Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

Hopefully the warnings will have come in time, while there will be casualties, these are inevitable, hopefully it's mostly material not human casualties. Trucks, Land Rovers, even tanks are easy enough to replace. Personnel, less so.

Guys whilst debate is good we must remember it’s the authors story and always will be.

Love the update hopefully the warnings of incoming will save some lives. For some who have seen an attack like this is scary very scary.

There will be a boom, a big one. Whether it will be forever is debateable though. The war has been very far away indeed.

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February 1985: The Texan High Plains

Up on the Texan High Plains, where Amarillo and Lubbock were, Nicaraguan forces there began February in a bad way and just about holding back the Americans. Within a week, the Nicaraguan Second Army would be no more. The Soviets couldn’t stop the annihilation of their supposed allies. The Americans would get as far south as Lubbock and win themselves a victory on the scale of Denver yet one with far less outside attention. The loss of the Nicaraguans would fade into the background though.

The US XVIII Corps moved down from Plainview and towards Lubbock early in the month. The city itself wasn’t their goal but rather the transportation infrastructure around it with the road, rail and air connections. Soviet orders pushed the Nicaraguans to make another stand while they rearranged their own forces to bring the Americans to a final stop closer to Lubbock yet there was too much faith put in the Nicaraguans. First the 56th Cavalry Brigade cut through them and then the 101st Air Assault Infantry Division followed those Texans out front. The Nicaraguans were broken up into little pieces very quickly and even at that stage, there was Soviet belief that they would be able to delay the Americans when making individual fights, hopefully managing to shut the door behind the Americans. That wasn’t to be. Nicaraguan units folded easily when cut off. The Americans would be slowed somewhat, but only by the sheer amount of POWs they would have to deal with. Infighting among the different nationalities involved within the Second Army – only about sixty per cent of the men were Nicaraguans; the rest Hondurans and Salvadorans – occurred once again when they surrendered. There had been an American propaganda effort ahead of the fight to sew division yet this only became out in the open once there had come those surrenders. Military police units were forced to back away and let the enemy kill each other. This was for their own safety, their reports higher up the chain of command said, though down on the ground the view was very different. It was a case of sitting back and watching the enemy kill each other with glee at a lower level of command.

Soviet paratroopers from the 106th Guards Airborne Division were around Lubbock and they were joined by Bulgarian paratroopers as well. These men came here light and without any heavy forces in immediate support. A regiment of Soviet tanks had been supposed to join them yet they had been sent to avert disaster in Arizona: it was a long trip for them across to south-eastern Arizona but they got there in the end. Those sent to Lubbock didn’t give a damn about Arizona. Their only concern was the approaching enemy and reconnaissance aircraft spotting a further incoming American heavy force to join with the 56th Brigade. Intelligence identified it as one of the two brigades serving with the 1st Infantry Division. This left only a tiny American force to the north, facing what few Nicaraguans were left between Amarillo and New Mexico, yet that couldn’t be exploited at all at this time. To replace those missing Soviet tanks, there had been a Bulgarian brigade meant to come to Lubbock. The Soviets rated them and the paratroopers already in Lubbock as good troops, very good in fact, though they would rather have had their own men here when faced with oncoming Americans. The paratroopers would have to hold on until the Bulgarians got to them.

American aircraft and helicopters struck ahead of their advancing troops though didn’t have an easy time of it. There was a lot of defensive fire directed towards them and the Soviets – joined by Cuban aircraft too – fought them in the skies. Neither side could control the skies nor make a decisive input to the ground fight. Meanwhile, the XVIII Corps advanced onwards and reached the Soviets outside of Lubbock before the Bulgarians showed up. They had won the race… yet the Bulgarians weren’t that far off, just a day away. Lubbock’s airport, which was a major transport hub for the Soviets and where they had flown in all those men to fight here, was fought over with the 56th Brigade seizing it at first yet then hit with a fierce Soviet counterattack. It was to the airport where the Bulgarian 9th Tank Brigade went and they forced the Texans to withdraw. There was a belief that those men from the 1st Infantry would be present as well yet the intelligence here was faulty. The Americans were playing radio games with much deception used in what they were up to. More than that, they were splitting their forces and that wasn’t what the Soviets believed they would do. The detached heavy brigade showed up to the west where the Bulgarians had their paratroopers, over at Reese AFB. Unlike the Soviet Airborne who had their many BMD light armoured vehicles, the Bulgarian 68th Parachute Reconnaissance Regiment had no armoured vehicles: they were often called the ‘Balkan Spetsnaz’ because that accurately summed them up. Sniping, raiding, patrolling… that was what they would good for and their deployment was on the flank meant to secure it. The Americans threw tanks, armoured infantry and artillery at them in a full-scale assault though to grab the airbase. The Soviets tried to reach them in time because they weren’t about to abandon them like they had done to the Nicaraguans, yet they wouldn’t extricate themselves nor the 9th Tank Brigade from the bigger fight when the 101st Air Assault showed up behind the 56th Brigade. Reese fell into American hands and the Bulgarians there were either killed or scattered.

There was no let up in the American attack. The XVIII Corps kept on going. From the airbase, they made an advance going around Lubbock anti-clockwise. From the airport, they moved forward in a clockwise direction. They were gobbling up Lubbock from the outside and aiming to shut the door behind those inside. This would trap the Soviets and the Bulgarians. The time to make a decision for the Soviets on what to do was alarmingly short. In theory, the Nicaraguan Second Army was the higher headquarters for the Texan High Plains though with the Nicaraguans lost, the Soviet Airborne divisional commander took charge of his men, the Bulgarian tankers and a mixed assortment of various smaller support units in the service of many nations. Withdraw now, came the order, with utmost haste. A KGB colonel attempted to avert this with the reasoning that there had been no higher permission. He was ignored and told that he would be left behind if he chose to be. The man elected to retreat with the withdrawing troops though this would be far from the end of the matter. The fastest way out of Lubbock would be to go southeast and towards the high ground there: the winding course of the Yellow House Canyon would provide an excellent buffer against the stronger American forces moving clockwise. Such a thing would open up the way for the Americans to go further south though, deep into West Texas. The 106th Guards’ commander knew he’d be in trouble for the retreat he ordered but it would be worse if he did that. Going southwest and running away was just that; moving south and making a stand over better terrain there would be (in his eyes) a valid military action. Therefore, it was to the south they went. The Bulgarians covered the rear and, while hasty, the retreat was done with much success. Few men were left behind. A lot of equipment, stores and infrastructure was left intact though, all for the Americans to use. The Soviets and Bulgarians established their blocking positions and brought the Americans to a halt almost a dozen miles south of Lubbock. They’d got away from a doomed fight. That KGB colonel among them reported the unauthorised action and pointed to what had been left in Lubbock. He smiled when he discovered that the Soviet Airborne general was to be executed for ‘cowardice in the face of the enemy’ yet that smirk disappeared when he himself was arrested, faced court-martial and was taken to be shot (a process which took ten minutes in total) because he too was deemed a coward. Why did he go along with the retreat and not stay behind to ensure the destruction of all of that that was left behind? He never got the chance to answer that question.


The XVIII Corps couldn’t go no further than the Soviet’s newly-established positions, a line stretching east-west past Lubbock. The ground chosen for those was anchored among high ground either side and the middle was full of some further difficult patches of terrain which was of good use to a defender. With time, once fire support was brought up and a major assault could commence, this would be taken on. Not for now though. The 56th Brigade’s commander wanted to keep on going but the initial engagements his men met when reaching the defensive line made the corps commander realise that this was impossible. The Bulgarians fought Texan national guardsmen once again and this time the Soviets got some aircraft into play to make a difference. While it was late, it did its job. A pause was ordered. More than thought possible had been done already and the XVIII Corps was overstretched. He feared that the Soviets would suddenly get more reinforcements and come back north while his men were spread out all over the place. This was no time to be foolish and lose his corps.

Inside Lubbock, the treasure trove that the Soviets were angry that was left behind wasn’t considered such by the Americans. Yes, they got hold of a lot of stores and equipment and there had been no major demolitions done but it was hardly anything to get really excited about. An intelligence leak said that the KGB had shot the paratroopers’ commander for what he left behind. There was a hunt on for that ‘what’ was because nothing jumped out at the Americans as being worth a great deal. The stocks of ammunition and weaponry encountered weren’t too much. Other stores were looked upon with disdain. They fed their soldiers this? This was their medical equipment? This was their vehicle maintenance set-up? Reese AFB had been taken near intact though the airport was smashed to pieces after being directly fought over. Much of the road and rail links around Lubbock were damaged from American air attacks before the battle and almost nothing had been done to repair that bomb damage. Prisoners were taken from the men who didn’t get out but none of them could be considered valuable to anyone. The fuss that the Soviets made was confusing because they had managed to get the majority of their forces out. In American eyes, losing their men would have been far worse than what they got their hands upon.

Winning a victory like they had and liberating American soil was what the Americans regarded as a prize. There were civilians in Lubbock who were freed though not too many of them. So many of the small city’s population had left long ago before it was lost and those who had stayed behind – for various reasons – had seen the Nicaraguans ‘pacify’ them. After Lubbock, the XVIII Corps received the orders to hold onto what they had (as the corps’ commander had already done) and wait pending his own reinforcement. Elements of the Army of the United States were being attached to the XVIII Corps, new units coming to an end of their training and being equipped. There were artillery, aviation, engineering and support units aplenty. Of combat troops, the XVIII Corps received a new division. This was the 11th Air Assault Infantry. When it came time to go south again, these new volunteer recruits and conscripts would see their first taste of battle when the war moved to West Texas.

I wonder what is happening on the domestic political front in Central American especially Nicaragua and Guatemala.