Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

Likewise, sorry to hear that - I've done the same thing myself a couple of times.

(304)

March 1985: New Mexico

Answering to Rockies Command, the First US Army had its combat forces spread from Colorado down into the north-western part of Texas called the High Plains. The Area of Operations (AO) covered New Mexico too. Not part of the AO was West Texas. To those viewing the fighting across the western side of Texas from the outside, this might not have meant anything. However, in military affairs the boundaries of AOs were rather important. It stopped friendly fire incidents and made sure that focus could be maintained on the mission instead of getting side-tracked. The First Army had had its AO changed before and this wasn’t really anything difficult to do. However, it was unchanged from February into March. Two-thirds of the First Army was fighting in Colorado – the US XI Corps and the I Canadian Corps – and other third, the US XVIII Corps, was fighting in the High Plains and had been advancing southwards towards West Texas. This meant that the XVIII Corps was liberating occupied territory, yes, but also moving away from the main fight that the rest of the First Army was. They’d reached the edge of the AO after taking Lubbock. Air support from the Seventeenth US Air Force (under the Rockies Command too) was stretched to support them and so were the long supply links. The already long flank of the XVIII Corps facing New Mexico was getting even longer the further south that they went; it was the same on the other flank and made the forward movement all neck and no shoulders with the resulting strong possibility of them soon being cut off and lost. More than any of that, as the XVIII Corps drove on towards West Texas, they had no influence over the fight that everyone else with the First Army was fighting. The rest of Texas was in the AO of Texas Command – with its own two armies and two numbered air forces – and the First Army wanted to move the fight into New Mexico. It was there that the XI Corps and the Canadians were wanted to advance into from the north once they were done in Colorado. To do that effectively, the XVIII Corps needed to head west.

Roswell was where the XVIII Corps moved towards at the beginning of March. This took the enemy by the surprise. Soviet light forces stretched south of Lubbock were anticipating a head-on attack against them and had established fortified positions. The Texan national guardsmen with the 56th Cavalry Brigade stayed behind to keep them fixed in-place while everyone else entered New Mexico starting with an assault against that famous New Mexico town. The international airport to the south of there, once an airbase belonged to Strategic Air Command before being closed in the late Sixties, was the entry point. Back last October, Nicaraguan forces had taken it from the XVIII Corps when they had first been in New Mexico. Those Nicaraguans were all gone. Soviet aircraft (reconnaissance and electronic warfare jets) flew from there and there was a garrison of Revolutionary Mexico troops. A combat jump was made into Roswell and this was undertaken by the newly-arrived reinforcements added to the XVIII Corps in the form of the 11th ‘Angels’ Airborne Division. This was an Army of the United States formation, full of wartime recruits and conscripts as well as veteran personnel transferred from elsewhere to make the division not so green. The 11th Airborne consisted of four combat brigades, each based around a historic regiment, and incorporated forces which should have been with the 17th Air Assault Infantry Division. Fully-forming that latter division alongside the former had been too much for the Americans to achieve in the short time period available and so they had been merged into one (a large one at that) before deploying to combat zones. This was the 11th Airborne’s first taste of war.

Paratroopers jumped from aircraft shouting ‘Currahee!’ as they went into battle: the re-established 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment went into battle. Roswell was a tough fight for a green unit but it was one that they won. Another brigade, this one with men from the 511th Regiment (also with World War Two heritage), joined them on the ground after being airlifted rather than jumping as trained into the captured airport and fighting with them. The rest of the XVIII Corps was behind them but those veteran units were the follow-up force rather than sent in ahead. Once the airhead was taken, everyone else moved forward. There was the rest of the 11th Airborne which came via trucks, the 101st Air Assault Infantry Division (the Screaming Eagles) which also moved by road, a brigade of the 1st Infantry Division with armour and all of the corps assets. Better progress was made with the 101st Air Assault who fought at Hobbs and then Carlsbad – where they’d retreated from last year with their tail between their legs – on the left flank than the fight on the right flank. Around Cannon AFB, from where Cuban aircraft had already departed in haste, Nicaraguan defenders halted the American attack for some time. The 1st Infantry’s first brigade required a lot of fire support to pin them down and move around them to engulf these men. The delay allowed the mass destruction of facilities at Cannon… a place which had seen so much deliberate American destruction when they first abandoned the facility. However, once Cannon was taken and the Nicaraguans beaten with an advance following, the whole of the XVIII Corps was deep inside New Mexico and along both banks of the Pecos River thus denying it as a defensive position for the enemy. The rest of the 1st Infantry (another pre-war brigade plus a new one transferred from an aborted ARUS division) joined up with its semi-detached brigade after leaving Amarillo too.

Three divisions, all on the back of victories won, moved forward through mid-March. Their orders were to reach the next major river, the Rio Grande, as it cut through the middle of New Mexico. Interstate-25 ran from El Paso north into Colorado alongside that waterway. Enemy forces in Colorado would thus be completely cut off by reaching the river. Naturally, the First US Army expected the Soviet Twenty–Second Guards Army to respond once they realised what was going on. The Americans believed they were ready to counter that response.


The Soviet trans-Atlantic convoys which had crossed the North Atlantic at the end of last year had brought over two complete field armies to be built on American soil for offensive operations in March. Naval losses meant that only one was fully formed, and sent to the fight in Texas to get into Oklahoma and the Great Plains, while the other had what pieces were available broken away and dispatched as reinforcements to many battlefields. The Twenty–Second Army received a Soviet motor rifle division – which the Americans aimed to trap in Colorado – and also an East German brigade. The latter was dispatched to North America as a full division but what equipment was issued in-theatre was only enough to form an ad hoc brigade… part of what was missing was on the bottom of the ocean, part was taken by the Soviets. Those East Germans were sent to El Paso after the Soviets had already moved long ahead. American reconnaissance missed them here. Texas Command should have spotted them in the eyes of Rockies Command and informed them because it was in the former’s AO. Rockies Command should have been responsible, Texas Command would later say, because that enemy unit was assigned to those who they were fighting. This screw-up would lead to later recriminations with court martials aplenty. Before then, those East Germans marched away from El Paso. A Seventeenth Air Force reconnaissance flight spotted them once they were in New Mexico. The tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery along with the infantry were quickly at Alamogordo. This position in the White Sands put them ahead of where the 101st Air Assault Infantry was due to go. It was a problem, but one which the First Army headquarters told the XVIII Corps was manageable.

‘Manageable’ was quite the turn of phrase.

The Screaming Eagles did what they had done back late last year and held onto the Sacramento Mountains where the Lincoln National Forest and the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation was located. This time they wouldn’t be driven out by either frontal attacks now or flank actions as was the case in late 1984. They did their job and managed. It was up to the 1st Infantry Division to do theirs. They came at the East Germans from the north, entering the White Sands well-supported from above. Crashing into the first East German positions, the commander of the lead brigade reported to his divisional commander that they’d gone through them like a ‘knife through hot butter’. The second brigade was called upon though to overcome the enemy completely. It wasn’t the regular, veteran soldiers brought forward but instead those new soldiers; the veterans were kept ready to exploit the expected victory afterwards. The East Germans recovered well… so well that it was fast apparent that they weren’t recovering but in fact only getting started. These were good soldiers. They were up against bad odds yet if this was to be their end, then the end it would be. They wouldn’t be managed. American intelligence summaries comfortably assumed that these East Germans would not fight well so far from home for a cause which they had no part of. That was a foolish error. East Germany and its armed forces there in Europe, with all that was going across the other side of the ocean, was something different from its troops which had been in North America waiting to go into battle for some months now. These men were cut off from contact with home due to Soviet ‘security’ over communications. Their morale was fine and they knew nothing of what else was going on.

The ARUS brigade was led by officers contemptuously deemed ‘ninety-day wonders’ by other regular US Army officers who’d been through West Point, The Citadel, Virginia Military Institute and other such elite training facilities. These civilians fast turned into officers leading new soldiers were said to be not up to the job. At Roswell, the ninety-day wonders with the 11th Airborne had done good. Around the crossroads town of Tularosa – north of the bigger Alamogordo – the East Germans took on the inexperienced officers and men with the 1st Infantry. It wasn’t pretty. No big, dramatic flanking manoeuvres or modern cavalry charges across open terrain with a stunning victory. Instead, it was a horrible fight where men fought up close and personal. The East Germans took everything thrown at them and gave it all back. Very soon it became apparent that the brigade of Americans should have been pulled out. There was the belief that this was going to soon be over though… any moment now. Immense casualties were taken on both sides as they fought a static battle with no one looking likely to emerge victorious anytime soon without many more deaths and injuries. The Americans blinked. A withdrawal was ordered as the gutted brigade was pulled out. The East Germans refused to relent even then. They could have taken the opportunity to withdraw, to flee southwards. They did no such thing and instead pursued the retreating Americans. The whole of the 1st Infantry, both further combat brigades joining in, eventually had to be brought into the fight to counterattack and then surround the enemy. Tremendous fire support was then used against the now trapped East Germans who’d lost their chance to get away. They were blasted apart and finally there came a surrender arranged. It was a different affair than where other foreign troops on American soil had surrendered to the US Army. The East Germans, despite being communist forces, were allowed to keep some – maybe a little – honour in surrender. Rockies Command dispatched a media team with personnel not from the civilian field but psychology warfare troops. They made a recording of the event and conducted interviews with some of the POWs. This didn’t eventually end up on American television screens. The video tapes were requested by the British Government to be used elsewhere… complete with selected editing too, naturally.


Finally, after a significant delay, the XVIII Corps moved onwards. The 1st Infantry needed to recover – ‘ninety-day wonders sitting on their backsides’ came the remarks despite the whole division being fought out – but the two other divisions were still more than combat-capable. The Screaming Eagles took the lead this time with the Angels following them. Helicopters assigned to the 101st Air Assault Infantry brought US Army soldiers to the Rio Grande. The landing was made around Truth or Consequences, a town with an unusual name. Nearby was Elephant Butte Reservoir and the radar station which had been one of the very first places hit by Soviet Spetsnaz to open the war: the missile radars there had been facing south and were knocked out to limit detection of those SS-20s which hit the North Dakota ICBM fields. Of importance now was a Soviet built airstrip at Truth or Consequences that was used as refuelling & transit point. A Red Horse airfield combat engineer team sent by the Seventeenth Air Force was all over this very fast to clear and improve it for American use.

When the 11th Airborne arrived, its two untested brigades – built around the 509th & 517th Regiments – were sent into battle. These were more airmobile troops and flown in on flight after flight of C-130 transports which made rapid turnarounds at Truth or Consequences. They were sent northwards, past the reservoir’s dam which the Screaming Eagles held securely against any attack, and along the course of Interstate-25 which in this part of New Mexico ran along the western side of the Rio Grande. More ninety-day wonders and the green troops they commanded got their first taste of battle. They fought small, sporadic engagements against Soviet, Cuban and Nicaraguan light units through the last week of March. This blooded them. It gave them their first experience of fighting and they were lucky that their opposition was scattered enemy from transport, engineering, and communications units. After Truth or Consequences had been taken, the American presence there cut a hole in the links going north. All of these soldiers involved in keeping the fight going in Colorado were told that while they were in New Mexico, they were still soldiers. They had to fight until others – real soldiers – turned up. They had guns and training but weren’t organised to mount any real resistance to American soldiers learning their trade. American numbers, training and organisation won out.

The XVIII Corps’ position on the Rio Grande deep in New Mexico put them atop the main supply route for the Soviets. Smaller links had already been lost when they moved into New Mexico from Texas. The Twenty–Second Army was cut off. In addition, it was also engaged in a major fight itself up in Colorado. Regardless of what was going on up there, the Soviets would have to move against the Truth or Consequences position and the pair of American divisions there fast despite the distance or otherwise die in-place. Come next month, those soldiers with the 11th Airborne who lost their greenness recently would value the combat lesson they learnt.

Yay Microsoft, don't ever change...

Great update again James G .

That makes sense yes. And if I'm not too badly mistaken, there also were East German troops in Poland to keep that contained, so that's a further drain on the already limited reliable manpower. Because, in the end, that's what matters the most. The East Germans (and Czechs) really need everything they have at home to secure the border (and to prevent things from blowing up at home, but you can't ever say that). 

I agree, wonder if the United States will create a security buffer zone in Mexico.