Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

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March 1985: The Middle East

Nothing happens in a vacuum. News spreads but bad news always spreads faster. Across the world, the various warring powers sought to influence the leaders of others through information… and also a healthy dose of disinformation too. Word of defeat and disaster was heard throughout the month around the world considering the global position of the Soviet Union. Not all of that was true or properly accurate yet much of it was though. Governments used their intelligence services (or relied on the activities of other’s) to find out what was going on. Once analysed, the bad news – ahead of anything good – which came on how the war had turned against the Soviets in many places was fully understood for what that all meant: those countries had backed the wrong side. Maybe the Soviets could turn the situation around, yes, but it didn’t look likely. There were several countries who were looking for a way out of this war.

Across the Middle East, there were those seeking to leave the conflict which they had joined. That didn’t mean turning actively against the Soviet Union yet there were concerns that in Moscow, they would see things that way. This brought the hesitation and the slow easing back of the role which they were playing rather than an abrupt halt which could see Moscow turn upon them. It was Assad in Syria and Saddam in Iraq who were doing this. The two dictators – enemies but whose countries were allies of convivence – didn’t want to end up like Gaddafi. Neither would each want to find themselves in the same position that Tirado López did before the end of March. They were seeking a balancing act, one which would bring about their own personal survival. That was key for each man. They had personal control over the countries of their birth and enriched themselves from that. The two of them were still relatively young men with many years ahead that they hoped to see before later their sons succeed them. To bring this about, they wanted to get out of this war and to do so without being killed by foreign assassins or nuclear attacks.

In the two nations, there were unfortunate problems which cropped up and accidents which took place. These brought about complications for the participation of each and their territory for the wider Soviet-led war effort. The borders of Iraq and Syria weren’t seeing war on them and so they were sort-of backwaters in the global conflict. This meant that what happened in them wasn’t as significant as it could have been had there been fighting in the Persian Gulf or, say, up in Turkey. The Soviets noticed the flurry of issues yet it took time for a pattern to emerge and be identified due to how unimportant it all was. Convoys were held up and ships delayed but it was nothing that was going to change the course of the war that they were fighting elsewhere. Once it was all put together, of course it was no coincidence. All those issues just couldn’t happen at once and not be connected. There was paranoia and then there was common sense: this was a case of the latter. It was reported up the chain of command.

Assad and Saddam didn’t coordinate their activities. There was an understanding between them though – one broken through outside sources rather than any high-level direct cooperation – on the matter. Neither was going to turn against the other at this time and work to bring either down at the behest of Moscow. Such an unofficial agreement had been broken by those outsiders in the form of other Arab countries not involved in the war yet at the same time not working for Allied or EDA interests. Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were all involved in this and doing it for themselves. Saudi Arabia helped to aid Iraq in being able to do what it did by easing back with its provocative stance towards Iraq – one which it regarded as only defensive – at this time. Moreover, using contacts in Jordan, the Saudis agreed to do this at the same time as Israel eased off with its ongoing actions in Lebanon and the Golan Heights where for months now clashes had occurred with Syria. Syria wasn’t given a free hand to do what it wanted – Israel wouldn’t stand for that – but it no longer had to face so many ‘defensive and pre-emptive’ Israel air & commando strikes. Tel Aviv’s motives here complicated. They too wanted Soviet allies across the Middle East – the red wave on the map – to leave the war but theirs was so that in the future, there wouldn’t be a solid bloc of united opponents. At the same time, they didn’t want to see a united bloc of any form created as well. Israel worked to make sure that these various countries didn’t trust each other even when working together. It wasn’t easy to do.

The war between Egypt and Libya remained a frozen conflict. It and the American reaction to it had been one of the significant events on the road to the Third World War yet once that larger conflict had started, this fight had already died down to nothing more than border skirmishes. Libya had openly aligned itself with the Soviet Union and Egypt had backed off in the face of that. Meanwhile Gaddafi had gone after Malta and tried to punch above its weight as a world power. Mubarak – the replacement for Sadat after Libyan-backed Palestinians had killed him – hadn’t forgotten what Gaddafi had done. If he had had the opportunity, and thought he could get away with it, he would have seen to it that Gaddafi got his just deserts. Gaddafi was dead though, killed by the Soviets for daring to act independently. His replacement was a very different man that his predecessor. Egypt had first been under the impression that Haftar was a Soviet proxy yet that fast became something dismissed. Haftar was no such thing. He was a man out to prove himself and with an extremely strong independent streak: he also quickly showed no aversion to enriching himself. Mubarak could deal with a man like that. Armed with Saudi money and contacts that Haftar fast established with the neutral Gulf Arab Monarchies, Egypt sought to woo the new leader of Libya. This wasn’t going to be easy. It was something that needed to be done quietly as well. However, Mubarak believed that it could be done. He did so for he shared the exact same opinion as those in Tel Aviv that the Soviets had no place in the Middle East and that a united collection of Arab nations fulfilling Moscow’s wishes – even if that was only on the surface – was only bad for everyone else. Maybe Israel would get the negative attention first but then Egypt would be next. Border fighting ceased and the approaches were made to Haftar to get him to lead his country out of the war which Gaddafi had taken Libya into. Egypt had just started this when several of Libya’s other neighbours all went to war in support of Western Europe. Algeria, Chad and Tunisia were all now actively aligned with the EDA against the Soviets. Yet, none of them moved against Libya and Haftar didn’t attack any of them either. There was no conflict now on any of Libya’s borders accept the short fight where Malta was liberated. Haftar showed no sign of taking any hostile action anywhere else, near or far. He hadn’t broken with Moscow publicly though it was no longer doing the Soviet’s bidding.

What the Iraqis and Syrians did, plus also hints of this ‘axis’ between Cairo, Riyadh and Tel Aviv, came to the attention of the Soviet leadership. The Libyans unfriendliness was already noted yet now there was a region-wide theme to this. It was all complicated when it came to the details – with alliances between supposed mortal enemies – but overall it was simple: Moscow’s allies were working with allies of the United States. The Americans had little involvement in this that the KGB could find though they were sure it was there somewhere. Those who reported this all the way to those at the top expected the strongest action to be taken. Gaddafi’s earlier ‘betrayal’ had been harshly dealt with there had been strong threats made to other countries such as Panama before. All of this surely would be stopped. There was a wait for the decision-makers to start issuing orders. That wait went on…

…and on.

Nothing came of it. Moscow was distracted by even more troubling events elsewhere: the wars in North America, Western Europe and China. Their influence abroad through such a significant region was ever-so-slowly crumbling and not being stopped.

The Soviets are probably focusing everything on keeping the Saxony Pocket going, the moment it collapses they can kiss East Germany goodbye.

Feels like the Soviets doing the same thing the Germans did during World War II.

Thank you.
You're correct. I avoided the region a lot. There was potential for a fight in the Persian Gulf and against Egypt too but I choose not to.
Readers may struggle to keep track with all that is going on already for I know I do: yet another front would be even more confusing!




If the EDA and British crush the trapped Soviet armies and then go east, they won't be stopped. The East Germans have border guards (well-armed but only 'light') as well as armed Stasi troops... and that's about it. In Poland there is a whole seven-division army formed of Soviets, East Germans and Czechoslovaks. However, they have seen their tank units halved: sent to West Germany with recon elements, artillery, chemical warfare detachments and so on: all those bits which would make them capable of the fight they would need to have. Plus, if they leave Poland, then that situation could blow up and leave them, plus anyone they could try to rescue, stranded.
It is a bad situation to be in.



You've summed that up very well there. The war in North America should have been the only one but even then the minute they failed to follow-up early successes with the supply route across the oceans, they were stuffed there eventually. China was a disaster to get into; Western Europe even worse.
Each fight is about overstretch too. The latest war with Yugoslavia is a good example of that: West Germany and Austria were enough! In the update below, in China, they have their armies fighting far from the Motherland and still winning but the overstretch there is the whole war, not the details.
There has been, and there will be more. heated discussions in Moscow. They aren't all insane there.
I must say though that no doves have occurred and internally, on the face of it, the Soviet Union is still in a good shape. Even with 'setbacks', the mood of defeat has yet to sink in.




In some ways, yes. However, fighting a three front war, across several continents, is beyond Hitler levels of stupidity now.



I agree. The latter is especially apt as that strike into West Germany is a last gasp flight of fancy where they are trying to repeat earlier successes elsewhere against different opponents.

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March 1985: Korea and the Pacific

The North Koreans just wouldn’t give in. Its armies on South Korean soil had been wiped out and the last of the occupied territory there retaken. There were two big nuclear holes in North Korea – at Kaesong and Wonsan – and the centre of Pyongyang was a pile of rubble from repeated B-52 strikes. Their Soviet allies had made promises which had only been partially delivered upon while now refusing to send any more ‘fraternal assistance’ in the form of troops. Kim Il-sung remained gravely injured from the American attempt to kill him; his son, Kim Jong-il, was struggling to maintain his position as he discovered that killing opponents just brought more to life. The South Koreans and the Allies had their armies inside the DMZ and looked ready to invade. Despite it all, North Korea kept on fighting.

Devoid of an air force, a navy and an army which could do anything offensive, North Korea fought onwards with the Second Korean War regardless. Back from the DMZ, the KPA had a huge defensive line. Nearly a million civilian soldiers – the Workers-Peasants Red Guards – manned that position out ahead. Many of them were positioned close to the Kaesong area and had no idea of the radiation coming from there. Right behind the Red Guards were lower-grade elements of the KPA with tanks (some really old ones too such as T-34s) and mobile infantry. There was a lot of artillery as well. Howitzers, mortars and rocket-launchers had been dragged from across the country to join those already in defensive positions already. This artillery launched continuous attacks southwards. In places the targeting was terrible yet elsewhere it remained good. Accuracy wasn’t important as far as the KPA was concerned though: what mattered was having those shells and rockets exploding to the south and thus keeping the enemy forces there ‘busy’. There was no telling at all where those would land and thus those forces massing for what Kim Jong-il was convinced was an incoming invasion were permanently kept off-balance.

There was no planned invasion of North Korea.

Clearing the KPA out of the last of their trapped pockets and then moving into the DMZ was all that could be done. Six long months of war had seen the South Koreans being able to do no more than that in the end. They’d fought both the KPA and then a detachment of the Soviet Army to a standstill on their soil before reaching the DMZ. No more could be done. Allied forces with them included those who had played a significant supporting role in that yet it was the South Koreans who – numerically – had done the bulk of the fighting. Recent arrivals of more troops from the Allies had come but there had been departures too: in the case of the latter, three quarters of the Americans. Men from Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand and the Philippines were welcome yet they only replaced the departing pair of US Army divisions (a third stayed behind) and the division of US Marines who were all going home. The South Korean, along with the Allies, weren’t able to go any further north than the DMZ.

Yet that didn’t stop them from imitating that they were going to at some point soon. Counter-shelling took place and there was much air activity against all of that North Korean artillery as well. The mass of Red Guards weren’t feared as a force capable of making a successful second invasion for they were lightly-armed yet there was still a lot of them to take on should they be marched forward in a human wave attack. The South Koreans wanted to see them gassed and pressed the Americans to do so, pointing out after it occurred that the Soviets had just gassed the British (another member of the Allies) over in West Germany. The Allies refused permission for this to be done, especially since they had yet to move. Instead, they were attacked with high-explosives, napalm and bucketfulls of propaganda leaflets for the time being. South Korea also continued to put commando teams north of the DMZ on raiding rather than intelligence-gathering missions as had been the case beforehand. This was done to keep up the impression that they were preparing for & scouting the way for an invasion. The men who took part in those raids were under that impression too and the ones which ended up captured told their interrogators that because they knew nothing else.

Through March, the situation on the Korean Peninsula at this point in the Second Korean War resembled that at the end of the First Korean War thirty years beforehand.


The Soviets retained a ‘fleet in being’ with the remains of their Pacific Fleet. There were two dozen major warships in the Sea of Okhotsk and this included two light aircraft carriers and a battle-cruiser. They were far inside that marginal sea which stretched deep in towards Siberia and far back from the US Navy forces which were positioned outside. Beneath the waves of this cold and lonely sea, there was a force of submarines present too: diesel- & nuclear-powered attack submarines for the further defence of the strategic missile submarines. Those warships had been out on the open ocean earlier in the war and were the survivors of a larger fleet who hadn’t managed to make it back into the Sea of Okhotsk in the face of the massed strength of the US Navy. Now they were to stay here and make sure that the missile submarines were kept safe in their bastion – aircraft and land-based missiles also defended the sea – instead of going back out into the Pacific. While that was their mission now for the foreseeable future, the Americans looked at the surviving warships as just waiting to move once again to open waters. The US Navy saw the Soviet Pacific Fleet as a fleet in being because its orders could change. The Americans wanted those ships sunk and to finish what they had started.

Getting at the Soviet ships meant getting past the defences of the bastion. The geography didn’t favour an attack into the Sea of Okhotsk when faced with the defences that the Soviets had in-place. To the west there was the Soviet mainland – the Primorye region with the nuclear devastation of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok at each end – and the large island of Sakhalin. Across to the east was the Kamchatka Peninsula. And, in the middle, lay the Kuril Islands. That island chain stretched between Kamchatka and the large Japanese home island of Hokkaido. Military sites along it had been attacked throughout the war from the air and also naval bombardments had occured. There remained defences within them though as well as minefields blocking the passage. While not impassable, they still provided a formidable line of defence and blocked the only viable route for a forced passage of major US Navy forces to go into the Sea of Okhotsk unless the Americans wanted to take the indirect route through the wider La Pérouse Strait and face the many more defences over there. A rearrangement of their carrier forces following the repairs made to the USS Carl Vinson (that carrier had taken months to be patched up) gave them a force of three ready to go into that sea: the Carl Vinson would be joined by the USS Constellation and the USS Ranger.

What to do about the Kuril Islands became a source of contention between two of the strongest Allied partners in Asia: Japan and the United States. The Kuril Islands – especially some of the nearest ones to Hokkaido – had once belonged to Japan as the bottom half of Sakhalin had too. Japan had long wanted those certain portions of the Kuril Islands back and deemed them their Northern Territories unjustly stolen at the end of the Second World War; the Soviets had taken them then and regarded their continued rule as the right of the conqueror. Moreover, such islands were now sovereign Soviet soil never to be given up no matter what. The Americans knew full well both positions and believed that if Japan took the Kuril Islands, the Soviets would resort to nuclear war over them. Japan would be in the firing line of that and, as Japan had no nuclear weapons of their own to strike back with, the United States would have to do so in retaliation to a Soviet first strike less the Soviets destroy all of Japan. That wasn’t a road which they wanted to go down. The US Navy wanted to go into the Sea of Okhotsk – bringing the Japanese with them – yet by doing so would mean occupying some of the Kuril Islands and the US Government wouldn’t agree to that. While it would be Japanese troops which would go into those islands, they would have to be supported by the US Navy in doing so. American refusal from above – cancelling out the US Navy’s wishes – aggravated Japan. They had their untested army (only Japan and Paraguay were the members of the Allies whose armies hadn’t seen action; South Korea, even when on its knees, had angrily refused a Japanese offer of troops) ready to see action where their air force and navy already had. There was a desire for revenge for all of those missile attacks upon Japan with both conventional and chemical weapons which went alongside that territorial demand; Japan played down the latter but everyone knew that that was what this was all about, even more than defeating the Soviet Pacific Fleet. The Americans said no. There would be no landings made in the Kuril Islands.

The Japanese were forced to stay away from the Kurile Islands apart from activity in the skies. The Americans still went into the Sea of Okhotsk though. Due to politics, the US Navy couldn’t send their carriers but they did dispatch several submarines. These were to act independently of each other rather than as a wolf pack and were tasked to seek out that fleet in being and attack it from below now that assault from above in the form of carrier air strikes were impossible. It was made very clear to the submarine captains that they weren’t to attack Soviet missile submarines. If such boats were in open water, away from this bastion, they were fair game (and there had been sinkings in the Arctic of such submarines), but not while in here. Of the five which were tasked to the mission, one was lost going through the La Pérouse Strait: there was an unknown minefield there. Two more operated in the southern half of the sea – one each off Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands – while the final pair went northwards in the direction of Magadan.

USS Indianapolis and USS La Jolla had those specific orders to not engage the missile submarines. Their captains would put personal feelings aside and obey those commands. The Soviet Pacific Fleet wasn’t aware of such orders though.

That last sentence was particularly ominous.

Chapter Twenty–Three – Betrayal

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Early April 1985: North America (one of three)

April 1985 saw only eleven days of full-scale, organised warfare take place. No one understood at the beginning of the month that there would only be a week and a half left of fighting. Things were started that were foreseen to take a lot longer and were thus cut abruptly short.

***

Soviet intelligence was aware that the Americans had pulled troops out of South Korea starting the end of February. Some consideration had been made to being prepared for their arrival on the western side of the Pacific: in China or even on the Soviet coast somewhere. However, the more reasonable assumption was that they would be sent across the wide expanse of the ocean over to North America. The KGB believed that those Americans would go to join the fighting in north-western Mexico; it would be to Alaska that the GRU was certain they would be sent to. The GRU was only half correct while the KGB was entirely mistaken. The US Army’s 7th and 25th Infantry Divisions (the latter with Hawaiian national guardsmen attached) went first to California before moving into Arizona to join the war there. As to the 3rd Marine Division, they arrived in Alaska yet didn’t make immediate opposed landings either in the Aleutian Islands or in the Alaskan Panhandle where the GRU was sure they would. To the Alaskan Panhandle the 3rd Marines did go, though they were part of the follow-up force for the activities of the already-engaged 5th Marine Division and were thus ‘late for the party’.

Continuing where they had left off in March, the 5th Marines moved on Juneau. The small city which was the state capital was where about half of the remaining Soviet forces in the region were located. They were trapped there: cut off from everyone else and the rest of the world too. However, rather than leaving them be behind their defensive position, the Americans moved against them. The Soviets in Juneau were surrounded by civilians as well as POWs. They had brought many up to the Juneau area. Conditions among those Americans there were clearly bad and, after seeing the same elsewhere in liberated areas, political pressure rather than military necessity drove what was in effect a rescue mission on a grand scale. Getting to Juneau was far more difficult than it was reaching Ketchikan and Sitka. It was far back from the open sea, hidden behind unfriendly terrain and Juneau couldn’t be reached by land. Only going via air and sea could that be done. That was why the 5th Marines were here rather than the US Army. April’s first few days saw the final approaches made, making good of preparations made last month. There were some fights in outlying areas away from Juneau as well as air activity against the Soviet’s own aircraft flying from Juneau’s airport. This all preceded the main attack where US Navy ships – escorts and the amphibious transports – brought the 5th Marines towards Juneau. Those vessels went through the Icy Strait, around the tip of Admiralty Island and to Auke Bay. From there the assault on Juneau began with a start at dawn on April 6th.

The landings were strongly opposed. Soviet defensive fire against landing ships and transport helicopters was fierce yet overcome. Once the Marines were put ashore, they faced an opponent which was dug-in and hadn’t been softened up enough by pre-assault action undertaken against them. Regardless, the 5th Marines pushed on. The defences were reckoned to be brittle, just needing a hard whack to crack open. That was true in the end though at certain moments such a thing might have seemed optimistic. Some of the defenders fought well, those who unleashed all of that firepower, but others caved in. The Marines exploited the gaps they found. Juneau Airport was taken – it was left a ruin – and part of the division, RLT 29, pushed onwards in a northern direction up the Mendenhall Valley. The other two regiments (RLT 21 & RLT 27) moved eastwards. Juneau itself was in that direction with the mountain after which it was named looming above it. The Soviets had lost the 11th Airmobile Brigade in fighting for the airport but they had two regiments of motor riflemen around the city. They weren’t as exposed to naval gunfire and while still having to face air attacks, at least those shells from the warships offshore wouldn’t be able to give them their full attention. However, the 5th Marines had landed their artillery ahead of the two regiments tasked for the advance inland. There were a lot of heavy guns they brought ashore. The US Marines were experts at bringing supporting firepower into play to accurately cover their assaults. Those guns were joined by Harriers and Sea-Cobra attack helicopters in raining hell down upon the Soviets outside Juneau; all of those warships assigned hadn’t too shown up in Auke Bay. A flotilla of five US Navy and two Canadian warships came up the Gastineau Channel, a waterway which the Soviets believed they had covered with mines and a missile battery at its bottom end. Force Recon Marines had seized the small town of Hoonah back on April 1st. There was a small airstrip there which the Soviets hadn’t been using due to the short length of its runway. Hoonah on Chichagof Island would have been a good outlying defensive position to block the Icy Strait yet the Soviets didn’t have the men to be everywhere. Flying from Hoonah were Harriers in US Marines service and these weren’t those which were aboard the amphibious ships. From Hoonah to the bottom of the Gastineau Channel, it was a short flight for aircraft which could make vertical take-offs & landings but could make use of a short runway as well to improve their performance. Several bomb runs were made where forward spotters guided the bombs which blasted that missile battery to utter smithereens. As to the mines, there were a pair of minesweepers available. One of the US Navy ships hit a mine and the destroyer USS Richard S. Edwards had to be beached or it would have sunk and blocked access, but the rest sailed onwards with their own air support coming from those Harriers too.

The whole defensive position of Juneau had fallen apart when the Americans had opened up the rear. Tanks supported the 5th Marines and they had all that external fire support to call upon. The Soviets were long doomed here but this only accelerated things. There was fighting on the outskirts of Juneau on April 9th and the Americans entered it the next morning. Soviet shipping of various types – their own and others they had captured to make use of – was either destroyed by American attacks or scuttled when the seacocks were pulled to deny them to the enemy. Explosions took place inside the city along with executions as well. Juneau was being abandoned. The Soviets fell backwards, either into the wilderness around the mountain behind or over onto Douglas Island. Going either way would see them doomed. The Americans were all over them and there was no way out of this mess. Meanwhile, the 5th Marines fought against hold-outs in Juneau. They had to several times call off artillery or air strikes when it was realised they were about to fire upon trapped civilians and instead dig the enemy out by close-up fighting. Juneau was a battle honour that the men who fought in it would be proud to have earned yet would have terrible memories of.

There was still fighting in and around Juneau come April 11th before that all came to a stop. The Americans had won and were mopping up the last hold-outs as well as hunting down those who had tried to make a run for it. Minds were already being turned to going elsewhere afterwards. The 3rd Marines was due to take-on the Soviets in Petersburg and Wrangell and once that was done, long term plans were already there to go to Kodiak Island and the Aleutians through May, June and July with both divisions. Yet that wasn’t to be. Instead, attention was on redirected to dealing with the mass of prisoners taken who almost all needed medical attention (wounds but other issues) alongside all of those civilians that were encountered. There were lots of them killed in the crossfire of the Battle of Juneau yet no mass massacre had taken place: this wasn’t Mexico after all. The rest needed medical care and to have something to eat. They celebrated their freedom that the 5th Marines had given them.


No one had told Tijuana that the nuclear strike on areas of their country held by Revolutionary Mexico was about to take place. The status of Democratic Mexico as a co-belligerent of the United States – not as an American ally nor a country part of the Allies – was a factor in this but so too was the whole American position towards Mexico of any stripe. In the Glenn Administration, only Howard Baker could be counted on to speak up for Democratic Mexico but even then, the Vice President still had little love for the governing council in Tijuana. He put American interests first and only sought to temper the mood of others in the US Government, as well as the vengeful Congress, to keep them in the fight. The soldiers of Democratic Mexico were fighting alongside United States forces on Mexican soil. Every casualty they took was one less American casualty. Baker had raised the issue of telling them, not consulting them, but Glenn overruled him when other National Security Council members pointed to the KGB finding out. The leadership of Democratic Mexico was rife was Soviets spies despite many American (costly) efforts to root them out. Nothing was said to Tijuana ahead of the strike on seven Mexican cities.

As could be expected, the leadership in Tijuana was absolutely furious. Those had been Mexican civilians in those cities struck on March 25th! Millions had been killed outright, millions more would join them for decades in dying due to after-effects and their nation would be poisoned forever! Mexico City’s destruction last September was something that Tijuana had never gotten over but this was even worse. They knew the feelings of the Americans towards them and concluded that this was deliberate murder of Mexican civilians just because they were Mexicans as well as a purposeful move to destroy their nation forever. Nothing that the Americans said afterwards – none of which contained apologies; what the hell did ‘an expression of regret’ even mean? – could convince them that everything about this wasn’t just an act of vengeance. It was pure evil, Tijuana decided, and there could be no justification. New York stated that it brought down the regime of Tirado López. Who cared about that when it came with the bodies of all of those innocents and the complete obliteration of Mexico’s future?

Tijuana was unable to do anything in response at what was a betrayal of everything they had thought that the Americans would do to end this war and see them put in power to lead Mexico post-war. How now could they lead their country once it was all over with that had been done? Their impotence in inaction with a response was telling and something that the Americans had known as well.

News spread across Mexico in relation to the attack on those seven cities. There was exaggeration, lies, denials, shock, anger… a whole range of emotions from those who heard about what happened. The Mexico Massacre did bring down the regime of Tirado López. He’d centralised power in Guadalajara after learning nothing from the fate of Mexico City and the destruction caused there beforehand to his regime last year. That regime couldn’t handle another shock like that when so many institutions of the state, plus key people, were killed. Guadalajara was partially supported by some state infrastructure elsewhere – all ready to move there – which was over in the city of Leon… another target for American ICBMs. Public security, communications and leadership losses came in an instant. Afterwards, the fallout came: physical and metaphorical. Central parts of Mexico were especially affected by the physical fallout due to the running line of nuclear strikes from Guadalajara to Leon to Morelia through where Mexico City once was to Pueblo. Elsewhere, the three blasts further north in Chihuahua, Hermosillo and Saltillo brought more poison to the people and the land. Panic hit those not killed by the blasts as they left cities and towns. Security forces had no higher control who gave orders what to do and then they suffered immense rates of desertion too. Revolutionary Mexico just disappeared into the night as a viable nation. The remaining parts of its army – those not long sent off to their deaths up in the United States – were spread across the country and unaffected by the nuclear attacks apart from the loss of central command. It might have held together if it hadn’t been for the desertions which came. These were far larger than anything seen before and the ‘usual’ methods of stopping this – shooting some of those caught, threatening the families of the others etc. – just didn’t work. Munities took place too where officers were killed by their men aplenty. The mission for the army was that of wartime security throughout the nation with regards to supporting the supply links and guarding key points as well as POWs rather than public security. The Soviets relied on them to do this and while there was the use of some of their own people – as well as those from other allies – the army of Revolutionary Mexico provided most of the manpower. The desertions in these places really hit the Soviet rear areas hard.

All of the POW camps were technically under the control of the Soviets, the Cubans, the Guatemalans and the Nicaraguans. Officers and key people were appointed there yet it was Revolutionary Mexico manpower at those sites which was more numerous. When the men melted away or mutinied, the situation at each site varied. Some were kept under control, others turned into scenes of massacres where the mass of unarmed POWs were killed entirely. Further sites saw a mixture of actions where the situation was left unresolved and remained on edge. Such sites were often a magnet for desperate people in Mexico before the nuclear strikes who sought to approach them seeking the food and medicines that they were told were there: all of which they deserved, not those gringos. It would be how this turned out when so many people were on the move while angry and scared rather than anything else which would decide the fate of the many, many American POWs inside Revolutionary Mexico.

Away from the all of that chaos, there was still fighting which took place inside Mexico up until the April 11th cessation of that. The nuclear attack on Hermosillo was made with low yield blasts because the Sonora region was being fought over. There were US Marines with the 1st Marine Division alongside an ever-increasing number of Chileans and also national guardsmen from the 38th & 47th Infantry Divisions fighting in Sonora. They continued to do so after Hermosillo where they fought in mountainous terrain south of the US-Mexico border. No big battles were had by each, just a lot of smaller fights which went on and on. There were enemy forces to their south which were trying to run a defensive line yet the Americans moved eastwards. Their eventual destination was due to be the Rio Grande where they would reach it on the Mexican side, opposite Texas and downstream from El Paso, and thus provide a second shutting of the door behind enemy forces to the north. Progress was made through early April though the Rio Grande was still a long way off when the fighting came to an end on an organised scale.


Arriving in the San Francisco Bay Area rather than Los Angeles which was closer because of all the war damage further south, the 7th & 25th Infantry Divisions formed up there in Central California. The men had been flown across the Pacific with ease though they had to wait for the shipping which arrived carrying everything they would need to fight with. A submarine attack had slowed one convoy coming from South Korea but this delay wasn’t seen at the time to have a serious effect. Three days later than planned, these veteran troops started moving away from San Francisco. As it would turn out, that delay did mean something.

These troops arrived in Arizona after passing through Nevada and were assigned to the US I Corps there rather than forming a separate corps command as had been expected. I Corps, under the Sixth United States Army (which controlled all fighting through Arizona and onto Mexican soil), had the mission of liberating the last bits of Arizona. In the north-eastern portion of the state, the 81st Infantry Brigade – national guardsmen from Oregon and Washington – was waiting for their arrival to finish off the last of the Guatemalans. They complained over the hold-up but once the reinforcements arrived, the 81st Brigade made sure that their US Army comrades knew where the enemy was for them to take on. First into action was the 25th Infantry. The ‘Tropic Lightning Division’ fought in the Painted Desert on the Hopi Indian Reservation and smashed through everyone who stood in their way. The last of the Guatemalans were nothing in comparison to North Korean troops in terms of tough opponents though were rather spread out. This took a lot of work to move from one group to another and keep them contained in the fight rather than letting them get away. Later, the 7th Infantry arrived. These incoming men only saw one day’s worth of action, up on Navajo land, before the fighting came to an end. To come all this way and do just that was extremely frustrating but it wasn’t down to them when it came to stopping.

The rest of the I Corps did what those newly-arriving men had come here to do eventually: move into New Mexico from out of Arizona. Penetration over the state-line had begun at the end of March and that now continued. Interstate-10 ran to Las Cruces which sat on the Rio Grande and the 32nd Infantry Division went that way and ended up just short of there by April 11th. As to the 5th Armored Brigade and the 9th Infantry Division, they fought on the right flank in the very southern reaches of New Mexico with some operations taking place on Mexican soil too. Their destination was the Pass of the North: where El Paso and Ciudad Juarez were located. Most of the troops from there – Cubans and Nicaraguans – had been send northwards to Truth or Consequences and the Soviets realised very late that the US Army was tearing forwards across the desert. They couldn’t lose El Paso like they couldn’t lose Truth or Consequences. Immediate action was taken were light and disposable units were sacrificed before they could get heavier units to block the I Corps. The ‘light’ men were a battle-weakened regiment of Soviet Airborne which included some armoured vehicles with attached anti-tank units. Those deemed ‘disposable’ were the majority of the soldiers which Noriega had sent northwards. Panama’s ragtag force was good for nothing apart from being sent to die yet the men from the Soviet Airborne were wasted.

Fifteen to a dozen miles west of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, the Americans fought those sent to block them. The Panamanians were taken apart in one of the war’s most unequal and unfair unit-upon-unit fight. These weren’t soldiers. Noriega had sent the dregs of his country – criminals, the lame, even mental patients from emptied hospitals – all the way to the United States while keeping loyal men back home. The Soviets had demanded he send men last year and that he did. Only before the battle were these men given ammunition for rifles which they had never fired beforehand. The Americans were surprised to find out ahead of the fight that these men ahead were from Panama. They fought these were real soldiers, men who’d taken the Canal Zone alongside the Soviets away from their fellow US Army soldiers back in September. There was a deliberate effort made to utterly destroy this gathering of the enemy, not bypass them, before afterwards they would roll down into El Paso. There would be a delay in getting into that city but there was also a military need to eliminate the mass of Panamanian soldiers – almost twenty thousand of them – first rather than leaving them in the rear. As to the Soviet paratroopers nearby, they were just a bonus. What a short but deadly fight it was! The weakness of the enemy was noted first when it came to Noriega’s soldiers but there were so many of them and a lot of fighting to be done instead of head-scratching. The hard-fighting Soviet Airborne focused minds too as they took some time to beat. Only afterwards was there time to consider the opposition sent against the I Corps. Some soul-searching took place especially once POWs were questioned, but they had been an armed enemy sent in Panamanian uniform and organised as a military unit under central command. Legally and in a military sense, the Americans had been in the right… morally, that became dubious because there was some unexploited intelligence beforehand on this that was ignored in the rush to take on Noriega’s men. Once done, the Americans were due to move in to both El Paso and Ciudad Juarez come April 12th, yet that didn’t occur. They had each in their sights at the end of April 11th though had all of those prisoners – so many of them that needed something done for them – to keep their attention instead of going forward. As was the case elsewhere, not going any further ahead wasn’t the choice made of the fighting men here.