Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

Wait are you copying James timeline on your computer, if so naughty man, but that brings me up to a idea, James why not create a story thread only and keep this as a discussion thread.

A other advantages is the access to basses to operate from and two allies, manly the French and the Netherlands who are giving some measure of support to the British in their fight against Guatemala.

But Britain might also can get a boost in its own self confidence in being able to do something like this.

I think a lot of Western European countries are not happy with Kennedy being president of America, he seems to me to be the exact opposite of Reagan who outspend the Soviets.

(74)

May 1982:

The Royal Marines arrived in Belize on May Day. Their landing was done right before the rainy season began in this tropical country. They needed to get ashore in amphibious operation now and start their assault on their opponents rather than wait for the weather to get too difficult to operate in. There were few locations for the assault planners to select: few that didn’t have good access from the sea, weren’t immediately surrounded by difficult-to-pass jungle and where there was little Guatemalan military presence. Exploitation inland from the beachhead was another consideration factored in because taking a bit of shoreline and then being able to do nothing afterwards would rather negate the point of the entry into Belize of the 3rd Commando Brigade. Those Royal Marines landed just south of Belize City, in behind the headland on which that city sat. The Western Highway, the inland road which linked the former territorial capital on the coast to Belmopan Pocket within the interior, was right behind the landing site. The city’s port was close by too, the bigger commercial port and not the smaller historical harbour in the older parts of Belize City. 40 Commando made the initial landing: there was only enough room in the selected area for just one of the battalion-sized units within the brigade at once. They came in landing craft from the amphibious ship HMS Fearless and were guided in by SBS men on the beaches ahead plus within the jungle on the flanks. It was a silent approach, one without the aid of naval gunfire, and made in the early hours long before dawn. The Royal Marines hit the beach and moved inland, turning to the north where the port was in their advance. 42 Commando, coming from HMS Intrepid, were right behind them with the second battalion landing less than an hour later. There were some issues with communication and navigation with the second wave – one company landed pretty far south and nowhere near where they were meant to be – but was important was that the Guatemalans didn’t oppose them. Once 42 Commando had joined 40 Commando ashore, then the silent attack became noisy. 40 Commando made a landward attack on the port, coming from behind when the Guatemalan defences were pointed seaward; 42 Commando (minus their ‘missing’ company) struck inland and hit troops from the Revolutionary Brigade stationed inland who were supposedly in a reinforcement role for those around Belize City. The noisy attack came with the Royal Marines using heavy crew-served weapons such as man-portable rocket-launchers, mortars and machine guns. Moreover, the skies were filled with incoming shells from warships offshore – the Canadian destroyer HMCS Iroquois with its five-inch gun included among the gun-line of Royal Navy ships –, Sea Harriers dropping bombs and fire support from some Fleet Air Arm helicopters too.

41 Commando and 1 Welsh Guards would follow the lead elements of the 3rd Brigade in arriving into Belize through the rest of the day. The Foot Guards were meant to go into Belize City itself and had been training for that (as much as can be done while aboard ship anyway) leaving Royal Marines to fight outside. 40 Commando was unfortunately dragged into fighting on the edge of the city after taking the port when they couldn’t defeat the Guatemalans by pinning them down. A withdrawal was made and the Royal Marines followed them. The brigade commander allowed that to continue because the port facilities were secure with only partial demolition done when the majority of pre-placed charges had been eliminated by SBS underwater engineers and he sent the 1 Welsh Guards in early. Guatemalan soldiers were engaged through the southern part of the city with the British being as careful as they could to avoid civilian casualties. The Guatemalans weren’t dug in but if left alone, they surely would soon be. During the day, as the last of them were hunted down before they could get to the crossings over the Belize River which cut through the centre of the city, those troops pursuing them would discover signs of what had been going on during the month-long occupation of Belize City. The Guatemalans had been committing atrocities. Rape and pillage was one thing, organised massacres were something else. There was an ethnic dimension to it more than anything else. The British knew that the Guatemalans had been killed ‘guerrillas’ due to communications intercepts but not on the scale which was discovered. The men who’d done this were those serving in an army meant to be different from the one it had replaced. A lot of the men, be they once rebels or government soldiers under Montt, had experience of doing this to civilians. There were hotly-contested allegations afterwards that some of those Guatemalans who died while trying to escape from British custody might have been shot by British soldiers and marines whose blood was up at what they had seen. There was a lot of fighting in the city and Guatemalans lost their lives in many ways. Others decided to run into the jungle, try to hide within Belize City or surrender. In the heat of battle, things can happen where there doesn’t need to be a full answer. That first day ashore for 3rd Brigade saw about a third of the city recaptured and a lot of progress made inland. 41 Commando moved northwards, avoiding Belize City, and heading for the distant airport: Guatemalan troops were trying to direct attention inwards away from their outward defences all the while under shelling and air attack. 42 Commando cut off the coastal regions from the interior and reached the town of Hattieville where there was a crossroads and nearly halfway to the most distant positions of the 5th Brigade in the Belmopan Pocket.

The Guatemalans were finished inside Belize. Most of the Independence Brigade was withdrawing back to the border and the Revolutionary Brigade was being beaten back from Belize City. May 3rd saw the airport taken, the following day saw the town of Ladyville on the coast fall. What was left of Guatemalan troops who’d been in control of Belize City beforehand were trapped against the shore. The skies were under complete British control and so was the sea. The Belmopan Pocket was no longer an encircled gathering of near-beaten British and BDF troops but rather the base of the drive back towards the border from where the 5th Brigade was racing to get there. The War Cabinet back in London vetoed a planned operation to send part of 3 PARA forward in helicopters to the border town at Benque Viejo to cut them off. It sounded too risky in terms of casualties (many had already been incurred) and an operation not thought out properly with proper reconnaissance done. They were correct: a helicopter assault on Benque Viejo would have been a bloodbath with the Guatemalans having moved their Brigada de la Libertad there complete with many anti-aircraft guns and armoured vehicles. Nonetheless, Guatemala’s war to ‘liberate’ Belize was over with that retreat ongoing in the jungle and the troops near the sea ready to give in.


The last-ditch move by the Guatemalans with their Freedom Brigade was the final independent decision made in the Belize War by the revolutionary government in Guatemalan City. It was sent to ‘correct’ the situation in Belize. Should it have advanced – and not ran into those Paras just inside the border –, the British were prepared to unleash a lot of aerial fire power upon it. The RAF had their Harriers and Jaguars and even Vulcan strikes were planned with bomb-runs made over the jungle. The Freedom Brigade didn’t move beyond Benque Viejo though for on May 5th, Cuba ended the war. Castro had started the Belize War and saw it as his decision to bring it to a conclusion. Things hadn’t gone as planned and Cuba’s interests were being endangered. Too much international attention was being paid to Cuba’s role in the conflict already and if it continued, that could make things very difficult. Andropov and the Soviets were telling him that Kennedy was weak and wouldn’t do anything. Maybe they were right, maybe they were wrong. Cuba had an intelligence network inside the United States. It was a small one, nothing like what the Soviets had, but one Castro was proud of for it kept tabs on Cubans exiles in America. It was them, those in that infernal Miami, who he worried about when it came to their sudden upsurge in activity in trying to shape American public opinion against Cuba’s proxy war in Belize using Guatemala. Kennedy was engaged in another dispute with Congress, as before back with his healthcare bill. Castro feared that as had been seen in the recent past, when the president faced domestic problems at home he did something abroad. The Soviets told Havana that Kennedy wouldn’t do that with Cuba as he had staked his position on opposing the Belize War but Castro didn’t want to risk it. He was wrong, dead wrong on this, but didn’t know that. He pulled the rug from out under the Guatemalans and instructed a government reshuffle in Guatemalan City where the few and isolated voices calling for Guatemala to get out of the war suddenly had influence. The Committee for the Revolution removed key people and the rump council took a vote. Mexico was used as a conduit to pass the word to the British that Guatemala wanted a ceasefire and was prepared to pull out the last of its troops.

Difficulties held up the start of the ceasefire for almost a day and a half but then it came. The Belize War was over. There would be withdrawals made of Guatemalan troops and the surrender of others in-place. Prisoners on both sides would need to be exchanged: the Guatemalans had many Britons and also Belizeans, all of whom Britain wanted back. Guatemala would want its POWs too and would ask for the transfer to them of ‘volunteers from aboard’ in something that would cause many issues. Diplomacy took over. First Mexico, then Costa Rica were involved in that. Britain had won a decisive victory. It had come at a cost though, one in the immediate term and in the long-term. Military casualties for Britain totalled over five hundred with one hundred and twenty-eight dead and the rest wounded in various manners. Belize suffered almost seven hundred soldiers dead along with four times as many wounded; civilian losses – including the missing; rotting in the jungle of thrown into the sea – were more than two and a half thousand. Britain would end up with an expensive and extensive military commitment post-war to Belize and the Caribbean too.

Well, historically Guatemala decided to resolve the situation with Belize after the UK throw the Argentinian away from the Falkands, showing that they will not hallow so open act of aggression and they are willing to fight; so the argentinian Junta will probably decide to leave the Falkands/Malvinas alone for now...and honestly i don't know if this is a good developement for Chile, Argentina need a short victorious war to prop up the regime, so their neighbourgh can be seen as a more viable target