Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

  Very true, along with I fear longer lasting chemical contamination.

I wonder what a certain New York businessman would be doing ITTL...

A lot of the country will be the same. Early on there is the start of 'if we cannot have it then you cannot' in terms of infrastructure and that will continue.




The US only has so many troops and are being spread thin.
If the Mississippi is reached, that is pretty far. it would also stretch the Soviets very far themselves.




I'm still thinking on it all.




Thank you. We shall have to see. For now it is only parts of Texas but the going is not looking good.



I'd agree with that.




Minescattering is going on all over the place and they aren't always noted in terms of position. High-level bombing scatters some which don't go boom. This is just at the start before each side also gets vengeful too when they cause destruction.



We'll come to the UK soon, and you are correct on that.

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21st–25th September 1984:

For what had seemed like an eternity, the soldiers of the 101st Air Assault Infantry Division based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky had been sitting on their behinds doing nothing while their country was invaded. They believed that they should have been straight into the fight. Texas first, and then over the border into Mexico the Screaming Eagles should go. The division was ready within days – fully-mobilised with missing personnel returning with haste – but remained at their home base while elsewhere there was fighting ongoing. Hurry up and wait it had been, hurry up and wait. Finally, after four days of that long wait, the Screaming Eagles were given orders to move. Part of the 101st Air Assault went to Texas but to northern Texas; that was a staging point for some while the lead elements of the rest of the division went into New Mexico where they were all to soon enough see action. The cross-country move was made by air. Military transports were used though in the main it was civilian airlift capability put to use. The airliners were flying for the country now, moving fighting men and equipment around instead of tourists and long-distance commuters. Fort Campbell had its own airfield capable of handling the big jets which came to move the Screaming Eagles; there was use made too of Nashville’s big civilian airport not that far away down in Tennessee. The 101st Air Assault went to Reese AFB near Lubbock and also to Roswell Airport: the latter which had been the SAC facility of Walker AFB before being closed in the late Sixties. The Screaming Eagles were air assault troops and they went west with their helicopters as well as light vehicles. The helicopters were airlifted rather than self-deployed and that slowed things down but New Mexico was pretty far off despite being ‘just’ a few states away. The heat of the South-West was noticed by the men the moment when they arrived though there was a lot for them to do more than just notice that. Roswell was close to where the invader could be found and at Reese – a training base being vacated by the peacetime units based there – would be pretty busy despite being in the rear.

The 101st Air Assault moved west as part of the US Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps though the division was the only major peacetime-assigned combat formation which went with the corps headquarters and other units. What was left of the 82nd Airborne Division after pre-war deployments of one third to South Korea and another third to Panama, was sent to Central Texas; the 24th Infantry Division had a new assignment to the V Corps moving from Dixie towards East Texas. The 101st Air Assault wouldn’t be alone though. The Screaming Eagles were to be joined by other US Army divisions attached to the XVIII Corps for the New Mexico mission as directed by the president himself. That mission for the three divisions – the 1st Infantry from out of Kansas and the 4th Infantry already in New Mexico after leaving Colorado – was to stop the Nicaraguans who were pouring into New Mexico from reaching Albuquerque and establishing firm control up the eastern side of the Rockies. Once free of El Paso but finding that Interstate-25 running north was blocked – it was completely impassable – the Nicaraguans had spread out in their advance. One of their own divisions (not highly-rated in terms of capability despite heavy equipment as far as the Americans were concerned) was in eastern New Mexico, another had followed what was left of the Soviet forces which had broken open El Paso and started crossing the White Sands and the third had struck east through the Texan Panhandle before entering southeastern New Mexico. The advances made by the Nicaraguans had all been near unopposed apart from air interdiction. As to those air strikes, the ability to do that had taken a hit when Holloman AFB in the White Sands had to be abandoned due to the Nicaraguans closing in. Hasty but effective demolitions had been done after the wing of F-15s based there had flown off to join the F-111s which they had been flying with at their base near Clovis. Cannon AFB was jammed full of combat aircraft now. Holloman had been denied to the invader to use (for several weeks at least, maybe longer) but there were Soviet tactical fighters flying from White Sands Space Harbor: those lengthy runways out in the open.

The Nicaraguans on the right and those with the Soviets up the middle around Alamogordo were those who were first engaged by the Screaming Eagles when they arrived in New Mexico. Quickly, helicopters from Roswell were ranging south and west of there. Attack and scouting helicopters went first into battle while behind them came transport helicopters dropping off the ground forces There was air cover from out of Cannon and also Reese too where that Texan airbase was home to arriving air national guard units from several states. The Screaming Eagles took the fight to the enemy and didn’t hold back. They made use of the local geography well. The Nicaraguans which had made it as far as Carlsbad and looked likely to turn to follow the Pecos River northwards up to Roswell. This was the first danger addressed. The 101st Air Assault lacked an armoured component though there was control of the air which was used for mobility. Raiding teams were everywhere throughout the latter part of the first weekend spent in the fight and the Nicaraguans were brought to a grinding halt. They were stretched out over an immense area with their supplies for their tanks and armoured vehicles focused on using one road. The Nicaraguans came to a stop just short of Carlsbad due to vehicles on that road being blown up aplenty. As to the White Sands area, the Nicaraguans in that valley were on the other side of the Sacramento Mountains: where the Mescalero Apache Reservation was among the Lincoln National Forest. There were passes through those mountains but ones which couldn’t be easily used when there were American aircraft and helicopters in the skies. The Nicaraguans were going north anyway. When the Screaming Eagles started making attacks across from Roswell, there was surprise from the Nicaraguans. Their movement through the White Sands was heavily disrupted by an unexpected threat. They had SAMs and anti-aircraft guns but really needed fighter cover. The Soviets out in the open at the Space Harbor were sitting ducks when on the ground and outnumbered when in the air. There was surprise when Soviet engineers were very quickly seen doing major work at Holloman – mines had been scattered everywhere – but they too were on the receiving end of the 101st Air Assault who conducted a heli-borne raid there with soldiers put on the ground to kill mine-clearing engineers and also evacuate several hundred American POWs found there who had been forced to search for mines… with the predicable results of that. Not everything went the Americans way. They did bring two Nicaraguan divisions to a halt and did them immense damage in doing so. However, relying on helicopters in what was fast becoming a very unfriendly environment for helicopters cost them men. Blackhawks, Cobras and Hueys all faced attack from the ground every time that the Nicaraguans could. As to Roswell, there was initially no capability to attack it from the air. Scud missiles were shot towards it instead, with the usual accuracy problems meaning that most missed and some of those came down in the town of Roswell. Then, Soviet aircraft started to show up at the wrecked air facilities around El Paso after several days of major clearance work done there. The international airport and Biggs Army Airfield had been written off for the foreseeable future as Holloman had been in the view of the Americans; the Soviets didn’t agree. In New Mexico, the Nicaraguans had seen their advance stopped and the Screaming Eagles had done very well, but this fight to stop them linking up with Albuquerque wasn’t over yet.


The US XVIII Corps had those two heavy divisions closing in upon Albuquerque. The Soviet airhead there with the lone division of paratroopers – and the Soviet Airborne’s 76th Division was at two-third’s strength – sat right at that interstate crossroad where east-west connections through New Mexico (and the Rockies too) ran. Kirtland had been closed for two days after hit being those fuel-air bombs. Casualties were massive and so was infrastructure damage. A follow-up fire had raged where aviation fuel had gone up. Strong winds had driven that fire away from the main air facilities, which were in a bad way but could be fixed, and instead towards the Sandia National Laboratories: that intelligence goldmine which the GRU was still taking apart. Sandia had been gutted. Who, the GRU had demanded, had decided to hide all that fuel nearby? The Soviet Airborne and Soviet Air Force commanders had blamed one another. Less than an hour after being reopened to flight activity yet only with one runway operational, Kirtland had been bombed again. Arc Light the Americans called it: a B-52 strike. There was a wing of those bombers which had left their Grand Forks AFB home in North Dakota ahead of the fallout coming their way and the SAC aircraft had flown to Buckley ANGB near Denver. Despite still on a nuclear-posture, and against their will, SAC had begun commencing limited B-52 strikes due to political orders/interference from on high. What hit Kirtland wasn’t ‘limited’ to those on the end of it, not by a long-shot. The blast waves from the falling bombs, lined-up perfectly for maximum weapons-effects, put out some of the last of the fires at Sandia. The Soviets could only be thankful for that, nothing more. Kirtland was closed once again. Furthermore, forty-five minutes later, another trio of B-52s made a follow-up strike to finish what they started and also kill members of recovery teams exposed out in the open.

Kirtland was where transport flights of weapons and equipment was being flown into; what few combat aircraft that there were plus the 76th Division’s helicopters were elsewhere following the earlier attention which the captured airbase had attracted. Those small civilian airports were stretched from Albuquerque to Santa Fe to Los Alamos. The fighters were few and had limited ammunition & fuel. The helicopters were always busy as they escorted ground convoys across a wide area of occupation – too wide for the Soviet Airborne to control – where there was all that civilian resistance and a sure sign of activity by Green Berets which had been dropping in on intelligence-gathering & raiding missions. The 76th Division had no hope of stopping the incoming ground attack which the US Army was sending their way, especially since it came from two directions and faster than expected. The 4th Infantry was meant to be stopped from coming down from Colorado by the Cubans & Nicaraguans around Pueblo. The 1st Infantry should have been in Texas by now. Two divisions (the 1st Infantry had a brigade missing though; it was in West Germany) against one where that one wasn’t in a good defensive position was bad news. The Soviet Airborne had only a small armoured component of their light tracked vehicles and were missing most of their heavy anti-tank guns when the aircraft bringing them had failed to reach Kirtland. The Americans would have hundreds of tanks with them; more than the dismounted paratroopers carrying shoulder-mounted weapons could deal with over a big area like where they were spread.

The 76th Division started making a series of tactical withdrawals, back towards Albuquerque itself. This left them more bunched up in the face of American air attacks though that danger was deemed less than being spread out facing a ground assault. Los Alamos, where the GRU were like they had been all over Sandia, was outside that defensive perimeter. It was exposed enough as it was without the 4th Infantry coming on fast like they were. No one was happy to make the retreat from there but it was done on higher orders. Decisions were made on what, plus who (prisoners – civilian workers – had been taken), was valuable and what would have to be left behind. Los Alamos was put to the torch when there weren’t enough explosives. There were also firing squads, a lot of those were active. If we can’t have it, you can’t have it! The Soviet Airborne fell back. On came the Americans, set to reach Albuquerque long before those Nicaraguans being taken to task far off to the south.

Far to the north of them, in the south of Colorado around Pueblo (but not in that town itself), there remained fighting spread over a wide area. The US Army out of Fort Carson had charged through and onwards but the mopping up being done by the national guardsmen wasn’t effective enough. The Cubans and Nicaraguans were scattered too wide to be effective themselves at first in stopping the 4th Infantry. However, that spread then helped when they faced lighter units who sought to finally eliminate them. The Colorado Army National Guard shouldn’t have been given this mission and wouldn’t have been if the truth over the numbers of Nicaraguans especially been known. Joined by what Cubans there were both east and west of Pueblo, the Nicaraguans fought onwards. They retook lost ground. They hit the airport being used for helicopter support by the national guardsmen. They started striking the supply columns coming south supporting the 4th Infantry. Everyone – including their own side – had written the Colorado airhead off, apart from those who were fighting there.

More than economic warfare, it's the entire system of international trade as gone banana; more than the european goverment the worst enemy of the US economy will be their own citizen (plus the usual shark) that will try to buy safe currency or gold and/or oil making the price rise, the problem it's the fact that the dollar value will be incredibly decreased due to the invasion and everything was traded in dollar...so in his 'infinite wisdom' (yeah sure) the invisible hand will search new safe currency almost without imput and in a chotic way. Sure goverment on both side of the Atlantic will try to keep thing smooth and running, avoid collapse of trade and  economies, but unfortunely a lot of sufference and problems will be totally unavoidable...so menacing will be useles, expecially due to the fact that any dropout from an economy college will tell you that you need desperately the help of the EEC as it's basically the only thing that will keep the world economy not thinking at the Great Depression as  the 'Good old time' and starting a potential economic warfare with the only one that can save you it's not a sane move.

Another good update.

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21st–25th September 1984:

The US Navy was removing its aircraft from the fighting taking place in southern California and southwestern Arizona. They had been taking part since the very start, engaging in a furious fight to defend US soil from Cuban forces – supported by smaller Soviets and even smaller East German elements – and done very well indeed in that. Flying from bases across California, those aircraft came from carrier-assigned units and training establishments (including the first unit of new FA-18s, aircraft which would soon be making their first at-sea deployment after being battle-tested over California): their flights from the ground rather than a carrier allowed them to carry a heavier payload than if they were at sea. They were being withdrawn to go fight elsewhere, across the Pacific to the west around Korea & Japan as well as near Alaska up in the north. The Soviets were under the mistaken belief that they could repeat successes in the Atlantic across in the Pacific. The US Navy was out to prove them wrong and show them who owned that bigger ocean. The US Marines had their own aircraft alongside the US Navy over the battlefield and they stayed in-place, reinforced in part too. To replace what was pulled out of the fighting, it was the US Air Force which moved in when the naval aviators departed. Finally, they had sorted themselves out west of the Rockies. What had been an ad hoc set up at Nellis AFB near Las Vegas became a proper command arrangement when the Ninth Air Force headquarters arrived from off in distant South Carolina to move to Nevada and take charge in an effective manner. Aircraft with the US Marines remained semi-independent, supporting their men on the ground, though their activities, like those of US Air Force units spread all across the West, were ran through a centralised command now. The Ninth Air Force joined the Sixth US Army in what had become Western Command, a joint command covering multiple states and the fighting taking place through the border region but also in the rear where there remained an active commando threat (one diminishing but still dangerous). With or without the US Navy jets, there was still a war to fight. The US Air Force had brought in further forces and so too had there been the addition to the Sixth Army of many national guard units for combat in the skies and on the ground too. Western Command was growing in strength every day though there still remained critical shortages in places.

I Marine Amphibious Force (I MAF) was engaged in direct combat starting on the 22nd when its 1st Marine Division, joined by the 40th Infantry Division – California’s national guardsmen – went on the offensive into the Imperial Valley. The Cubans had their First Army in there, what had been so thoroughly pounded from the air, and they were fought now on the ground. I MAF put the squeeze on them and had air support directed behind them too, along the US-Mexican border to increase that. The Cubans fought well but they couldn’t hold back the 1st Marines which came at them with tanks, helicopters and plenty of eager marine riflemen. They were pushed back from near to the Salton Sea and deep into the Imperial Valley. Brawley was retaken on the 23rd and the advance continued down towards Imperial first and then to El Centro. The national guardsmen came in from the flank, across the Anza-Borrego wilderness, and it was hard going for them yet there was a push onwards as morale was good: there was a desire to get revenge for what had happened to their fellow national guardsmen in the Imperial Valley who’d been caught unawares and massacred on invasion day. I MAF soon found that it needed more tanks. Air support was great, so too was the plentiful artillery brought in, but tanks were needed. The southern half of the valley was crammed full of Cuban armour and also dug-in improvised defences. Another Cuban division, this one an infantry unit, had arrived and they were established in defence back through which what remained of the trio of mobile divisions had withdrawn through in a haste to get back to the Mexicali-Calexico area. The US Marines and the California Army National Guard had rather a lot, but they needed more. Retaking the smashed-up NAS El Centro on the 24th showed the need for those further tanks: it changed hands three times in one evening. They wouldn’t be charging forward anymore into the complex interlocking fields of fire which the Cubans had set up, but instead used to get around the last of the Cubans and outflank them outside of the valley rather than inside it where they had been going head-on into more than expected resistance. The three battalions (two regular; one reserve) of M-60s had been used to force the Cubans back and were slowly withdrawn from the fight when this became apparent. The Cubans were going to be far harder to finally overcome than initially believed and so the tanks would be used in another manner rather than in direct support for advancing marine riflemen. What the I MAF had done after a long weekend of fighting was remove the Cubans as an invasion force; what was needed now was to eliminate them entirely. More of the 40th Infantry entered the Imperial Valley (which did have their own tanks) as the 1st Marines started to pull out now that they had driven the Cubans most of the way back. With that done, now was the time to be clever and get rid of them for good: by taking the fight over the border behind them.

The I US Corps consisted of regular US Army forces in the West with national guard attachments from Oregon and Washington state. The 9th Infantry Division had come down from Fort Lewis along with the 41st & 81st Infantry Brigades (two pre-war part-mobilised units). They had tanks, plenty of them, but went into Arizona instead of to southern California. To join them afterwards but before then coming across from Fort Irwin and the US Army’s training centre, there were more regular forces and these were using the temporary designation of OPFOR Group. They usually played the opposing force at Fort Irwin but they were no longer playing when they approached the Parker and Palo Verde Valleys within the Colorado River where there were those Soviet and East German light troops. The East Germans had moved up from Yuma days beforehand and had been meant to have been followed by that Cuban division which was then re-tasked to go to the Imperial Valley. Instead, the Soviet 38th Guards Brigade joined with the East German paratroopers and took them back under operational command. Where they were might have at first seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and thus unimportant, but it really wasn’t. They continued to move further northwards everyday and cutting the connections between California and Arizona as they did so. The I Corps was making entry into Arizona in that direction – ahead of the leap-frogging airmobile forces south of them – and thus their supply lines would be later in danger if those enemy on their flank were left in-place. The OPFOR Group, equivalent in size to a small brigade following additions made before leaving Fort Irwin, slammed into the Soviets first. The 38th Brigade was taken apart. A guards unit the brigade was: that mattered for nothing when faced with regular army but exceedingly well-trained men on the attack who had good air cover and also who caught the Soviets by surprise too in how fast they came at them. Around Parker and Poston, both little towns where the Soviets were with their helicopters and supposed to be protecting the establishment of small airstrips for combat aircraft to use, the OPFOR Group ran rampage. The Soviets were killed where they stood or ran for their lives out into the surrounding deserts outside the green and fertile valley among them. A comprehensive victory was won here, one won by a unit which still didn’t have a ‘proper’ designation (there’d been too much debate about that and Sixth Army HQ had ordered them to go fight rather than dispute what they could be called). As to the East Germans, they missed that storm. The Soviets had moved ahead of them and when OPFOR Group had finished with the 38th Brigade they turned south at first to go down to Blythe. The East Germans made ‘tactical withdrawals’ back from the airport and the interstate crossing over the Colorado River – blowing the latter up to deny it to the Americans – into the small town and set up an all-round defence while the Americans were busy to the north of them. Still, the OPFOR Group was due to come southwards but before they could, they were needed in Arizona. The US Air Force was assigned to take care of the East Germans for there was only a battalion of them who were now left in the middle of nowhere while there was a greater need for American troops in Arizona.

Arizona was meant to be a side-show for the Soviet-led invasion. It was entered by Guatemalan troops with Nicaraguan attachments while the Soviets, the Cubans and most Nicaraguans went either to California, New Mexico or Texas. Surprisingly, plenty of success was had there. Luck had something to do with it; lack of initial American organised opposition was the main issue. After the exceeding successful advances made in the opening stages of the invasion – looking at distances covered on the maps rather than the actual quality of the attacking forces –, the Americans were forced to turn their attention there. The I US Corps was sent to Arizona following how first Fort Huachuca was taken by the Guatemalans and then the Nicaraguans overran David-Monthan AFB along with the neighbouring AMARC facility. Control was established throughout southeastern Arizona primarily though the concern was that a recently-detected concentration of follow-on Nicaraguan forces (several divisions worth) spotted south of the border would go into Arizona to reinforce that success. The Americans deceived themselves on this; there was no Soviet deception with this interpretation of what the Nicaraguans moving up through Chihuahua were doing, they were going into New Mexico with the belief that they hadn’t been detected. Inside the Guatemalan area of control, which extended to the edge of the city of Tucson, there was a lot of chaos as well. Guerrilla forces were springing up everywhere: all unorganised without central control but with lethality oftentimes. There had been that incident near Nogales where one of those Revolutionary Mexican units following the Nicaraguans had been ambushed and seen complete and utter destruction to them followed by a column of buses arranged by civilians then taking it upon themselves to evacuate the refugee camp which the Mexicans were meant to go in and ‘pacify’. At Bisbee, order among Guatemalan troops there at a stop along their supply lines had been completely lost. They had looted the town then put it to the torch before fighting each other: the Guatemalans had incorporated forced ‘volunteers’ from El Salvador and Honduras into their army sent up into the United States while keeping their best troops for a second go at Belize. Desertions among the Guatemalans and what few Mexican forces were sent over the border (the latter for cross-border security, nothing more) were immense with the men running at every opportunity. Yet, the area of occupation which they appeared to have under control was large and events inside were not known from without beyond some scattered reports. The fear was that Tucson would be taken and there would be an advance up towards Phoenix by that Nicaraguan field army supposedly soon to enter Arizona. Around that bigger city, the US Air Force had several airbases (Gila Bend AFB & Luke AFB) and they were part of the growing Ninth Air Force presence in the West. Phoenix was a major communications centre too: if they were to take it, the Nicaraguans & Guatemalans would probably be reinforced by Soviet forces soon afterwards for it would be rather important to hold as a base of operations. That was why the I Corps came into Arizona with the 9th Infantry out front and the two national guard brigades following them plus the OPFOR Group soon to follow too. They entered Arizona through the northwest and kept on going. American civilians self-evacuating headed the other way yet car-horns were beeped at the passing columns of American troops led by tanks. It looked like the modern-day Cav’ was coming to save the day. Phoenix was passed by and they headed down to Tucson, spreading out as they did and meeting the first enemy outposts. Guatemalan MiGs – not flown by Guatemalans at all but trainers from many different countries – came out of the captured Libby Army Airfield to meet the threat and were knocked down by F-15s and F-16s all over the sky. The airport outside Tucson where there were Nicaraguan helicopters was retaken. Towards Davis-Monthan and AMARC then the Americans went. Air reconnaissance said that there were foreign military personnel all over that site and the (correct) assumption was that those were Soviet and Cuban intelligence officers. No aircraft had yet to be flown out of the storage site. Maybe AMARC could be retaken… No, that wasn’t to be. As was the case elsewhere, here in Arizona it was a matter of destroy it rather than lose it. Explosions ripped through the parked aircraft as the Americans closed in. A lot of explosives were used, more than enough in fact to make buildings shake in Tucson as blast followed blast. When the engineers ran out of satchel charges, a senior Soviet liaison officer override the command for Nicaraguan artillery to carry on firing on the approaching Americans and destroy as much of AMARC as possible instead. The Americans wouldn’t have what they came for.

Tucson was saved from the horrors of occupation and the Nicaraguans, plus elements of the Guatemalans as well, got a pasting. A brilliant victory was won in Arizona as the invaders were pushed back just like they had been in California too. It looked entirely possible that the newly-established Western Command would liberate almost everywhere in California and Arizona by the end of the month. Air reconnaissance started seeing more Cuban troops coming up through Sonora and attacks began against them when they were in Mexico. It was projected that they would come into Arizona instead of what was previously believed to be an attempt by the Nicaraguans in Chihuahua to do so: updated intelligence showed the Nicaraguans certainly going towards New Mexico. That was something for the set-up Texas Command (Fifth US Army and Twelfth Air Force) to deal with. However, these oncoming Cubans looked like another field army of several small divisions like the ones which had entered California had been. These Cubans were coming for Arizona. It was something which was a concern and wouldn’t be a walkover but could be handled. There was a chance that the Cubans could be engaged on Mexican territory too. Things were looking up when it came to the West. It was believed that the storm could be turned back following victory after victory with more of those to come. What small forces were with Western Command – especially when it came to ground units – had done far better than those elsewhere in beating back the invasion. Such was what came from the Western Command’s commanding officer, a US Air Force senior general appointed by the reorganised Joint Chiefs at Raven Rock and who’d established himself at MCB Barstow, a US Marines base in California pending setting his headquarters up somewhere else. He hadn’t been anywhere near the frontlines. He’d seen the reports of the invaders beaten back and was waiting for final defeat of them to come while reporting up the chain of command that that was almost done. He was eager to make sure that he was reporting victory. There was a forgetfulness even a week later of what had just occurred when the invasion had started with a bolt from the blue attack: there shouldn’t have been such a disregard for recent events. Reconnaissance images and intelligence information pouring into Barstow was being looked at for the positive bits, not the unexplained nor un-positive. The Cubans in the Imperial Valley weren’t finished and neither were the Guatemalans & Nicaraguans in southeastern Arizona: they weren’t beaten back over the border until they were. As to the Cubans coming up through Mexico, small forces reportedly, that had been said before about those which had gone into California when they were down-rated in size and capability in intelligence summaries before the war. The war wasn’t over here nor anywhere near close to being finished despite the sudden, foolish optimism of coming full victory against enemy forces – rightly or wrongly; it depended upon which – all rated as ripe for defeat.