The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

152 – The little war


Guerrilla warfare is as old as warfare itself. Throughout history, after facing defeat on the battlefield, certain elements of the conquered nation’s people had fought against occupation through armed resistance. The name itself came from the Napoleonic Wars where Spain – after switching sides – was occupied by the French. The Spanish people engaged in a brutal, costly resistance called the ‘little war’: roughly translated as guerrilla. Now a loan word in English, the concept of what guerrilla warfare was differed by circumstances. The Soviet Army was long dealing with guerrillas in Afghanistan and was facing them through occupied bits of Western Europe too. Across here in Britain, they would meet guerrillas as well. Generally, Soviet treatment of prisoners of war taken had been reasonable unless a special interest was taken in the particular captive. Anyone deemed an illegal combatant wasn’t afforded the same level of treatment as the ones recognised to be legitimate by the Soviets. They decided the rules on this themselves and the rules were bent too depending upon individual circumstances. Those whom the Soviets decided were guerrillas were being either shot out of hand whether they surrendered or not and the very unlucky ones would face torture for information before an impromptu firing squad would put them out of their suffering. Civilian hostages were taken (completely against the rules of warfare) to ensure civilian cooperation and to be held with their lives forfeited if there was guerrilla activity. Prominent local civilians had been taken at first but soon enough ordinary people were held. These people, completely innocent in every way, were being shot when guerrilla attacks were occurring. The policy was an immediate failure, once sure never to work, but regardless, it continued. The guerrilla actions carried on too.

Some of the guerrillas were British military personnel of regulars and reservists who had decided not to surrender when defeat had come. They fought on in spite of the hopeless military situation where they found themselves behind enemy lines. In Norfolk, there were few places where guerrilla warfare tactics of ambush, hit-and-run strikes and destruction of exposed military infrastructure could take place. It was tried though and the Soviet reaction was to hit back hard. They sent their paratroopers into the wooded & hilly Cromer Ridge as well as down into the wet Norfolk Broads. Norwich became a scene of engagement with urban guerrillas showing up: the small city offered some opportunities for those striking out against the occupier but due to its size, there were limited opportunities overall. Many soldiers eventually gave themselves up, often without engaging in any attacks too, after not long trying to carry on the fight. Their ammunition was low and the hopelessness of what they were facing saw them surrender and try to pretend that they hadn’t been doing what they were. Volunteers had come to Norfolk before most access into the coastal county was closed off by full-scale warfare. Loading vehicles with weapons, ammunition and supplies, they’d headed towards Norfolk. A few knew what they were doing; the vast majority didn’t. The British authorities managed to intercept and turn back many yet others made it. This wasn’t what they imagined it would be. Overwhelming force was used against them and the Soviet Airborne Troops were no fools. They knew how to counter the majority of guerrilla activities in the manner of if not being fully able to defeat the threat, then neutering many of the negative effects. It was the KGB who were taking and shooting hostages. The VDV used large patrols on guerrilla sweeps through areas where they believed they would find opponents complete with firepower. They were either using helicopters or protected convoys to move about rather than driving down country lanes in lone vehicles where improvised explosive devices could be planted. The bases which they had taken over for use were well-guarded with landmines scattered around them. Paratroopers watched each other’s backs, constantly reminded to not go off on their own. Attacks were at once met with the strongest possible reaction. Those civilian volunteers who’d come to Norfolk to fight, maybe to get a bit of glory too, weren’t going to last long unless they were either very clever or very lucky.

The British had started sending SAS teams into Norfolk yesterday. None of the patrols dispatched to go through and operate behind enemy lines were spotted on their way in. There were several teams who slipped into the rear. They were on scouting missions and were supposed to call-in reconnaissance information as well as mark targets for air attacks when necessary. Two particular teams did go in with the purpose instead to make attacks on the enemy, seeking targets of opportunity, and the Soviets would use their anti-guerrilla measures on them. Should these men be caught, they wouldn’t be treated in captivity as they were supposed to be. The Soviets would tell themselves that their own Spetsnaz would face such harsh treatment when caught by the British – in part true – and that these captives were acting like guerrillas. Useful intelligence would be forced out of such prisoners when taken too. This was being done with British & NATO special forces caught on the Continent and would occur here in East Anglia as well. Many of the KGB methods for extracting information from guerrillas did bring results though would be seemingly purposefully cruel. The interrogation techniques undertaken by GRU officers for SAS captives would be different: horrible and illegal but done to get information rather than make examples. Of course, before they could do this, the Soviets would have to catch the SAS raiders first. Don’t get caught, those who’d gone into Norfolk had been told: no one was under any illusion that the little war which they would be fighting would be pleasant.


Transport aircraft and large helicopters were still flying into airheads established in Norfolk. The planned further airheads down in Suffolk were supposed to help expand upon this effort but then two of them were lost less than twenty-four hours after being captured with the third unusable. This meant that there only remained a very few sites in Norfolk which the Soviets could make use of. These faced enemy attacks like the other ones had where those were destroyed. The British and their allies kept on coming at them aiming to stop the flow of men, equipment and stores. This was still ongoing. So much had been brought into Britain in the first two days but during the third day of Operation Red Bear, it continued. There were fewer transport assets being employed now though because so much had already come in. Flights with fuel (for vehicles & vehicles) as well as ammunition were the most numerous. Personnel were still arriving but these were non-combat troops after the full deployment – less what was lost in transit – of a VDV airborne division, a DShV airmobile brigade and small combat detachments such as that battalion of air-portable tanks, several batteries of especially large guns and anti-tank units had been sent. Specialist equipment was arriving along with other stores for the 15th Guards Airborne Corps. The majority of the outbound flights went out of Britain empty. There was no transfer of POWs and nothing much really to be taken out as loot deemed war booty. Some medical evacuations were being made but that was about it: the majority of the injured were either to be treated on the ground or would die in the poor conditions at the Soviet field hospitals long before anyone could decide to fly them out… where treatment wasn’t going to be much better anyway.

Certain flights had brought in high-value equipment and weapons. There were tactical nuclear weapons which had been sent to Norfolk. A few dozen warheads had been brought over and quickly moved to scattered storage sites rather than going near the frontlines. These thermonuclear weapons were artillery shells and aircraft-delivered bombs. The KGB had complete control of them in terms of physical security and also any movements ahead of deployment. Bringing them into Britain might have seemed unnecessary to some but from the Soviet military viewpoint, it made perfect sense. Should the conflict go nuclear, their forces forward deployed into Britain had such weapons on-hand to make use of rather than being left without them on a nuclear battlefield. The Soviet Army brought strategic-level missiles over the North Sea too when mobile long-range SAM launchers and short-range ballistic missile launchers were also flown in. The former were S-300V air defence weapons while the latter were Scuds. Each of these launch platforms had taken up valuable room on equally value aircraft – with some aircraft lost with such payloads too – but orders from on high demanded that they be sent. These weapons were dispersed and put to use. The SAMs were soon engaging aircraft making deep-level attacks far into Norfolk while the ballistic missiles were ordered to be fired on a target list supplied. There weren’t that many of the actual Scud missiles themselves and the corps commander would have preferred to use them against military targets in the enemy’s rear. He was told that that wasn’t the mission for those weapons: they were to be used on a strategic scale.

This evening, as British forces fought around Norfolk’s edges to turn back the paratroopers who’d arrived so unwelcome here, missiles flew out. The Scuds were targeted on British urban centres some distance away. There had already been civilian casualties caused across the nation by Soviet missiles beforehand. Those were off-target though: ones which failed to strike nearby military bases. Now, civilians were being targeted deliberately. This was less about killing and maiming people – which it would do – and more to do with frightening many more with the ultimate goal of causing a fracture in Britain’s will to continue to fight. Cambridge, Leicester, Nottingham, Oxford and Sheffield were fired upon by two missiles each. Four Scuds flew towards Birmingham. Nerve gas was used instead of high explosives. A couple of missiles had launch or warhead failures and a few missed. Others crashed home into their targets at each of the six urban areas. The effects would be horrendous. There was no warning and civilians were exposed to the gas unleashed. Murder would be too gentle of a description for this attack done on the orders of the Soviet leadership. They were doing it elsewhere the same evening, hitting urban areas in other NATO countries like British ones.

While British civilians were being gassed in distant towns and cities, those closer to where the Second Battle of Britain was being fought were facing a different kind of enemy approach when it came to their lives. In Norwich, Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn especially the KGB was seeking out collaborators to assist them in maintaining public order. Norwich and those two towns on each side of Norfolk had all not been fought over directly but had seen civilian disturbances: rioting, looting and arson. Soviet paratroopers had shot anyone who dared come after them, taking casualties in the process, but the KGB wanted to use a different approach to dealing with the populous. They wanted people to do their work for them. Those prominent locals that they had taken for hostages to hold against guerrilla attacks had been questioned. Local records seized had been examined. There were pre-selected teams of personnel who were trained to do this and comrades of theirs were doing this in occupied parts of other Western European nations. The KGB was the KGB though. They weren’t about to accept help from anyone who wanted to assist them and they were seeking to use people for their own purposes. Certain people approached them offering to help and these were rejected with the suspicion caused leading to immediate detention. They found themselves with ideological zealots – often so-called communists, some Trotskyites and even fascists – as well as people who described themselves as non-political who just wanted to serve their community at a time like this. The policy employed was to trust no one who came to them. They instead went out searching for those they identified. Cooperation was sought. Serve your fellow Britons at this time of need, they were told, so that no harm will come to your friends, neighbours & co-workers. To ensure that collaboration was ‘honest’, family members were taken away for their supposed protection. Winning friends wasn’t what this was all about. Instead, there were the surest of guarantees sought. The KGB had dispatched close to six hundred of their personnel to Britain already. They had high-ranking and key people as well as lower-level people to assist them. It was a big deployment with training academy staff used as well as retirees recalled to service on the eve of war. These men – and a few women too – went about their duties, following orders as they did so even in the face of things going wrong when here. What no one told any of them, nor the senior military people either, was that Moscow had long ago written them all off in the long run because, either in conventional warfare or an escalation to the nuclear level, the lodgement secured in Britain was never going to hold out for good unless the war ended quickly. This was all for nought when it came to the highest strategic war goals. It would be funny if it really wasn’t so.