Does mean that the Soviet authorities would not need to deal with lots of dead bodies post-strike. I imagine a self burying population appealed a great deal to them. 
We Served the Soviet Union - A Protect and Survive Spinoff!
- Thread starter Panzerfaust 150
- Start date
Project page established :
http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/timelines/we_served_the_soviet_union
http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/timelines/we_served_the_soviet_union
Panzerfaust 150
Banned
Sorry abt lack of updates. Had some family issues to handle. Will update this week.
Panzerfaust 150
Banned
Oh... my... God...
One minor quibble : A Russian Gregory would more probably be Grigori / Grigoriy.
It's not just them, it's more Soviet veterans who made it home, and that would be in something of the minority, just like NATO or NSWP veterans. Lemme give you a hint where I am going with this guy. 6th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade was posted in the Karlhorst barracks of Berlin. I'm assuming, of the members of forces engaged in West Germany (not SAC/Bomber Command/Long Range Aviation/SRF types) on 21 FEB, maybe 20% survived the fighting, and maybe 40-50% of that is still alive today due to massive cancer risk.
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So ballpark figure maybe ten percent of the forward forces deployed to Europe survived and made it home.
Dudicus that us just ugly.
Very believable and I totally buy it, but still YEESHE
Panzerfaust 150
Banned
Well, consider in some ways, Soviet NBC protection was actually WORSE than anything NATO had. The suits were not permeable at all, so heat related injuries were more likely, exposed hoses and filters made damage more likely, and the infamous "anti-radiation pills" in the rations that were at best, Potassium Iodide, at worst? A placebo or anti-nausea meds.
Though with this many warheads, being on a battlefield itself is going to guarentee a measure of exposure, no matter how good the protection.
That's what I was thinking.
I found it to be a very engaging and compelling set of charecters presented well and in a world I found very easy to believe.
I was actually thinking of AMERICAN forces in Europe, but yes, you're o nthe money about that as well.
Panzerfaust 150
Banned
In what sense did you mean, “be careful what you wish for?”
Ah, the Taman Guards. The nicest thing NATO ever did for the Soviet Army was vaporize them and their barracks on the 21st.The Taman Guards were a show outfit, a Potemkin village, they spent six months of the year preparing for the parade in Red Square and the other six months training with the MVD (Interior Ministry) to crush any coups or civil disorder in Moscow. In short, I was with a bunch of fops and bully boys. And worse, they had assigned me the worst tank platoon of the worst tank company in the division. Oh, they could march alright and their equipment was sparkling! But they could not do it to the standards of the division. Oh, any other Soviet division, these men would have been considered exemplary soldiers. I had few discipline problems, and most of the men were eager to do what was asked of them, but the fact was? They were performers more than they were soldiers. When we went to the rifle range once, I remember a motor rifleman asking me how to clear a jam with his rifle. This was a supposedly trained man! It had been so long since the division had trained on practical training skills…Oh, these men could march, and yes, swing riot batons, but the basic skills of the soldier had been neglected. And worse? The constant berating by the company commander of his entire company in morning formation had shot the confidence of many men to hell. They wanted to be good soldiers, but even good soldiers in the Taman Guards were not considered good enough. Such was the pressure that men snapped; I had one of my men hang himself in the barracks. I filed a report with higher commanders, and the entire matter was quashed. It had me at a low state. I had to get out of this mess before my own career suffered; many of these boys were thankfully, only here two years. The thought of home got many through.
It was such, that by October of 1977, I had had enough. I called my father, and asked him if he could please get me orders to Germany. I did not ask him any favors such as this, before or since, but the culture of the officer’s mess was just oppressive. I had joined the Soviet Army, not the army of the Czars! Sure, I was trading in on my father’s influence, but it had to be done.
So what happened, did your father secure you another posting?
(Volobriev smiles) Yes, he did, and an unusual one at that. Someone at the assignments section in Moscow remembered I’d done well in my English classes. And there was an opening with the Soviet Military Liaison Mission in West Germany.
Excuse me, did you say West Germany?
Yes Comrade Professor, I most certainly did. The Allied Military Liaison Missions were a throwback to the end of the Second World War. They were there as observer missions to reassure the other side that neither side was planning any kind of surprise attack. We and our Western counterparts in East Germany were there to make sure of it by observing the other side’s armies. Sadly, as subsequent events bear out, that mission failed. It was purely on that basis I was assigned as a new member of the mission in January of 1978. I had no intelligence training at all. Nevertheless, I had the time of my life. We were a close knit bunch. Most of us were young officers, most with better education and English skills than me, but I soon realized I had the mind to keep up with them. We functioned in two man teams, driving around in marked, olive drab cars following around NATO exercises, and playing hare and hound with the various NATO military police units as well as their intelligence services. Neither side played for “keeps” as you would not put it, in the West, even if our mission was deadly serious, I will say that most of the NATO soldiers I met were of good humor about it. Half the time, I was used as a distraction, taking pictures with various NATO soldiers while the officer with intelligence training wrote down bumper numbers, or tried to get photos of new NATO equipment. But god it was fun! Our commander, Colonel Andriev, was a jovial man for a GRU with Spetsnaz training. Oh, I am sure he had some very serious concerns, but his standing orders were, “Don’t risk your lives, drive safely, obey all traffic laws, cooperate with the NATO military and civil authorities when they catch you, and be nice. Remember, you represent the Soviet army.” It was a shame he was killed in Afghanistan in 1982. He was a father figure to each and every one of us. Sadly, our side did not treat the NATO MLMs as well.
What were these missions like?
As I said, a lot of fun. There were rules to what we did, and both sides knew them, we were not to be harmed or threatened. We had free run of “unrestricted areas” which were pretty much anywhere NATO said wasn’t. But, we tended to ignore such restrictions, and at times, this was at our peril. The cars we were issued were these Volga sedans brought in because the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) was concerned anything we bought locally would be bugged by NATO intelligence agencies. I can say with authority that those damn cars taught me about how to fix an automobile than working on my tank ever did. Damn cars broke down enough. Then there was the games the NATO truck drivers used to play with us…they would see us and our license plates, and realizes very quickly who we were. So, they’d try to either box us in, or stop short and let us rear-end them, and then bill the mission for damages. Oh I am sure we did it too. But god it was fun, and though various NATO intelligence people dogged us on our days off, we got to do things like take in the cinema, and maybe try our luck with the local girls. Can’t say any of us really succeeded. Probably just as well, I bet most of those girls worked for the BND or MI-6 (West German and British intelligence respectively). I can’t disparage the British too much really.
Why not?
They were nice enough to give us a place to live in one of their barracks complexes in Bunde. It was in a married housing block, and thus, we ran into a lot of British officers’ families with them taking their families out on the weekend, pushing the prams or taking their little ones by the hand. I realized during those years just how dangerous war really could be. And, I also realized that the people I used to call the “German Fascist Hyenas” were anything but. It’s a damn shame what ended up happening. I naturally kept such opinions to myself. Expressing them openly would be dangerous. In any event, my tour ended in January of 1979. They never liked to keep any of us with a mission for more than a year. Can’t have anyone getting ideas, don’t you know?
What came next?
A short posting as an instructor at Kharkov. I enjoyed that, I found I was good at teaching young officers, and I had a good class, for as long as I had it.
What happened?
In December 1979, I was reassigned to the 5th Guards Motor Rifle Division. They had been chosen as part of the initial invasion force for Afghanistan. The fighting during the invasion, as well as the year I was there didn’t resemble the later years before the exchange. There were no guerillas as such. Just occasional mutinies by the DRA (Army of the Pro-Soviet Afghani government, it was often unreliable and detested by the Soviets) or tribal armies of the local warlords. I remember one of those fools actually tried to charge a Soviet tank battalion on horseback. I guess the locals didn’t read up on what happened when the Poles tried that to the Germans?
I presume it was a slaughter?
Yes, not even remotely a fair fight. By now, I had made Captain, and I was commanding a Company of tanks. Still T-62s, only now in real combat conditions. We did alright, considering. The main reason we thanked god (even if the Commissars frowned on it) was because these tribal armies had never heard of anti-tank weapons with the exception of RPGs. I think in that sense, we were very lucky. They had more RPGs than people in many cases. Happily, for all the tales of Afghani marksmanship, I am glad it was little more than a scary nuisance. The main problem we had early on was disease and poor nutrition for operating in such a remote place. I had 5 Hepatitis cases in my company alone. To say such numbers are small is to forget something; there was 52 men in my company and 10 of them had to be evacuated home due to the fact they’d gotten sick somehow or another, and this was in the first two weeks of our arrival.
What next then?
I rotated out of Afghanistan in December 1980. I had sat for and passed the Frunze Academy examinations and had orders for Moscow. It was on the train from Tashkent north that I met my wife. She was a seamstress, who was just starting out, and here I was, trying and failing to play the confident Army officer to sweep her off her feet. I must have done something proper and correct, because I married her in March 1981 and we had almost three great years together. She was killed in the exchange, along with our two children. Sacha was two. Alexander wasn’t a year old in 1984. They all died when NATO nuked the Karlhorst barracks. I was at Frunze for three years, and my time at the MLM helped, as I managed to graduate the lofty goal of second in my class. I probably would have made Major then, but I didn’t quite have what you Americans call “time in grade”.
I know I keep saying this, but what came next?
My new family and I left Frunze in January 1984, where I had been temporarily attached to the staff of the school as basically a glorified adjutant to assume a new posting as a company commander with the 6th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade in Berlin. With the proverbial storm clouds that were forming, it did not take a particularly smart man to know East-West tensions at an all-time high, and getting worse by the day. Considering what came next, It seemed the past had become prologue. I arrived to my new company just in time to find out the Brigade was on alert.
END PART TWO
Ah, the Taman Guards. The nicest thing NATO ever did for the Soviet Army was vaporize them and their barracks on the 21st.The Taman Guards were a show outfit, a Potemkin village, they spent six months of the year preparing for the parade in Red Square and the other six months training with the MVD (Interior Ministry) to crush any coups or civil disorder in Moscow. In short, I was with a bunch of fops and bully boys. And worse, they had assigned me the worst tank platoon of the worst tank company in the division. Oh, they could march alright and their equipment was sparkling! But they could not do it to the standards of the division. Oh, any other Soviet division, these men would have been considered exemplary soldiers. I had few discipline problems, and most of the men were eager to do what was asked of them, but the fact was? They were performers more than they were soldiers. When we went to the rifle range once, I remember a motor rifleman asking me how to clear a jam with his rifle. This was a supposedly trained man! It had been so long since the division had trained on practical training skills…Oh, these men could march, and yes, swing riot batons, but the basic skills of the soldier had been neglected. And worse? The constant berating by the company commander of his entire company in morning formation had shot the confidence of many men to hell. They wanted to be good soldiers, but even good soldiers in the Taman Guards were not considered good enough. Such was the pressure that men snapped; I had one of my men hang himself in the barracks. I filed a report with higher commanders, and the entire matter was quashed. It had me at a low state. I had to get out of this mess before my own career suffered; many of these boys were thankfully, only here two years. The thought of home got many through.
It was such, that by October of 1977, I had had enough. I called my father, and asked him if he could please get me orders to Germany. I did not ask him any favors such as this, before or since, but the culture of the officer’s mess was just oppressive. I had joined the Soviet Army, not the army of the Czars! Sure, I was trading in on my father’s influence, but it had to be done.
So what happened, did your father secure you another posting?
(Volobriev smiles) Yes, he did, and an unusual one at that. Someone at the assignments section in Moscow remembered I’d done well in my English classes. And there was an opening with the Soviet Military Liaison Mission in West Germany.
Excuse me, did you say West Germany?
Yes Comrade Professor, I most certainly did. The Allied Military Liaison Missions were a throwback to the end of the Second World War. They were there as observer missions to reassure the other side that neither side was planning any kind of surprise attack. We and our Western counterparts in East Germany were there to make sure of it by observing the other side’s armies. Sadly, as subsequent events bear out, that mission failed. It was purely on that basis I was assigned as a new member of the mission in January of 1978. I had no intelligence training at all. Nevertheless, I had the time of my life. We were a close knit bunch. Most of us were young officers, most with better education and English skills than me, but I soon realized I had the mind to keep up with them. We functioned in two man teams, driving around in marked, olive drab cars following around NATO exercises, and playing hare and hound with the various NATO military police units as well as their intelligence services. Neither side played for “keeps” as you would not put it, in the West, even if our mission was deadly serious, I will say that most of the NATO soldiers I met were of good humor about it. Half the time, I was used as a distraction, taking pictures with various NATO soldiers while the officer with intelligence training wrote down bumper numbers, or tried to get photos of new NATO equipment. But god it was fun! Our commander, Colonel Andriev, was a jovial man for a GRU with Spetsnaz training. Oh, I am sure he had some very serious concerns, but his standing orders were, “Don’t risk your lives, drive safely, obey all traffic laws, cooperate with the NATO military and civil authorities when they catch you, and be nice. Remember, you represent the Soviet army.” It was a shame he was killed in Afghanistan in 1982. He was a father figure to each and every one of us. Sadly, our side did not treat the NATO MLMs as well.
What were these missions like?
As I said, a lot of fun. There were rules to what we did, and both sides knew them, we were not to be harmed or threatened. We had free run of “unrestricted areas” which were pretty much anywhere NATO said wasn’t. But, we tended to ignore such restrictions, and at times, this was at our peril. The cars we were issued were these Volga sedans brought in because the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) was concerned anything we bought locally would be bugged by NATO intelligence agencies. I can say with authority that those damn cars taught me about how to fix an automobile than working on my tank ever did. Damn cars broke down enough. Then there was the games the NATO truck drivers used to play with us…they would see us and our license plates, and realizes very quickly who we were. So, they’d try to either box us in, or stop short and let us rear-end them, and then bill the mission for damages. Oh I am sure we did it too. But god it was fun, and though various NATO intelligence people dogged us on our days off, we got to do things like take in the cinema, and maybe try our luck with the local girls. Can’t say any of us really succeeded. Probably just as well, I bet most of those girls worked for the BND or MI-6 (West German and British intelligence respectively). I can’t disparage the British too much really.
Why not?
They were nice enough to give us a place to live in one of their barracks complexes in Bunde. It was in a married housing block, and thus, we ran into a lot of British officers’ families with them taking their families out on the weekend, pushing the prams or taking their little ones by the hand. I realized during those years just how dangerous war really could be. And, I also realized that the people I used to call the “German Fascist Hyenas” were anything but. It’s a damn shame what ended up happening. I naturally kept such opinions to myself. Expressing them openly would be dangerous. In any event, my tour ended in January of 1979. They never liked to keep any of us with a mission for more than a year. Can’t have anyone getting ideas, don’t you know?
What came next?
A short posting as an instructor at Kharkov. I enjoyed that, I found I was good at teaching young officers, and I had a good class, for as long as I had it.
What happened?
In December 1979, I was reassigned to the 5th Guards Motor Rifle Division. They had been chosen as part of the initial invasion force for Afghanistan. The fighting during the invasion, as well as the year I was there didn’t resemble the later years before the exchange. There were no guerillas as such. Just occasional mutinies by the DRA (Army of the Pro-Soviet Afghani government, it was often unreliable and detested by the Soviets) or tribal armies of the local warlords. I remember one of those fools actually tried to charge a Soviet tank battalion on horseback. I guess the locals didn’t read up on what happened when the Poles tried that to the Germans?
I presume it was a slaughter?
Yes, not even remotely a fair fight. By now, I had made Captain, and I was commanding a Company of tanks. Still T-62s, only now in real combat conditions. We did alright, considering. The main reason we thanked god (even if the Commissars frowned on it) was because these tribal armies had never heard of anti-tank weapons with the exception of RPGs. I think in that sense, we were very lucky. They had more RPGs than people in many cases. Happily, for all the tales of Afghani marksmanship, I am glad it was little more than a scary nuisance. The main problem we had early on was disease and poor nutrition for operating in such a remote place. I had 5 Hepatitis cases in my company alone. To say such numbers are small is to forget something; there was 52 men in my company and 10 of them had to be evacuated home due to the fact they’d gotten sick somehow or another, and this was in the first two weeks of our arrival.
What next then?
I rotated out of Afghanistan in December 1980. I had sat for and passed the Frunze Academy examinations and had orders for Moscow. It was on the train from Tashkent north that I met my wife. She was a seamstress, who was just starting out, and here I was, trying and failing to play the confident Army officer to sweep her off her feet. I must have done something proper and correct, because I married her in March 1981 and we had almost three great years together. She was killed in the exchange, along with our two children. Sacha was two. Alexander wasn’t a year old in 1984. They all died when NATO nuked the Karlhorst barracks. I was at Frunze for three years, and my time at the MLM helped, as I managed to graduate the lofty goal of second in my class. I probably would have made Major then, but I didn’t quite have what you Americans call “time in grade”.
I know I keep saying this, but what came next?
My new family and I left Frunze in January 1984, where I had been temporarily attached to the staff of the school as basically a glorified adjutant to assume a new posting as a company commander with the 6th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade in Berlin. With the proverbial storm clouds that were forming, it did not take a particularly smart man to know East-West tensions at an all-time high, and getting worse by the day. Considering what came next, It seemed the past had become prologue. I arrived to my new company just in time to find out the Brigade was on alert.
END PART TWO
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Panzerfaust, that was a breathtaking fresh break and a wonderful humanisation of your charecters. It really brings home the fact that neither side was composed of cardboard cutout saturday morning cartoon villains. The cold war was NOT "G.I.Joe vs Cobra". it was a clash of ideologies and economies and if it had gone hot it would have been an unexpressable tragedy. thank you, great stuff.
Considering the extremely intense fighting with simply an indecent amount of Firepower on both sides, the Long fronts... The casualty-Liste Must have been very Long älready up to the Exchange.
BTW, Panzerfaust... A Great update.