John Schettler: Grand Alliance

Brigadier General Kinlan arrived back at the tail of the column, his mind weighted with a thousand impossible thoughts. The evidence of his own eyes had betrayed his thin hold on sanity, forcing him to stand at the edge of oblivion and stare into the abyss. He felt completely untethered, his thoughts as dark as the dead satellite GPS links, a blind man groping about in a desert sandstorm in a desperate search to find something he could get hold of to save himself from being buried.

He stepped out of the FV432 command vehicle, thankful his sand goggles hid the uncertainty and fear in his eyes. His boast to his Chief of Staff, old reliable Sims, still echoed in his mind. What were they going to do? Could this all be really happening? Was his whole brigade now caught up in this whirlwind of impossibility, trapped in the deserts of 1941 and marooned in World War Two?

Where was that damn Russian Captain? “Sims,” he said, forcing as much normalcy on his tone of voice as he could. The men, the few that had heard and seen the same evidence as he had, would be as disoriented and clueless as he felt now, and it was his to be the heavy anchor and keep this ship from foundering on the rocks. They would look to him, first and foremost, to make sense of what was happening, and sort it all out. So he reached for the book. They would do things the Army way, step by step.

The Army way, thought Kinlan. The four pillars of operations were drilled into his head early on in officer’s training schools: integrity of purpose, application and threat of force, the nature and character of the conflict, enduring philosophy and principles… he smiled grimly at that, still hearing the command instructor’s words as if they were just spoken.

“These principles should be adhered to in every respect, but they are not immune from change. They are malleable, and can be altered so that they may be applied to as many situations as possible, but only after careful consideration. Doctrine is the map for all your operations. It turns the sum of subjective thinking into an objective guide for action, thus distilling a sometimes confusing array of ideas and opinions into a clear, simple essence. Existing doctrine-based on common sense-should be consulted before new ideas are floated, but nothing should be taken too literally in translation. And remember that all principles of war fighting rest upon the cohesion of will, in ourselves, our allies, and our adversaries.”

Doctrine, common sense and will power. Know the rules and use them, but be ready to break them if the situation warrants… But only after careful consideration. And by all means, don’t be stupid. That was the menu now, right from the book of war. He had long known that no plan, however carefully it was devised, ever survived first contact with the enemy-but this? This was something else entirely. This was sheer bedlam.

Rommel… He had told Sims he was going to head for Mersa Matruh as planned, and if he found anyone named Rommel out there he would kick his ass half way to Berlin. Yet at the moment, with communications down, no satellite links, no sitrep, little intelligence as to what had actually happened, and this crazy Russian Captain and his troupe of World War Two impersonators, the doctrine called for caution. Rommel… It was he who had coined the phrase so often repeated by surly instructors in the officer’s schools: “The British write some of the best doctrine in the world; it is fortunate that their officers do not read it!”

Doctrine… Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act… Yet at the moment he would go dark and still. There was no sense pushing his five miles of steel and thunder north until he knew damn well what he was heading for, and to a certainty. Now he wished he still had the 656th Squadron Apaches with him, but the air assault units were the first to depart. They left for Mersa Matruh three days before the missile came in. They were spared the madness, but he could damn well use their eyes and mobility right now. Then he remembered the Russians, and that nice fat KA-40 helicopter sitting out there somewhere.

“Tell Hampton to send out a Wingo to all units. The column is to stop and remain in NBC order, engines off, lights dark, except for flankers and air defense security. Then find me that Russian Captain and his interpreter, the fellow who calls himself Popski. We’re going to get to the bottom of this right now.”

“Sir!” Sims was off at the trot, soon disappearing into the heavy brown desert airs, still occluded heavily at ground level from the recent storm.

Send out a Wingo, which was Army slang for WngO, a Warning Order. Sense, warn, consider, decide, execute… And be ready to take risks. He might be faulted for stopping now, leaving his column strung out, motionless, a massive sinuous heat signature on the desert. That wouldn’t matter much to another ICBM, so he decided to take the risk. He knew that mobility was his first guarantor of survivability, but something told him it was not good just blundering ahead until he could understand his environment and make some sense of this situation.

He wanted to talk to that Russian Captain again, but even as he thought this, he heard the rebuke so often quoted in the Army Operations Manual about the last war in this goddamned desert. ‘The British were plagued by feebleness, by lack of instant authority in the high command. Intentions were too often obscure. Orders at army, corps, or divisional level were too often treated as the basis for discussion, matters for visit, argument, expostulation even. The result was a system of command too conversational and chatty, rather than instant and incisive…’

What if these two characters had been sent out here to serve as a grand distraction to delay his move north? That thought was silly. Could he imagine the Russians dreaming up something like this charade? How can we make sure the British will stay in the target zone? I know, send in a few men on helicopters to ID their position, and better yet, we can dress them up in old World War Two uniforms and tell the British they’ve been transported to that old romantic era of the past where the Desert Rats first made their mark on these sands.

He shook his head… Impossible. The Russians couldn’t dream this up in a century. This business with the LRDG, Popski, O’Connor and the whole bit… well it all seemed so damnably authentic. The look in O’Connor’s eye was riveting, and he was mad as a hornet now in the other FV432. To calm the man he had played along, almost comically.

“General,” he had said. “We’re glad you’ve been recovered, but I’ve a bit of a problem on my hands at the moment, and more than one. Would you be so kind as to wait here while I complete my reconnaissance? We’re trying to get through to the liaison officer in Cairo.”

That worked. It at least gave him the time he needed to slip away and sort this whole mess out. Yet the more he looked at the situation, the more wild and crazy it all became! The Russian had come to him bang away with the assertion that he should look over his shoulder and return to the Sultan Apache facilities. In the end, he had granted the man the small grace of compliance, and sent a patrol back to check on the status of things at the massive oil drilling site. They reported nothing was there, and Kinlan immediately assumed they had wandered off somewhere in this damn desert sand storm and were probably lost in the desolation of the Qattara Depression. So he went to look for himself.