Ralph Peters - Red Army

In the year after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Malinsky had found himself on an inspectorate tour that took him through Smolensk. Hard drinking was still fashionable in the officer corps then, and the officers with whom he was traveling were a particularly hard-drinking bunch.

One morning while they snored into their hangovers, he had taken the staff car out to the state farm where once his family estates had counted thousands of souls.

The great house was long gone, destroyed by the Germans during the Great Patriotic War. The Sovkhoz buildings were nondescript barns, shacks and sheds of tin and cinder block. Malinsky parked the car and walked beyond the litter of the state into the newly harvested fields. From a low rise he could see the chronicle of his blood stretching brown and yellow and green over tens of gently rolling kilometers. And he wept, taking off his hat. Not for the loss of land. Nor because he wasn't called a count, even though in intimate moments he thought of his wife affection-14

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ately as his countess. Rather, he wept for Russia, without understanding himself. With blurred vision, he stared off into the distance where the fields met the vast, empty sky, caught up in its timelessness, suspecting that good men had always wept for Russia, that there was no choice, ever.

The gagging of a stalled tractor roused him, and he walked back through the characterless plot of farm buildings. Upon his approach, an old woman, an eternal peasant of a woman, called out:

"No special bargains for officers here, Comrade. You can go stand in line like all the rest."

Major General Anseev came in cautiously. As he approached the island of light in front of the situation map Malinsky motioned for him to take a seat. A visitor's chair had been carefully positioned so that the guest could turn slightly to his left and address the map or twist to the right and face Malinsky, but with no possibility of comfort in either position. The chair was positioned exactly so that, whenever the guest had to turn toward Malinsky, one of the small spotlights that lit the map dazzled the subordinate's eyes. Malinsky was not a cruel man, but he firmly believed in establishing and maintaining control under all circumstances, and he believed in precision and in the importance of the smallest detail to the greatest military operations.

Malinsky knew Anseev well enough. During Malinsky's tour of duty in Afghanistan—easily the most frustrating assignment of his life—Anseev had commanded a combined arms unit. Anseev had been bold, a great improviser, where others were routinely overcautious. Once, denied the use of mountain roads by the dushman, he had personally led his armored vehicles up a dry riverbed to relieve a besieged garrison. But he did not pay enough attention to little things, and his casualties were always high. Each of his commanders had his own peculiar weaknesses, Malinsky reflected. Anseev just needed to feel the bit now and then.

Anseev had been given the command of a corps structured to perform optimally as an operational maneuver group, with the mission of thrusting deeply and rapidly into the enemy's operational rear, unhing-ing the enemy's ability to reorganize his defenses, seizing key terrain or striking decisive targets, and convincing the opponent that he had been defeated before the military issue was actually settled. Anseev had been selected for the command because of his boldness and the speed with which he moved. Yet here was a situation in which one of his subunits could not even clear its staging area on time. Malinsky suspected he knew the reason, but he wanted to hear Anseev's tale.

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Ralph Peters

Holding out his cigarette case, Malinsky leaned forward into the light.

Anseev was normally highly self-confident, even brash, and he was a chain-smoker like Malinsky. But now he waved away the proffered smoke with almost unintelligible thanks.

"Come, Igor Fedorovitch, you like a smoke."

Anseev obediently took one of the short paper tubes that bled dark tobacco from both ends.

From Anseev's behavior, Malinsky could tell that the man knew what the problem was, and that he had hoped it would slip by the front commander.

Malinsky leaned back into the shadows.

"Igor Fedorovitch," he said in a friendly, almost paternal voice, "are you aware that your trail brigade is still in its staging area, holding up another unit?"

"Yes, Comrade Front Commander."

"What's the problem there?"

"The roads are just too crowded," Anseev said anxiously. Anseev was a mongrel, with a great deal of Tartar blood and the guarded eyes of an Asian. "The supply columns from the front and army materiel support brigades are undisciplined. They act as though they are under no control whatsoever. I have tanks colliding with fuelers, and nobody can decide who has priority unless a senior officer is present. The commandant's service has not deployed adequate traffic controllers. You should see how it is along my routes, Comrade Front Commander. The river-crossing sites are an absolute nightmare."

"Igor Fedorovitch, do you imagine it will be easier to move in combat?

Do you expect the British or the Germans to control traffic for you?"

Malinsky paused for effect, carefully holding his voice down to a studied near-whisper that could be chilling and fatherly at the same time. "We're not in Afghanistan now. This is a real war, with mechanized opponents, with enormous mechanized armies the like of which the world has never seen in battle. Moving to war on the finest road networks in the world.

And you, my cavalryman, are perhaps the most important formation commander in this front. Yet you can't move a lone brigade on time? Igor Fedorovitch, we've had reasonable weather, a little rain, but nothing to stop a good cavalryman. If the supply columns have no control, why didn't you take control? If you can't maneuver around a pack of field kitchens, how do you expect to get to the Rhine? How can I trust you even to get into combat on time?"

"Comrade Front Commander, this will not happen again. It's just—"

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"No 'just,'" Malinsky said, his voice lowering in pitch and suddenly as cold as winter in the far north. "Fix the problem. And never let it happen again."

"Yes, Comrade Front Commander. By the way, I have to tell you that your son's brigade is the best in my command. Well-disciplined, and he moves his tanks like lightning."

It was the wrong approach to try with Malinsky, who instantly realized how shaken Anseev must have been to try anything so tactless and naive.

Anseev would need watching as the pressure mounted.

"Guards Colonel Malinsky is no special concern of mine," Malinsky said emphatically. "He's one commander out of many. Anseev, did you personally review your march tables and routes in detail?"

"Comrade Commander, I flew the routes myself."

"Did you personally review the march tables? Was your movement plan fully cleared with my chief of the rear and my movement control officers? Or did you bend the schedule you were allowed by the front?

Did you even know all that had been done or left undone in your name?"

"Comrade Front Commander, the automated support mechanism—"

"Yes or no?"

"No, Comrade Front Commander."

Malinsky drew on his cigarette, letting its glow briefly light his face.

Anseev was clearly distraught. As he deserved to be. But Malinsky did not want him to return to his unit that way. And there was the final review to get through with all of the other commanders, the front staff, and the special representatives.

Anseev turned his face to the map, as though seeking a way to reach out and correct his error in front of Malinsky's eyes.