The Third World War - The Untold Story Read Online Free Page A

was given command of a platoon in the motor rifle regiment of 5 Tank Division. Soviet forces abroad were normally in Category One, at operational strength, including the officers. Young officers beginning their service abroad did so at the lowest level. Most of Andrei’s fellow cadets who had received postings within the Soviet Union were given command, not of platoons but of companies, immediately after graduating from the Academy. By sheer good luck Dimitri too had been sent to 5 Tank Division and was commanding a platoon in another company of the same motor rifle regiment.
    In 1984 Nekrassov was transferred to the Belorussian Military District, where he took over a motor rifle company in 197 Motor Rifle Division of 28 Army. All divisions in 28 Army belonged to the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, although in peacetime they were largely stationed in Belorussia. Together with its normal combat training, 28 Army was in constant practice for a swift move into East Germany, where, even in peacetime, its mobilization stores and much of its heavy equipment were located.
    In Hungary Andrei Nekrassov had had a platoon of thirty-two men. In Belorussia he was given command of a company comprising three platoons, but with no more than thirty men in all. Like most other such companies, his was thinly manned, with only a cadre of indispensable specialists: junior commanders, drivers of BMP infantry combat vehicles, and heavy weapons operators. The ‘cannon fodder’ - submachine gunners, machine-gunners, grenade throwers and the like - joined the company only on mobilization. The standard of training of these reservist soldiers was abysmally low but no one seemed to mind. After all, there was an almost inexhaustible supply of them.
    In June 1985 extensive training exercises began in Belorussia. Under the guise of these, as became clear later, the Red Army was partially mobilized and divisions were reinforced to their regular strength. The reservists came from Moslem republics - Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kirghiz. After two months of refresher weapon training (the men had by now almost forgotten how to handle weapons), sub-units had been formed. Even when this training programme had long been completed, no order to release the reservists came through. On the contrary, the instructions were to continue with the training.
    No. R341266 Senior Lieutenant Nekrassov, 001, was beginning to get worried. As one of the regiment’s best officers he had been put forward as a candidate for the Frunze Military Academy. For junior officers the Military Academy meant escape from the stifling monotony of service in the lower ranks to more interesting and creative military work on the staff. Nekrassov had already passed the preliminary medical board and had been recommended by superior reporting officers, including his divisional commander. He had received a summons to sit the Academy entrance examinations and was required to be in Moscow on 10 August. But the training of reservists dragged on. Nekrassov feared that, if he missed these entrance examinations, perhaps next year some other officers in the regiment might have better luck and he would be left out, or next year something might go wrong in the company and once again he would have another year to wait. If this went on, he might never get into the Academy at all. It was important for him to know. Nekrassov, who was approaching his twenty-fourth birthday, wanted to get on with it. There were only two weeks left before the examinations but he had still not received confirmation of permission to attend, and there was no sign of an end to the exercises. The only consolation was that in the division there were many other officers who had applied for military academies, and they too remained in uncertainty.
    One of these, it so happened, was none other than his old friend Dimitri Vassilievitch Makarov, who had just turned up in another motor rifle regiment of the same division.
    On 26 July intensive training