Borderlands Part 1: The Falklands
It was good to be back.
Major Mike Norman stepped off the stair of the RAF Belfast. The breeze was bracing, yet warmer than he had become accustomed to in his last deployment to the islands, even considering that spring was still a month away. That wasn't the only thing that had changed. Several new buildings had now been erected around RAF Mount Pleasant, along with a very large radar back from the control tower, two dozen hardened aircraft shelters and storage igloos, and a number of fenced off areas that were likely the new experimental missile cells.
"A tad greener than Aden."
"Gary! I had been expecting someone a little less illustrious."
"The mufti almost got me, but I'd recognise that snout from a mile off."
"Well, I'm not actually here yet, officially speaking. Corps HQ at Portsmouth thought it better to have a gander before the actual changeover, and read the tealeaves. And a good snout is never a bad thing when it comes to sniffing out trouble; it did the job last time I was here."
"Yes, the business with the velociraptors; who can forget it. All things considered, it should be rather quieter down here for this pull. Anyway Mike, I thought I might as well kill both birds of protocol and familiarity with the one stone, and run you back up to Stanley myself. HE, the Army fellows and the Navy and Air Force blokes are all keen to meet you ahead of the formalities of the arrival of your lot tomorrow. A little chat before satisfying Aunty and the local news with the little parade in the morning."
"Very good. The road seems better."
"They've done it up a treat. We've got the new Land Rover Cruisers down here, so we should be able to do it in around 25 minutes. A bit quicker and quieter than the train, even if it does run exactly on time; that Portuguese honourary director is a dab hand at punctuality."
"Bento? He still kicking about?"
"He is, the funny old coot. He'd be 90 if he was a day, even if the beard makes him seem as old as a wizard. Shall we?"
"Lead on, Gary."
The drive down the military road to Stanley was indeed swift, with the repulsor fence posts ensuring that the main population of the islands didn't wander onto it. The road was wide and straight, part of its purpose of serving as an auxiliary runway as well as allowing heavier vehicles to get from the airfield to the main town in convoy. The rugged, windswept landscape about them on either side was dotted with little farms and houses, and in the distance, Norman could see some of the buildings of the new mining settlements off to the west. It had been 8 years, yet progress had even come to this distant borderland outpost of the Empire, in a fashion; the sight of a horseback patrol from the Army's mounted troop off to the east showed that it hadn't quite yet completed the transformation.
“Any trouble I should know about?”
“Nothing, really. We’re too far away for the other side to get any eyes on the ground down for a proper look, although no doubt they’ve tried, and nothing goes on outside that their eyes in the sky can see. Nothing like your fun and games with the dinosaurs, or those crackpot Argies landing on the racecourse.”
“If I never come face to face with one of those bloody chickens again up close, it won’t be long enough.”
Noott was good to his word, and, within a short while, they were approaching the town. Stanley had sprawled out further, which he had briefly seen from the air, but got a better sense of it from here on the road as they approached. What had once been the old golf club was now a new array of houses set around a park, the town stretched out a dozen streets inland rather than seven and the outer verges were now only separated from their destination of the Moody Brook Barracks by a little under a mile. There were now several more larger buildings in the middle of town, good solid ones of stone, and a pair of half sized Routemasters puttering about past them.
Pulling into Moody Brook, they passed through a pair of checkpoints, the first along the fence line and the second at the inner gate, with both allowing Norman a chance to get a look at the men of the previous Royal Marine company.
“All spick and span, Gary. Good to see your lot haven't gone native down here?”
“These boys have done as many Burmas and Adens as yours, Mike. We're not the Guards, but we've kept our standards up, no doubt.”
“Amen to that."
Inside, Noott lead the way down a corridor into a spacious briefing room, where waited five men, four in uniform and one older fellow in a morning suit, who would be the Governor of the Falkland Islands, Sir William Tarkin.
“Major Norman, these are the commanding officers of the other contingents - Major Harry Hearne of the Black Watch, Major Jack McVicker of the Gurkhas, Squadron Leader Archibald Lockwood of the RAF Regiment and Lieutenant-Commander Lancelot Hunter of the Royal Naval Commandos.” Noott did the honours as nods and handshakes were exchanged.
The Governor seemed rather familiar, even as he and Norman had never met before, and he wracked his brain for half a moment before coming up with the answer - His Excellency was the spitting image of Professor Lorimer Van Helsing.
“Major Norman. Welcome back.”
“Thank you, Your Excellency. The place has changed a bit, I’ll warrant. Hopefully a little less lively than my last tour.”
“Indeed; we don’t really want those types loose in our new forest.”
Norman smiled thinly and perfunctorily.
“Very good. Major Hearne will begin our little informal briefing today, having seniority; we had our own little Zulu to do here before you arrived.
Rather typical of the Army. Come to think of it, this Hearne fellow looked a little like Michael Caine.
“Thank you, Your Excellency. As of today, we have the five company sized elements here on East Falkland - the RAF Regiment at Mount Pleasant, the Navy Commandos across at Stanley Airfield, the Marines here at Moody Brook, the Gurkhas at Darwin and my boys at Victoria Cantonment on Teal Inlet. Colonel Mustard has the HQ Company and B and D Companies on exercise in Prydain, and D Company is up on Saint Helena for the month, whilst Colonel Chapman has his regular battalion of the Falkland Islands Regiment down in Lafonia for training in the forest.
As for the South Atlantic Fleet, there are cruisers in Montevideo and São Paulo, the RSAN carrier Natal is at Capetown and their battleship up at Zanzibar. The nearest British battleship is at Gibraltar, and there is a carrier due to be visiting Trinidad for working up cruise next week. Fairly standard. Endurance is at sea, but Terra Nova and Sherwood are in port, and Amazon is due in three days.
We have no indication of any threats beyond the usual Argie firebreathers that Rodriguez has been humouring of late, and they don’t even reach the level of a minor nuisance. The Argentines are in discussions about some scrapping contracts on South Georgia, but there won’t be any decisions on that anytime soon, apparently. They make up a fair whack of the more recent tranches of gas workers, but none of them really stay for long; not quite salubrious enough for Latins here, what!
In the case of any unexpected visitors or a crisis, we are well set here, as we’re one of the few battalions to deploy with our 25pdr support guns in peacetime, and there is the Valiant troop and a battery of Light Guns for general support. We have the standard load of four atomic warheads for our Pink Panthers, along with a dozen gas and eight blessed ones; enough for most contingencies, and that isn't even factoring in the jets from our estimable Royal Air Force compatriots.
Our ostensible role is to provide security for the oil facilities, and the four mines, along with the airfield and port. Our actual one is, whilst covering those, to ensure that the new facilities remain undisturbed - the Royal Space Force has a ground station under an old shearing shed on Grantham Sound, Baker Street has a ‘village’ they are building for some of their special friends, under the guise of the Shaking Quakers, and the Ministry of Magic has a laboratory in the dig at Mount Young. They want it nice and quiet there, and we are happy to oblige, and to know nothing further. They have their own security team in house, but in case of stranger things, we’re back up.”
"Have the chances of any of that actually changed? Are there any indications of a valid threat." asked Norman.
"Frankly, no. The pool on the reason why there have been the force increases here over the last decade and a bit remains open, and I dare say our lords and masters won't deem to take us into their secret confidence any time soon. My bob remains on a member of the government having some secret family ties to some dear old biddy somewhere off in the Camp, but I've always been something of a romantic; one wag from the Navy thought that they had gazed into their big crystal ball in London and discovered that there would be a war here someday, but he was frankly batty. As ever, I dare say we're really here for the oil."
"Your humour is your greatest treasure, Major Hearne," began Governor Tarkin as he arose from his seat "In the absence of a sudden descent by a Soviet brigade or Senor Rodriguez losing his mind and sending a division of his Marines on a surprise attack, we remain quite, quite secure and quite, quite peaceful here in the Falklands, and that is how I wish it to stay. Not that there is any scope for the Argentine to go mad; their days of that type of business are extinct, and their fire has gone out of the neighbourhood. Major Norman, after your last tour here, you will find this to be what it is - a nice and quiet posting where nothing significant will ever happen."
"That, your Excellency, after those dashed raptors, is a reward I will most certainly take."
As he walked back outside, Norman looked out over Stanley Harbour, where the frigate and sloop stood at anchor and at peace.
Of all the Empire's borderlands, at least one was at peace.
Dark Earth: Borderlands
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jemhouston
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Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
Mr. Murphy, please pick up the red courtesy phone. 
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Simon Darkshade
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Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
No, that isn’t the case at all here, just an ironic final line in the light of our world.
"The presence of Prydain as an independent Commonwealth state on the South American mainland, encompassing the @ Argy provinces of Chubut and Santa Cruz and the entirety of Tierra del Fuego effectively makes the Falklands a non-issue; whilst there is an old claim on it, Argentina is far away and faces a pretty immovable object in its way that has a population of several million and is a long time friend, trading partner and fellow founding member of the League of Nations."
That puts the nearest Argentine base 1150 miles away, or out of range for any fighters, right on the bleeding edge of their 24 C-130s and only in range of their bombers.
The garrison of the Falklands is fairly substantive, ostensibly for oil and Antarctica.
The purpose of this series of vignettes is not to do a Falklands War, as that would be a non-starter, but to look at several different borderlands, ostensibly at peace, but in some cases, not really. Something of a deeper meaning to the title.
"The presence of Prydain as an independent Commonwealth state on the South American mainland, encompassing the @ Argy provinces of Chubut and Santa Cruz and the entirety of Tierra del Fuego effectively makes the Falklands a non-issue; whilst there is an old claim on it, Argentina is far away and faces a pretty immovable object in its way that has a population of several million and is a long time friend, trading partner and fellow founding member of the League of Nations."
That puts the nearest Argentine base 1150 miles away, or out of range for any fighters, right on the bleeding edge of their 24 C-130s and only in range of their bombers.
The garrison of the Falklands is fairly substantive, ostensibly for oil and Antarctica.
The purpose of this series of vignettes is not to do a Falklands War, as that would be a non-starter, but to look at several different borderlands, ostensibly at peace, but in some cases, not really. Something of a deeper meaning to the title.
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Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 2065
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
Falklands Garrison:
Land Forces
3rd Battalion, The Black Watch
1st Battalion, Falklands Islands Regiment
B Company, 72nd Royal Marine Battalion
C Company, 41st Gurkha Independent Battalion, Parachute Regiment
D Company, 4 Royal Navy Commando
No. 236 Squadron RAF Regiment
1 Mounted Cavalry Troop (1 x 60)
Field Artillery Battery (8 x 125mm Light Guns)
Royal Artillery Infantry Support Gun Battery (8 x 25pdr)
Armoured Troop (8 Vickers Valiant MBT)
Air Defense Battery (8 PT.428)
RMGC Platoon
695 Coast Regiment: 4 x 9.2" Automatic Coastal Defence Guns, 6 x twin 5.25” Automatic DP Anti-Aircraft/Coastal Defence Turrets
879 Missile Regiment: 16 x Paladin anti-ship missiles
Royal Engineer Troop
Royal Signals Troop
REME Section
RLC Section
RASC Section
RAOC Section
RIC Section
Air Forces
No. 1417 Flight RAF: 6 Avro Arrows
RNAS Flight: 6 Hawker-Siddeley Phantom FGR.1
RFC Flight: 6 Hawker-Siddeley Harriers
Commonwealth Flight: 6 RAAF English Electric Lightnings
RAF Transport Flight: 6 Short Skyvan
RFC Helicopter Flight: 6 Bristol Bulldogs
RNAS Rotodyne Flight: 6 Fairey Rotodynes
Commonwealth Flight: 6 RCAF Britten-Norman Defenders
Naval Forces
HMS Endurance
HMS Terra Nova
HMS Amazon (RN Guardship Type 21 Frigate)
HMS Sherwood
HMS Strong Champion
HMS Strong Defender
Naval Party 8902 (4 hovercraft)
Notes
- Endurance is a new cruiser-sized nuclear powered Antarctic Patrol Ship with icebreaking capabilities (25,000t, 4 x 12", numerous AA and light guns, Sea Wolf SAMs, 4 Helicopters/Rotodynes, maximum speed of 28 knots)
- Sherwood is one of the new Medium Patrol Ships/OPVs (6250t, 4 x 6", numerous light AA/GP guns, 2 x Sea King helicopters, range 20,000nm, CODAG engine, maximum speed of 28 knots) mentioned in ANJ Part 15.
- The Royal Marines come from 8 battalions raised to administratively control the various Naval Parties deployed in British colonies, key overseas bases and naval stations, consisting of:
North Atlantic: Bahamas, Bermuda, British Honduras, Azure Islands
South Atlantic: Saint Helena, Ascension, Falklands, Saint John
South Pacific: Fiji, New Hebrides, Easter Island, Galapagos
East Indies: Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives, Diego Garcia
Africa: Berbera, Zanzibar, Tangiers, Sierra Leone
Middle East: Kuwait, Southern Arabia, Bahrain, Socotra
Far East: Brunei, Hong Kong, Sarawak, North Borneo
Mediterranean: Minorca, Cyprus, Pantalleria, Ionian Islands
- Each Naval Party consists of a reinforced company, which in this case means an extra reserve section for each platoon, an extra strength weapons company and an attached wizard
- The Royal Naval Commandos are a different force that free out of the WW2 forces into something of a counterpart to the Royal Marine Commandos and, strangely enough, might be viewed as an equivalent to the Argentine Buzos Tacticos
- They are down south as the Falklands and South Georgia provide some excellent secure training areas for operations up in Norway, Sweden and the Arctic
- The Gurkha Paras are there for a similar rotation
- The Black Watch, like every infantry battalion deployed in the light role, is equipped with the Pink Panther recoilless rifle, which is a British equivalent to Davey Crockett. Only 4 atomic rounds are issued for a typical battalion, along with 12 chemical and 8 blessed ones. The nuclear shells are kept locked in special boxes with an ingenious combination lock…
- Contrast atomic armament with 84mm Charlie Gs
- The RAF is at Mount Pleasant, the RN at Stanley, the RM at Moody Brook, the Gurkhas at Darwin and the Army is at Teal Inlet
- The mounted cavalry troop? It is drawn from one of the units formed when the Free Polish Army was folded into the British Armed Forces, so that this particular unit are ‘descended’ from Winged Hussars
- Each of the 404 infantry, airborne and commando battalions of the British Army fields a heavy infantry section of 12 men in power armour. The capabilities of such a force against basic light infantry are...one sided...
- The level of force down in the Falklands can't be explained by conventional reasons, or even by the warnings from 'The Other World' via Lapcat in 1961. There is something else afoot, and no one on the ground realises it yet...
Land Forces
3rd Battalion, The Black Watch
1st Battalion, Falklands Islands Regiment
B Company, 72nd Royal Marine Battalion
C Company, 41st Gurkha Independent Battalion, Parachute Regiment
D Company, 4 Royal Navy Commando
No. 236 Squadron RAF Regiment
1 Mounted Cavalry Troop (1 x 60)
Field Artillery Battery (8 x 125mm Light Guns)
Royal Artillery Infantry Support Gun Battery (8 x 25pdr)
Armoured Troop (8 Vickers Valiant MBT)
Air Defense Battery (8 PT.428)
RMGC Platoon
695 Coast Regiment: 4 x 9.2" Automatic Coastal Defence Guns, 6 x twin 5.25” Automatic DP Anti-Aircraft/Coastal Defence Turrets
879 Missile Regiment: 16 x Paladin anti-ship missiles
Royal Engineer Troop
Royal Signals Troop
REME Section
RLC Section
RASC Section
RAOC Section
RIC Section
Air Forces
No. 1417 Flight RAF: 6 Avro Arrows
RNAS Flight: 6 Hawker-Siddeley Phantom FGR.1
RFC Flight: 6 Hawker-Siddeley Harriers
Commonwealth Flight: 6 RAAF English Electric Lightnings
RAF Transport Flight: 6 Short Skyvan
RFC Helicopter Flight: 6 Bristol Bulldogs
RNAS Rotodyne Flight: 6 Fairey Rotodynes
Commonwealth Flight: 6 RCAF Britten-Norman Defenders
Naval Forces
HMS Endurance
HMS Terra Nova
HMS Amazon (RN Guardship Type 21 Frigate)
HMS Sherwood
HMS Strong Champion
HMS Strong Defender
Naval Party 8902 (4 hovercraft)
Notes
- Endurance is a new cruiser-sized nuclear powered Antarctic Patrol Ship with icebreaking capabilities (25,000t, 4 x 12", numerous AA and light guns, Sea Wolf SAMs, 4 Helicopters/Rotodynes, maximum speed of 28 knots)
- Sherwood is one of the new Medium Patrol Ships/OPVs (6250t, 4 x 6", numerous light AA/GP guns, 2 x Sea King helicopters, range 20,000nm, CODAG engine, maximum speed of 28 knots) mentioned in ANJ Part 15.
- The Royal Marines come from 8 battalions raised to administratively control the various Naval Parties deployed in British colonies, key overseas bases and naval stations, consisting of:
North Atlantic: Bahamas, Bermuda, British Honduras, Azure Islands
South Atlantic: Saint Helena, Ascension, Falklands, Saint John
South Pacific: Fiji, New Hebrides, Easter Island, Galapagos
East Indies: Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives, Diego Garcia
Africa: Berbera, Zanzibar, Tangiers, Sierra Leone
Middle East: Kuwait, Southern Arabia, Bahrain, Socotra
Far East: Brunei, Hong Kong, Sarawak, North Borneo
Mediterranean: Minorca, Cyprus, Pantalleria, Ionian Islands
- Each Naval Party consists of a reinforced company, which in this case means an extra reserve section for each platoon, an extra strength weapons company and an attached wizard
- The Royal Naval Commandos are a different force that free out of the WW2 forces into something of a counterpart to the Royal Marine Commandos and, strangely enough, might be viewed as an equivalent to the Argentine Buzos Tacticos
- They are down south as the Falklands and South Georgia provide some excellent secure training areas for operations up in Norway, Sweden and the Arctic
- The Gurkha Paras are there for a similar rotation
- The Black Watch, like every infantry battalion deployed in the light role, is equipped with the Pink Panther recoilless rifle, which is a British equivalent to Davey Crockett. Only 4 atomic rounds are issued for a typical battalion, along with 12 chemical and 8 blessed ones. The nuclear shells are kept locked in special boxes with an ingenious combination lock…
- Contrast atomic armament with 84mm Charlie Gs
- The RAF is at Mount Pleasant, the RN at Stanley, the RM at Moody Brook, the Gurkhas at Darwin and the Army is at Teal Inlet
- The mounted cavalry troop? It is drawn from one of the units formed when the Free Polish Army was folded into the British Armed Forces, so that this particular unit are ‘descended’ from Winged Hussars
- Each of the 404 infantry, airborne and commando battalions of the British Army fields a heavy infantry section of 12 men in power armour. The capabilities of such a force against basic light infantry are...one sided...
- The level of force down in the Falklands can't be explained by conventional reasons, or even by the warnings from 'The Other World' via Lapcat in 1961. There is something else afoot, and no one on the ground realises it yet...
Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
Oh goody, another Dark Earth tale.
Good show old bean, what!
Jonathan
Good show old bean, what!
Jonathan
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Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 2065
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
Thank you Jonathan.
This isn't going to be a Falklands War scenario, but rather a series of little vignettes (not necessarily connected) looking at the far reaches of the Empire in ~ 1975, painting a picture that will later have some level of significance.
There will be Israel, Burma, the Congolese border, Hong Kong, Northern Australia, Darkest Scotland (right on the edge of civilisation
), Alaska and Afghanistan.
No big dramatic plot, even on the level of Charlottesville, but some 'colour plates' that are easy to write up when the weather is ungodly hot. The theme of ‘borderlands’ is not just to explore them in a literal sense, but to weave a picture of the borders between peace and war, certainty and uncertainty, and the shifting tides of power. Some will be quiet, like the Falklands, some ‘hotter’, and some will have significance of a certain decline in influence or power.
(By the by, Major Norman’s references to velociraptors is a continuation of a long running DE in-joke, whereby Mike Norman was played by Bob Peck in An Ungentlemanly Act, and Peck also appeared in Jurassic Park, where he was killed by the ‘clever girl’ raptor.)
This isn't going to be a Falklands War scenario, but rather a series of little vignettes (not necessarily connected) looking at the far reaches of the Empire in ~ 1975, painting a picture that will later have some level of significance.
There will be Israel, Burma, the Congolese border, Hong Kong, Northern Australia, Darkest Scotland (right on the edge of civilisation
), Alaska and Afghanistan.No big dramatic plot, even on the level of Charlottesville, but some 'colour plates' that are easy to write up when the weather is ungodly hot. The theme of ‘borderlands’ is not just to explore them in a literal sense, but to weave a picture of the borders between peace and war, certainty and uncertainty, and the shifting tides of power. Some will be quiet, like the Falklands, some ‘hotter’, and some will have significance of a certain decline in influence or power.
(By the by, Major Norman’s references to velociraptors is a continuation of a long running DE in-joke, whereby Mike Norman was played by Bob Peck in An Ungentlemanly Act, and Peck also appeared in Jurassic Park, where he was killed by the ‘clever girl’ raptor.)
Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
Scotland 
Through my father’s line I am a member (?) of the MacGregor diaspora. Not called MacGregor though.
There was apparently some differences in opinion with other clans that lead us to be outlawed and had our name suppressed by order of the Parliament or some such.
Not really cricket though, I mean cattle, despite their preferences, can’t really rustle themselves.
Anyways, border lands are a fertile ground for tales in DE.
Jonathan
Through my father’s line I am a member (?) of the MacGregor diaspora. Not called MacGregor though.
There was apparently some differences in opinion with other clans that lead us to be outlawed and had our name suppressed by order of the Parliament or some such.
Not really cricket though, I mean cattle, despite their preferences, can’t really rustle themselves.
Anyways, border lands are a fertile ground for tales in DE.
Jonathan
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Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 2065
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
A little preview of the next bit, heading in a different direction:
Stanley Barton picked up the dashed paper from his desk once again and held it up in the light to re-read the confounded words.
“ ‘The recent events, whilst coming from an unpredictable circumstance, follow a predictable pattern. Armament, political tension, economic competition and shifting socio-political movements in the Arab world have increased the probability of some sort of armed conflict in the Middle East in the next five years to 47.4747%.’ So sayeth the computing engine. What do you think, Field Marshal?”
Sir Richard Sharpe was used to these evening meetings by now, and leaned forward in his chair to respond.
“I wouldn’t be able to put a number on it like the machines, Prime Minister, let alone the decimals, but it is broadly in line with the DMI report. The Army’s direct interest in it comes from the importance of our bases in the Israel for control of the wider region, and what defeat could do to the bloody - to the Arabs, sir.”
“Your studies also predict an Israeli victory?”
“Yes. We’re a bit more confident in what they can do than SIS. If they preempt, they would defeat their enemies in 4-6 days; if they let the Arabs take the first move, 7-10 days. They haven’t had a conflict in their own area since 1956, and they didn’t have the major role there, but they’ve still got the most powerful military in the Middle East. This was for the specific scenario that you requested."
"If we stayed out. Which we wouldn't. Or couldn't. We've just too many bases and interests there to not be, even if they weren't part of the Commonwealth, or 'part' of the Commonwealth, as they sometimes put it. In any event, we can't have it. War there isn’t in the interests of Britain or the Empire. We’ve made a great deal of progress in the last ten years, both economically and in our rearmament programme, but can’t risk another major war pulling us back when we need to be moving up to the next level to confound the Reds.”
Barton ground his teeth. He didn’t mention the other byproduct of any war, which would be a loss of British influence and control over both parties in the area, whatever the outcome. A victory would see the Israelis assert their separate tendencies with gusto, whilst costing bases and even losing losing the Arabs altogether to Moscow, or worse, Washington.
“We’ve got to tamp down on those odds, Field Marshal, diplomatically, economically, politically and militarily, and show that we have capacity on this matter. I need some military options to add to my quiver for when we meet with Prime Minister Dayan and Field Marshal Rabin late next week.”
“Short of putting another division back on the ground in the Sinai at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds…”
“Not the Sinai. The Egyptians aren’t the concern, not with our own boys in the Canal Zone in between them. What I'd like is something smaller and symbolic enough to assuage Israel's concerns on these threat axes here and here." Barton stabbed at the map on the table. "You've been looking for an opportunity to test out the Field Force concept outside of Germany and Norway, haven't you?"
"Indeed, Prime Minister. We'd probably want to use the one of the heavier Field Forces up in the north there. Decent tank country, at least for fighting ; we pushed a tank column up that way to Damascus back in ‘56, and it was rather slow going. Poor bastards; bloody awful bastard of a road.”
Barton and Sharpe looked up at each other across the map table before the former traced a particular line with his finger and tapped it twice.
“That could be an answer, Prime Minister. We could get one of our chaps from the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps over for a dekko.”
“Who did you have in mind?”
Sharpe told him.
“Hmm. I’ve read of his name a few times in all three of his capacities. Can you get him to fly over there tonight?”
“We can, Prime Minister. He may not be happy about it, but all of those chaps know they are subject to recall at very short notice.”
The Army would probably have to smooth things over with Middlesex as well, but he’d only miss the one game.
“Good. Do it.”
Stanley Barton picked up the dashed paper from his desk once again and held it up in the light to re-read the confounded words.
“ ‘The recent events, whilst coming from an unpredictable circumstance, follow a predictable pattern. Armament, political tension, economic competition and shifting socio-political movements in the Arab world have increased the probability of some sort of armed conflict in the Middle East in the next five years to 47.4747%.’ So sayeth the computing engine. What do you think, Field Marshal?”
Sir Richard Sharpe was used to these evening meetings by now, and leaned forward in his chair to respond.
“I wouldn’t be able to put a number on it like the machines, Prime Minister, let alone the decimals, but it is broadly in line with the DMI report. The Army’s direct interest in it comes from the importance of our bases in the Israel for control of the wider region, and what defeat could do to the bloody - to the Arabs, sir.”
“Your studies also predict an Israeli victory?”
“Yes. We’re a bit more confident in what they can do than SIS. If they preempt, they would defeat their enemies in 4-6 days; if they let the Arabs take the first move, 7-10 days. They haven’t had a conflict in their own area since 1956, and they didn’t have the major role there, but they’ve still got the most powerful military in the Middle East. This was for the specific scenario that you requested."
"If we stayed out. Which we wouldn't. Or couldn't. We've just too many bases and interests there to not be, even if they weren't part of the Commonwealth, or 'part' of the Commonwealth, as they sometimes put it. In any event, we can't have it. War there isn’t in the interests of Britain or the Empire. We’ve made a great deal of progress in the last ten years, both economically and in our rearmament programme, but can’t risk another major war pulling us back when we need to be moving up to the next level to confound the Reds.”
Barton ground his teeth. He didn’t mention the other byproduct of any war, which would be a loss of British influence and control over both parties in the area, whatever the outcome. A victory would see the Israelis assert their separate tendencies with gusto, whilst costing bases and even losing losing the Arabs altogether to Moscow, or worse, Washington.
“We’ve got to tamp down on those odds, Field Marshal, diplomatically, economically, politically and militarily, and show that we have capacity on this matter. I need some military options to add to my quiver for when we meet with Prime Minister Dayan and Field Marshal Rabin late next week.”
“Short of putting another division back on the ground in the Sinai at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds…”
“Not the Sinai. The Egyptians aren’t the concern, not with our own boys in the Canal Zone in between them. What I'd like is something smaller and symbolic enough to assuage Israel's concerns on these threat axes here and here." Barton stabbed at the map on the table. "You've been looking for an opportunity to test out the Field Force concept outside of Germany and Norway, haven't you?"
"Indeed, Prime Minister. We'd probably want to use the one of the heavier Field Forces up in the north there. Decent tank country, at least for fighting ; we pushed a tank column up that way to Damascus back in ‘56, and it was rather slow going. Poor bastards; bloody awful bastard of a road.”
Barton and Sharpe looked up at each other across the map table before the former traced a particular line with his finger and tapped it twice.
“That could be an answer, Prime Minister. We could get one of our chaps from the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps over for a dekko.”
“Who did you have in mind?”
Sharpe told him.
“Hmm. I’ve read of his name a few times in all three of his capacities. Can you get him to fly over there tonight?”
“We can, Prime Minister. He may not be happy about it, but all of those chaps know they are subject to recall at very short notice.”
The Army would probably have to smooth things over with Middlesex as well, but he’d only miss the one game.
“Good. Do it.”
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jemhouston
- Posts: 6416
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
Great tease
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Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 2065
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
Like Blackadder’s firing squad, I aim to please.
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Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 2065
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
"At least they let me fly in mufti." The man muttered to himself.
"What was that, sir?" queried the obsequious steward in the customary obsequious manner specified for Imperial Airways' nighttime services.
"Nothing, nothing. Some more scotch, if you will."
"Right away. sir."
"Thanks. Where are we currently?"
"Just coming up over the Italian coast, sir, so we are on track for our landing at Haifa at 4:30."
"Very good."
He returned to his papers. One of the downsides of air travel these days was that there was less time to read things through, at least compared to his business. His mission briefing had been ironically brief, as he had been called out of the dying stages of a dinner at the Ritz which had been dragging on in any event, then he barely had time to get changed from evening wear and grab a bag from his London flat before being taken by flying car to Heathrow. Once the War Office decided they needed something done quickly, they certainly pulled out all the stops, and holding the late night Concord on the Bombay run was an example of that.
"You are to assess the current transport situation in Northern Israel, particularly through Galilee to the Golan Heights, with regard to both roads and railways. Consider the rights of way and route necessary for connections between Acre, Haifa, Caesarea and Tel Aviv with appropriate sites for three railheads between the Sea of Galilee and Mount Hermon, and spur lines to supply dumps at sites within Galilee and the Valley of Jezreel. Make recommendations on current bridges and infrastructure and locations for potential tunnels."
Oliver Harrison, or Colonel Oliver Harrison as he was on this particular jaunt, rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day at the office before the evening's recall to the colours, and he had been hoping to get a few decent night's sleep before the rather important clash with Leicestershire on Saturday; that little dream had been hit for six, but not in the good way.
The maps and diagrams of the various roads and the few railways had given him some sense of what he was going to be playing with, but as ever, he wanted to have a good shufti at the lie of the land and drive along some of the country to get a proper sense of what could be done. Harrison was under no particular illusions - this type of surveying job was usually not done by British Army officers, even part time ones, leastways not in a Commonwealth country, and never really at such short notice as to pull a man out of his Scotch woodcock and plop him on a supersonic jetliner after midnight on a Wednesday. There was something afoot here, and something both urgent and important
Tsk.
He did rather hope that, whatever it was, it wasn't World War Three. That would be rather a vexsome happenstance, what with this season being Middlesex's best start for half a dozen years. Hopefully it wouldn't quite be that, though; he was reminded of the old joke that did the rounds of the office every now and again: "I'm afraid I don't know the meaning of the word Armageddon, but it isn't the end of the world."
Harrison almost allowed himself a momentary smile, then he noticed the Megiddo Junction on the map on Page 3.
Perhaps it might be better not to tempt fate.
"What was that, sir?" queried the obsequious steward in the customary obsequious manner specified for Imperial Airways' nighttime services.
"Nothing, nothing. Some more scotch, if you will."
"Right away. sir."
"Thanks. Where are we currently?"
"Just coming up over the Italian coast, sir, so we are on track for our landing at Haifa at 4:30."
"Very good."
He returned to his papers. One of the downsides of air travel these days was that there was less time to read things through, at least compared to his business. His mission briefing had been ironically brief, as he had been called out of the dying stages of a dinner at the Ritz which had been dragging on in any event, then he barely had time to get changed from evening wear and grab a bag from his London flat before being taken by flying car to Heathrow. Once the War Office decided they needed something done quickly, they certainly pulled out all the stops, and holding the late night Concord on the Bombay run was an example of that.
"You are to assess the current transport situation in Northern Israel, particularly through Galilee to the Golan Heights, with regard to both roads and railways. Consider the rights of way and route necessary for connections between Acre, Haifa, Caesarea and Tel Aviv with appropriate sites for three railheads between the Sea of Galilee and Mount Hermon, and spur lines to supply dumps at sites within Galilee and the Valley of Jezreel. Make recommendations on current bridges and infrastructure and locations for potential tunnels."
Oliver Harrison, or Colonel Oliver Harrison as he was on this particular jaunt, rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day at the office before the evening's recall to the colours, and he had been hoping to get a few decent night's sleep before the rather important clash with Leicestershire on Saturday; that little dream had been hit for six, but not in the good way.
The maps and diagrams of the various roads and the few railways had given him some sense of what he was going to be playing with, but as ever, he wanted to have a good shufti at the lie of the land and drive along some of the country to get a proper sense of what could be done. Harrison was under no particular illusions - this type of surveying job was usually not done by British Army officers, even part time ones, leastways not in a Commonwealth country, and never really at such short notice as to pull a man out of his Scotch woodcock and plop him on a supersonic jetliner after midnight on a Wednesday. There was something afoot here, and something both urgent and important
Tsk.
He did rather hope that, whatever it was, it wasn't World War Three. That would be rather a vexsome happenstance, what with this season being Middlesex's best start for half a dozen years. Hopefully it wouldn't quite be that, though; he was reminded of the old joke that did the rounds of the office every now and again: "I'm afraid I don't know the meaning of the word Armageddon, but it isn't the end of the world."
Harrison almost allowed himself a momentary smile, then he noticed the Megiddo Junction on the map on Page 3.
Perhaps it might be better not to tempt fate.
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Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 2065
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
Colonel Harrison stood and waited outside the waystation. Safed was the furthest the highway went from Haifa and had only taken the liasion Vauxhall two hours to cover the 75 mile distance - good going for this part of the world. A figure appeared out of the brightening predawn light.
“Colonel Harrison? I’m Major Uri Ben-Shimon, Aman. I’ll be your primary escort and liaison during your time up here with Northern Command. We’ll take a chopper up to Mount Avital in the morning, so for now we’ll head out to the base for a spot of breakfast.”
“That would be most welcome, Major. Lead on.”
The Major hoisted Harrison’s case in his hand, waving away his interjection, and strode off purposefully to his waiting Land Rover. He was clad in the typical olive greens of an Israeli Army field officer without insignia or much frippery, which was quite fitting, wearing short sleeves despite the relative chill of early April.
“One of the news Uzis. Nice little machine pistol, that.”
“They do the job they are designed for, and fit right in their niche. Your new Webleys and SMGs probably preclude it getting a chance in the British Army.” Ben-Shimon said as he took the wheel and tore off at alarming pace.
"We shall see. If we have to come visiting here, then it could make a bit of sense."
"Middlesex? Don't you have fish to fry closer to home? Geoff Boycott comes to mind."
"Curious. I had always heard that you Israelis weren't that wild about cricket."
"We're certainly not the Indians, I'll grant you, but it isn't entirely unknown here."
"And here was me thinking that it was just because you were in the business of knowing things, Major."
"Ah, Colonel, ye of little faith! Can't a man show his love for the game without having his motives impugned?"
Harrison laughed. Ben-Shimon laughed. Neither of them meant it.
On first impressions, things did seem less tense than during that business a few years ago. Things had been decent enough for Her Majesty and the Prince to come through to Jerusalem from Alex last year, after all, but that had been with an escorting companies of Grenadier Guards and the Gurkhas and a few dozen plain clothed chaps from Hereford, not to mention a full regiment of the Royal Israeli Guards, ostensibly for review purposes. However, temporary forbearance in this world was sadly fleeting, based on the last decade or so.
The eight mile journey went quickly and, as the glorious rays of the sun began to reach forth over the dawn horizon, they slowed to a halt as they reached the imposing steel gate of Machna Gideon, one of Northern Command's key bases for the security of the border. Built deep inside the mountainside overlooking the villages of Alma and Reyhaniya, it was secure against anything short of an atom bomb.
The guards checked over their identifications very carefully and cautiously examined the Land Rover with a bomb detection wand before letting them enter the mountain. They drove down a short winding passage to a vast parking cavern filled with other vehicles. Following another two checkpoints and a journey down an elevator into the bowels of the earth, they were finally inside Machna Gideon, and made for the officer's mess.
"Coffee?"
"Over my rotting corpse."
"Tea. Of course. You English." smirked Major Ben-Shimon.
"We have our ways and it got us through the last wars."
"Naturally. I was only teasing." The Israeli officer waved at the attendant and nodded.
"As you saw, things have settled down a little here since the beginning of the year, and the year before that. Steak, I take it?" Ben-Shimon asked as he sipped from his own steaming cup of Turkish coffee a short time later.
"Yes, that will be fine. This is calm?"
"I wouldn't say that. More settled than last year. We have ratcheted down our mobilisation status, but still have the headquarters of II Corps up here, ready to react."
"Quite. It looks to be decent enough ground.”
“It is, if we pick it carefully."
"Hopefully, you won't have to."
"Quite." Ben-Shimon smiled his empty smile once again.
"Impressive base you've got here."
“Here? Yes. Out in the Golan? I’ll save the grand tour for the afternoon, but that is the more complex area that you’ll want to see for when you come over.”
“When am I going to come over? I’m just a staff officer of the Engineer and Staff Corps - a specialist."
"Indeed. Perhaps you are such a specialist, but you are 'just a staff officer' who is next in line to get a brigade of the 32nd when they are mobilised for their year in the line. We do our homework, Colonel."
"Rather, except that if you had done it, you would have called it 'prep'; I went to Repton after all."
The pair smiled at each other. All square.
“Touche, Colonel, as the Frogs might say. Anyway, I wasn't talking only about you in the singular sense, but your Army in general."
After a brief pause as their steaks arrived, the match began again in earnest.
“Colonel Harrison? I’m Major Uri Ben-Shimon, Aman. I’ll be your primary escort and liaison during your time up here with Northern Command. We’ll take a chopper up to Mount Avital in the morning, so for now we’ll head out to the base for a spot of breakfast.”
“That would be most welcome, Major. Lead on.”
The Major hoisted Harrison’s case in his hand, waving away his interjection, and strode off purposefully to his waiting Land Rover. He was clad in the typical olive greens of an Israeli Army field officer without insignia or much frippery, which was quite fitting, wearing short sleeves despite the relative chill of early April.
“One of the news Uzis. Nice little machine pistol, that.”
“They do the job they are designed for, and fit right in their niche. Your new Webleys and SMGs probably preclude it getting a chance in the British Army.” Ben-Shimon said as he took the wheel and tore off at alarming pace.
"We shall see. If we have to come visiting here, then it could make a bit of sense."
"Middlesex? Don't you have fish to fry closer to home? Geoff Boycott comes to mind."
"Curious. I had always heard that you Israelis weren't that wild about cricket."
"We're certainly not the Indians, I'll grant you, but it isn't entirely unknown here."
"And here was me thinking that it was just because you were in the business of knowing things, Major."
"Ah, Colonel, ye of little faith! Can't a man show his love for the game without having his motives impugned?"
Harrison laughed. Ben-Shimon laughed. Neither of them meant it.
On first impressions, things did seem less tense than during that business a few years ago. Things had been decent enough for Her Majesty and the Prince to come through to Jerusalem from Alex last year, after all, but that had been with an escorting companies of Grenadier Guards and the Gurkhas and a few dozen plain clothed chaps from Hereford, not to mention a full regiment of the Royal Israeli Guards, ostensibly for review purposes. However, temporary forbearance in this world was sadly fleeting, based on the last decade or so.
The eight mile journey went quickly and, as the glorious rays of the sun began to reach forth over the dawn horizon, they slowed to a halt as they reached the imposing steel gate of Machna Gideon, one of Northern Command's key bases for the security of the border. Built deep inside the mountainside overlooking the villages of Alma and Reyhaniya, it was secure against anything short of an atom bomb.
The guards checked over their identifications very carefully and cautiously examined the Land Rover with a bomb detection wand before letting them enter the mountain. They drove down a short winding passage to a vast parking cavern filled with other vehicles. Following another two checkpoints and a journey down an elevator into the bowels of the earth, they were finally inside Machna Gideon, and made for the officer's mess.
"Coffee?"
"Over my rotting corpse."
"Tea. Of course. You English." smirked Major Ben-Shimon.
"We have our ways and it got us through the last wars."
"Naturally. I was only teasing." The Israeli officer waved at the attendant and nodded.
"As you saw, things have settled down a little here since the beginning of the year, and the year before that. Steak, I take it?" Ben-Shimon asked as he sipped from his own steaming cup of Turkish coffee a short time later.
"Yes, that will be fine. This is calm?"
"I wouldn't say that. More settled than last year. We have ratcheted down our mobilisation status, but still have the headquarters of II Corps up here, ready to react."
"Quite. It looks to be decent enough ground.”
“It is, if we pick it carefully."
"Hopefully, you won't have to."
"Quite." Ben-Shimon smiled his empty smile once again.
"Impressive base you've got here."
“Here? Yes. Out in the Golan? I’ll save the grand tour for the afternoon, but that is the more complex area that you’ll want to see for when you come over.”
“When am I going to come over? I’m just a staff officer of the Engineer and Staff Corps - a specialist."
"Indeed. Perhaps you are such a specialist, but you are 'just a staff officer' who is next in line to get a brigade of the 32nd when they are mobilised for their year in the line. We do our homework, Colonel."
"Rather, except that if you had done it, you would have called it 'prep'; I went to Repton after all."
The pair smiled at each other. All square.
“Touche, Colonel, as the Frogs might say. Anyway, I wasn't talking only about you in the singular sense, but your Army in general."
After a brief pause as their steaks arrived, the match began again in earnest.
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 2065
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
Borderlands Part 2: Israel
Stanley Barton picked up the dashed paper from his desk once again and held it up in the light to re-read the confounded words.
“ ‘The recent events, whilst coming from an unpredictable circumstance, follow a predictable pattern. Armament, political tension, economic competition and shifting socio-political movements in the Arab world have increased the probability of some sort of armed conflict in the Middle East in the next five years to 47.4747%.’ So sayeth the computing engine. What do you think, Field Marshal?”
Sir Richard Sharpe was used to these evening meetings by now, and leaned forward in his chair to respond.
“I wouldn’t be able to put a number on it like the machines, Prime Minister, let alone the decimals, but it is broadly in line with the DMI report. The Army’s direct interest in it comes from the importance of our bases in the Israel for control of the wider region, and what defeat could do to the bloody - to the Arabs, sir.”
“Your studies also predict an Israeli victory?”
“Yes. We’re a bit more confident in what they can do than SIS. If they preempt, they would defeat their enemies in 4-6 days; if they let the Arabs take the first move, 7-10 days. They haven’t had a conflict in their own area since 1956, and they didn’t have the major role there, but they’ve still got the most powerful military in the Middle East. This was for the specific scenario that you requested."
"If we stayed out. Which we wouldn't. Or couldn't. We've just too many bases and interests there to not be, even if they weren't part of the Commonwealth, or 'part' of the Commonwealth, as they sometimes put it.”
“Not to mention that it would bring in the French if they headed up into the Lebanon, where our projections show them rolling up to the Litani in 6 to 12 hours.”
“Quite. There is even the theoretical scope for us being dragged in on both sides, on account of the Baghdad Pact, but when that undersecretary raised it, I asked him how he would like to be seconded to the embassy in Karakorum, and he just sputtered and turned mauve.”
Sharpe chuckled. He was fairly sure he knew which mandarin the Prime Minister was referring to, and he was glad that Barton had given him the abbreviated and non-loquacious précis of the conversation; he didn’t fancy being here all night.
“In any event, we can't have it. War there isn’t in the interests of Britain or the Empire. We’ve made a great deal of progress in the last ten years, both economically and in our rearmament programme, but can’t risk another major war pulling us back when we need to be moving up to the next level to confound the Reds. We’ve got to tamp down on those odds, Field Marshal, diplomatically, economically, politically and militarily, and show that we have capacity on this matter. I need some military options to add to my quiver for when we meet with Prime Minister Dayan and Field Marshal Rabin late next week.“
Barton ground his teeth. He didn’t mention the other byproduct of any war, which would be a loss of British influence and control over both parties in the area, whatever the outcome. A victory would see the Israelis assert their separate tendencies with gusto, whilst costing bases and even losing losing the Arabs altogether to Moscow, or worse, Washington.
“You’re right enough, Prime Minister. Their new breed of generals, and politicians for that matter, are pretty sure of themselves, but don’t have to see the big picture in the same way we do. Rabin and Dayan are the old men there, at least by their standards now, and the young buggers haven’t fought a proper war and it shows in how eager they are for one. We have a range of options as I see them, Prime Minister.
First, we turn the tap off on supplies, cooperation and training. This would be a disaster, as that would give the pro American groups there all the ammunition they need. We can’t do that.
Second, we shore up both them and the Arabs. That could work, but the Syrians in particular have very bad memories of what we did to them in ‘56; there is a non-negligible chance that such a heavy approach might backfire there.
Third, we assert our basing rights and ship over a lot of troops to effectively spoil the chance of a war. That works in the short term, but could just kick the can down the road for a future rupture, not to mention costing an arm and a leg. Regulars won’t work, or at least not in the way we want it, as we are stretched enough by Germany. We’d be robbing Peter to pay Paul, quite literally on the road to Damascus.
“Fourth, we do a limited deployment, bringing forward the planned rouelement of our garrison troops in Suez and the Sinai. That complicates the equation for everyone in the region.”
“I’m most interested in that one, but with a modification. Putting another division back on the ground in the Sinai at a cost a hundred million pounds isn’t really going to tamp down on the smouldering up north. The Egyptians aren’t the concern, not with our own boys in the Canal Zone in between them. What I'd like is something smaller and symbolic enough to assuage Israel's concerns on these threat axes here and here." Barton stabbed at the map on the table, striking the Golan and Samaria.
“I wouldn’t worry about the middle, sir, not really. The Jords are firmly in our pocket and we call the military shots in Amman, even if they aren’t exactly fond of it. As for the north, it is decent tank country, at least for fighting ; we pushed a tank column up that way to Damascus back in ‘56, and it was rather slow going. Poor bastards; bloody awful bastard of a road.”
Barton and Sharpe looked up at each other across the map table before the former traced a particular line with his finger and tapped it twice.
“Something that is not aid, not troops, not sales, but just as valuable. That could work, Prime Minister.”
“It would give them some more flexibility so that there is less urgency to pre-empt, as well as not being so openly provocative as to frighten the Arabs. We’d need some sort of cover story that can give Dayan his own cover…you’ve been looking for an opportunity to test out the Field Force concept outside of Germany and Norway, haven't you?"
"Indeed, Prime Minister. I can drop around at the Israeli High Commission directly and have a drink with General Simhoni about your burning desire to see two of our heavy Field Forces go through their paces, and getting one of my staff boys over there to do some of the groundwork. I’ll mention that we might be looking to bring forward our Army Reserve deployment of next year, and boosting it up to boot. Then, we actually send one of our chaps from the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps over for a dekko.”
“That could work. Who did you have in mind?”
Sharpe told him.
“Hmm. I’ve read of his name a few times in all three of his capacities. Can you get him to fly over there tonight?”
“We can, Prime Minister. He may not be happy about it, but all of those chaps know they are subject to recall at very short notice.”
The Army would probably have to smooth things over with Middlesex as well, but he’d only miss the one game.
“Good. Do it.”
................
"At least they let me fly in mufti." The man muttered to himself.
"What was that, sir?" queried the obsequious steward in the customary obsequious manner specified for Imperial Airways' nighttime services.
"Nothing, nothing. Some more scotch, if you will."
"Right away. sir."
"Thanks. Where are we currently?"
"Just coming up over the Italian coast, sir, so we are on track for our landing at Haifa at 4:30."
"Very good."
He returned to his papers. One of the downsides of air travel these days was that there was less time to read things through, at least compared to his business. His mission briefing had been ironically brief, as he had been called out of the dying stages of a dinner at the Ritz which had been dragging on in any event, then he barely had time to get changed from evening wear and grab a bag from his London flat before being taken by flying car to Heathrow. Once the War Office decided they needed something done quickly, they certainly pulled out all the stops, and holding the late night Concord on the Bombay run was an example of that.
"You are to assess the current transport situation in Northern Israel, particularly through Galilee to the Golan Heights, with regard to both roads and railways. Consider the rights of way and route necessary for connections between Acre, Haifa, Caesarea and Tel Aviv with appropriate sites for three railheads between the Sea of Galilee and Mount Hermon, and spur lines to supply dumps at sites within Galilee and the Valley of Jezreel. Make recommendations on current bridges and infrastructure and locations for potential tunnels."
Oliver Harrison, or Colonel Oliver Harrison as he was on this particular jaunt, rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day at the office before the evening's recall to the colours, and he had been hoping to get a few decent night's sleep before the rather important clash with Leicestershire on Saturday; that little dream had been hit for six, but not in the good way.
The maps and diagrams of the various roads and the few railways had given him some sense of what he was going to be playing with, but as ever, he wanted to have a good shufti at the lie of the land and drive along some of the country to get a proper sense of what could be done. Harrison was under no particular illusions - this type of surveying job was usually not done by British Army officers, even part time ones, leastways not in a Commonwealth country, and never really at such short notice as to pull a man out of his Scotch woodcock and plop him on a supersonic jetliner after midnight on a Wednesday. There was something afoot here, and something both urgent and important
Tsk.
He did rather hope that, whatever it was, it wasn't World War Three. That would be rather a vexsome happenstance, what with this season being Middlesex's best start for half a dozen years. Hopefully it wouldn't quite be that, though; he was reminded of the old joke that did the rounds of the office every now and again: "I'm afraid I don't know the meaning of the word Armageddon, but it isn't the end of the world."
Harrison almost allowed himself a momentary smile, then he noticed the Megiddo Junction on the map on Page 3.
Perhaps it might be better not to tempt fate.
.........
Colonel Harrison stood and waited outside the waystation. Safed was the furthest the highway went from Haifa and had only taken the liasion Vauxhall two hours to cover the 75 mile distance - good going for this part of the world. A figure appeared out of the brightening predawn light.
“Colonel Harrison? I’m Major Uri Ben-Shimon, Aman. I’ll be your primary escort and liaison during your time up here with Northern Command. We’ll take a chopper up to Mount Avital when it is light, so for now we’ll head out to the base for a spot of breakfast.”
“That would be most welcome, Major. Lead on.”
The Major hoisted Harrison’s case in his hand, waving away his interjection, and strode off purposefully to his waiting Land Rover. He was clad in the typical olive greens of an Israeli Army field officer without insignia or much frippery, which was quite fitting, wearing short sleeves despite the relative chill of early April.
“One of the news Uzis. Nice little machine pistol, that.”
“They do the job they are designed for, and fit right in their niche. Your new Webleys and SMGs probably preclude it getting a chance in the British Army.” Ben-Shimon said as he took the wheel and tore off at alarming pace.
"We shall see. If we have to come visiting here, then it could make a bit of sense."
"Middlesex? Don't you have fish to fry closer to home? Geoff Boycott comes to mind."
"Curious. I had always heard that you Israelis weren't that wild about cricket."
"We're certainly not the Indians, I'll grant you, but it isn't entirely unknown here."
"And here was me thinking that it was just because you were in the business of knowing things, Major."
"Ah, Colonel, ye of little faith! Can't a man show his love for the game without having his motives impugned?"
Harrison laughed. Ben-Shimon laughed. Neither of them meant it.
On first impressions, things did seem less tense than during that business a few years ago. Things had been decent enough for Her Majesty and the Prince to come through to Jerusalem from Alex last year, after all, but that had been with an escorting companies of Grenadier Guards and the Gurkhas and a few dozen plain clothed chaps from Hereford, not to mention a full regiment of the Royal Israeli Guards, ostensibly for review purposes. However, temporary forbearance in this world was sadly fleeting, based on the last decade or so.
The eight mile journey went quickly and, as the glorious rays of the sun began to creep just to the brink of the dawn horizon, like a child peaking through stair rails to see if Father Christmas was on schedule, they slowed to a halt as they reached the imposing steel gate of Machna Gideon, one of Northern Command's key bases for the security of the border. Built deep inside the mountainside overlooking the villages of Alma and Reyhaniya, it was secure against anything short of an atom bomb.
The guards checked over their identifications very carefully and cautiously examined the Land Rover with a bomb detection wand before letting them enter the mountain. They drove down a short winding passage to a vast parking cavern filled with other vehicles. Following another two checkpoints and a journey down an elevator into the bowels of the earth, they were finally inside Machna Gideon, and made for the officer's mess.
"Coffee?"
"Over my rotting corpse."
"Tea. Of course. You English." smirked Major Ben-Shimon.
"We have our ways and it got us through the last wars."
"Naturally. I was only teasing." The Israeli officer waved at the attendant and nodded.
"As you saw, things have settled down a little here since the beginning of the year, and the year before that. Steak, I take it?" Ben-Shimon asked as he sipped from his own steaming cup of Turkish coffee a short time later.
"Yes, that will be fine. This is calm?"
"I wouldn't say that. More settled than last year. We have ratcheted down our mobilisation status, but still have the headquarters of II Corps up here, ready to react."
"Quite. It looks to be decent enough ground.”
“It is, if we pick it carefully."
"Hopefully, you won't have to."
"Quite." Ben-Shimon smiled his empty smile once again.
“Here? Yes. Out in the Golan? I’ll save the grand tour for the morning, but that is the more complex area that you’ll want to see for when you come over.”
“When am I going to come over? I’m just a staff officer of the Engineer and Staff Corps - a specialist."
"Indeed. Perhaps you are such a specialist, but you are 'just a staff officer' who is next in line to get a brigade of the 32nd when they are mobilised for their year in the line. We do our homework, Colonel."
"Rather, except that if you had done it, you would have called it 'prep'; I went to Repton after all."
The pair smiled at each other. All square.
“Touche, Colonel, as the Frogs might say. Anyway, I wasn't talking only about you in the singular sense, but your Army in general."
After a brief pause as their steaks arrived, the match began again in earnest.
“So, you’ll be wanting to see where your brigade will be next year then?”
“In the words of a man I once met, you might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.”
“Ha! Your boys will be of course welcome; our army hasn’t needed help for a long time, though. In ‘56, we went to Damascus and Cairo, and in ‘42, we shoved the Turk back nearly to Alexandretta.”
“As I recall, there were just a couple of our lads around in the Six Day War - not too many, mind, maybe a million of us in the Middle East theatre. As for the war, I do believe that Ratcliffe and Lawrence’s armies may have had a little bit to do with that.”
“Indeed. You were only a young lieutenant back then, weren’t you?”
“18 years old, callow and disliking the accomodations about our troopship, the Empire Windrush, if I recall it right. 6th Middlesex, 107th Infantry Brigade, 18th Division, as your notes would have told you.”
“Of course, Colonel Harrison, as they did of your summer out here six years before that.”
“Now you’re taking me back. The Jezreel was beautiful that time of year. I would very much like to see it again; perhaps something might be arranged on my way back.”
“But of course. Good ground there.”
“Quite. My grandfather rode there under Allenby in 1917, and, going back 450 years or so, my forefather, Sir William Sommerlund fought there as well, in King Henry’s Crusade.”
“You won’t be the first in your line to come and fight out here, then. Good.”
Harrison gave a non-committal smile and hoved into his steak.
.................................
The Westland Wessex of the Royal Israeli Air Force's 193 Squadron had come up from Ramat David to pick them up, and now had Harrison and Ben-Shimon high over the Golan in the brilliant early morning sunlit skies. Back and far above their chopper, a flight of RIAF F-4 Phantoms circled over the Jordan on regular morning patrol, directed in turn by the Armstrong-Whitworth Argus airborne warning and control plane back over Tiberias. The valley below was verdantly emerald in its springtime glory, and the roads and tracks which criss-crossed between villages buzzed away with the type of early morning traffic seen in such areas around the world.
Mount Avital, sitting just back from the border, didn’t seem much to look at from without, with just a helipad out on a flattened part of the summit and a steel bunker door to indicate what lay within. Harrison was lead down the winding corridors through several more blast doors to the heart of the complex within the mountain, where General Mordecai Gur, head of the Israeli Army’s Northern Command, awaited him, looking over his large map table.
“Good morning. How are you, Colonel Harrison?”
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say ‘tired’, General, but at least I’m here now.”
“Indeed. In light of that, we’ll cut to the chase. Up here on the border, we have two divisions - 9th Armoured along the line from Mount Hermon to Quineitra, and the 10th Mechanised from there to Aramark Magshimim - with the 7th Armoured Brigade held back as corps reserve.” Gur indicated the positions on the map.”
“How many men?”
“A bit over 32,000 men on regular current strength, rising to 56,000 if and when our reserve formations are called up, with 860 tanks and 500 guns - 450 tanks with the 9th, 250 with the 10th and 160 with the 7th Brigade. Across the border, there are five Syrian divisions with 1300 tanks, and another two corps in close support; all up, they have close to a 4 to 1 numerical superiority across the front, even though we now have the extra division up here. That would normally be concerning enough, but the Arabs have been buying whatever they can get from you, the French, the Yanks and the Italians. The Syrians have been able to move their Centurions to their infantry formations, with their armoured and mechanised forces fielding M54s and the rebuilt AMX-25s, the Jordanians have their Super Cents, and the Iraqis are deep in talks with Rome over the Leones. Put simply, our margin of superiority on the ground is far from ideal, let alone safe.”
“General, you have Crusaders. Short of the Arabs getting M60s or T-72s, you’ve one heck of a margin, as far as I know.”
"We'll see. In any event, our front line is strong, but needs to be stronger. We've a network of anti-tank ditches, concrete barriers, minefields and prepared depressions back from the border fences and wall, overlooked by an initial line of pillboxes and tank fighting positions, then our main fortified line 12 miles back."
"And that is supplied by the single main road over the Jordan at Jacob's Ford. Quite the bottleneck."
"It is. Our primary mission is to hold the Arabs at the front so that the air force can get into the air and come up to wreck them whilst the rest of the army mobilises. That works, on paper, for now, at least until the Arabs get their new aircraft, including from you."
"From Britain, General, not I; unless you mean Middlesex, but we aren't in the business of supplying jet fighters to anyone, either, unless they are fighting Essex. Would that I had such capabilities and facilities. "
"It will be much the same thing, soon enough, will it not?"
"Perhaps, General Gur. Perhaps."
.....................................
"Well, gentlemen, there you have it - the Harrison Report." Barton looked across the table at Prime Minister Dayan, Minister of Defence Yitzhak Rabin and the avuncular presence of the Israeli Foreign Minister, Abba Eban. They look mildly intrigued, whilst their accompanying military chiefs and intelligence men - Air Marshal Peled, Field Marshal Elazar and General Zeira - seemed more mildly disappointed.
"An interesting idea, Prime Minister. I must say that we were thinking more along the lines of a British contingent deployed up with Northern Command than this...engineering project."
"Indeed, Prime Minister Dayan, and that may well come, but at the right time, and in a better place. Might I regale you with an anecdote?" Barton gave a perfunctory pause, just that little bit too short for his opposite man to be able to even nod before continuing. "Back in the days before the Great War, we had a military mission head over to France in, oh, 1908 or so, in order to begin to iron out the details of our little Cordial Agreement with Paris. I think it was General Wilson who asked General Foch, for general he was then, what would be the smallest British force that would be any practical assistance to France, in the event of a war with Germany. Do you know what his answer was?"
"A single British soldier — and we will see to it that he is killed.”
"Exactly. And in so doing, ensure that we would be in with them to the hilt. We really don't need any repeats of that, Prime Minister, and I would suggest that neither do you. What we can and will do is what is recommended here by Harrison - pay for and build you a new triple track railway from Acre through Karmiel and Safed to three railheads at the Jordan, along with three military highways across the Galilee into the Golan, two new road bridges across the Jordan here and here, and a connecting central highway up through the Jezreel here. That will enable you to move your Central Command forces and strategic reserves in less than half the time you currently estimate."
"I won't say it isn't welcome or useful, Mr. Barton, but building projects won't put the wind up the Arabs."'
"Don't worry, I was getting to that. We will deploy one of our Field Forces to Israel within the next 10 days - to Muqeible and Megiddo. That will free up your 5th Division at Nablus to be assigned to the northern border. After they finish their deployment and rotate back to Blighty, they'll leave their tanks, guns and fighting vehicles behind for a new brigade group which we will fund for you, using the Commonwealth Defence Fund. Would that provide the Imperial security and unity you are after?"
Dayan exchanged a brief look with first Rabin, then with Elazar and Zeira, with the latter having a sour grimace playing around the edges of his mouth, just waiting for the right time to emerge, like a timid snoot-ferret after a storm.
"It will."
.......................
"I wish you didn't have to do that, Stanley."
"And I wish you didn't have to make us do it, Moshe, but here we are nonetheless. We've given you a bit of cover within your own politics for now - perfidious Albion not playing along with the building blocks of a war and pulling rank on you to boot. Now you can do what we talked about before - stand up to us in private, get a win with the next Field Force going up to Karmiel to cover your lines of communication and the Lebanon at once, and then use that steal a march on your Young Turks."
"I know. It is all very Byzantine, really."
"Don't get the Greeks involved - we'll be here all year."
"A joke, Stanley? Has the office corrupted you that much?"
"I can grind my teeth for you if it would help. Perhaps it has; perhaps it is just playing the game. Doing it long enough can change a man, somehow."
"All the same, and all the theatre aside, I do have my reservations, as I said in my letter."
"Moshe, when haven't we been there for you? Sometimes, there is less to it all than meets the eye."
"I want to hope so, Stanley. I really do."
"You can. We've got things in hand. My youngest likes to watch this newfangled American programme on the electric television, you know. Sesames Street, I believe. They have a funny little affectation on it, at times - 'Today is bought to you by the letters A, B, C and the number 6'...or was it 7? Anyway, we have our own little 'sponsor' for tomorrow and the days to come for you."
"I trust you are going to make sense very soon, Stanley."
"Our guarantee is bought to you by the letters T, S, R and the number 2, on Cyprus."
"Very droll."
"You've my word. Now, shall we head out for the pictures and the jackals of the press, Prime Minister?"
"Yes, Prime Minister."
Stanley Barton picked up the dashed paper from his desk once again and held it up in the light to re-read the confounded words.
“ ‘The recent events, whilst coming from an unpredictable circumstance, follow a predictable pattern. Armament, political tension, economic competition and shifting socio-political movements in the Arab world have increased the probability of some sort of armed conflict in the Middle East in the next five years to 47.4747%.’ So sayeth the computing engine. What do you think, Field Marshal?”
Sir Richard Sharpe was used to these evening meetings by now, and leaned forward in his chair to respond.
“I wouldn’t be able to put a number on it like the machines, Prime Minister, let alone the decimals, but it is broadly in line with the DMI report. The Army’s direct interest in it comes from the importance of our bases in the Israel for control of the wider region, and what defeat could do to the bloody - to the Arabs, sir.”
“Your studies also predict an Israeli victory?”
“Yes. We’re a bit more confident in what they can do than SIS. If they preempt, they would defeat their enemies in 4-6 days; if they let the Arabs take the first move, 7-10 days. They haven’t had a conflict in their own area since 1956, and they didn’t have the major role there, but they’ve still got the most powerful military in the Middle East. This was for the specific scenario that you requested."
"If we stayed out. Which we wouldn't. Or couldn't. We've just too many bases and interests there to not be, even if they weren't part of the Commonwealth, or 'part' of the Commonwealth, as they sometimes put it.”
“Not to mention that it would bring in the French if they headed up into the Lebanon, where our projections show them rolling up to the Litani in 6 to 12 hours.”
“Quite. There is even the theoretical scope for us being dragged in on both sides, on account of the Baghdad Pact, but when that undersecretary raised it, I asked him how he would like to be seconded to the embassy in Karakorum, and he just sputtered and turned mauve.”
Sharpe chuckled. He was fairly sure he knew which mandarin the Prime Minister was referring to, and he was glad that Barton had given him the abbreviated and non-loquacious précis of the conversation; he didn’t fancy being here all night.
“In any event, we can't have it. War there isn’t in the interests of Britain or the Empire. We’ve made a great deal of progress in the last ten years, both economically and in our rearmament programme, but can’t risk another major war pulling us back when we need to be moving up to the next level to confound the Reds. We’ve got to tamp down on those odds, Field Marshal, diplomatically, economically, politically and militarily, and show that we have capacity on this matter. I need some military options to add to my quiver for when we meet with Prime Minister Dayan and Field Marshal Rabin late next week.“
Barton ground his teeth. He didn’t mention the other byproduct of any war, which would be a loss of British influence and control over both parties in the area, whatever the outcome. A victory would see the Israelis assert their separate tendencies with gusto, whilst costing bases and even losing losing the Arabs altogether to Moscow, or worse, Washington.
“You’re right enough, Prime Minister. Their new breed of generals, and politicians for that matter, are pretty sure of themselves, but don’t have to see the big picture in the same way we do. Rabin and Dayan are the old men there, at least by their standards now, and the young buggers haven’t fought a proper war and it shows in how eager they are for one. We have a range of options as I see them, Prime Minister.
First, we turn the tap off on supplies, cooperation and training. This would be a disaster, as that would give the pro American groups there all the ammunition they need. We can’t do that.
Second, we shore up both them and the Arabs. That could work, but the Syrians in particular have very bad memories of what we did to them in ‘56; there is a non-negligible chance that such a heavy approach might backfire there.
Third, we assert our basing rights and ship over a lot of troops to effectively spoil the chance of a war. That works in the short term, but could just kick the can down the road for a future rupture, not to mention costing an arm and a leg. Regulars won’t work, or at least not in the way we want it, as we are stretched enough by Germany. We’d be robbing Peter to pay Paul, quite literally on the road to Damascus.
“Fourth, we do a limited deployment, bringing forward the planned rouelement of our garrison troops in Suez and the Sinai. That complicates the equation for everyone in the region.”
“I’m most interested in that one, but with a modification. Putting another division back on the ground in the Sinai at a cost a hundred million pounds isn’t really going to tamp down on the smouldering up north. The Egyptians aren’t the concern, not with our own boys in the Canal Zone in between them. What I'd like is something smaller and symbolic enough to assuage Israel's concerns on these threat axes here and here." Barton stabbed at the map on the table, striking the Golan and Samaria.
“I wouldn’t worry about the middle, sir, not really. The Jords are firmly in our pocket and we call the military shots in Amman, even if they aren’t exactly fond of it. As for the north, it is decent tank country, at least for fighting ; we pushed a tank column up that way to Damascus back in ‘56, and it was rather slow going. Poor bastards; bloody awful bastard of a road.”
Barton and Sharpe looked up at each other across the map table before the former traced a particular line with his finger and tapped it twice.
“Something that is not aid, not troops, not sales, but just as valuable. That could work, Prime Minister.”
“It would give them some more flexibility so that there is less urgency to pre-empt, as well as not being so openly provocative as to frighten the Arabs. We’d need some sort of cover story that can give Dayan his own cover…you’ve been looking for an opportunity to test out the Field Force concept outside of Germany and Norway, haven't you?"
"Indeed, Prime Minister. I can drop around at the Israeli High Commission directly and have a drink with General Simhoni about your burning desire to see two of our heavy Field Forces go through their paces, and getting one of my staff boys over there to do some of the groundwork. I’ll mention that we might be looking to bring forward our Army Reserve deployment of next year, and boosting it up to boot. Then, we actually send one of our chaps from the Engineer and Railway Staff Corps over for a dekko.”
“That could work. Who did you have in mind?”
Sharpe told him.
“Hmm. I’ve read of his name a few times in all three of his capacities. Can you get him to fly over there tonight?”
“We can, Prime Minister. He may not be happy about it, but all of those chaps know they are subject to recall at very short notice.”
The Army would probably have to smooth things over with Middlesex as well, but he’d only miss the one game.
“Good. Do it.”
................
"At least they let me fly in mufti." The man muttered to himself.
"What was that, sir?" queried the obsequious steward in the customary obsequious manner specified for Imperial Airways' nighttime services.
"Nothing, nothing. Some more scotch, if you will."
"Right away. sir."
"Thanks. Where are we currently?"
"Just coming up over the Italian coast, sir, so we are on track for our landing at Haifa at 4:30."
"Very good."
He returned to his papers. One of the downsides of air travel these days was that there was less time to read things through, at least compared to his business. His mission briefing had been ironically brief, as he had been called out of the dying stages of a dinner at the Ritz which had been dragging on in any event, then he barely had time to get changed from evening wear and grab a bag from his London flat before being taken by flying car to Heathrow. Once the War Office decided they needed something done quickly, they certainly pulled out all the stops, and holding the late night Concord on the Bombay run was an example of that.
"You are to assess the current transport situation in Northern Israel, particularly through Galilee to the Golan Heights, with regard to both roads and railways. Consider the rights of way and route necessary for connections between Acre, Haifa, Caesarea and Tel Aviv with appropriate sites for three railheads between the Sea of Galilee and Mount Hermon, and spur lines to supply dumps at sites within Galilee and the Valley of Jezreel. Make recommendations on current bridges and infrastructure and locations for potential tunnels."
Oliver Harrison, or Colonel Oliver Harrison as he was on this particular jaunt, rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day at the office before the evening's recall to the colours, and he had been hoping to get a few decent night's sleep before the rather important clash with Leicestershire on Saturday; that little dream had been hit for six, but not in the good way.
The maps and diagrams of the various roads and the few railways had given him some sense of what he was going to be playing with, but as ever, he wanted to have a good shufti at the lie of the land and drive along some of the country to get a proper sense of what could be done. Harrison was under no particular illusions - this type of surveying job was usually not done by British Army officers, even part time ones, leastways not in a Commonwealth country, and never really at such short notice as to pull a man out of his Scotch woodcock and plop him on a supersonic jetliner after midnight on a Wednesday. There was something afoot here, and something both urgent and important
Tsk.
He did rather hope that, whatever it was, it wasn't World War Three. That would be rather a vexsome happenstance, what with this season being Middlesex's best start for half a dozen years. Hopefully it wouldn't quite be that, though; he was reminded of the old joke that did the rounds of the office every now and again: "I'm afraid I don't know the meaning of the word Armageddon, but it isn't the end of the world."
Harrison almost allowed himself a momentary smile, then he noticed the Megiddo Junction on the map on Page 3.
Perhaps it might be better not to tempt fate.
.........
Colonel Harrison stood and waited outside the waystation. Safed was the furthest the highway went from Haifa and had only taken the liasion Vauxhall two hours to cover the 75 mile distance - good going for this part of the world. A figure appeared out of the brightening predawn light.
“Colonel Harrison? I’m Major Uri Ben-Shimon, Aman. I’ll be your primary escort and liaison during your time up here with Northern Command. We’ll take a chopper up to Mount Avital when it is light, so for now we’ll head out to the base for a spot of breakfast.”
“That would be most welcome, Major. Lead on.”
The Major hoisted Harrison’s case in his hand, waving away his interjection, and strode off purposefully to his waiting Land Rover. He was clad in the typical olive greens of an Israeli Army field officer without insignia or much frippery, which was quite fitting, wearing short sleeves despite the relative chill of early April.
“One of the news Uzis. Nice little machine pistol, that.”
“They do the job they are designed for, and fit right in their niche. Your new Webleys and SMGs probably preclude it getting a chance in the British Army.” Ben-Shimon said as he took the wheel and tore off at alarming pace.
"We shall see. If we have to come visiting here, then it could make a bit of sense."
"Middlesex? Don't you have fish to fry closer to home? Geoff Boycott comes to mind."
"Curious. I had always heard that you Israelis weren't that wild about cricket."
"We're certainly not the Indians, I'll grant you, but it isn't entirely unknown here."
"And here was me thinking that it was just because you were in the business of knowing things, Major."
"Ah, Colonel, ye of little faith! Can't a man show his love for the game without having his motives impugned?"
Harrison laughed. Ben-Shimon laughed. Neither of them meant it.
On first impressions, things did seem less tense than during that business a few years ago. Things had been decent enough for Her Majesty and the Prince to come through to Jerusalem from Alex last year, after all, but that had been with an escorting companies of Grenadier Guards and the Gurkhas and a few dozen plain clothed chaps from Hereford, not to mention a full regiment of the Royal Israeli Guards, ostensibly for review purposes. However, temporary forbearance in this world was sadly fleeting, based on the last decade or so.
The eight mile journey went quickly and, as the glorious rays of the sun began to creep just to the brink of the dawn horizon, like a child peaking through stair rails to see if Father Christmas was on schedule, they slowed to a halt as they reached the imposing steel gate of Machna Gideon, one of Northern Command's key bases for the security of the border. Built deep inside the mountainside overlooking the villages of Alma and Reyhaniya, it was secure against anything short of an atom bomb.
The guards checked over their identifications very carefully and cautiously examined the Land Rover with a bomb detection wand before letting them enter the mountain. They drove down a short winding passage to a vast parking cavern filled with other vehicles. Following another two checkpoints and a journey down an elevator into the bowels of the earth, they were finally inside Machna Gideon, and made for the officer's mess.
"Coffee?"
"Over my rotting corpse."
"Tea. Of course. You English." smirked Major Ben-Shimon.
"We have our ways and it got us through the last wars."
"Naturally. I was only teasing." The Israeli officer waved at the attendant and nodded.
"As you saw, things have settled down a little here since the beginning of the year, and the year before that. Steak, I take it?" Ben-Shimon asked as he sipped from his own steaming cup of Turkish coffee a short time later.
"Yes, that will be fine. This is calm?"
"I wouldn't say that. More settled than last year. We have ratcheted down our mobilisation status, but still have the headquarters of II Corps up here, ready to react."
"Quite. It looks to be decent enough ground.”
“It is, if we pick it carefully."
"Hopefully, you won't have to."
"Quite." Ben-Shimon smiled his empty smile once again.
“Here? Yes. Out in the Golan? I’ll save the grand tour for the morning, but that is the more complex area that you’ll want to see for when you come over.”
“When am I going to come over? I’m just a staff officer of the Engineer and Staff Corps - a specialist."
"Indeed. Perhaps you are such a specialist, but you are 'just a staff officer' who is next in line to get a brigade of the 32nd when they are mobilised for their year in the line. We do our homework, Colonel."
"Rather, except that if you had done it, you would have called it 'prep'; I went to Repton after all."
The pair smiled at each other. All square.
“Touche, Colonel, as the Frogs might say. Anyway, I wasn't talking only about you in the singular sense, but your Army in general."
After a brief pause as their steaks arrived, the match began again in earnest.
“So, you’ll be wanting to see where your brigade will be next year then?”
“In the words of a man I once met, you might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment.”
“Ha! Your boys will be of course welcome; our army hasn’t needed help for a long time, though. In ‘56, we went to Damascus and Cairo, and in ‘42, we shoved the Turk back nearly to Alexandretta.”
“As I recall, there were just a couple of our lads around in the Six Day War - not too many, mind, maybe a million of us in the Middle East theatre. As for the war, I do believe that Ratcliffe and Lawrence’s armies may have had a little bit to do with that.”
“Indeed. You were only a young lieutenant back then, weren’t you?”
“18 years old, callow and disliking the accomodations about our troopship, the Empire Windrush, if I recall it right. 6th Middlesex, 107th Infantry Brigade, 18th Division, as your notes would have told you.”
“Of course, Colonel Harrison, as they did of your summer out here six years before that.”
“Now you’re taking me back. The Jezreel was beautiful that time of year. I would very much like to see it again; perhaps something might be arranged on my way back.”
“But of course. Good ground there.”
“Quite. My grandfather rode there under Allenby in 1917, and, going back 450 years or so, my forefather, Sir William Sommerlund fought there as well, in King Henry’s Crusade.”
“You won’t be the first in your line to come and fight out here, then. Good.”
Harrison gave a non-committal smile and hoved into his steak.
.................................
The Westland Wessex of the Royal Israeli Air Force's 193 Squadron had come up from Ramat David to pick them up, and now had Harrison and Ben-Shimon high over the Golan in the brilliant early morning sunlit skies. Back and far above their chopper, a flight of RIAF F-4 Phantoms circled over the Jordan on regular morning patrol, directed in turn by the Armstrong-Whitworth Argus airborne warning and control plane back over Tiberias. The valley below was verdantly emerald in its springtime glory, and the roads and tracks which criss-crossed between villages buzzed away with the type of early morning traffic seen in such areas around the world.
Mount Avital, sitting just back from the border, didn’t seem much to look at from without, with just a helipad out on a flattened part of the summit and a steel bunker door to indicate what lay within. Harrison was lead down the winding corridors through several more blast doors to the heart of the complex within the mountain, where General Mordecai Gur, head of the Israeli Army’s Northern Command, awaited him, looking over his large map table.
“Good morning. How are you, Colonel Harrison?”
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say ‘tired’, General, but at least I’m here now.”
“Indeed. In light of that, we’ll cut to the chase. Up here on the border, we have two divisions - 9th Armoured along the line from Mount Hermon to Quineitra, and the 10th Mechanised from there to Aramark Magshimim - with the 7th Armoured Brigade held back as corps reserve.” Gur indicated the positions on the map.”
“How many men?”
“A bit over 32,000 men on regular current strength, rising to 56,000 if and when our reserve formations are called up, with 860 tanks and 500 guns - 450 tanks with the 9th, 250 with the 10th and 160 with the 7th Brigade. Across the border, there are five Syrian divisions with 1300 tanks, and another two corps in close support; all up, they have close to a 4 to 1 numerical superiority across the front, even though we now have the extra division up here. That would normally be concerning enough, but the Arabs have been buying whatever they can get from you, the French, the Yanks and the Italians. The Syrians have been able to move their Centurions to their infantry formations, with their armoured and mechanised forces fielding M54s and the rebuilt AMX-25s, the Jordanians have their Super Cents, and the Iraqis are deep in talks with Rome over the Leones. Put simply, our margin of superiority on the ground is far from ideal, let alone safe.”
“General, you have Crusaders. Short of the Arabs getting M60s or T-72s, you’ve one heck of a margin, as far as I know.”
"We'll see. In any event, our front line is strong, but needs to be stronger. We've a network of anti-tank ditches, concrete barriers, minefields and prepared depressions back from the border fences and wall, overlooked by an initial line of pillboxes and tank fighting positions, then our main fortified line 12 miles back."
"And that is supplied by the single main road over the Jordan at Jacob's Ford. Quite the bottleneck."
"It is. Our primary mission is to hold the Arabs at the front so that the air force can get into the air and come up to wreck them whilst the rest of the army mobilises. That works, on paper, for now, at least until the Arabs get their new aircraft, including from you."
"From Britain, General, not I; unless you mean Middlesex, but we aren't in the business of supplying jet fighters to anyone, either, unless they are fighting Essex. Would that I had such capabilities and facilities. "
"It will be much the same thing, soon enough, will it not?"
"Perhaps, General Gur. Perhaps."
.....................................
"Well, gentlemen, there you have it - the Harrison Report." Barton looked across the table at Prime Minister Dayan, Minister of Defence Yitzhak Rabin and the avuncular presence of the Israeli Foreign Minister, Abba Eban. They look mildly intrigued, whilst their accompanying military chiefs and intelligence men - Air Marshal Peled, Field Marshal Elazar and General Zeira - seemed more mildly disappointed.
"An interesting idea, Prime Minister. I must say that we were thinking more along the lines of a British contingent deployed up with Northern Command than this...engineering project."
"Indeed, Prime Minister Dayan, and that may well come, but at the right time, and in a better place. Might I regale you with an anecdote?" Barton gave a perfunctory pause, just that little bit too short for his opposite man to be able to even nod before continuing. "Back in the days before the Great War, we had a military mission head over to France in, oh, 1908 or so, in order to begin to iron out the details of our little Cordial Agreement with Paris. I think it was General Wilson who asked General Foch, for general he was then, what would be the smallest British force that would be any practical assistance to France, in the event of a war with Germany. Do you know what his answer was?"
"A single British soldier — and we will see to it that he is killed.”
"Exactly. And in so doing, ensure that we would be in with them to the hilt. We really don't need any repeats of that, Prime Minister, and I would suggest that neither do you. What we can and will do is what is recommended here by Harrison - pay for and build you a new triple track railway from Acre through Karmiel and Safed to three railheads at the Jordan, along with three military highways across the Galilee into the Golan, two new road bridges across the Jordan here and here, and a connecting central highway up through the Jezreel here. That will enable you to move your Central Command forces and strategic reserves in less than half the time you currently estimate."
"I won't say it isn't welcome or useful, Mr. Barton, but building projects won't put the wind up the Arabs."'
"Don't worry, I was getting to that. We will deploy one of our Field Forces to Israel within the next 10 days - to Muqeible and Megiddo. That will free up your 5th Division at Nablus to be assigned to the northern border. After they finish their deployment and rotate back to Blighty, they'll leave their tanks, guns and fighting vehicles behind for a new brigade group which we will fund for you, using the Commonwealth Defence Fund. Would that provide the Imperial security and unity you are after?"
Dayan exchanged a brief look with first Rabin, then with Elazar and Zeira, with the latter having a sour grimace playing around the edges of his mouth, just waiting for the right time to emerge, like a timid snoot-ferret after a storm.
"It will."
.......................
"I wish you didn't have to do that, Stanley."
"And I wish you didn't have to make us do it, Moshe, but here we are nonetheless. We've given you a bit of cover within your own politics for now - perfidious Albion not playing along with the building blocks of a war and pulling rank on you to boot. Now you can do what we talked about before - stand up to us in private, get a win with the next Field Force going up to Karmiel to cover your lines of communication and the Lebanon at once, and then use that steal a march on your Young Turks."
"I know. It is all very Byzantine, really."
"Don't get the Greeks involved - we'll be here all year."
"A joke, Stanley? Has the office corrupted you that much?"
"I can grind my teeth for you if it would help. Perhaps it has; perhaps it is just playing the game. Doing it long enough can change a man, somehow."
"All the same, and all the theatre aside, I do have my reservations, as I said in my letter."
"Moshe, when haven't we been there for you? Sometimes, there is less to it all than meets the eye."
"I want to hope so, Stanley. I really do."
"You can. We've got things in hand. My youngest likes to watch this newfangled American programme on the electric television, you know. Sesames Street, I believe. They have a funny little affectation on it, at times - 'Today is bought to you by the letters A, B, C and the number 6'...or was it 7? Anyway, we have our own little 'sponsor' for tomorrow and the days to come for you."
"I trust you are going to make sense very soon, Stanley."
"Our guarantee is bought to you by the letters T, S, R and the number 2, on Cyprus."
"Very droll."
"You've my word. Now, shall we head out for the pictures and the jackals of the press, Prime Minister?"
"Yes, Prime Minister."
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Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
I see what you did there......
Belushi TD
Belushi TD
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Simon Darkshade
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Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
I did a thing!
As ever, I wanted to have a bit of a look at the place, but without going into too much world-impacting action or an open ended narrative.
(Please try and conserve full stops/periods by limiting ellipses to the standard three at a time; I don't want to hog the world's supply at this time of war and imminent alien arrival.)
As ever, I wanted to have a bit of a look at the place, but without going into too much world-impacting action or an open ended narrative.
(Please try and conserve full stops/periods by limiting ellipses to the standard three at a time; I don't want to hog the world's supply at this time of war and imminent alien arrival.)
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Belushi TD
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Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
I am unconcerned...............
I have a truckload of them out in the back. Tell you what, I'll send you a few.....
..........................................................................
*grin*
By the way, I see I forgot to compliment this particular installment. I seem to recall this has been posted before, correct? This is a nicely edited version of the older work?
Belushi TD
I have a truckload of them out in the back. Tell you what, I'll send you a few.....
..........................................................................
*grin*
By the way, I see I forgot to compliment this particular installment. I seem to recall this has been posted before, correct? This is a nicely edited version of the older work?
Belushi TD
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Simon Darkshade
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Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
This is the full version of the little part previously previewed, lovingly typed with a single finger.
I also cut short the extensive political ruminations in favour of writing around it; there can be such as thing as too much conversation on sofas with scotch between politicians.
I also cut short the extensive political ruminations in favour of writing around it; there can be such as thing as too much conversation on sofas with scotch between politicians.
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Belushi TD
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Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
In the main, I agree with you, unless its someone else's scotch, and I'm the one watching the bottle!
Belushi TD
Belushi TD
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Simon Darkshade
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Re: Dark Earth: Borderlands
Funnily enough, the next part or one after that will be taking place in Scotland.
Noted expert on the Scotch, Dr. Rick Dagless M.D. once had this to say on the place: "For the first time ever I saw the Scotch in their natural habitat, and it weren't pretty. I'd seen them huddling in stations before, being loud but… this time I was surrounded. Everywhere I went it felt like they were watching me; fish-white flesh puckered by the Highland breeze; tight eyes peering out for fresh meat; screechy, booze-soaked voices hollering out for a taxi to take 'em halfway up the road to the next all-night watering hole. A shatter of glass; a round of applause; a sixteen-year-old mother of three vomiting in an open sewer, bairns looking on, chewing on potato cakes. I ain’t never going back… not never."
However, this will be more of a rural tale up in the Highlands, partially inspired by this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZk2jV5gJbM
Noted expert on the Scotch, Dr. Rick Dagless M.D. once had this to say on the place: "For the first time ever I saw the Scotch in their natural habitat, and it weren't pretty. I'd seen them huddling in stations before, being loud but… this time I was surrounded. Everywhere I went it felt like they were watching me; fish-white flesh puckered by the Highland breeze; tight eyes peering out for fresh meat; screechy, booze-soaked voices hollering out for a taxi to take 'em halfway up the road to the next all-night watering hole. A shatter of glass; a round of applause; a sixteen-year-old mother of three vomiting in an open sewer, bairns looking on, chewing on potato cakes. I ain’t never going back… not never."
However, this will be more of a rural tale up in the Highlands, partially inspired by this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZk2jV5gJbM