Will's Good Idea for the Week of 6/2/19

World War 1990: Combined Arms Army.

We've written before about doing a WW1990 book from the Soviet point of view.

The book would follow a Soviet combined arms army during the first few weeks of the war. They advance across the North German Plain, pushing NATO back, always waiting for an American armored division that lurks about, the lesnoy. The book's climax is the battle and eventual destruction of that armored division and the Soviets bridging the Weser.

Yes we know, Ralph Peters did this too.

In Polish Storm we NPC'd the Soviets. We did this deliberately as we did not want to fall into the pattern of A then B, A then B.

As World War 1990 has progressed, we've come to view the USSR as a wounded bear being poked with sticks.

At this point we kinda feel like we owe it to the Russians to write Combined Arms Army.

We'd want to do make this  as Soviet as possible, using their terminology.  We'd want to really Russify the novel, which would be hard. Did we ever mention that we have Russian friends?

Not any time soon, mind you. But still...

What about all the Junk?

So The Battle of the Polish Plain, we still hate the title by the way, is coming along nicely and we see where it will be 60,000 words.

Of course we've complained a lot about having to write this thing, or re-write it, as if having not one but two more books to sell is a bad thing.

[Yeah that sucks, Ed]

Anyway, one of the issues for the NATO invasion of Eastern Europe is manpower and equipment. Seriously a lot of these units are going to be warn down. After three weeks of fighting in West Germany they're going to turn around and invade Eastern Europe?

We've actually just written about how the Canadian 1st Division was restocked with every last spare vehicle Ottawa could scrounge up and the ranks replenished with reservists, militia, etc etc.

Of course the Soviets have no such problems. Lose one division simply throw another division into the fight.

But this made us think...

[ooooh wow, you, thinking?-Ed]

....we thought about, say the Battle of the Fulda Gap, defended by an American cavalry regiment and an infantry division.  We can say with certainty that the Americans would make mince meat of the first few Soviet waves but eventually sheer numbers would overwhelm them. But at some point wouldn't the gap just be too choked with flaming wreckage for another Soviet regiment to move through? I mean, after a few hours its a high tech junk yard. How does one advance through a battlefield already fouled up by hundrds of burning hulls?

Food for thought as we wrap things up here.