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Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

Who's going to be laying mines south of the 5th Division's last stand? If it's the Soviets and Poles in July 2000, where did they get a lot of mines, and why would they be dropping them there? IIRC, this was an extended meeting engagement, a mobile battle of sorts. Minefields, AFAIK, are more common in deliberate defensive positions, and the Battle of Kalisz doesn't seem to fit that for me.

This is a fair issue to raise. The answer comes in the form of the 1997 campaign. There’s a thread somewhere in the archives in which we discuss this issue at length, so I’ll only recap here. The Pact gets kicked out of East Germany in December 1997. Their best units have been very roughly handled, first by the West Germans, then by the Anglo-Americans. Although the West would like to come to terms at this point, the Kremlin has no intention of doing so. Since the Soviets aren’t going to sue for peace, they can hardly expect NATO to demobilize. In fact, the thing they fear the most—a German-led invasion by the West aimed at the USSR —looks pretty darned likely at this point. The best thing to do is to use Poland as it has been intended for use all along: as a bulwark against the West.

Trading Polish space for Soviet time means fighting a defensive action until Pact forces can be readied for a counteroffensive. Soviet doctrine calls for defense in depth based on multiple belts of obstacles—principally mines. Given three to four months between the end of the campaign in East Germany and the beginning of the NATO offensive in Poland, the Pact can lay an awful lot of mines.

We know from the timetables given in the v1 chronology that NATO’s offensive didn’t exactly burn up the track moving across Poland. Much of this can be attributed, I assert, to the very dense defenses established by the Pact in western Poland in Jan-Apr 1997. As the NATO offensive ground eastward, the Pact would have established fresh defenses on the most likely avenues of approach. Kalisz is a road junction 200km east of the Oder. I think it’s entirely likely that the Pact would have established defenses in depth (meaning, among other things, minefields) here as the front line moved towards the Soviet border.

So the short answer is that the 1997 fighting would have resulted in minefields in and around Kalisz, along with the creation of fortified fighting positions and the other survivability structures employed by a dug-in defender. NATO would have cleared the mines affecting the MSR, but little else. They didn’t have the time and manpower to clear mines in their own rear between April and August/September 1997. The engineers would be too busy at the front.

After NATO fell back across the Oder, the Poles would be quite keen to get the minefields cleared, of course. The Soviets might not be so keen, though. So long as the LOC were open, the Soviets probably would have had better uses for their engineering assets. And, of course, everyone was busy coping with the nuclear exchanges for the rest of 1997.

Clearing mines without specialized equipment is a slow and agonizing business. It’s all well and good to talk about clearing mines by hand, but you don’t have to see too many people blown to hamburger by anti-tamper devices, ham-handedness, or just plain bad luck before this approach loses its charm. This much said, some sappers get quite good at this sort of thing. The civilian population in Central Europe will produce some folks who are fairly handy at this, too.

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

"Recycling" like this is likely to be one of the few methods of resupply by 2000.

Very astute, Leg. I agree completely. This goes to one reason why some minefields will be left in place, while others will have been created with scavenged or locally fabricated mines. The security situation enters a downward spiral from late 1997 onward. As the countryside fills with marauders, the need to fortify communities increases. Defensive barriers of every description will appear around the surviving communities. We should expect to see a “moat” of mines around Kalisz.

So by the time 5th ID rolls through western central Poland, there will be two main categories of minefields present: minefields left from the large-scale fighting of 1997 and minefields established in the interim for the purpose of keeping bandits out of town. Some of these fields will be known and marked. Some will be known but unmarked. (It’s better if the locals know where the mines are but let marauders stumble across them.) Some will be unknown and unmarked. Most will be in open areas, but some will be in restricted terrain, like the woods. After all, an unimproved road through the woods can offer a very serviceable bypass for attackers who don’t want to tackle minefields in the open.

Originally Posted by HorseSoldier

I could see a specialist cottage industry growing up of semi-nomadic civilians who travel around clearing mines, IEDs, and UXO for farmers and smaller communities and then trading the recovered mines or explosives to merchants, military forces or new governments like Krakow. Could make for an interesting group for PCs to encounter or travel with.

Now that’s an interesting idea! I really like this one. EPW and convicts might be cheaper, but civilians with specialized techniques might be more cost-effective. One problem I foresee is that the local armed forces would be inclined to “draft” said civilians. This isn’t necessarily a deal breaker for the concept, but it’s something to be considered.

Originally Posted by Raellus

In forests- at least here in the U.S.- animals often create their own high speed trails. I have a number of rabbit trails in my backyard. Soldiers could follow newer game trails to avoid old mines or one could assume that game and/or hunters have accidently cleared most mines from older ones.

I was thinking just the same thing for my characters. However, it’s hard to move an M1 along a deer trail.


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