[B][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYH8DsU2WCk]17:00, November 6th, 1983.[/url][/B] To drink or not to drink, that was the question. The 41st was well aware that at 0230 tomorrow they had to get up and join a massive military drill. "Able Archer" they called it, and it was to be bigger than anything before. Leaders would go into hiding, entire armies would be put on alert, radio silence was to be maintained. It was as realistic as it could get, but they knew it was coming. So the crew of 'Henk de Tank', officially named 'Curtis' by the commander, went down to the cafetaria under the barracks. As they went into the door, Blue Monday by New Order blasted and the smell of beer, tobacco, and deep-frying fat filled the air. Looking at the rest of the guys, Hendrik spoke up. "Wat nemen we? Pizza'tje?" "Ik heb liever een flinke bak friet." Thus spoke the wise David Sylvian. Or at least he was Sylvian to his friends, a friendly poke at his rather alternative appearance and taste in music. "We hebben een frituurbak in Henk." His comrade QUintis said, the everpresent smile still plastered across his face. "... Doe dan meer een pizza'tje, okee." "Gaat lukken", Hendrik spoke. "Nog wat te zuipen?" Tom's response, "Bier!", didn't miss a beat. Hendrik looked at him in a puzzled way. "Zou je nou wel gaan drinken?", he asked." We moeten erg vroeg op" "Ik ben wel wat meer gewend dan dat, komp helemaal goed!" was the jovial, careless response with a big smile. "Doe mij ook maar een biertje." Or so spoke Quintis. "Brak ben ik toch wel!" Sylvian, meanwhile, thought about the implications of consuming alcoholic beverages for a short moment... And decided he'd be better off with soda. "Doe mij maar fris." "Mietjes!", shouted Thomas, who was promptly slapped on the back of the head by Hendrik, who turned to the rest of the gang. "Zoeken jullie een tafel? Liever niet naast de speakers." He then disappeared in the crowd of soldiers as he walked to the bar. As he disappeared, Tom looked around and spotted four empty spots at a table and rushed towards it. The rest of the gang followed suit, making a beeline for the table lest it be claimed by other people. Sitting was always preferential over standing. It didn't take long before Hendrik, like a waiter, arrived with the drinks. A glass of coca-cola and three beer were quickly served, and he sat down. "Is salami goed? Moet wel, want hij ligt in de oven. Met een kwartiertje is 'ie klaar. Over vreten gesproken, wat hebben jullie ingepakt?" "Frituurpan onder de ventilatieroosters." Quintis replied. Sylvian nearly spat out his drink. "Je hebt het echt gedaan? /Echt/?" "Hé, mama heeft me geleerd dat ik niet mag liegen. Als ik iets zeg, meen ik het ook." Quintis cheerfully replied before taking a sip of his beer. "Brave jongen ben je", Hendrik said. "Wat heb je voor de rest mee?" "Een flinke voorraad frikandellen en friet. Hebben we iets anders nodig?" The tallest member of the crew responded. "... Misschien iets waar we niet zo dik van worden dat we niet meer door de dakluiken passen." "Geen zorgen, gozer. We gaan vijf dagen geiten en terug naar de basis. Wat kan er fout gaan?" "Dat we niet meer door de dakluiken passen. Moeten ze zometeen een gat in de romp snijden om ons eruit te krijgen." "Hij?" Quintis said, thoroughly amused. "Dat bedoel ik dus" "Het zijn wel kleine kutluiken." "Maar jouw lichaamsomvang is ook een kubieke kilometer" "Goed punt." "Heeft iemand nog wat anders ingepakt? Bier? Snoep?" Thomas looked around. "...Munitie?" "Tuurlijk hebben we munitie." Sylvian said. "... De helft ervan is vervangen door bier, dat wel. Niet mijn schuld." "Hoeveel van de hoeveel granaten zijn vervangen door bier?", Thomas asked with a shifty look on his face. "Ongeveer een kwart, denk ik. De helft was een beetje overdreven." "Heineken dat is ons bier! Heineken is ons plezier!", Tom and Hendrik toasted. "We hebben toch DAFjes vol munitie." "Trouwens, met die frituur moet een van ons in de loop ruften en de rookwolk is groot zat", Hendrik spoke in perfect deadpan. "Is ook zo." Sylvian replied on the most serious tone of voice he could muster. "Hé, ik ga die pizza halen. Ben d'r zo weer.", Hendrik said as he disappeared into the crowd. "... Wat moeten we nog doen voordat we gaan?" Quintis asked. Tom looked around. "Die nicht, Bart. Zou die haarspul hebben?" "Wie?" "De schutter die ook bij ons ligt! Die homo!" "Waarom zouden we haarspul nodig hebben?" Then Tom looked at David. "We gaan David z'n haar net als David Sylvian doen." Behind them Hendrik nearly dropped the pizza laughing, but he put it down properly. "Doen!" "Moeten we ook een Mick Karn hebben." Sylvian simply replied. "Geweldig plan." Quintis said between laughter. "Ronsel een van die Griekse officieren" "Moeten we er wel eentje hebben die bas speelt." Quintis said. "Alsof een van die idioten fretloos zou kunnen spelen." Sylvian muttered. Speaking up, Hendrik cut the pizza with a pair of scissors. "We gaan gewoon je haar fixen. Bart heeft die dingen wel. En anders is er vast een winkeltje dichtbij." Tom looked at him and responded deadpan. "Het is zondag, knurft" ''... Hebben ze Blue Monday op herhalen staan of iets dergelijks?" Sylvian said, looking around. "Gok het. Nou, eet smakelijk. Ik spreek die nicht nog wel" --- Also in the barracks, the staff of the 41st Battalion were working tirelessly on preparing the unit for the upcoming exercises. Simulating conventional warfare, Lt Col Van de Kamp was confident of his unit's success in the wargames. They were well-trained and equipped with the Leopard 2, which was the single most-armoured tank in the world. But something bothered Nico. His troops looked...Untidy. Like a bunch of weekend warriors, eating junk food every night. This didn't mix well with hus subconscious ego, in which he wanted to impress the foreign observing officers from Canada to Greece. The 41st represented the Dutch military to them, and the impression they got probably wasn't all that good. "Within minutes of the alarm being raised, the soldiers will get to their vehicles and we'll go. We go south, to Zeven, then to the east at Tolstedt, and keep rolling towards Lüneburg. Command has informed us that we are to defend there, where the river Elbe and Elbe-Seitenkanal meet. We will be combat ready here in less than five hours". The Battalion Commander was explaining the real war plan to the foreign observers, after he held the same story in Dutch to his staff and squadron commanders. He spoke in a clear, audible, deep voice despite his heavy Dutch accent and his somewhat broken English. We'll be ready to catch any East German assaults if they come. I have confidence that my battalion will do well. If the Russians were really there, we have explosives to blow the bridges up, but command said we won't do that for the game. It's not like driving through a field of crops. "That said, the tanks will not be right next of the canal. There's not enough trees or other cover there, so we will be spreading between Lüneburg and Artlenburg. The area here is farmland with lots of irrigation and roads. Tricky for tanks to maneuver through, and very flat with high visibility. It's a perfect killing field." --- The sleeping quarters of the Seedorf barracks were divided into eight-man rooms. The crew of Curtis shared it with another tank's crew, the gunner of which was Bart Vermeer. The definition of sassy, and an open homosexual on top of that, it came in very handy. After Tom broke the idea, he put his connections to work and acquired all the stuff needed to give David the hairdo of David Sylvian at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1982. "Je haar is hier echt ideaal voor", he told Sylvian as he was styling his hair. "De kleur is ook verbazingwekkend snel goed gekomen" "Nou, ik vind het niet erg om eventjes nachtbraker te spelen. Ben ik al op", Hendrik said. "Kan ik ook even de laatste dingen doornemen." He took a swig of his coffee and looked out of the window. "Ja ja, schiet nou maar op. Ik begin me nichterig te voelen." Sylvian said. While usually friendly, if guarded, shortage of sleep would quickly ruin his mood. "... Hebben we de gitaren al in de tank geladen?" "Ja, lauw met de pook", Hendrik said. "Koffiezetapparaat ook, trouwens." Bart just finised the hairdo. "Het ziet er goed uit op je. Ik zou m'n baret niet op doen als ik jou was, gaat het alleen maar kapot van", he said as he walked to the bathroom to wash his hair. "Iemand een bakkie?", Hendrik asked to the remaining six comrades. --- [center][b][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBsKplb2E6Q]Central Clinical Hospital, Moscow. 0300 Moscow Time, November 7th, 1983.[/url] [/center][/b] The rough awakening did not do much good to the mood of Chairman Andropov, who was struck to a hospital bad after kidney failure earlier in the year. The General Secretary was done for physically and had not much fight left in him, but his mind was clear. Dmitriy Ustinov, Andrei Gromyko, Konstantin Chernenko and Viktor Chebrikov consulted him for something of grave importance. It better be of 'grave importance' to awaken a terminally ill old man in the middle of the night. And it was. The four consulted him on what they were convinced was a NATO invasion of the Eastern Bloc. They informed him of the situation and convinced Andropov that the USSR had to act now, and undo NATO before NATO undid them. Trusting his most loyal aides' consensus, he signed the order for a massive strike of all Warsaw Pact nations against the forces of NATO. Behind the Iron Curtain, active units were raised, the navies sailed out of port and the air forces took off with full payloads. It was about to get messy. The Warsaw Pact armies weren't expecting anything, and the NATO armies were informed their alarms would go off at 2:30 in the morning. However, at 1:30 in the morning the radars saw an abnormal amount of activiy and in some cases targets were bombed. The alarms everyone expected an hour later went off, and the theory that it was an error in timing was taken away as soon as the words "This is not a drill" were heard. Across West Germany the troops rushed into action. The Cold War had just gone hot. --- In a mere two minutes after the first news broke, the sirens on the base started howling and a lot of boots started trampling through the hallways. The door of their room was hastily opened and a corporal was too hurried to notice what was going on. "Het is oorlog!", he shouted, "NU NAAR DE TANKS!" Hendrik spat out his coffee "Wat?!", he asked angrily, "We hebben nog een uur, goochem!" "Ja, dat dacht ik dus ook, maar dit is NONEX!" ([b]NON EX[/b]), the Corporal said and he rushed on. He uttered only a defeated "Godverdomme" "... Betekent dat dat de Russen het op hun heupen hebben gekregen?" Quintis asked, his smile fading for a moment. "Mijn gok is van wel", Hendrik said as he readies his bag and got his uniform in order, clearly in a hurry. "Wat een pokkeherrie maken die sirenes!" --- "WAT?!", Nico screamed at his Iris S6, who was also the only woman in the staff. "Ik hoor het ook net", Kapitein Iris van der Meer responded in an equally loud tone, "ik wil niet riskeren dat dit een slechte grap is!". Nico was fuming. Jumping up and throwing his overall on, he grumbled angrily to nobody in particular. "Als ik die vonkenboer in m'n fikken krijg..." He threw his bag over his shoulder and looked at Iris who was busy tying her hair in a bun. "EN HIEROM MOET JE JE HAAR KNIPPEN, STEKKERDOOS!" Nico shouted and he ran towards the courtyard where the entire regiment was storming out of the barracks and started entering their tanks, starting their engines, and rolling out. The crew of Curtis also ended up rushing out of their barracks and to their tank where they first tied their boots and then rolled out with the rest of C-squadron. It was cold, dark, and they were groggy. But they were blessed by the fact that they smuggled a coffeemaker and four big cups on board. But the rest of the 41st was shaken too, but they still slept. Only the drivers, signallers, the staff and the squadron commanders were awake. The rest slept on, not caring or not yet realising what they were a part of. [hider=Translation of dialogue] "What'll we have? Pizza?" "I'd rather take a big portion of fries" "We've got a frying pan in Henk" "...Alright, let's have a Pizza" "Will do.", "Something to drink?" "Beer!" "You reckon you'd go and drink? We'll have to go out very early." "I'm used to more than that, it'll be totally fine!" "I'll take a beer too. I'll be wrecked anyway!" "I'll take a soda" "Pussies!" "Will you look for a table? I'd rather not have it next to the speakers." "Is pepperoni alright? It better be, because it's in the oven. It'll be done in fifteen minutes. Speaking of food, what did you pack?" "There's a frying pan under the ventilation" "You really did it? /Really/?" "Hey, mama told me I shouldn't lie. When I say something, I mean it" "Good boy", "What else did you pack?" "A load of frikandellen and fries. Do we need something else?" "Maybe something that doesn't make us too fat to fit through the hatches" "No worries, dude. We're going to dick around for five days and back to base. What could possibly go wrong?" "That we won't fit through the hatches. They'll have to cut a hole in the hull to get us out?" "He?" "That's what I mean" "They're fucking tiny, though" "But your body is around a cubic kilometre" "Good point" "Anyone got something else? Beer? Candy?" "...Ammo?" "Of course we have Ammo", "Half of it has been replaced by beer, but that's not my fault" "How many of the how many shells are replaced by beer?" "Around a quarter, half is a bit much" "Heineken, that is our beer! Heineken, that is our joy!", "We've got DAFs full of ammo" "Besides, with the frying pan we just have to rip one into the barrel and the smoke cloud will be big enough" "..Correct" "Hey, I'm going to grab the pizza. Be right back" "...What do we have to do before we go?" "The faggot, Bart. Do you think he's got hair products?" "Who?" "The gunner that's also with us, the gay dude!" "Why would we need hair products?" "We're going to style David's hair like David Sylvian's." "Do it!" "We'll need a Mick Karn", "Great plan" "Seize one of the Greek officers" "We'll need one who plays bass.", "Like one of this idiots could play fretless" "We're just going to fix your hair! Bart's got the stuff. And otherwise, there's probably a shop around.", "It's Sunday, you dope" "Do they have Blue Monday on repeat or something?" "I think so. I'll speak to the faggot." --- "Your hair is ideal for this", "The colouring went amazingly fast as well" "I don't mind staying up at night. Means I'm up already.", "Allows me to check a few things too". "Yeah, yeah. Just hurry up. I'm feeling like a faggot". "Do we have the guitars in the tank already?" "All done. A coffemaker too" "It looks good on you. If I were you, I wouldn't put my beret on. It'll ruin it" "Anyone want a cup?" --- "It's war!", "TO THE TANKS NOW!" "What?!", "We've got another hour, doofus!" "I thought so too, but this is NONEX!" "God Damnit" "Does that mean the Russians are at it?" "I think so.", "Those sirens make a hellish noise!" --- "WHAT?!" "I also just heared it", "I don't want to risk this being a bad joke!" "If I get my hands on the spark salesman...", "AND THIS IS WHY YOU CUT YOUR HAIR, SOCKET!" ('Doos' is also a semi-derogatory term for a woman) [/hider]