Chapter 2

Two Transit vans collected the team, their luggage and the cases with the files and computer and drove them for two hours to RAF Brize Norton for the flight to Germany. Why they had to drive west before flying east to Germany? That’s the RAF for you. They had to go to them, rather than them have an aircraft at Northholt in London for the team. They were going in a Hercules which to nearly everyone on the team was an outrage but for Andrew was totally awesome. There were moments where he was still a teenage boy, and this was one of them. He was not sure what everyone expected but he didn’t mind in the slightest. When they got to the base there was much checking of passes but they were deposited in front of a nondescript building that could have been on any military base in the country. RAF movement controllers, that is their official title but Vestie described them as pathetic jobsworths, wanted to check the luggage including the locked cases of files but were told to desist. To be fair they were told to fuck off but this was all happening at the front of the line and Andrew was very much at the back. So who said what, and who won the dick swinging contest he didn’t know, but just before 9.00 they were led out to the Hercules. Cold, noisy, cramped and uncomfortable but Andrew loved it. They climbed in, were given two wax earplugs and then it was sit and wait until take off. If there was a safety briefing Andrew missed it. Once they were airborne it got noisier and colder and they still could see nothing. But barely an hour after take-off they landed in West Germany, although in the British base RAF Bruggen. There were more words and more attempts at inspections but finally the team escaped the clutches of the RAF and headed five miles down the road to the Headquarters of the British Forces in West Germany.

Everything to do with the armed forces in West Germany was complicated. At the end of the Second World War the four victorious allied powers occupied different parts of Germany. As Berlin was the capital it was occupied separately, even although it sat surrounded on all sides by the Soviet Zone of occupation. British forces were in the north, the Americans were in the centre and the south, the French were in the west and the Soviets were in the east. Over the next five years the three western allies went from playing nicely with the Soviets to seeing them as the deadly enemy. Within four years the three allied zones of occupation came together to form West Germany, the Federal republic. The Soviets created East Germany, the Democratic Republic, from their zone and the two sides were set. Over the next 20 years West Germany became reintegrated into European political and military structures. NATO had been created a month before the creation of West Germany, although the Germans were not admitted until 1955.

But in the meantime, there were forces of occupation from the three western allied powers in West Germany. Once West Germany joined NATO these forces stayed in place but went from being vestigial occupation forces from WW2 and instead immediately became fellow NATO members’ commitment to the security and integrity of West Germany. And 30 years later they were all still there. As the Cold War had got ever chillier the forces had increased and other nations had forces in West Germany beyond the original three, including the Canadians, Belgians and Dutch. In peacetime all of these armies have their own officers and command structure but at a time of crisis or war they all come under NATO command. So the Headquarters of NATO’s Northern Army Group was also the Headquarters of the British Army of the Rhine. Just as the Headquarters of NATO’s 2^nd Air Force was the Headquarters of the RAF in Germany. The team were going to the British Army and Air Force Headquarters but which were also NATO headquarters and had American, German, Dutch and Belgian (that Andrew saw, there may have been others) troops stationed there. So this was not some small inconsequential base.

This was one half of the forces expected to defend Western Europe against the Soviet Army if it was ordered to attack. Everything else was a distraction to this mission. It wasn’t that they didn’t care about potential espionage but they cared about the impact to them. The new tanks with the new armour were expected to hold up the Soviet forces better, survive multiple impacts. This impacted operational plans, attrition modelling, things like that. What the command staff of the BAOR also cared about was whether this was going to end up being blamed on them. If this new armour had gone missing over there in Germany then there would be firings. Well not literally since everyone had guns, but commanders could potentially lose their jobs.

So this investigation impacted war plans, may confirm that NATO plans were compromised and it may also cost people their jobs. So as you can imagine, they were made to feel really welcome.

Now that was Andrew’s mental summary of lots of conversations with Vestie. They were in Rheindahlen for two days before going onto Minden, finally, where the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers had been based during the exercise. Andrew said and did nothing, he could have flown over on Wednesday morning as he added no value during these first two days. What he observed, and had explained to him, was an education though. Once again it was the difference between a well-ordered life, an engineering problem, a maths test, things that had a right or wrong answer; versus dealing with a confused and messy situation where it appeared, at least to Andrew, as if everyone was pulling in different directions.

He left school with a lot of naiveté about life, and that summer from OTC camp onwards, did a lot to strip that away. Andrew also believed that leadership and command started to make more sense to him that summer as well.

They were still being kept apart from other troops so Andrew couldn’t comment about Army life at that time in West Germany because he met so few regular soldiers. Rheindahlen seemed to have a lot of political posturing but that is the same at the top of all organisations. Finally on the Wednesday morning they were loaded into two LandRovers for the drive to Minden. There were six of them from the MoD Police there in Germany, led by Detective Inspector Brodie. There were two other Detective Sergeants in addition to Vestergaard and a Detective Constable. And Andrew.

Vestie had given him an idea of who some of the other organisations on the team were. Just as with the Army there in West Germany, it was not clear that everyone was pulling in the same direction. There were two investigators from the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police. They would be taking over the investigation into the suspected individuals. There was someone from the Defence Intelligence Staff, ‘covering the MoD’s arse’ was how he was described by Vestie. MI5 and MI6 were not present on the team at the moment but that was expected to change. Instead they had a team from the British Services Security Organisation. They worked in a counter espionage role within West Germany, and most pertinently to this investigation, worked to support the Armed Forces in the country. Vestie was categorical that they were not looking to help so much as ensure that blame was kept away from BAOR command. It appeared to be a common presumption as no one in the LandRover challenged Vestie while he was telling Andrew all this. It was also why they had travelled as a separate team. The MoD Police didn’t trust the others on the investigation. At the time what struck Andrew more than that incendiary mindset was how matter of fact everyone was about it. British nationals working for different agencies of the British Government were just as worried about internal politics as the external threat to the country. In this case, the suspected theft of an armoured panel with the new type of armour.

By the time they got to the garrison at Minden Andrew was ready to get the computer unpacked and finally escape into his own little world. He could work at the problem, identify the information that the team wanted and then stand well back as they bickered about what they had found. But before he could do any of that he was taken along with Vestie and one of the other Sergeants, Trevor Drinkwater, who the others called Splash, to see police work in action. They wanted to build up an understanding of what had happened talking to everyone there. They needed Andrew there when it came to figuring out how AIMS fitted into all this. He was allowed to take notes so that information could be verified on the computer system.

Minden was the garrison for the 11^th Armoured Brigade but it was just the Headquarters. There were no actual tanks based in the town. The tanks were an hour south in Paderborn. What were based in Minden were mechanised infantry. This did not make the task any clearer or easier. The follow up questions started on AIMS and then things just turned sad. As in pathetic.

The Property Services Agency had been in West Germany making plans for additional or replacement barracks for the troops. Before they returned to the UK they asked the Headquarters staff to use AIMS to give them an updated list of all the high value facilities. Now they had all this information on paper files but they dumped the task of starting to computerise them onto the Army staff in West Germany, without explanation or most importantly, training. With no one there to explain what was required and the PSA staff having left, the task was deemed the lowest of low priorities, so the program was put to one side and ignored. No harm, no foul.

Oh if only. The program was discovered by some keen, fresh-out-of Sandhurst Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers officer. That Corps was responsible for equipment maintenance within the Army, including tanks. So this officer, trying too hard for his own good, tried to take an asset management program and use it as an inventory program. Remember the comment about entering shit into the system will only get you shit out the system? Exactly. The files that the team were trying to reconcile to paper records did not match because no one knew what they were doing.