Those of us who remember the 1960s and 1970s will no doubt recall that the Cold War was no joke; the metaphorical Iron Curtain hung low across Europe, the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) had numerous bases in Germany, as did the US Army, the Berlin Wall stood tall and tensions waxed and waned from time to time. It all ended suddenly but, recently, there have been renewed tensions, comparable with the earlier Cold War-era, with the Russian annexation of the Crimea.
Military exercises on both sides of the Iron Curtain were both propaganda exercises for the benefit of the ‘other side’ and useful training for the armies involved, as they were held in the exact terrain where there could conceivably have been fighting if the Cold War had warmed up into a military conflict. During September 1972, military manoeuvres were held by Warsaw Pact forces. Under the name ‘Bouclier 72’, they were held in Czechoslovakian territory with the participation of armies from Hungary, East Germany (DDR), Poland, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia’s armed forces (all the nations under the Warsaw Pact).
They were commanded by Slovak military officer and communist politician General Martin Dzúr (1919-1985) who was the Czechos…
