So when the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, a motorcycle platoon of the Reconnaissance Battalion of the 6th Guards Motor-Rifle division was stopped north of Prague.
While cleaning their weapons, somebody brought out a large bottle of Czech plum-brandy, and the cleaning session became a lot more cheerful. The men were cleaning their guns with gasoline, which wasn't supposed to be done but it made everything so much faster. They were smoking as well, and someone threw his cigarette butt into the bucket of petrol. Laughing, one of the other men kicked the bucket. The bucket tumbled in the air and landed on the motorcycle that they had siphoned the gasoline out of, and whose tank was still open. Fwoosh.
In seconds, the motorcycle was a black-charred frame.
That cheery spirit evaporated instantly. Cleaning weapons with petrol was forbidden, and the destruction of state property was sure to land them in front of a tribunal and behind bars.
The platoon commander wandered away and fell to pieces, but one of the squad leaders came to his senses immediately and lined the platoon up and gave them their cover story.
"Platoon! We were assaulted by a dark blue Skoda, with three Czechs inside of it! The license plate was obscured by mud! They threw a molotov cocktail at us, and as we were cleaning our weapons, we were completely unable to return fire."
After drilling each man on the details to make sure they had the story straight, the sergeant sent word up to the company commander. The company commander himself came up to investigate with several other officer. After observing the scene of the crime, the company commander called the soldiers over one by one and interrogated them, asking each a few questions before calling for the next. Finally, he called that one sergeant over.
"Fair weather we've been having Sergeant, yes."
"Eh, quite boring. I'll be happy when it does something other than drizzle."
"Yes. It rained pretty good last night," the company commander said, testing the ground with his boot. "And the ground is still soft. You said that the Czechs came in a Skoda?"
"Absolutely."
"But then where are the tire marks? I don't see any Skoda tracks."
The sergeant knew he was up shit creek right then, because the company commander was a skilled recon man. But he also had pride in his company, and did not want to see them come to trouble.
"Sergeant, where you buried the bucket and rags you used to clean your guns, do a better job. And have the whole of the platoon tramp over the earth. It must not look disturbed!"
They cleaned up the evidence, but no commissar or special investigator was ever assigned to the field of battle against the Czech counter-revolutionaries, who were clearly in the pay of western intelligence services. However, when the company commander tried to submit his report, the battalion commander turned the report over in his hands.
"I'll sign it, but you must re-write it and add that an anti-tank grenade launcher, an RPG-7B, was destroyed along with the motorcycle. One of our men dropped one in a swamp while we were passing through Poland, and we couldn't get it out."
The company commander wanted to object, but he saw a certain look in the battalion commander's eye, and knew that there would be no objecting. So he re-wrote the report and submitted it, only for it to come back again and again for a rewrite.
When the report reached the desk of the rear commander of the Carpathian Front, who had to sign off on all battlefield losses, the reconnaissance motorcycle had evolved into a wonder-machine. Not only did it have a machine gun and an RPG-7B rocket launcher, but it had two active infra-red sights, a rangefinder, and an R-123 radio transmitter. Furthermore it must have been designed for work in polar conditions, as two fur coats were lying on top of it, and it had been towing a 200-liter trailer full of spirits.
The rear commander scratched his chin, and passed the report to his assistant.
"Send this back to be rewritten and have him add... say..."
"In the 128th Division, we lost a BTR in the River Elbe."
"As a result of counter-revolutionary action?"
"Yes."
"Splendid. Have him add that to the report."