Christmas Truce

[Raellus]

Merry Christmas, y'all! Or Happy Holidays, if Christmas is not a thing for you.

Is Christmas mentioned at all in T2k canon? Do the various antagonists refrain from using nuclear weapons on this day- a respite after the carnage of the Thanksgiving Day Massacre and the recriminations that follow?

Do local commanders order their troops to stand down from combat ops on Christmas Day? Do we see something like the unofficial 1914 Christmas truce c. 2000?

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[Targan]

The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 7th, so notwithstanding that official Soviet policy was to eventually have a religion-free society, I doubt very much Soviet political and military leaders would feel any obligation to not launch nukes on December 25th.

[Tegyrius]

Interesting question, Rae! I poked at the PDF archive of 1e canon. Direct references seem to be rather sparse.

The 1e core rules' timeline and Mediterranean Cruise both establish the Turkish offensive into Bulgaria (which we fleshed out a bit in our Romania work) as launching on Christmas Eve 1996. The RDF Sourcebook states that Tabriz fell to Soviet forces on Christmas of the same year.

Bear's Den has the PCs arriving in Lviv "around Christmastime," when holiday cheer masks the turmoil around the module's events. A quick skim didn't unearth any details beyond a single rumor.

My campaign is scheduled to restart next month. The PCs are currently in mid-October 2000, so it'll be interesting to see if my players decide that their characters will do anything for the holiday. The American PCs did celebrate Independence Day when it rolled around...

- C.

[ToughOmbres]

Merry Christmas, y'all! Or Happy Holidays, if Christmas is not a thing for you.

Is Christmas mentioned at all in T2k canon? Do the various antagonists refrain from using nuclear weapons on this day- a respite after the carnage of the Thanksgiving Day Massacre and the recriminations that follow?

Do local commanders order their troops to stand down from combat ops on Christmas Day? Do we see something like the unofficial 1914 Christmas truce c. 2000?

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I doubt it but to each referee their own. Only the Polish Armed Forces (AFAIK) still had chaplains in the WP satellite armies. Even so I wouldn't imagine Soviet handlers or political commissars would look kindly on any sort of unsanctioned truce.

[Raellus]

The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 7th, so notwithstanding that official Soviet policy was to eventually have a religion-free society, I doubt very much Soviet political and military leaders would feel any obligation to not launch nukes on December 25th.

Good point. I'd forgotten about the calendar differences. Given Russia's recent (IRL) December 25th, Christmas "celebration" in Ukraine, I too doubt the Soviet high command would hold off on strategic offensive operations on high holy days of any calendar.

I still wonder, however, if cantonment commanders might, on their own initiative, call for local ceasefires on special occasions.

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[Raellus]

The 1e core rules' timeline and Mediterranean Cruise both establish the Turkish offensive into Bulgaria (which we fleshed out a bit in our Romania work) as launching on Christmas Eve 1996. The RDF Sourcebook states that Tabriz fell to Soviet forces on Christmas of the same year.

Thanks! I'd forgotten about that. Tegyrius and I mentioned Christmas, 1996, in our Romania Sourcebook:

Operation Racetrack

After a long and harrowing flight from Aviano, Italy, in the pre-dawn hours of December 24th, Christmas Eve Day, the first elements of the US 173rd Airborne Brigade landed at the Romanian Air Force’s 90th Airlift Base just outside of Bucharest. The first American paratroopers on the ground dug in around the airport to await the arrival of the rest of the brigade and its attendant supporting units.

Escorted by F-16s of the 31st Tactical Fighter Wing, and directed by an RAF E-3D AWACS flying out of Akrotiti on Cyprus, USAF transport pilots flew a practically non-stop round-trip shuttle service from Italy to Romania, remaining on the ground only long enough to load and unload men and materiel, and refuel. Although the US military officially dubbed the operation, “Racetrack”, an American cable news network referred to it as “Operation Rudolph” and, in the popular imagination, the name stuck. Combat troops and artillery were first to arrive in country, then the Brigade’s helicopters (228th Aviation Battalion), and finally, its LAV-75s (D Company, 16th Armor). To protect the Romanian airfield and the vulnerable USAF transports shuttling to and fro, a squadron from the 31st Tactical Fighter Wing was forward deployed to Bucharest. Having lost many of its own combat aircraft to WTO air defenses, the Romanian Air force was happy to provide its American guests with avgas.

By December 31st, the 173rd Airborne’s redeployment from Italy was more or less complete. Despite being a token force, the arrival of the American Sky Soldiers on Romanian soil had a heartening effect on its battered military.

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