This is a good point. I suppose that IF XI Corps was entirely out of fuel AND all the bridges between their positions and Bremerhaven were down AND they thought that significant PACT forces (at least a strong armored or mech Corps) were driving for the Baltic in order to cut them off, then staying put makes a ton of sense.

Perhaps we should break it down. There are a lot of issues/factors at play here, and things are starting to get muddled.

Going Home states that "The XI Corps was cut off from higher headquarters after the Pact counteroffensive of July, and has remained in its positions out of necessity rather than by choice. It has been written off by USAEUR. The XI US Corps HQ staff is currently wintering in Kolobrzeg, Poland, along with the remnants of the 50th US AD. At of the beginning of the adventure, word of the evacuation has just arrived. Most of the Corps' personnel will decide to remain in place rather than risk the journey to Bremerhaven." (Going Home, p. 14)


1.) "The XI Corps was cut off from higher headquarters after the Pact counteroffensive of July..."

This is the smoking gun, as far as I'm concerned, suggesting a fairly serious continuity error on the part of the writers. No such forces are identified or mentioned in any of the canonical sources as being in the region in either July, autumn or winter of 2000. If a RetCon is required, this is what needs to be addressed. A powerful Soviet/Pact Corps or Army needs to be created and placed in NW Poland, either between XI Corps and the German border, or in the immediate vicinity.

2.) "...and [XI Corps] has remained in its positions out of necessity rather than by choice."

Once again, this suggests that the above-mentioned hypothetical enemy forces are still in the area between XI Corps and the German border and pose a clear and present danger to a large-scale evacuation/general withdrawal.

3.) "[XI Corps] has been written off by USAEUR."

If it's unable to move because of points 1 & 2, then this makes perfect sense and needs no further explanation. If no such enemy units exist, then perhaps USAEUR decided to sacrifice XI Corps to protect the evac site from a possible Dunkirk scenario.

Rainbow has theorized that XI Corps will be evacuated later, by way of the UK, after assisting in stabilizing that island nation. This is an interesting theory, but one belied by the "written off" bit. I still think that this alternative theory provides an intriguing segue for American PC groups wishing to play a campaign in the UK.

I've posited an alternative, political explanation, where the XI Corps command is suspected of throwing in its lot with CivGov, and is therefore deliberately left behind to strengthen MilGov's hand in CONUS upon the return of the OMEGA sealifts. Perhaps SACEUR feeds XI Corps bogus intel suggesting a possible PACT attack to keep them in place.

4.) "At of the beginning of the adventure, word of the evacuation has just arrived. Most of the Corps' personnel will decide to remain in place rather than risk the journey to Bremerhaven."

"[R]isk the journey..." supports the RetCon placing strong Pact units between XI Corps and the German border in the Autumn of 2000.

Also, its possible that the command element and soldiers of XI Corps are personally invested in the area and have made a conscious decision to "remain in place".

XI Corps doesn't need to be completely out of fuel, but "low" can be low enough. If they have to abandon their heavy vehicles to walk out, even Red cavalry or barely mechanized forces can mop them up easy.

There may not be strong Pact forces in position to their west, but the possibility exists (not least in the minds of XI Corps HQ) that the Soviets could move one there. Once 5th Division ceases transmitting, does the Corps HQ really know where 4th Guards Tank Army is? IMO, they could believe that there are more Pact forces, gas/diesel-fueled, lurking over the horizon. For a general & staff trained to fight for years with the benefits of radio communication, satellite and aerial reconnaissance, and other goodies; now that they've lost them, the "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns" can add up pretty quickly. Do they really know where Red Bear Chelkov and his Army is? The CIA claims to be in contact with forces near him, but do you trust them? Those reports are pretty out of date by the time they get to XI Corps HQ.

Also, it's been mentioned that the Corps and its forces have some reconnaissance assets, but those can't go very deep and still provide rapid information anymore. If there are cavalry patrols (Pact Poles and Soviets) to the east, they can report that. How would you interpret it? Whatever is out there to the east, it drove off III German Corps. That's a significant point of data.

Someone above said "paralyzed with fear"-- I would expand that to "with fear and uncertainty." And maybe command exhaustion. "There are no tired regiments, only tired colonels."-- Napoleon(?)

As for the Danes, I could support either the idea that they followed the Germans out, or that they found enough shipping on their own to float out. Neither event is likely to raise the morale of XI Corps HQ.

Finally, I think the idea of the British making an offer to pull them out in 2001 via the UK would make an excellent "Return to Europe" adventure for a group of PCs.

The 22nd Cavalry Army had in fact been confirmed to be in Byelorussia at the beginning of the offensive.
The 4th GTA were also confirmed to be in the Ukraine.

As of November 2000, there is little to indicated that either of these formations (particularly the 4th GTA) were short on fuel. It can be assumed though that the destruction of the US 5th ID took a lot out of them, requiring weeks, or even months to rebuild.

Throughout all the available resources, we see that there was widespread activity in the summer of 2000 all along the Poland / German front. It can be presumed that few units were not in contact to varying degrees with the enemy. It can also be presumed (or should have by the various commanders) that units pushed back from the front and relieved would have been rallied and held in reserve. Without modern recon abilities (air, satellite, etc) a commander could not know the exact state of these units and had to assume (until evidence was provided otherwise) they could be a problem for any operations.

We, as players, GMs, writers, etc know that the real state of affairs was one of utter confusion. Almost no unit retained much structural integrity, let alone offensive capability. The people on the ground however had lived, fought, and seen men die for up to five years. Even after units, cities, factory complexes and civilisation in general had been nuked almost back to the stone age, the military had remained. A relatively small (compared to a few years before) offensive wasn't likely to do what the nukes couldn't...

So, right up until physical confirmation had been received that the enemy had given up and gone home, commanders HAD to assume the war was still being fought and react accordingly, or risk their entire unit, nay, the entire war being lost.

This fact has to be at the core of all decisions a commander makes - in our current topic of conversation, the decision to stay put in a defensible location and not withdraw as per Omega.

Now, NATO in general may have felt the US leaving to be a betrayal, however they left all their heavy equipment behind, allowing the Germans to rebuild their military. The reduction of tens of thousands of hungry mouths from Germany would also have been a welcome relief for those who stayed.

It wasn't until the following year, once the situation had apparently stabilised and information was available to indicate the Pact were no longer a credible threat that the British withdrew. With the situation at home, it was also quite clear to the remains of the British government that leaving the troops in Europe was probably going to cause more problems than it solved. Bringing them home and using them there was definitely going to solve more problems than it created.

The same said UK Forces were already in and around the Hanover region of Germany. Quite a bit far from their starting points of the 2000 offensive began and not in direction that would place them in contact with enemy Pact Forces either.

A VERY different situation. The British, as far as I can work out, were Nato's reserve prior to the 2000 actions. Although there are indications they fought in the summer of 2000, they were never in danger of being cut off.
The British are also in a stronger bargaining position than the Americans too - they don't require anywhere near the same amount of fuel to get home (and as previously indicated, they can probably supply it themselves from the North Sea wells). Therefore, it's extremely likely they'd be able to take all their heavy equipment with them (not that they'd really need tanks and artillery back home, unlike the Americans with Mexican and Soviet forces on their soil).

I don't think that's out of the box at all.

Even if XI Corps couldn't make OPOMEGA's departure date, where do you think a couple of thousand English speakers are going to want to settle down permanently? Poland? or the U.K.? If I were HMG I sure as heck would be mulling over the possibility of recruiting all those Americans and Canadians.

Besides the language barrier, I've always wondered why US forces are always treated so hospitably by Poles in TW2000. Sure, the Sovs are brutal douche-nozzles, but the Americans sure did toss a lot of nukes around the Polish country-side. Even if there is such a thing as pro-NATO Polish Free Congress, I can't imagine their attitude towards Americans is going to be anything other than "Thanks for the Rads and for the mauling the Red Army... now f@*& off."

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

Living in Poland was not easy in the 80s. Eastern Europeans also had a very low standard of living during the Cold War.

I have read several books on the Estonian Forest Brothers. Only a small part of the Estonians began to resist the brutal oppression of the regime. Even food donations freedom fighters demanding a great deal of courage. This, therefore, despite the fact that Estonians have had universal military service (men knew how to use weapons) and weapons were readily available as soon as the fighting ended on Estonian soil. In real world partisan action is for those who are very brave or who have nothing to lose.

I can well imagine the Polish village. Local young men have died in the war at China in 1996 and 1997. Soviet troops committed quite serious raping & looting while they retreated through the village.

The villagers feared that scorpions will follow the snakes. To everyone's surprise, the Americans behaved like gentlemen. Freedom of speech was introduced. Communist regime absurd regulations were withdrawn. All unemployed men received well paying jobs from road building engineer unit. State owned land was distributed to local farmers. And there was something to buy from local shops.

When NATO retrieved many villagers were shot by polish state police. Nobody owned nothing anymore and kids were hungry - again. And now the russian started to use nuclear weapons! In october 1999 villagers killed their local communist officials and last ZOMO troops.

Scott,

As tempting as that might be to HM's government to poach such personnel, Canada is still an ally (and Commonwealth member), still at war and who still needs all the personnel it can get. There might be a political cost, perhaps a diplomatic break some time in the future. Granted, Canadian and British personnel have been welcome in each others' ranks in wartime due to Canada's close relationship to the "mother country". Perhaps there would be some kind of quid pro quo with British personnel stuck in Canada being taken into service in the CF (as opposed to merely being part of the Anglo-German brigade).

Your point about Poland is well-taken. This element tends to be glossed over because American PCs (and other NATO countries, particularly German) would otherwise be put into a rather difficult position. I would imagine that even in games where NATO was fighting against a communist Polish government (v1 and v2/v2.2, depending) even the considerable numbers of Poles sympathetic to Solidarność and the Free Polish government will have a complicated relationship with their "liberators".

In Raellus' T2K game (running for a few years now at least) I play a Pole who in the past was a little ambivalent about his companions. Near the start of the game, my character had a philosophical discussion with a fellow Pole about the group's commanding officer, a German, as they passed through the ruins of Nowy Huta floating down the Wisla:

[Dawid] slouched over the rail, thinking about what [Griet] said. "Well, let us say I trust Kapitan Bayer as a leader, even though as a Pole I have little love for the rest of his people. After all, we're perhaps only 50 kilometres downriver from Oświęcim... what the Hitlerites called "Auschwitz"."

"I am proud to be a Pole and I love Poland! It hurts me what's been done to our country. The North Atlantic Pact [aka NATO] soldiers say they came to liberate us, but," he gestured at the destroyed city around them, "please, let us not ask the good people of Nowy Huta if they feel "liberated" in their graves. Those that have graves, that is."

While playing this game I also came to the realisation that the people of Poland, communist and non-communist, were getting a raw deal with the "RESET" situation. There were suggestions in "Free City" about how different factions could benefit from the plans and how the players could turn a profit. Nothing about how the Poles could benefit from what is one of the few remaining Polish national treasures (so to speak) that was likely gained at the expense of the lives of many or most of the remaining Polish scientific community. At least in "Black Madonna" there is the option of benefiting the Polish people via supporting the Wojsko Ludowa ("People's Army").

Tony

Per the Survivor's Guide to the UK, the first two Divisions to come home (2nd and 5th) left Bremerhaven for England some time in December 2000.

LOL...better to have and not need than need and not have...:)

Tony, original theory was that after an agreed time assisting to stabilise the situation in the UK, the final part of the deal would be HMG providing transport to the US and Canada for any member of XI Corps who wished to go home. That said, I don't doubt HMG will offer all sorts of incentives to any individuals who choose voluntarily to stay in Britain, but ultimately anyone who wants to go home would be able to do so.

You raise a valid point about the Anglo German Brigade - perhaps once the Canadian contingent of XI Corps is home, the Canadians might be able to look at ways of getting those troops back to the UK, possibly using the same ships that brought XI Corps to North America.

Dave

Dave,

Fair enough, a certain amount of soldiers are going to want to stay either in Canada or the UK, especially of they've started families or otherwise decide it's better where they are. Being trained experienced soldiers, it would be advantageous and easy to fit them into either service (CF or the British Army) as has been a long-standing tradition. I just wanted to emphasise that such efforts would have to stop short of offering too many incentives or be seen as playing hardball to avoid any appearance of impropriety between friends and allies.

Tony

Tony,

Good point. I think we may be in general agreement here. When it comes to incentives, I think any efforts would be done subtly, and where possible deniably; I don't forsee HMG setting up "recruiting booths" to try and encourage US or Canadian troops to stay en masse. As you say, when it comes to staying behind the obvious candidates would be individual troops who have "bonded" with the locals (got themselves a British wife or girlfriend, started a family, etc).

Dave

Well one of the things is look at the start points at the beginning, both UK Corps were holding line well south of the jump off point for the 3rd German Army.

Shhhh! I was hoping nobody would actually check! (I neglected to) ;)
Even though those units left after the bulk of US forces, it was only a few thousand men and occured once the US equipment had been handed over to German units. It's also very likely that it was becoming more and more apparent no further Pact offensive would be forthcoming, at least in the next year and certainly not over winter.

Group,

Regarding the Canadian contingent of XI Corps, it looks like even if the US units did stay, most of 4CMB made it home by November 2000. So it's mostly moot, if you're using canon sources. (Not everyone does, and there's a lot wrong of goofy with canon, of course!)


July 2000:

1/22e Karlino, Poland
2/22e Karlino, Poland
1/BCR Karlino, Poland
1/CAR Karlino, Poland

According to Challenge #30 (Canada: 2000 by Legion G. McRae)

November 2000:

1/22e New Glasgow, NS
2/22e St. John's, NFLD
1/BCR Gaspé, Que
1/CAR Gaspé, Que

In the NATO vehicle guide, the above units were in "winter cantonments" as of "July 2000". By 2001, many (if not all) CF units were back in Canada, and all of 4MB was assigned to Maritime command. So it's possible that even of the American units stayed put, the 4th Canadian Mech Brigade successfully made a run for Bremerhaven and were transported back home as a part of OP OMEGA.

I'm aware that not everyone makes full use of canon (including me) in all circumstances, and the above information is all v1 (and in Challenge, to boot). I thought I would post the following to clarify the "official" story on these units.

Tony

Challenge, while excellent, isn't always absolutely 100% correct and realistic (although it should be!) given that it's written by fans on the whole. Take some of the weapon stats presented for example...
Are there any indications the Canadians still had heavy equipment after returning home? Could they have evacuated by small boat in time to catch TF35, leaving their heavy gear with XI Corp?
This is the only practical and logical way they could have made it out.

Leg,

Yeah, I'm about 80% with the Challenge articles on Canada and other areas. The author of those articles, Legion McRae, shows up every once in a while at the local miniatures wargaming club.

1/British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught's Own, aka "the Dukes") is listed as having 3 AFVs, although these could of course be anything. Their strength in Poland isn't stated so it's impossible to correlate exactly. It does, however, make sense that a smaller unit of non-Americans would break from XI Corps and make the trip via small craft than go by land.

Tony

By small craft it's doable given the available port facilities. Any vehicles they may have once back in Canada could be local acquisitions, possibly captured from Quebec units they encounted shortly after landing. They could even be lightly armoured scout cars of some type, "liberated" from a private collection.

LOL...sorry mate...:)

To be fair, I can see why you reached that conclusion - whilst it doesn't make any definitive statements, istr Going Home does suggest that any UK evacuation isn't likely to take place until sometime in 2001. Perhaps Omega serves as a catalyst for HMG to decide to stage its own evacuation. As to why only a portion of the BAOR is brought home, perhaps there was a political dimension to it, with an agreement reached between the British and German Governments that some troops will stay, or perhaps it's as simple as there was only enough shipping / fuel available to bring home two Divisions in one lift.

At the risk of debunking my own theory, it does seem like the earlier the remainder of the BAOR pulls out the much less likely it is that XI Corps would be able to make it to Bremerhaven to join them.

The second one is the correct one.

It's because the British were not willing to give up their armour and heavy equipment like the Americans. Shipping limitations meant they couldn't make just one crossing.

Agreed. Even though 2000 Divisions are much smaller than a couple of years before, there's a corresponding, or even greater reduction in available shipping due to the war. While it's conceivable the British may have been able to shift their manpower in one go, they'd have been insane to give up their hardware.

Unlike the Americans, who almost the moment they land back in the US disband the bulk of their military (those on Omega anyway), the British appear to be focused sqaurely on using their troops at home to retake the country and begin rebuilding.

That is one thing that I never figured out why the US would go through the trouble to move the troops back home and then almost as fast disband the influx of troops. Instead of putting them to good use.

It was the one thing that always bothered me about the timing of Operation Omega. I think it would of been better to have waited until spring before pulling both US and UK forces off the line in attempts to send them home.

Especially since the US is still in the middle of fighting off the Mexican invasion.

I'd say it was simply gaming decision and nothing more. It's not Twilight2000 with large numbers of big units hanging around the usual gaming locales. Disbanding them leaves more of Europe and the eastern US open for greater gaming freedom.