[Legbreaker]

The 8th really shouldn't be where they are. In my opinion they should have stopped a few hundred kilometres earlier and avoided entanglement in the Baltic states.

As it stands, they are very unlikely to make it back to friendly lines any time soon. There's a hell of a lot of enemy held ground behind them and a lot of highly mobile (for 2000-01) cavalry in the way. There's also a general migration of Soviet deserters, etc moving back through the area in an attempt to reach home - these may not be a direct threat to the 8th as long as it maintains it's integrity, but the odd raid by marauders will happen which will slowly bleed the 8th of fuel, ammo and other supplies.

Even though the 8th are in a bad position, they do have a relatively friendly Pact unit nearby. The locals are also generally friendly but that's probably more because the Americans are seen as a lesser evil than the Soviets.

The best approach for the 8ths commander is to make friends with as many people as he can, allying if possible with one of the rebelling Pact units and riding out winter in better terrain than it is at the end of Summer 2000.

Moving back across country is as mentioned previously, near impossible so the only real hope is for a significant amount of shipping to be found and fuelled to enable them to be sealifted out. This is not going to be very easy to accomplish and may not be possible for a year or three.