[Olefin]

March 26, 2001

California

The 177th Brigade attacks Mexican marauder forces near Victorville as the 40th Infantry, after clearing out Lancaster, continues its attack into Palmdale. Mexican Regular Army troops in the area are giving ground, as they withdraw to positions in the mountains north of Los Angeles.

A reorganization of forces in California begins as the 89th Corps is folded into the 63rd Corps, with its supply and headquarters troops being integrated to free up men for frontline duty. The 91st Infantry Division is integrated into the 46th Infantry Division along with militia reinforcements to bring the 46th up to 2000 men. The 49th Military Police Brigade and the 221st Military Police Brigade are joined together into the new 106th Infantry Division, along with some 900 militia, to bring it up to 2500 men, with the two Brigades remaining as seperate parts of the new division. Large scale preparations are being made for an offensive against the Mexicans and recruitment and training efforts in California are beginning to pay dividends to bring US forces back to strenth.

Arizona/New Mexico

In Arizona and New Mexico, preparations have begun to retake the areas lost to the Mexicans.

In Arizona, the 158th Infantry Regiment is reactivated in Flagstaff, Arizona. Its 600 men include militia, Battery Yuma, a battery of three prototype 155mm howitzers that were at Yuma Proving Grounds and a sprinkling of police, National Guardsmen and Border Guards. Its only armored vehicles are four modified bank armored cars and a single M50 Ontos from a civilian collector with two 106mm recoilless rifles added to it. Two of its four infantry companies are horse soliders.

In New Mexico, the 200th Infantry Brigade has been formed from the surviving members of the National Guard, reinforced by some 500 militia from Santa Fe. It has 1500 men, along with the SCV Battery of the 202nd Field Artillery (three 105mm, one 155mm) and what is left of the 7-200 ADA Battalion (five Chaparral, eleven Duster). Four of its companies are cavalry.

It is deployed just north of what remains of Albuquerque, which was destroyed when Kirtland Air Force Base was hit by an 800 kiloton surface burst during the TDM. It ruins have since cooled down sufficiently to move thru its ruins.. That strike and its after effects served to help stop the Mexican invasion from getting to Santa Fe in 1998 as the prevailing winds dropped radiation south and southeast of Albuquerque, preventing the Mexicans from crossing that area due to the high residual radiation at the time.

Texas

The 43rd enters McAllen after dispersing a group of Constitucionales that had taken over the town from the 50 Brigada Tampica infantry that were left in town. The commander issues a proclamation that promises amnesty to any who worked for the Mexicans who were American citizens and that as long as they will not take up arms that any refugees can stay for now. In the north elements of the 1st encounter Bandera Rodriguez near Kingsville. They dig in and wait for the rest of the 1st to join them.

Nuclear attack on Romanian oil facilities (from the end of our Med Cruise campaign game)

Earlier in the war the US had used smaller nuclear air bursts to try to keep civilian casualties down among their allies, the Romanians, which had resulted in the survival of some of the Ploesti oilfields and refineries. This time MilGov isn’t concerned about civilian casualties, instead they want to knock Ploesti out once and for all.

The three Tomahawks launched by the Corpus Christi arrive on target, all detonating one after the other, spread out to achieve maximum destruction of the surviving refineries and oil fields around Ploesti, completely destroying them along with 42nd Guards Tank Division and the 97th Motorized Rifle Division. The only survivors of the two divisions are a detachment of some 180 men from the 42nd along with four tanks in Constanta.

The three 150 kiloton bursts, detonated only 100 feet off the ground, combined with the sustained winds of 20 mph from the north that day, send a huge cloud of debris, dirt and burning oil downwind, full of radioactive fallout. The fallout plumes from the three blasts extend into Bulgaria, with Bucharest covered in fallout of over 10 rads per hour.

Hundreds of thousands of Romanians and Bulgarians die or are sickened by the fallout, which hits without warning due to the breakdown of communications in the area caused by the war. The attack devastates both countries, with large areas of the countryside poisoned by fallout for years to come.

For the Soviets the attack is a catastrophe. The destruction of the Ploesti oil fields means the end of any more gasoline, diesel or aviation gas for their forces in Eastern Europe, crippling any further operations there. For their forces in the path of the cloud, their filters for their NBC equipment either long ago used or sold on the black market, the effects are devastating.

Except for 80 men of the 32nd Air Assault Brigade, who escape in their helicopters, every man of the 14th Tank Division and the 32nd Air Assault Brigade sickens and dies from radiation poisoning over the next few days. The Soviet forces that remain are spread out, with several low on fuel. In the coming days Romanian partisans, reinforced by the weapons recently received from the Americans, begin to attack all those units in a bid to finally reclaim what is left of their country.