[chico20854]

February 8, 1998

Quebecois forces abandon Sherbrooke, relocating their capital north to Quebec City as Canadian troops from New Brunswick approach.

In the US, the nationwide relocation effort is abandoned as being wasteful of fuel. In retorspect, its main effect has been to create large bands of homeless wandering throughout the country.

The Soviet ballistic missile submarine Barrikada rendezvouses with a submarine resupply vessel in the north Atlantic. The ship brings orders to the submarine that it is to remain on station in the North Atlantic until 15 March, then return home.

Unofficially,

The 1st Battalion, 30th Marines closes on the port of Wilminton, North Carolina and secures the port area while loading its paltry amount of equipment aboard the transports Minnesota Freedom and the Maltese-flagged Clipper Santos.

With the front in Central Europe growing calm and teams getting increasingly exhausted and low on supplies, the Headquarters, 20th Special Forces Group issues a recall order for teams that are able and willing to attempt the journey to the unit's new headquarters in Fürstenberg, East Germany (the prewar Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Army headquarters complex).

In central Jugslavia the 158th Motor-Rifle Division finds itself in an increasingly untenable position. The division's regiments are strung out along the road and rail route between the Sava River and Sarajevo, holding a series of isolated outposts along the bottom of the Bosna River Valley, with the division headquarters in the steel mill of the Bosnian town of Zenica. The situation outside the small garrisons grows increasingly desperate as Jugoslav partisans and bandits begin to attack traffic along the route and the Soviet bases as well. The commanding general’s requests for aerial resupply are laughed off and the division’s 151st Tank Regiment, “holding” Sarajevo, finds itself under siege in the city’s downtown, subject to murderous enemy fire from the high ground overlooking the city.