[chico20854]

April 1, 1998

Nothing official for today. Unofficially,

Farmers in Nebraska are dismayed by the ground conditions. As the normal planting season begins, the soil is too cold and dry for the process to begin, and every day brings added pressure from the tens of thousands of evacuees on their land to eat the carefully husbanded seed that should be on its way into the ground.

16th Army, on occupation duty in southern Germany, assigns the 24 T-62 tanks and 100 of the new replacements that arrived on a recent train from the USSR, to the 19th Guards Tank Division, bringing it up to 80 tanks and 8,500 men.

The last US Army industrial equipment - backup generators, machine tools and building-mounted cranes - arrives in central Germany north of Frankfurt, from the Franco-Belgian occupied zone. The few remaining US Army troops and civilian employees in the zone are now involved with collecting "engineer materials" (mostly fencing, barbed wire, pipe and copper wire) from the last of dozens of kasernes, depots and stations located in the zone. Informally, they are also trying to eat as much of the French-supplied food as possible, hoping to return to Germany with several pounds of calories stored.

The crew of the Second World War-vintage American freighter Occidental Victory, which has been in harbor in Portland, Oregon since concluding a voyage from Korea, abandons the ship as the last of the food in the ship's lockers runs out.

The mobilization-only 106th Motor-Rifle (my 232nd Rear Area Protection) Division is ordered to prepare for movement to the front in Austria from its home station in west-central Ukraine, where it has been performing anti-partisan duties. The division commander begins an effort to gather (the locals would characterize it as horde) food, fuel and transport in preparation, as well as inducting by force a number of teenage boys and men in their 40s, depriving local collective farms of badly-needed workers

The transfer of USAF air assets to Kenya from Europe and the Mediterranean has largely been completed despite the poor weather in Africa. To provide command and control of the airlift squadrons, two new commands are stood up - the 139th and 164th Tactical Airlift Groups. Assurances are received that additional personnel to stand these commands up will be aboard the long-delayed reinforcement convoy.