[chico20854]

May 31, 1998

Another day with nothing in canon. Unofficially,

42nd Infantry Division deserter Nathan Snyder has found himself a girlfriend within the Hells Own marauder gang in New York - the gang's informal leader's little sister.

In Lodz Poland, Professor Kristof Cikowski makes a presentation of his idea to a joint committee of other electrical engineering professors and the university's Communist Party leadership. They view his concept skeptically and are reluctant to allocate scarce resources to his project, but reluctantly authorize him and two graduate students to be exempt from mandatory civil works duties, which normally consume over 20 hours of labor each week, and permit him to scavenge the campus for electronic materials and parts that may be useful in his project.

North of Ansbach, Germany the lead regiments of the 19th Guards and 20th Tank Divisions link up, cutting off most of the American 1st and 36th Infantry Divisions in the town. Specialist Cutler's fire team leader and squad leader are killed by a Soviet mortar barrage, leaving him unsupervised. He retreats to the safety of the cellar and the welcoming tap of the keg it shelters. Responding to the envelopment, V US Corps begins movement south from its winter quarters to the northwest around Fulda. 16th Army rushes troops forward to reinforce the encircling force, denying the commander of the 19th Guards' 99th Reconnaissance Battalion's request to pursue the retreating American support elements. The Soviet force is becoming increasingly constrained by supply shortages, however, with artillery commanders having to ration rounds and the deputy commander for the rear scouring the territory they are occupying for German tank trucks (military or civilian) to augment the Army's to move fuel to forward troops.

To the west of Ansbach, 41st Army and the Italian 3 Corps have captured the town of Esslingen, outside Stuttgart.

The American cruiser USS Virginia departs Stanley in the Falklands Islands, its fresh water tanks full and with a slightly better rested and fed crew. The weather is awful as the full South Atlantic Winter buffets the region.

American advisors detached from the 101st Air Assault Division assist newly-trained Iranian troops of the 9th Airmobile Brigade in their first offensive operation. The IPA force makes a dawn air assault from a collection of UH-1s and various other variants (two-engine Bell 212s and four-rotor Bell 412s, from a variety of manufacturers) on a marauder stronghold in the mountains northeast of Bushehr. The raid is successful, with light Iranian casualties and nearly half the sleeping bandit force captured alive.