June 6, 1998
Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,
Anti-Mexican rioting continues in Texas and California, with pitched battles raging between armed Mexicans and informal American militias in California's Imperial Valley and near Del Rio, Texas. Both sides are armed with small arms, mostly civilian hunting and semi-automatic weapons. Casualties are modest on both sides, although the civilian death toll is breathtaking, with fighting raging in crowded camps that have not been evacuated by either side, the Mexican defenders wanting the civilians to remain as cover and the nativist militias aiming to exterminate the refugees.
Arriving at Dartmoor Forest in Devon, Captain Nikolai Konev and his group of escaped POWs, desperate for food, weapons and shelter, fall upon a small caravan park, overwhelming the few lightly armed men (and two women) and seizing the trailers, the small supply of food and the men's guns.
XX US Corps, consisting of the 6th and 10th Infantry Divisions (Light) and 43rd Infantry Division (US Army Reserve) and various artillery, engineer and support units, has been pushed back into the Black Forest by the Italian Alpini of 4th Corps. Italian troops have cut the American corps off, although they are unable to make much forward progress in the dark and rough wooded terrain.
Specialist Cutler is beaten by his Soviet counterparts and forced to take them to the cellar where he was hiding throughout the battle. The motor-riflemen take the remaining supplies and Cutler's rucksack, sleeping bag and other personal gear and other items of value from the building, then turn him over to the rear detachment for processing as a prisoner of war.
RCAF CF-18s appear in the skies overhead, operating from their new location at the Dortmund civilian airport. American F/A-18s of the Warlords of VMFA-451, assigned to support II MEF, score a lucrative air-to-air kill when a flight of four fighter-bombers races east, intercepting and shooting down a Soviet AN-26RT ELINT aircraft that was loitering over Poland collecting intelligence on NATO positions along the Oder River.
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I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...
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