[chico20854]

June 14, 1998

Nothing in canon for today. Unofficially,

The challenges facing the Joint Chiefs expand dramatically today as the Soviet forces in British Columbia launch their long-feared spring offensive, using carefully husbanded stocks of supplies and ammunition which has trickled in on small ships from home over the prior several months and been laboriously transported to the front. With allied Canadian units hobbled by lack of supplies (as a result of Alberta's border closure), the main force resisting the attack is the American 47th Infantry Division. The Soviets open the attack with a trio of artillery-delivered tactical nuclear strikes which spook the front-line troops, who retreat and disperse to avoid becoming the next recipients of armageddon.

A wave of patriotism accompanies the Mexican invasion of the US and thousands of men (and more than a few women) flock to military bases around the country, eager to volunteer to fight the gringos.

As the fourth day of combat along the border begins, Mexican commanders begin to realize the challenges that an army organized for internal security and home defense duties faces when engaged in expeditionary warfare - logistics. The supplies of food, fuel and ammunition that Mexican Army units carried with them when they crossed the American border have been exhausted, and the hastily organized and mobilized brigades have no support battalions, and the respective Army headquarters are having a difficult time coordinating combat operations of units spread out over hundreds of miles, let alone organizing resupply convoys. Staffers at the Ministry of National Defense in Mexico City are pushing stocks from depots around the country north by rail, but the forward combat formations have very limited numbers of trucks (averaging a 50-truck company, with aged 2 1/2- and 5-ton trucks, all cargo variants, per Army) to try to move supplies forward from hastily organized railheads.

The Mexican Army makes little progress during the day. The fighting in San Diego continues, with Mexican units moving north through the city to link up with the paratroops at Miramar Naval Air Station and closing off escape routes for American defenders all around the harbor. In El Paso, the School Brigade and its German allied personnel turn back a dawn attack by the Ciudad Juarez Brigade, while the Torres Cavalry Brigade makes some progress moving north along the city's western outskirts. The fighting in Brownsville is bogged down by fierce resistance as well, while overhead the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing's F-16s fly their first sorties against the Mexicans.

The US Navy Landing Ship Tank Barbour County arrives in Kokura, Japan to pick up the cargo of trucks and the handful of armored vehicles that were aboard the mine-damaged Rhode Island Freedom, which has been abandoned in the Japanese city's harbor.

Advance positions of the German X Corps, manned by the (former East-German) border guards of the 7th GrenzJaeger Division, engage lead elements of the Soviet 30th Guards Motor-Rifle Division as the Soviets advance on Heidelberg. Italian mechanized troops of the Legnano Mechanized Brigade push past scattered territorial resistance in Pforzheim, rushing on the Karlsruhe on the Rhine.

To the east, V US Corps and II British Corps have taken up posiitions along the northern bank of the Main River, taking advantage of the defensive value of that major water barrier and with knowledge that Pact engineer troops are very short on assault bridging assets after the 1997 campaign. The Hungarian II Corps has occupied Bamberg; security troops go house to house searching for "collaborators" who worked for the US Army in the decades that the town hosted 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division. The Hungarians, however, seem most interested in obtaining control of the wealth that the Americans brought the community, and the Corps commander isssues a decree that nothing is to removed from the US Arrmy base without his express permission, pushing the looting out into the town.

The Czech 1st Army has been less successful in advancing through rough terrain north of Bayreuth, meeting continued fierce resistance from the German 24th PanzerGrenadier Division.

The remnants of the Soviet 1048th Assault Gun Regiment, a SU-130 formation that was nearly annihilated in the 1997 campaign that has been serving as the defense force for the Baltic Front commander's villa in northwestern Poland, receives unexpected reinforcements - a detachment of 20 Second World War-era ISU-152 heavy assault guns, dropped off from tank transporters along with 125 teenagers from Estonia armed with AKMs and a few truckloads of ammunition and fuel for the behemoths.

The American aircraft carrier USS John F Kennedy is damaged by an Italian mine in the Mediterranean. This is the second time the ship has sustained serious damage, having been hit by a Soviet mine in the first days of the war. This blast renders one of the ship's four propeller shafts inoperable. Nonetheless, the carrier and its remaining escorts move into the Adriatic Sea in an effort to hamper Italian supply shipments along the coast and to its occupation forces in Jugoslavia.