[chico20854]

June 19, 1998

The remnants of the Greek government/Army (unofficially, in actuality, a cabal of leftist field-grade officers that asserted control of the military in the chaotic last weeks of 1997, in no small part due to the intervention of a KGB hit team that eliminated various rightist or centrist generals and politicians) issues a declaration directly annexing the Jugoslav republic of Macedonia.

The 106th Guards Air Assault Division is ordered to the Ryazan area from its reserve positions near Grodno, Byelorussia.

Unofficially,

In the wake of the evacuation of the military facilities in San Diego literally thousands of seamen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen are brought to the San Francisco Bay Area. The fighting for control of the city's military bases continues, with troops from Brigade La Paz arriving on the front lines. Elsewhere in the city the population (many of which returned home over the winter, realizing life in an unpowered home may be preferable to that in a desert refugee camp) is suffering from lack of water and widespread fires that are burning unchecked. The final navy combatants and auxiliaries depart the harbor, taking minor damage from long-range Mexican small arms fire and taking the last noncombatants out of the perimeter.

East of San Diego the Mexican drive is encountering its first serious resistance as forward patrols of Brigade Mexicali clash with the 177th Armored Brigade's forward reconnaissance screen. The American commander has ordered his troops to maintain an active mobile defense while 89 (my II) Corps tries to scrape together enough ammunition and fuel for 1st Brigade, 4th Armored Division to join his command. The Mexican commander is able to begin shifting additional troops to face the Fort Irwin Contingent as Brigade Hermosillo begins arriving in the area and taking over the roadblocks on Interstate 8.

The Mexican 3rd Army, in the Battle of El Paso, is nearing a crisis. While a trickle of supplies is beginning to arrive, the School Brigade and its allied and Texas State Guard augmentees have fought Brigade Ciudad Juarez to a halt and, the Army commander, General de división Jose Gonzalez, fears that his command is vulnerable to an American counterattack if reinforcements do not arrive. (He is unaware of the dire situation on the cantonment area of Fort Bliss, where ammunition, food and fuel are all reaching critically low levels).

With Brownsville behind them, the so-called Mexican "Coastal Column" makes progress moving north, with parallel columns on highways 77 and 281 and forward detachment capturing the Kingsville Naval Air Station. The airfield is deserted, the aircraft having been flown off over a week ago and the garrison evacuated, taking everything of value along or burning what they couldn't carry. Many ranchers in the area are fleeing ahead of the Mexican Army, although others remain and defend their land. (These encounters rarely end well for the outnumbered and outgunned Texans). Some of this resistance is out of patriotism; for others it is a matter of survival, as the Mexican Army and refugees both are slaughtering their livestock at an alarming rate in order to survive.

South of San Antonio, skirmishing continues between Mexican Army and US Air Force contingents, the Mexican 4th Army rushing additional formations north as quickly as the ragtag transportation net can feed them.

RainbowSix reports that Faisel Khan, an immigrant to Leicester that in the years prior to the war had been a very successful businessman and charitable benefactor, has become the city's de-facto leader. This feat is not out of any desire to become a leader but instead the natural evolution that occurred as Leicester threatened to fall apart and descend into chaos and anarchy. Khan finds himself thrust to the forefront, bringing calm first to the Asian community and then to the city in general.

An odd truce reigns along the Rhine River between the German-Italian lines south of Heidelberg and the American-Italian lines opposite Strasbourg. The French Army has been maintaining active but low-key patrolling in the so-called "Dead Zone" opposite French territory. Those patrols are now running into Soviet-allied Italian troops; French commanders issue orders identical to those on the Italian border in southeaster France: correct relations, no assistance, and minimal cooperation, oriented towards deconfliction of space in an attempt to avoid NATO accusations of re-entering the conflict on the Pact side, which would raise the possibility of NATO nuclear retaliation.

The isolated guns of the 1048th Assault Gun Regiment are circled together in the rear of the US Marine's 6th Marine Regiment, low on fuel and ammunition, fight tank-hunting teams. The designated exploitation force that is supposed to advance through the hole in the lines the guns blasted, the 3rd Guards Motor-Rifle Division, remains largely immobile, its officers unable to motivate their troops to leave the safety of the forward trenches to advance on the American positions.