[chico20854]

June 21, 1998

The Albanian Army, always a reluctant ally, protests the Greek annexation of Macedonia.

Cape Cod is completely under UBF control. The USCG and naval commands in the area, as well as the 43rd MP Brigade, have their plates full dealing with multiple crises in other areas and are unable to take any action.

Headquarters, 63 (my XVI) Corps issues orders redesignating the 40th Training Division (less 1st Brigade) back to an infantry division, as well as ordering its reinforcement with a hodgepodge of armored vehicles. Accompanying these is a directive for it to proceed south to halt the Mexican invasion. Orders are also issued to the 221st MP Brigade to move south, and (unofficially) for the 91st Training Division to provide trained troops to the 40th and 196th Infantry Brigade to allow those units to move south; the 91st is also to assume the internal security and disaster relief duties that the 221st and 196th had been performing. The 91st, which has been training locally-drafted troops continuously since the nuclear exchange, has excess troops that are available for these duties, although weapons and vehicles are in short supply.

Unofficially,

Mexican troops of Brigade Ensenada cut off the narrow corridor between the San Diego Naval Base and the Marine Corps Recruit Depot to the northwest, taking heavy losses in the effort as Mexican Marines advance under heavy fire across the runway of the heavily burning Naval Air Station North Island, former home of the Pacific Fleet's helicopter force.

Brigade Mexicali and Brigade La Paz's 160th Infantry Regiment launch a frontal attack on 89th (my II) Corps' positions north of Palm Springs; the American armored force easily turns back the largely dismounted attack.

3rd Mexican Army pauses offensive operations for the day to allow its exhausted troops a chance to rest and to allow the rapidly evolving support organization time to resupply the widely-scattered units. The day also sees the arrival of the first infantry companies from Brigade Durango arriving in El Paso.

Farther east in Texas, a task force built around the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and Brigade Monclova's 47th Infantry Regiment (motorized with captured vehicles) strikes out north from the former Hondo Airfield west of San Antonio, the beginning of an effort to bypass American resistance in the city. The column is attacked by an ad-ho force of Texas Rangers and armed civilians as it enters the hilly terrain, but beats the resistance back with machinegun and mortar fire. The so-called "Coastal Column" dispatches its first scouting parties into the ruins of post-nuclear Corpus Christi.

The Mexican Navy begins mobilizing a motley collection of ships and craft, dispatching them to Cuba to pick up the Soviet "Division Cuba" and its equipment.

The Soviet 2nd Southwestern Front begins planning the next wave of tis offensive, the effort to capture Frankfurt.

After assessing the situation in Byelorussia, the Byelorussian Military District commander, Colonel General Vitaly Ragozin, directs the conversion of one of his last remaining uncommitted forces, the cadre and student body of the Minsk Higher Military-Political Combined Arms School, to the 138th Motor-Rifle Division with the incorporation of any number of stragglers as well as men from the ages of 16-55 in refugee camps in the district. Equipment is appallingly short, but since the division is intended for internal duties the shortages are not crippling.