[chico20854]

March 9, 1998

The return of the 101st Air Assault Division's helicopters to action in Iran presents an opportunity for the 6th Air Cavalry Combat Brigade to once again withdraw to Saudi Arabia for rest and long-overdue maintenance.

The 25th Infantry Division (Light) is reformed in Korea with fewer than 1000 surviving personnel. The "Tropical Lightning" Division had been hit by six Soviet tactical nuclear weapons in October before being overrun.

Unofficially,

As fuel supplies, food and spares dwindle, the staff of the Gulfwind oilfield off Brownsville, Texas begin shutting the platforms, subsea installations and pipelines down. They take care to ensure that the facilities are prepared as possible to survive the harshest weather the Gulf of Mexico can inflict (all offshore facilities have a long-standing hurricane plan) and hopefully last an extended period of abandonment. Similar activities are underway in dozens of other oil fields between the Mexican border and Mobile, Alabama.

In Fairbanks, Alaska, fierce combat continues along the eastern end of the University of Alaska campus as the Soviet defenders fight with a ferocity their forefathers in Stalingrad would have been proud of.

Recognizing the excellent performance of its service as part of 21st Army in southern Germany in the 1997 campaign, the commander of the Western TVD raises the 48th Motor Rifle Division to a Guards unit.

Also in southern Germany, military authorities, working alongside the Austrian government in exile, gather stragglers and isolated units of the Austrian Bundesheer together into a single, unified formation. The combined force is given the title of the Bundesheer's only prewar division, the 1st Panzergrenadier, and assigned to the German IV Korps in southern Germany. The Austrians retain a roughly regiment-sized force to guard the remaining government in the extreme western province of Vorarlberg, nestled between Lake Constance and Switzerland and unconquered by the overstretched Italians.