[chico20854]

January 21, 1998

Nothing official for today!

Officers and senior NCOs of the small French garrison of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon off Newfoundland board a light transport aircraft for a low-level flight to Sherbrooke, capital of the newly independent nation of Quebec, to help form and train the new nation's army.

US Army Europe begins a series of organizational and logistic streamlining as the first evacuation convoys from French occupied zone begin arriving. Administratively, the flow of replacement troops and equipment has almost entirely halted, requiring the losses sustained in the prior year's campaigning to be filled from resources already in theatre. The Army's support structure is in apalling condition between attacks from Soviet Spetsnaz teams and pro-Soviet partisans, the tactical nuclear exchange and the French invasion. The first evacuation convoys carry troops of the 21st Theater Army Command, who are tasked to establish a new support structure in central Germany. The command establishes a headquarters in the Kransberg Castle, a prewar US Army facility with extensive bunkers north of Frankfurt and begins planning to reoccupy a variety of Bundeswehr and US Army storage sites and ammunition dumps (all long emptied of materiel) to house the troops being withdrawn from the occupied zone. Likewise, the Air Force reassembles the remnants of 17th Air Force headquarters (its home station at Sembach Air Base was nuked in September) at the air defense control bunker under Erndtebrück, not far away from 21 TAACOM and begins coordinating the reassembly of USAF Germany.

The mobilization-only 283rd Motor Rifle Division is activated in the Crimea, formed from stay-behind troops of the 126th Motor-Rifle Division. By 1950s standards it would have been considered underequipped, with three battalions of BTR-152 APCs, a full complement of T-34/85 tanks and various Second World War and 1950s artillery pieces and FROG-5 SSMs; the division's sole anti-tank weapons are a battery of 57mm ZiS-2 anti-tank guns and less than 50 RPG-2 rocket launchers.