[chico20854]

July 3, 1997

A Canadian battle group raised for service in Korea has its departure cancelled and, renamed Northern Command, is sent to Yukon.

The last USAF troops leave Point Salines Airport in Grenada.

Unofficially,

XV Corps Headquarters completes its command post exercise at Ft Leavenworth, Kansas and is declared ready for deployment.

A militiaman near Nogales, Arizona opens fire on a group of Mexican immigrants fleeing north.

The second regiment from the 5th Marine Division (the 27th Marines) arrives at Twentynine Palms, California to join its sister regiment the 26th in regiment-level pre-deployment exercises. The troops practice working in coordination with artillery, tanks and close-support aircraft from VMFAT-101, the F/A-18 readiness squadron at Air Station El Toro.

Soviet Arctic troops advancing across the Bering Strait consolidate their positions on the coast, establishing Nome as their headquarters and logistical hub, taking advantage of the port and airport facilities.

South Korean troops and American Marines of I MEB close on the North Korean coastal city of Hamhung, North Korea's third largest city and a major industrial center and transportation hub.

The Commander of 2nd Western Front reports that his troops holding the city of Brest have less than one days' supply remaining and that the rail lines leading to his front’s rear area have been cut; reinforcing divisions promised him are gathering near Smolensk but immobile while awaiting trucks to bring forward supplies of fuel for their hodgepodge collection of wheeled vehicles and to move the armored vehicles to the front.

The German III Korps reports that the town and naval base of Hel are finally under control, over a month after the start of the Battle of the Hel Peninsula.

In besieged Warsaw, troops of the American 40th Infantry Division (California National Guard) clear the last defenders from the now ruined terminal of Warsaw International Airport. ZOMO Captain Czarny's depleted company is assigned a reserve position 500m behind the front line in the Ursus Tractor Factory; he spends much of the day scavenging weapons and equipment from the dead and wounded to give his teenage recruits.

The last NATO troops (from the Norwegian Vestoppland Infanteri Regiment, part of 6th Brigade that had fought throughout the entire campaign) leave Soviet territory on the Kola Peninsula.

A GRU detachment arrives at Comiso Air Base, Sicily to tour the former USAF Ground Launched Cruise Missile facility. The team will brief Spetsnaz teams on the detailed layout of the facility, which closely resembles similar ones in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany.

A fire rages through the Kama River Truck Plant's diesel engine manufacturing facility. The plant is the Soviet Union's largest truck plant.

A Soviet raider, a converted Cuban SD-14 type freighter, sinks the Panamanian-flag (but US-owned) tanker Texaco Star as it transits the Caribbean from Venezuela to the US Gulf Coast.

The Egyptian government completes an award of a contract to clear the Suez Canal of mines and sunken ship. The winning bid goes to a company led by a trio of retired generals that has little experience in large projects, has only a dozen employees (nearly all relatives of the generals) and until receiving the first payment under the contract, virtually no money to mobilize men and equipment to do the job.

Low-level skirmishing break out along the entire length of the Indian-Pakistani border as both nations rush troops to the front. Islamist tribal militias in northwestern Pakistan fill the vacuum left by the withdrawal of Army troops.