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III Corps in the Mid-Atlantic

III Corps, consisting of the 1st Cavalry Brigade, 2nd Armored Brigade, 4th Infantry Brigade, 304th Civil Affairs Brigade and 8th Naval Construction Regiment, returned from Europe to the Mid-Atlantic States. The Corps HQ, along with CINCEUR, his headquarters and III Corps' 2nd Armored and 4th Infantry Brigades arrived in the Hampton Roads area in November 2000 and were appalled at what they found. CINCLANT and his entire command were living in an area that was still radioactive from the Soviet nuclear attacks on the area (a total of 16 warheads yielding 4 MT scattered from Camp Peary in the west to Norfolk in the east) and all were slowly dying of radiation sickness. CINCLANT had moved his command to the Little Creek amphibious base and nearby Oceana Naval Air Station and Fort Story, but the damage had already been done. Food and fuel were critically short when CINCEUR and his command arrived, and CINCLANT's medical condition was so poor that the enclave was often effectively leaderless. CINCLANT's subordinate officers were suffering from the same dire medical conditions, leaving none fit to take command in CINCLANT's stead. Worse than the physical illness in CINCLANT's command, however, was the mental defeat and lack of hope displayed by the sailors, soldiers and airmen in the Hampton Roads enclave - many of whom seemed to exist each day solely to better prepare to die. Their low morale and hopelessness threatened to spread to the European veterans, all of whom were shocked and depressed by the condition of their homeland for which they had fought and strove to return to through all the hard battles across Europe.

Elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic region, the 78th Infantry Division, U.S. Coast Guard's Cape May station and New Jersey state government's enclave in southern New Jersey was reinforced by the returning 1st Cavalry Brigade and some of the Task Force 34 vessels - the flagship USS John Hancock and three nuclear powered attack submarines, the USS Helena, USS Louisville and USS Atlanta, which anchored south of New York City at the U.S. Naval Weapons Station Earle. Upon arrival, the 1st Cavalry Brigade assumed security responsibilities from 1st Brigade, 78th Infantry Division, which was able to return to its normal wartime mission of conducting initial entry training (basic combat and advanced individual training) for new draftees, conscripted from the schools, refugee camps and checkpoints of the South Jersey enclave. The new draftees were assigned to other units of the 78th to bring it back to full strength, with subsequent trainees to fill other units up. In addition to the 1st Brigade, 78th Infantry Division, Fort Dix also contained the U.S. Military Academy (West Point), which conducted a two-year program focusing on civil engineering. The troopers of the 1st Cavalry, in turn, patrolled the northern border of the enclave, New Jersey Route 33, which had been transformed into a fortified zone with wide fields of fire and protective walls made of abandoned cars.

The crewmen of the submarines augmented the civilian nuclear workers who operated the Oyster Creek plant and provided a major portion of the reactor technicians who restarted the reactors of the Hope Creek/Salem power plant on the Delaware River in March 2001. In addition, the nuclear technicians established a nuclear reactor and power plant training school at Oyster Creek to supply areas under Milgov control with safe, trained and somewhat experienced plant operators to assist in the nationwide recovery effort. Soldiers of the enclave also worked on repairing damage suffered during the war and conducting company-level training. Sailors from the submarines' departments other than engineering were assigned technical jobs ashore commensurate with their individual skills. Electricians, for example, were assigned to the 21st Naval Mobile Construction (SeeBee) Battalion to rewire EMP-damaged electrical systems, while torpedo maintainers repaired small engines, and the unluckiest (and least skilled) sailors were assigned to stand guard on the anchored submarines and drive wagons between farms, factories and Milgov-controlled warehouses.

The assignment was a good one for both the soldiers and sailors that were sent to the New Jersey enclave. Southern New Jersey, sealed by the Pine Barrens and the line of military bases across the state to the north and the Delaware River to the west, had not received the refugee flow from the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas that prewar planners had feared. The availability of electrical power from the Oyster Bay power plant (which had been shut down during the nuclear exchange as a precaution but restarted in late spring 1998), the agricultural surplus from South Jersey farms, and the security provided by the state and federal armed forces meant that life in the New Jersey enclave in the winter of 2000-2001 was much more comfortable than almost anywhere else in North America.

Back in Norfolk, tensions between CINCEUR and CINCLANT were building. Milgov wanted the two commands and staffs to combine and supervise the operations of First, Fifth and Seventh Armies in a coordinated manner. When the task of joining staffs arose, CINCLANT, claiming superior local knowledge, insisted that "his people" be placed in all the senior positions, with a deputy from EURCOM. EURCOM, looking at the sad state of Milgov operations in the eastern U.S. and the poor physical and mental condition of the CINCLANT staff, thought that some fresh thinking and eager hands would be able to solve some of the vexing problems that the nation faced, and that the CINCLANT staff could use the rest to see to their health. Discussions over the winter gradually became more heated (not only over the staff assignments) and reached a head in late February 2001. A confrontation occurred between CONCLANT and CINCEUR during the planning session for the March 1, 2001 JCS conference call and the military police were called in. CINCLANT directed the MP's to arrest CINCEUR for insubordination, and the MP's (one of the few organizations which had successfully integrated) declined, citing a lack of clear evidence of a crime. While CINCLANT raged, CINCEUR left the headquarters building, went to the docks and boarded one of the TF 34 vessels still in Norfolk. He sailed to Cape May, and within a week the remaining European veterans (and the MPs from CINCLANT) had also departed the Norfolk enclave and moved to New Jersey, the last ship being cursed personally by CINCLANT as the final passengers boarded.

In Colorado Springs General Cummings was faced with the question of what to do with his squabbling subordinates. Practically, there was little he could do to support or punish subordinate commanders other than to alter the amount of supplies coming from CENTCOM, which in the winter of 2000-2001 was almost nothing. Therefore, he took the most practical course of action and redefined the commands and areas of responsibility of CINCLANT and CINCEUR. CINCEUR retained command over III, V and VII Corps, TF 34 and the naval vessels evacuated from Europe. He also was given command of 1st and 5th Armies and the naval forces based in Mobile and the New Jersey enclave. CINCLANT retained command of all forces in the Norfolk enclave. CINCEUR was responsible for the area north of the Potomac River/mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and the area west of the Appalachians (starting at the remains of Pensacola). CINCLANT retained responsibility for restoring order to Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. While not formally censuring CINCLANT, General Cummings instead gave CINCLANT an impossible job - to restore Milgov control to an area rife with Civgov and New America supporters with a minuscule amount of troops and equipment to do so. General Cummings had in other cases simply withdrawn support from subordinates who refused to follow orders, as the commander of the Coast Guard First District had done. As time went on the situations of these orphan commands became direr until they either ceased to exist as organized military units or began to follow the orders emanating from Colorado Springs.

With the coming of spring in South Jersey, CINCEUR was faced with the problem of a larger force to feed than he had planned. The added electrical power from the Hope Creek/Salem nuclear power plants was a boon to the enclave, but would not solve the food problem his Reconstruction Tsar predicted. As a consequence, CINCEUR decided to regain control of the fertile agricultural area of the Delmarva Peninsula. The 2nd Armored Brigade was ferried across the mouth of the Delaware River, using the pre-war Cape May ferries, to southern Delaware. Simultaneously, the 1st Battalion (Infantry) of the 4th Infantry Division was ferried into the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, where one rifle company secured each of the four bridges and began patrolling the local areas along the south bank of the canal and inland. Over the next two months the remainder of the 4th Infantry Brigade was ferried across and, in cooperation with the 2nd Armored Brigade, had swept as far south as U.S. Highway 50. Planting was started within the area swept by Milgov, and patrols extended farther south, only occasionally encountering resistance from bandits or locals unhappy to see the government return or fearful of seizure of their land or crops. (In many cases, local farmer's last interaction with the government was when FEMA forced farmers to hand over crops to and host families fleeing from Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia.) While III Corps commander wanted to further extend his area of control on the Delmarva Peninsula he did not yet have sufficient forces to adequately patrol the entire area. The town of Salisbury, Maryland had hosted tens of thousands of refugees from Baltimore and Washington, DC in its many hotels and in the dormitories of Salisbury State University. Soon their welcome wore out and the refugees were forced to seize food from the local farmers by force. A vicious gang, formed by hard-core inner-city gang members, soon became the only protectors of the refugees and the only force strong enough to seize the food needed them. Their brutal reign, in which the farmers were enslaved to provide a steady food supply, was only interrupted by periodic raids against or by rival gangs operating from the pre-war resort towns of Rehobeth and Bethany, Delaware and Ocean City, Maryland, which also had been used to relocate refugees from the Washington and Baltimore area. Milgov was unable to free the Eisenhower battle group and stockpiles of fuel and munitions to III Corps until after the fall harvest, and the gangs were too strong to take on without air support. In addition, the III Corps commander was tasked to carry out a delicate but special mission.

Colorado Springs wanted III Corps to investigate the recovery of the Federal Reserve's gold stockpile from New York and the related actions of a renegade Special Operations force under the command of the wealthy and mad Major Anthony Po. One of the scandals that had erupted in Norfolk during the winter was the discovery of the mass murders, torture and other crimes committed by the special operations force and the complicity of CINCLANT's special operations command in not halting or even reporting those crimes. Major Po was declared a renegade and wanted criminal and a price was placed on his head. Given the state of the area north of the New Jersey enclave and the strength of Major Po's force, direct military action was not initiated against him; instead independent bounty hunters were sent after him and DIA teams were tasked, among other things, to locate him so an air strike could be called in on his position. Finally, what limited support Major Po and his command had been receiving from Milgov was stopped, although suspicions remained that elements of CINCLANT's J-2 (Intelligence) staff continued covert support for Major Po and possibly even warned him of operations against him.

Major Po's command split upon word of Milgov's declaration. A little more than half of the group, under the command of Major Po's XO, LtCdr Tadeusz Jones, deserted the major and returned to Milgov lines outside Lakehurst Naval Air Station. After several bloody encounters between the remnant's of Po's command, the renegade major was forced to flee west towards Scranton, Pennsylvania, pursued by an A-team from 3rd Company, 10th Special Forces Group, a lone assassin from the CIA and two separate teams of independent pursuers. He evaded his pursuers during a severe thunderstorm and arrived at one of his family's country residences in the Adirondacks. Having lost nearly all his gear in the evasion effort, he was almost defenseless when he encountered a patrol from the refugee camp that had been set up on his family's land (with their consent) while he was overseas. During the subsequent altercation (which saw Major Po kill three militiamen in hand-to-hand combat) he was shot and killed by a young refugee girl named Britney Spears. When the .30-06 Springfield went off in her hands, Miss Spears was heard to remark "Oops! I did it again!" (This was Miss Spear's second kill).

Commander Jones' detachment reported that Major Po had discovered the location of the gold reserves but had not recovered them. The commander of the 78th Division (now reporting to III Corps) advised CINCEUR of the difficulties of operating in Manhattan (as one of the survivors of the 78th's evacuation in 1998) and the massive logistics challenge involved with recovering nearly 80 tons of gold, even if the various armed factions operating in New York could be dealt with. With the knowledge that nobody else was capable of recovering the gold and that Major Po's team had eliminated the only people in New York that knew of the gold's location, III Corps decided to defer the recovery effort.

III Corps also expanded a short distance north in New Jersey with the coming of spring 2001. In the east, the 1st Cavalry Brigade widened the safe corridor between the Route 33 line and the Naval Weapons Station Earl annex on Lower New York Bay, where the larger units of the TF 34 fleet were anchored. In the west, the troopers of the 1st Cav occupied the town of Princeton and the university. In September 2001 classes resumed at Princeton with the integration of the surviving faculties of Princeton, Rutgers, West Point, the US Naval Academy and other colleges and universities in New Jersey. The Combined Corps of Cadets (the combined West Point and Naval Academy student formation) moved to Princeton from Fort Dix and provided additional security to the town's State Defense Force detachment. The curriculum initially was limited - engineering, education, and the sciences, with the entire Combined Corps of Cadets enrolled in civil, mechanical or electrical engineering.

The Physics Department at Princeton, however, performed an absolutely revolutionary task - supporting the work of the Russian defector scientists, Doctors Alexi and Tanya Popovich, in their effort to complete development of a nuclear fusion reactor, simple to construct with relatively low technology, using a room-temperature superconductor that is also easily made under primitive conditions. Milgov assigned a 2-star general to coordinate Milgov's efforts to support the Popovich's efforts (under the code name the Philadelphia Engineer Support Detachment or Philadelphia Project, in tribute to the Manhattan Project of the 1940s). The Philadelphia Project enjoyed nearly endless (for post-war America) resources and called on dozens of small units (usually composed of 5-12 returned European veterans) to perform special, secret missions to retrieve items, documents or people needed by the Popovich's effort. It would take several years to bring the first prototype reactor online, but the benefits proved, in time, to be absolutely revolutionary to all of human history.

Long term, III Corps had several goals. First, Milgov demanded that absolute priority be directed to the Philadelphia Project, even as it was kept under the strictest secrecy. Second, the remainder of the Delmarva Peninsula needed to be brought under Milgov control. To do this, the gangs had to be defeated and the refugees screened for useful skills and protected from retaliation from the locals. The expansion to the southern end of the peninsula would have to be handled with some finesse, as the Norfolk enclave maintained much of its food growing capacity in farms on the southern end of the peninsula. The effort to restore control over the entire Delmarva Peninsula would be eased by establishing regular overland communications to southern New Jersey through the ruins of Wilmington and/or Philadelphia. The areas brought under Milgov control would need to have infrastructure restored (power, light, water, communications, local government, transportation and food distribution) and the ruined cities of Wilmington and Philadelphia salvaged for useful materials. Another long-term goal was to return to New York City and conduct a census, salvage useful materials, and recover the gold before starting full-blown recovery efforts. Finally, to increase the food supplies available to III Corps it was deemed necessary to expand into eastern Pennsylvania, eventually to the Alleghenies, incorporating the rich farmland and non-mechanized farming skills of the Amish of Lancaster County and bringing online the Limerick, Peach Bottom and Three Mile Island nuclear power plants and clearing a route to the Civgov enclave in Frederick, Maryland and the coal fields of northeastern Pennsylvania.