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Old 03-14-2023, 03:28 PM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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February 23, 1998

Nothing in canon for the day. Unofficially,

In Alaska, the fighting in downtown Fairbanks continues as American airborne troops attempt to gain a foothold on the north bank of the Chena River and National Guard troops of the 1st and 2nd Arctic Recon Brigades close in on Highway 2, the sole road leaving the city to the west. Troops of the 1st Brigade move slowly and carefully as they advance around the forested slopes of Ester Dome, the mountain that dominates the city's skyline, slowed by temperatures of -50 F.

Pact forces in Poland are slowly rebuilding their logistic structure after the havoc wreaked by NATO occupying forces and nuclear and conventional strikes. A major challenge is the change of railroad gauge along the Polish-Soviet border; the pre-existing change of gauge stations were thoroughly destroyed by NATO engineers before they evacuated the area in August. The Linia Hutniczo-Siarkowa (Metallurgy-Sulphur Line), a Russian-gauge line that reaches nearly 250 miles into eastern Silesia, is the highest priority, although Soviet engineers are unsure of their ability to repair the Wisla bridge at Kolonia, whose western abutments were destroyed by an American atomic demolition munition. The Soviets urge the Polish Communist Party to rally manpower - military, POW, civilian, refugee - to manually unload the few train cars that are arriving from the USSR for further transport to the front.

In the Ionian Sea, the Bulgarian freighter A.B. Buzko makes radio contact with another friendly ship, the Soviet Ignatius Sergeev, which is in the Black Sea. The Soviet captain reports that he has been ordered to Cuba with a cargo of foodstuffs for the isolated Soviet garrison there, but is unsure of being able to pass through the Bosporus. The two captains make a pact - the Bulgarian ship will deliver its cargo of grain to Cuba while the Soviet ship diverts to Bulgaria; both leaders reckon that in these desperate situations that the arrangement makes some lvel of sense.

Party officials in the Tver region north of Moscow, faced with rapidly diminishing food supplies and ever more refugees from Moscow, decide to demonstrate their commitment to the war effort by sweeping the refugee camps for men of military age. The local MVD quickly rounds up nearly 500 men (and some young women in their late teens and 20s) and loads them onto railcars, dispatching them to the front in Europe as reinforcements.
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I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...
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