[chico20854]

January 3, 1998

The winter of 1997-98 is particularly cold. Civilian war casualties in the industrialized nations have reached almost 15%, although the worst is yet to come.

The California coast from Santa Barbara south has been devastated by the nuclear strikes, and the city of Los Angeles suffers most severely. Blast, radiation, and fire, combined with panic and disease, cause millions of casualties. The city has less than 20 percent of its prewar population remaining. The Bay area has also been devastated by nuclear strikes, but the presence of military forces in the region provide a modest level of organization.

In Maryland, the capital of Annapolis has been largely abandoned following is contamination with fallout from the Fort Meade attack and the relocation of the state government (such as it is) to Columbia (located between Baltimore and Washington).

The Dutch 101st Mechanized Brigade moves south from the Leeuwarden area to reinforce territorial troops. The Dutch 302nd Infantry Brigade repulses another attack by French paratroops of the 8th Marine Parachite Regiment in the Breda-Tilburg area as they try to break out and join the (very slowly-advancing) French armored force. Frogmen from the Dutch 2nd Amphibious Combat Group sink the French frigate Balny as it anchors off Vlissingen in the pre-dawn hours blocking Dutch naval intervention and standing by to offer fire support to French troops.

With the the linkup between the 82nd Airborne Division and the rest of XVIII Airborne Corps completed, both the 82nd and 24th ID and their Kurdish auxiliaries begin an orderly withdrawal back to the Bandar-e-Khomeyni area.

Unofficially,

The last planeload of replacements departs Fort Jackson, South Carolina for service in Europe. The base's training brigades are devoting increasing amounts of efforts to assisting the state government in maintaining order, distributing food and organizing relief following the Soviet nuclear strikes on Charleston and the base commander judges that he cannot afford to lose trained and ready troops when his situation is so severe. Reinforcing this bias, his higher authorities (Training and Doctrine Command and 2nd US Army) had both been struck in Soviet nuclear strikes, as had Transportation Command and Military Airlift Command, the authorities responsible for arranging for reinforcement flights. Finally, Shaw Air Force Base, from which the flight departs, has limited amounts of fuel remaining in its tank farm and the base commander has been ordered to conseserve it for that base's tanker fleet, which is tasked to support nuclear strike operations. The move strands several requisitioned airlines at the base.

In Alaska, the Soviet 130th Air Assault Brigade (reduced to a single battalion of hardened troops) occupies a blocking position north of the hamlet (and road junction) of Gakona, Alaska, preventing the American force at Fort Greely from cutting the supply line of the 13th Guards Air Assault Division and 1st Arctic Mechanized Brigade, which are continuing to advance northeast along Highway 1.

HM Government authorizes a roundup of known Soviet agents and sympathizers, determined to limit internal dissent that could hamper the already extremely diffcult relief effort in the nation.

7th Fleet is able to direct the oiler USNS Neosho to the South China Sea, where it rendevous with the destroyer USS Morton and the cruiser USS Sterett and refuels both ships before turning north, accompanied by the cruiser while the Morton makes her way to the Indian Ocean.

The Dutch royal family accepts the British government's offer to evacuate their home as rumors fly of French military intelligence and special forces teams roaming the country seeking them out. A Royal Navy Sea King helicopter extracts them, flying at low level over the dark North Sea.

French and Belgian troops encounter an obstacle that their commanders had not adequately considered - British, Canadian and American rear area facilities, air bases and storage sites. Many of the air bases have been struck (some multiple times) by Soviet nuclear weapons and are nearly abandoned, while others (such as Ramstein) are fully operational, guarded by German territorials and USAF security troops and harbor American tactical nuclear weapons. In there areas an informal truce prevails, with the Franco-Belgian units giving these sites wide berth and avoiding any engagemnet with their defenders. The commander of the French 1st Army, General Francois Bescond, reaches out to SACEUR, a well-respected colleague from prewar days. After a "heated and frank" discussion between the two commanders, an agreement is reached. After the French forces have reached the Rhine River, they will offer all assistance to all bypassed NATO personnel, regardless of nationality, to evacuate the zone. The generals agree upon a 1-km exclusion zone around all American, British and Canadian facilities and, in exchange for non-belligerence from the troops at these facilities, the immediate provision of adequate food and fuel to sustain them until they have been evacuated. The two generals also agree that they will support NATO proposals for the provision of covert French and Belgian logistic support to the war effort, including food, fuel, electricity and munitions, in quantities to be agreed upon by the diplomats and intelligence agencies. While the French general was later criticized for accepting such terms, Bescond responded that the British and Americans still retained tens of thousands of nuclear warheads and that what was later perceived as a bad deal was vastly preferable to the elimination of the French nation by its ertswhile allies.

The stripping of the USS America is completed and Sixth Fleet transfers the remaining shoreside spares and supplies to the newly arrived freighter Wolman Expert, while the remaining American and Allied personnel begin to collapse the area of Sicily under NATO control. The troop transport Barrett arrives with the Expert (both escorted by the light frigate USS Petit) to take aboard passengers.

The crew of the full-rigged ship Iron Duke (formerly the property of the late eccentrick rock star Ted Hendrix) arrive in St. John, US Virgin Islands and seek shelter from the war there.