[chico20854]

July 5, 1998

(Unofficially) As another day of clear weather presents the pilots of attack aircraft with picture-perfect targeting opportunities, the Soviet drive across the DMZ falls apart. ROK infantry launch a counterattack out of Yungjiu while Allied armor slices through the Soviet rear, sweeping aside the resistance of the remaining Soviet paratroops of the 203rd (my 14th) Air Assault Brigade. (Officially) The Allied armored/mechanized force savagely mauls the enemy formations and forces them back across the border. It will prove to be the last major Soviet-led offensive of the war in Korea.

Unofficially,

The final transports arrive in the Mexican port of Altamira carrying troops and supplies for the Soviet Division Cuba. The crews of Soviet ships in the ragtag flotilla are drafted into service with the division, Major General Femorov accepting the risk that the experienced sailors he needs to continue his journey back home may be lost in combat, so desperate is the need for men for Division Cuba. Most of the Mexican vessels are abandoned as well, but the third-country ships (including the Bulgarian A.B. Buzko, the Polish Orlęta Lviv and the Greek Paraguay Express) begin scrounging fuel to return to sea rather than be stranded in Mexico. The Mexican naval authorities do what they can, securing some poorly refined crude that can be burned in the Bulgarian steamship's boilers.

Harold Thomas, leader of the refugee army forming west of Pittsburgh, tests out his force, which to date has been indifferently armed with whatever weapons individuals brought along with them. Thomas sets his sights on an isolated military facility - an Army Reserve regional vehicle maintenance center on Neville Island in the middle of the Ohio River downstream of downtown Pittsburgh. Since the deployment of the units the facility supported in peacetime, its staff (composed of civilian workers and soldiers medically disqualified from deployment) was reassigned to perform repair duties on seriously damaged vehicles evacuated to the US from combat zones around the world; the base was assigned as a repair center for M-750 armored cars and M35-series 2 1/2-ton trucks. He leads his ragtag force of desperate refugees (that many would characterize as marauders) in a multi-prong attack on the base, which straddles the middle of the long, narrow island and has been supported by river traffic since the nuclear strikes in November and December. As human waves of lightly-armed men assault from the landside, an "elite" force of Thomas' most loyal fighters crosses the river from the north bank in small boats. Fierce close-in fighting ensues, in which the Army personnel are overwhelmed. Thomas' group captures three operable M-750s and a dozen trucks as well as a healthy stockpile of parts, tools and damaged vehicles; the bodies of the expert mechanics needed to employ them, however, are scattered all around the plant, reducing the value of the prize. The armored cars have very little ammunition, and the biggest prize is the contents of the base's arms room, with three dozen M16s and five M60 machineguns as well as the machineguns for the M750s and the small arms wielded by the late employees.

A pre-dawn Mexican attack on the Marines in San Diego is partially successful; little ground is captured but the Marines lose several dozen men and expend increasingly scarce ammunition repelling the assault. The weather is too clear for any risky resupply flights to be flown.

89 (my II) Corps to the east is immobilized while awaiting additional fuel tankers to arrive; the force's Marines of Task Force Devil Dog ambush a Mexican patrol attempting to infiltrate behind the corps' lines through the broiling-hot Joshua Tree National Park.

In New Mexico and West Texas a strange calm reigns, with the retreating School Brigade, short on supplies and reliant on increasingly breakdown-prone civilian vehicles, attempting to make its way to friendly territory without a major clash with their Mexican opponents, who are equally reluctant to fight, given their poor supply situation and extreme dispersal.

Fighting in eastern Texas is increasingly confused as Mexican Army and allied criminal and biker gangs contest control of Austin; an informal force of snipers (all US Marine Corps veterans) ensconce themselves on the Texas Tower's 27th-floor observation deck, dominating the campus with accurate rifle fire. The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment bypasses the city once again, passing through the city's eastern suburbs and looping west to block Interstate 35 once again. North of Houston, the Mexican Coastal Column is gradually spreading out, with individual regiments advancing north and east nearly independently, overrunning equally dispersed detachments of the ill-fated 46th Infantry Division.

In British Columbia, the 47th Infantry Division comes under coordinated attack by the 13th Guards Air Assault Division from the north and the 114th (my 202nd) Motor-Rifle Division from the west. While short of ammunition and fuel, the American infantry and their Canadian allies turn back the assault.

The 34th (my 14th) Tank Division, a category C unit that saw much action earlier in the war in China and Turkey, is shifted from occupation duty in Thrace under 14th Army's command to 5th Guards Army in Romania, where it is assigned to secure the Ukrainian-Romanian border west of the ruins of Odessa, keeping the two-way flow of supplies and petroleum with Romania secure.

Outside the northwestern Russian town of Volkhov, a group of three deserters from the 115th Guards Motor-Rifle Division take over an isolated farmhouse, taking the residents (an elderly couple and their teenage granddaughter) hostage, forcing them to cook for them as they rest and steal what few valuables the locals possess. The couple's 12-year old grandson, who was out hunting when the deserters arrived, notices that something is wrong and hides in the woods to observe. Seeing the armed deserter, the boy flees to town and alerts the local MVD security troops.