[chico20854]

January 23, 1998

Nothing official for today!

Graebarde reports that farms in the US feel the fall as much as anyone. The modernized American farm depends on electricity to run all the modern conveniences. Animal enterprises especially suffer as it is rapidly discovered the normal crew cannot handle 1,000 hogs in confinement when the power fails, nor can the egg and broiler factories or the giant dairies. Even the smaller operations have trouble with the smaller herd and flocks they manage. It takes perhaps two to three times as long to milk out a cow by hand compared to a milking machine. (Longer for hand-milkers not used to the task, as their forearms tighten up from the squeezing). The four persons on a 50-cow dairy spend most of the day just getting the 40 or so cows milking at the time milked out, leaving no time for the myriad other tasks needed on the farm. Then arises the question of what to do with all the milk, or in the case of egg factories all the eggs, that accumulate in the first couple of days. Many of the large operations soon have no workers showing for work for a number of reasons which compound all the problems. Herds soon die off. Chickens and hogs start to starve unless someone turns them loose, and winter is not a good time for the housed animals to be set free to fend for themselves, something that was bred out of them long ago. Crop farmers fair somewhat better with their crops either in bins or silos on the farm or at the community grain company’s granary. As the transportation system fails, however, there is no way for the raw food to reach those that needed it.

Those farmers in the colder areas, predominately north of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers suffer as well as heat sources disappear. Very few have alternative means of heating their homes that are adequate for prolonged periods of time. The generator to run the electric heater or fans on gas stoves need fuel, which soon becomes scarce due to distribution and supply problems, which government policy seems to direct what aid arrives in rural areas to the refugees from the cities. Many farm homes are destroyed by fires caused by improvised alternative heat sources.

While food for the most part on farms is available, it is unprocessed. Most of the smaller holdings still maintain at least a token garden, but almost all modern farms rely on the same source of food as the city folks, the local markets. The specialization of the modern farmer works against them - dairymen have milk, most have some beef or a pig in the freezer as well as eggs and so forth, but most are not stocked up as their pioneer ancestors had been. The elderly, remembering the depression and war years of WW II are somewhat better prepared, having been ingrained with stocking up, but never all.

The winter takes its toll on the weak and sick, both two- and four-legged. Starvation conditions, while not as severe on most farms, exist. Local government support, in the form of USDA representatives, county agricultural extension agents and state agricultural university faculty, are not forthcoming in first winter after the attacks. Most farmers do not leave their farms other than perhaps cluster several families onto one farm for security. Neighbors help neighbors. Those with heat take in those without. Those with food share with those without. Refugees are ‘placed’ on farms. Some had been there before during prior evacuations at the outbreak of the war or in the flurry of panicked evacuations that followed the outbreak of nuclear warfare in Europe and Asia in July. Some are welcomed back as good helpers; others are sent packing as soon as the farmer is able to do so. The government procures food from the farmers, primarily raw food stocks. Cereal grains are coarse ground in on-farm mills intended to grind feed for livestock on many farms. The coarseness does not matter since it goes into gruel. Excess animals are butchered on a regular basis, or procured by the government for relief efforts. The farmers are given chits for the produce and livestock taken, but there is not much faith it will ever be worth anything.

Elsewhere, unofficially

The destroyer USS Morton arrives at the Kenyan port of Mombasa after a month and a half-long voyage from San Diego. The aged destroyer requires several weeks of repairs to restore the ship to adequate condition.

On the Warsaw Pact side of the front line in Europe the situation is desperate. Soviet and Polish troops are exhausted, their units depleted by months of battering NATO forces and nuclear attacks, at the end of supply lines across a nation devastated in two campaigns from one end of the country to the other, sustained by a USSR that has been at war for over two years, its economy in shambles as it supported war on five fronts. NATO troops have been expelled from nearly all Polish territory (a slice of northwest Poland, including the battered city of Szczecin, remains under control of US Marines), and Soviet, Czech, Hungarian and Italian troops occupy Austria and southern Germany along a line from Lake Constance through Augsburg and Regensburg through to the Czech border south of the Hof Gap.

The communications and transportation networks of the western USSR, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia have been shredded by NATO conventional and nuclear strikes over the preceding year, the economy of Poland totally destroyed, the Polish harvest a complete failure, and Czech industry severely damaged by the war. The surviving Polish population faces death by starvation and exposure. Faced with these challenges and with Soviet units averaging 2-4000 men (from one seventh to one third of authorized strength), the Soviet Western TVD is in no position to continue offensive operations (or even to mount a coherent defense, if by some magical means, NATO could muster the force to counterattack).

The most immediate challenge is to sustain the fighting forces and the Polish population, followed by reorganization and reconstruction of the Pact armies. To lessen the burden on the transportation network (and to assist in maintaining martial law in the USSR) 1st Byelorussian Front and the reinforcements released by RGVK (most crucially the 1st Shock Army) are recalled to the USSR, ordered to leave a portion of their heavy weapons and vehicles behind for transfer to units remaining in Poland. (Compliance with those orders is more theoretical than real, but they do result in some replacement equipment reaching units still in contact).

Warsaw Pact units on the front line currently consist of: Baltic Front (with 11th Guards Army replacing 22nd Army) on the northernmost section of the Oder River from the Baltic Coast to Kostrzyn, where the 1st Western Front sector begins. That formation (with 8th Guards Army and 2nd Polish Army on the front line, with the remnants of 1st Guards Tank Army in reserve) faces the US XI Corps, and is responsible for the front south to Forst, where 2nd Western Front (2nd Guards Tank Army and 20th Army at the front, with 3rd Shock Army in reserve) assumes responsibility for the front line through to Zittau, at the common border of East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. From there, 1st Southwestern Front with 4th Czech, 21st and 1st Czech Armies guards the East German border and occupies south Germany through the city of Regensburg. Second Southwestern Front (with two Italian and one Hungarian corps under command, as well as its own 16th and 41st Armies) occupies Austria (with 2nd Czech Army, assisted by 8th Tank Army) and southern Germany from Regensburg to Lake Constance. Reserve Front, with 22nd Army, 4th Guards Tank Army and the 3rd Polish Army, remains in central and eastern Poland, assisting the remnants of the Polish Internal Front in rebuilding devastated Poland and restoring communist rule while serving as a reserve for the Western TVD.

In the air over western Germany, another flight of F-16s takes off from the French occupied zone, this time from the 86th Tactical Fighter Wing at Ramstein, heading for Hohn Air Base north of Hamburg.

Another mobilization-only division, the 67th Tank, is called up in the Siberian Military District. Formed in Novosibirsk from stockpiles and a small cadre of the 85th Motor-Rifle Division. The division’s stockpiles of equipment were depleted long ago to support other units, and the 67th only manages to receive a handful of T-55s and a smattering of Second World War-era artillery pieces. The rest of the division (which never receives a full complement of troops) is formed into a cavalry force.