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Old 11-14-2022, 02:59 PM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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November 14, 1997

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

The twin light frigates Howard D. Crow and Petit exit the Gulf of St Lawrence to commence their first mission, an escort of Convoy 310.

The 108th Armored Cavalry Regiment is ordered held at the Yuma Proving Ground pending allocation of adequate equipment prior to movement to a theater of war. The regimental commander is grateful for the opportunity for his command to engage in additional training prior to deployment. His adjudant polls commanders for recommended personnel changes, relieving those who the recently-completed NTC rotation has demonstrated as not being up to the task and promoting those that demonstrated potential.

Due to an atmospheric anomoly possibly caused by the nuclear exchange, a radio message from the 139th (my 119th) Motor-Rifle Division is received at the Headquarters, 1st Far Eastern Front. The 139th, a poorly trained and equipped mobilization-only division thought lost since July, reports that it is deep in the Chinese interior and has been reduced to a battalion in strength. It is the last contact the Red Army has with the unit.

In North Korea, the evacuation of Allied forces in Wonsan becomes more chaotic as panicking civilians rush aboard the motley collection of fishing boats, tugs, small freighters and amphibious craft that the ROK naval command has commandeered into an evacuation fleet. Offshore, the guns of the USS Des Moines augment the embattled defenders of the city's perimeter; the heavy cruiser strikes a heavy blow when its onboard helicopter locates the commander of the Soviet 247th Motor-Rifle Division (using an unsecured radio) and wipes him out with one of the ship's tactical nuclear rounds. Despite the loss, the 247th holds its blocking positions, although the unit's planned attacks on the southern perimeter fail to launch.

Their magazines emptying and their fuel tanks running dry, the battleships Missouri and New Jersey conclude their attacks on Sakhalin Island and the Siberian coast opposite it. They travel south through the Strait of Tartary, heading for friendly Japanese territory. As they depart, a Soviet mobile coast defense missile battery looses a volley of SSC-1 anti-ship missiles at the American force. The escorting Aegis destroyers shoot down all but one, which strikes the frigate USS Gray. The missile's 2000-pound warhead tears the frigate's stern apart and tosses the ship's helicopter about in its hangar, igniting a massive blaze. The ship slips under the waves a few hours later.

The 25th Missile Brigade, a former East German Army Scud missile unit, is down to a handful of (non-nuclear) missiles. (The Soviets never allowed the East Germans access to chemical or nuclear warheads). NATO commanders, busy targeting American-built nuclear delivery systems, are too busy to assign the brigade targets and the German government has the brigade withdrawn to the Ruhr, where its remaining TELs (Transporter-Erector-Launcher trucks) are parked in a disused warehouse.

The American 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment battles to recapture its peacetime headquarters, Merrell Barracks in Nuremberg. The firefight adds to the damage the garrison's buildings proudly displayed (the original damage the result of Allied attacks on the former SS barracks during and immediately after World War Two). The American troopers are enraged to discover that the Soviet occupiers have looted the Regimental Museum, and that several historic artifacts (including Patton Silver, the Dragoon Book and several original oils by Stivers, Troianni, etc.) are missing.

NATO forces have largely evacuated all the territory they captured in the spring and summer invasion of Poland, falling back to mostly derelict defensive positions opposite Oder River crossings they occupied over the prior winter.

In the central Atlantic, the Sierra III-class attack sub K-231 completes over a week's patrolling of a remote area of the ocean, failing to detect any NATO or neutral ship traffic. It relays the news to Murmansk, where the Red Banner Northern Fleet orders the Typhoon-class boomer TK-20 and its Akula-class escort K-461 to the area.

Convoy 306 transits the English Channel after dark, concluding a long voyage that included a drastic diversion south to avoid a massive hole blasted in NATO's defenses of the North Atlantic west of Iceland.

A new head of GOSPLAN, the Soviet planning body responsible for control of the command economy, is named. As an indication of the new direction coming from the Kremlin the nominee is a Party official that has spent most of his career in the branch of the Party responsible for indoctrination and mass mobilization; he has no prior economic or industrial experience.

Belizian and British forces stop another Guatemalan assault along the road from the border to the capital city of Belmopan. The British and Belizian light infantry, guided by the instructors of the British Jungle Warfare School, adopt tactics similar to the Finns, striking road-bound units from trackless wooded terrain, then fading away before the enemy can respond. In the commerical capital, Belize City, the last elements of the British Force, 43 Battery, Royal Artillery, a light air defense unit equipped with captured Soviet ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns and obsolescent Blowpipe missiles, arrives.
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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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