Adventure seed/story-time/game-fic based on the Going Home handout...

[raketenjagdpanzer]

As always, use and abuse.

General Smith gazed out his headquarters office window at the Bremerhaven port. The harbor was a dismal mess of half-sunken wrecks (some of the wrecks US Navy ships that had limped, crippled by torpedo and cruise missile fire, into the harbor never to sail again) and neglected heavy equipment.

It's been three years since the bombs, and the damn harbor looks a thousand years old he mused.

Despite this, the harbor would soon come alive. He'd spent the day at a classified briefing that was almost unbelievable: the United States military was going home. Not in bits and pieces on tramp freighters, but as a single unit. Enough fuel-oil had been found to power the remnants of the merchant fleet that could be scraped together along Germany's northern coast, and the orders were clear: get everyone home, soonest.

But "soonest" meant sometime before the North Atlantic was wracked with winter storms - which were almost entirely unpredictable since the last GOES-8 weather satellite had quit working sometime in 1998 - and the military was forced to either fight, starve, or become farmers wholesale to survive in Europe.

The decision to move brought its own difficulties, though. The US military consisted now of no cohesive units outside of Germany (and those were questionably organized). Instead, divisions which just three years ago would have been considered brigades were strung out from northern Poland all the way to southwestern Romania. An entire US Marine RCT with two companies of armor was at last report somewhere in Bulgaria. Thousands of men (and women) had hundreds of miles to cross to get to the port. This was only the beginning of the difficulty, though. The trip across the Atlantic would "only" take a week, perhaps ten days with a fleet layover off of Dover. During this time, food would be an issue. The German government was being incredibly generous giving up a treasure trove of fuel in exchange for perhaps a thousand half broken-down armored vehicles of all stripes. The Bundeswehr liaison had made it quite clear that use of the ships, the harbor and the fuel was as far as they could go. Getting seven days' food for perhaps fifty to fifty-five thousand troops on top of all of that was simply impossible.

OPORD: Omega (as it was being called) couldn't order every soldier to pack a week's groceries or starve. Smith rubbed his forehead as he contemplated the outbreaks of food related violence and beyond if the troops weren't kept fed at sea for a week. The Germans themselves might riot if fifty thousand eager to travel US troops decided to help themselves to crops, the few store goods left, and so on.

...

Smith worked into the night, going over notes and maps - many if not most were hopelessly out of date. Still, every avenue had to be pursued. He finally narrowed his search down to a single folder of maps and notes. He tapped the red dot that indicated where Fehmarn was - had been - and began to make his own notes.

...POMCUS site...many railroads...no contact since '99...possibility? yes, best

He made note to contact the commander of 2-42 armored reconnaissance. They had a drive to take, tomorrow morning.

...

This is a short Twilight:2000 scenario titled OPERATION: VITTLES. The timeframe is two months prior to OpOrd: Omega. The scenario is, if you couldn't tell by that bit of creative writing, that thousands of pounds of food are required for TF34 to be successful. The general in question (mentioned in the Opord Omega handout) is tasked with getting enough support and logistics (including food!) together for the voyage. During the rapid advances and successes of US and German forces, to keep supply lines from becoming stretched too thin additional POMCUS sites were established and material was shifted forward to them. It is the General's hope that the one at Fehmarn hasn't been completely stripped since due to its proximity to both railroads and seaports it was a vital location for food distribution.

The reality is both good and bad: most of the food is intact (more than enough to fill a few railcars or an entire convoy of trucks) and there is plenty for the task. The bad part comes in trying to get it over 150 miles of iffy German terrain without being noticed! Also, survivors in the towns around Fehmarn aren't completely ignorant of what is in the warehouses near the "bombed town"...consequently there is a large bandit contingent ready to pounce should anyone deny them their considerable stockpile of loot!

Fehmarn itself suffered a single slightly off-target 300kt groundburst - enough to spare the POMCUS warehouses and at least a little of the city from total destruction. The foodstuffs themselves have been undamaged by fallout, as most drifted out to sea to the east and north. Late in November of 1997, the Soviets "salted the wound" by conventional bombings of the town, as well as laying down cluster-bomb delivered mines in an effort to deny the port to NATO troops, at least for a while.

Consequently the city is a no-man's land of minefields, bomb craters and fallout zones occupied by the toughest and most ruthless individuals.

Getting in is easy, getting out with 30 tons of food is the real trick...