Winter Cantonment Locations...

[Slappy]

Interesting thread here including a nice article by Legbreaker on the 2000 offensive.

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=354

A couple of things lead me to the belief, quite possibly wrong, that the German III Corps spent the winter of 99-00 in northwest Poland.

One is the opening of the Kalisz campaign history in the 1.0 boxed set stating the 5th ID's jumping off point as Chojnice. Chojnice is about 200km east of the Oder and the German/Polish border. If the 5th had to make it's way that far through contested territory, I would have expected some word on it. My assumption was that this point was somewhere near the 5th's winter quarters or at least near to an area held by a NATO unit that could provide security such that the 5th was essentially road marching to that point.

Second is that the rest of III Corps (Germans, US 116 ACR, Canadian 4th Mech) is currently in the area around Kolobrzeg in all canon listings. There doesn't seem to be a lot of these units going much of anywhere during the 2000 offensive, despite the fact that they were III Corps units. There was also no significant Soviet counteroffensive that far north that I can find a mention of. My supposition is that they were a blocking force against the Soviet 8th Guards Army to the south east of Berlin. They largely stayed put when the offensive went to hell and so are largely where they started.

I would put the III Corps winter quarters generally in the area bounded by Szczecin, Pila, Chojwice and Lebork with Kolobrzeg as the Corps HQ.