What were the Marines up to? [backstory]

[Adm.Lee]

I have a glimmer of hope that I might get to run a short FtF game of T2k next year. (my groups have a DM/game rotation) I had an idea to set the PCs up as a Marine recon team on the Baltic coast, before the main landings as part of the 2000 final offensive.

I wandered through the v1 and v2 history, and then the v1 US and NATO vehicle guides. I noticed something odd. The US 2nd Marine Division sent its regiments their separate ways in 1996, and the division reassembled in Germany in the winter of '97-98. The oddity was that they were not listed as participating in the '98 Soviet offensive or the NATO counter offensive in southeastern and central Germany. From my reading, NATO seemed pretty desperate in that, yet they kept out a big US division?

On the face of it, one can see that the Marines, with their relative lack of APCs/IFVs and MBTs, would be not that useful in a mechanized campaign. They'd be better off defending a fixed position, perhaps. Were they the American last stand at the port of Bremerhaven (or other suitable port)? Were they backstopping the Dutch when the French moved up to the Rhine? For that matter, were they watching the French from across the Rhine in Germany? On top of that, I'd bet the raiding elements (divisional recon battalion, attached Force Recon and SEAL teams) would be roaming the Baltic and/or Norwegian coasts, wreaking some havoc.

These all make sense to me, how about you?