ChalkLine's Desiderata

[ChalkLine]

Lublin and the Warsaw Pact in the Central Polish Corridor. The WarPact MSR.

Way over near the Ukrainian/Belarusian border of Poland is the large town of Lublin, seat of the Reserve Front Head Quarters.
Oddly enough most of the headquarters' actual units seem to be at least about two hundred and thirty kilometres west, the nearest being at Piotrków Trybunalski which is the base for the Fourth Soviet Guards Tank Army.
This implies there's an MSR (Main Supply Route) connecting the two. Now, it will probably eventually fail but when the 5th Infantry Division (US) gets nailed at Kalisz it's definitely still in operation.

The route crosses the Vistula/Wisła river at Pulawy, then heads due west to Piotrków Trybunalski and then heads north west to Łódź itself.
Now, it's written in the various sources that the Polish government and the Warsaw Pact command is having trouble with bandits in this area, so you can expect heavy contingents of anti-partisan elements from both Reserve Front HQ and its security elements in Lublin, the formidable Soviet 20th Tank Division and the 6th WOP Brygada (BGB) from Łódź and the nearby 11th WOP Brygada (BGB) from Lask. Not listed will be the various OTK local defence units, formations not to be discounted.

While the 11th are cavalry you can expect the 6th to be mounted in light vehicles with possible guntrucks, UAZ-469 and Tarpan Honker technicals if they send a rapid reaction force. The 20th Guards Tank Division however is a different proposition. They can send actual APCs, IFVs backed by their 8 remaining MBTs along the route and won't hesitate to do so. Players running into a patrol should think carefully about attacking as the situation will simply escalate until the 20th take a serious interest in eliminating the threat to its rear areas. Note that as these are all experienced Warsaw Pact units they won't be mindlessly attacking from the front but will hit hard and fast from all directions.

Along the MSR you'll find a series of fortified checkpoints possibly stiffened by dug-in light and heavy armour. It would not be unreasonable to find these checkpoints using hardened concrete bunkers and even with things like IFV or MBT turrets installed. At this point the supply routes are actually more important than combat capacity.
The checkpoints will send out patrols to dominate the area and fly the flag. Apart from fighting marauders and bouncing player characters they'll also do things like gather up Displaced Persons and then send them towards collection points and relief camps. They might reconnoitre interesting sites for salvage and collect intelligence on things too large to handle themselves.
Support for these units will be at a premium so they can't expect much, but they definitely will be able to call on mortar support if they're close to their base.


As movement is often restricted to infantry endurance there are large checkpoint/bases for platoon sized elements at Zwolen, on the outskirts of Radom, the Pillica river bridge at Inowłódz and at Tomaszow Mazowiecki (all available on Google Maps)