On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[chico20854]

June 26, 1998

Following nearly two months of assembly, company and battalion-level training and delays in transportation, 19 Infantry Brigade is deployed from England to Germany.

Matagorda Island air base, a small facility in coastal Texas used to support training flights and coastal zone patrols, is abandoned. The base is stripped and blown up, leaving nothing remaining but the charred frameworks of empty Quonset huts and hangars and a badly cratered runway.

Unofficially,

A series of orders are issued from Colorado Springs to implement the Joint Chiefs' directive to prepare for nuclear strikes on Mexican targets. One of the first units to move are the National Guard Green Berets of the 19th Special Forces Group's designated Direct Action B-Team, who load onto an Army National Guard C-27 transport for infiltration behind Mexican lines south of the Rio Grande. Likewise, the cadre of the Military Freefall School at Yuma Proving Ground and a detachment from the USAF Special Operations Center at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico are dropped behind Mexican lines, into Baja California and central Mexico, respectively. All three detachments are tasked with identifying the routes used by Mexican logistics truck convoys and where they are loading from. The paratroops all jump with motorcycles and FAVs to provide rapid cross-country mobility.

Mexican forces largely spend the day absorbing the previous day's captures and attempting to establish secure lines to prevent the escape of thousands of American military personnel who are attempting to escape Mexican captivity as well as manage the streams of refugees fleeing to American-held territory.

The B Team from the 8th SF Group in Chiapas, southern Mexico, has begun to arm the men of several small indigenous villages, preparing them to take up arms against the remnants of local authorities. To the south, at Cato Sano air base in Honduras, aviation fuel supplies are dwindling, with what remains allocated to supply drops to support the Green Berets; the 198th Tactical Fighter Squadron is largely grounded pending delivery of more fuel.

The 47th Infantry Division falls back through British Columbia, following several days of strong Soviet pressure and intelligence reports that the Soviets may have recently received additional tactical nuclear weapons. The American division is accompanied by Canadian territorial troops.

Fighting rages in Heidelberg, Germany as a combined force of German border guards (both former East and West German), the East German reservists of the 219th Motor-Rifle Division and a mixed bag of American rear area support troops rallies to blunt the latest assault by the Soviet 41st Army, which has driven back the Danish Expeditionary Force before turning west, squeezing out the waning Italian 3rd Corps.

The Maltese authorities back down, faced with the firepower of the Kennedy battle group. The government, already straining to support its population, has no desire for American gunboats to be less than a kilometer from its seat of power. The carrier commander has offered to allow Maltese authorities to examine the condition of his ship, verifying its need for repairs; unfortunately the harbor has only a small boatyard to service the town's fishing fleet and there is no shipyard in the nation capable of drydocking the massive carrier. Maltese officials are eager to speed the Americans' departure, unable to support the needs of the thousands of sailors aboard.

A skirmish breaks out between Albanian troops of the 24th Division and the Greek IX Infantry Division jointly occupying the Suvenir ammunition plant in western Macedonia; the erstwhile allies had been sharing the plant's output as well as jointly operating the nearby hydropower plant that keeps the machinery going.

The airborne school operated by XVIII Airborne Corps accepts its first non-U.S. Army troops. The class starting today has two British students and an Iranian student as well as a trio of Marines headed for 4th Marine Division's Force Reconnaissance detachment.