"Rations" in the late Twilight War

[Abbott Shaull]

It all fun and games until someone finds a finger in their soup.

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by Webstral

Maybe we need a new thread: The Cuisine of Twilight: 2000. (No cannibal recipes, please)

Webstral

good one

[Trooper]

Originally Posted by Webstral

Maybe we need a new thread: The Cuisine of Twilight: 2000. (No cannibal recipes, please)

Webstral

Military menu in Finland.

Field kitchen = soup & crisp bread or porridge + crisp bread.

No field kitchen = crisp bread & spam or just crisp bread.

MRE is only for those units who have patrol duties behind the enemy lines.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisp_bread

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Abbott Shaull

...I would think they would of been better off with offensive in the south if this was their intentions for the offensive. The Polish in the north were pretty well spent by this time. Granted there were some units if they wanted too who could carry out offensive attacks...

In the north, Nato were quite strong compared to the Pact forces, while in the South, Soviet units formed a near impenetrable barrier for 2000 era Nato. The supply chain is one of the reasons I have for the summer Nato offensive swinging south down to Lodz (US 5th ID). If all had gone well, the 5th would have been supported by at least the US 50th AD, 116th ACR and the Canadians (the Marines and 8th ID needed elsewhere.

The rest of III German Army would have followed on securing the flanks, and perhaps some elements leapfrogging the US XI Corp and driving even further south to close the trap on the Soviets at the Czech border.

While not directly threatening food production in the encircled areas, it would have made supply of other material rather difficult (entailing a difficult journey through mountains). Essentially it would have achieved the same goal as a direct attack but without the massive casualties - the Soviets would have been forced back to or past the Wisla or risk encirclement.

Of course as we know, the 5th got stomped before much else could happen, radically altering the course of the war and effectively ending any further offensive action of significance from either side for years to come.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Abbott Shaull

It all fun and games until someone finds a finger in their soup.

Cook: "Sssh, don't say anything or everybody will want one".

[simonmark6]

A few years back when I was running a Pirates of the Vistula campaign for some of the kids in school, there was a lot of focus on food and crappy rations, this made the reward offered by the town of Nielepomice even more enticing.

The group cleared the town of bandits and walked away with thirty cans of Coca Cola each, I'd found out that the town was a major distributor for the company and reckoned they might have a stash.

The group were really pleased at their reward, more than when they found a working BMP. I guess, that was an abstract for them, they knew how important Coke was....

[Abbott Shaull]

No I think with the effects of moving 2 "Armies" west to take care of the NATO Offensive quite effectively take the wind out of any further Pact Offensive at least in Germany/Poland/Czech for in the near term. There were plenty of people who were upset they had to sudden share their limited resources with more mouths.

After this point more Divisional level commanders would either want to stay put and survive or make it a goal to return what troops they can to their home to survive. If they didn't come to this conclusion by themselves lower unit commanders would and either break away from their parent unit and/or break down in discipline to spawn more marauder bands over Eastern Europe. As for higher commands, for the most part on both sides they have effectively cease to exist and their troops are being absorb into sub-units.

Remember by 2000 many of the Soviet in Southern Germany and Poland out right refused to move against the US XI Corps and 3rd German Army. Lot of this is due to inability to move the entire Division/Army for variety of reason ranging from lack of fuel and/or transport. Remember even the 5th Mechanized Division last month before they were wiped out, had leapfrog units with in the Division as they had to make more fuel, even with stockpile of fuel to begin with. Or the Pact units didn't want to leave their source of food either with no way of knowing if they would be able to return. Another reason why the units that did respond did so slow from the South.

I believe that the plan was for the 4th Guard Tank Army was to make an attack in Southern Germany with the 22nd Cavalry Army beefing up the Baltic Front to tie up the US XI Corps and Third German Army. This could explain why many Soviet units in Southern Germany and Poland refused to move. They knew of the plan and didn't want to fight to re-take areas they had already control. The 3rd Soviet Shock Army even was slow to react, they held areas that the 4th Guard Tank Army.

[Raellus]

Even after the 3rd German Army's failed offensive and the Soviet 4th GTA's counteroffensive, local offensives still took place. That is, if you buy the Eastern European Sourcebook as T2K canon.

One of the adventure modules therin has a Czech division attacking the U.S. 6th ID (light) in order to capture its stockpile of supplies. Fuel is mentioned explicitly but one could surmise that food stockpiles were also an objective for the Czech troops.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Abbott Shaull

Remember by 2000 many of the Soviet in Southern Germany and Poland out right refused to move against the US XI Corps and 3rd German Army.

NOTE: All the unit information we have from canon is dated mid 2000 or later. While some unit histories show they had ceased listening to orders some time before, this is not true for most. The summer battles of 2000 were probably the last straw.

We can therefore summise that a general offensive was at least possible by the Soviets and there is some (albeit scarce) evidence to support this actually happening. I'm currently working on firstly the Pact plan, and how this may have played out (obviously didn't go to plan). I tend to agree that the units which ended up crushing the US 5th ID may have been intended to be at least follow on units, however as they were able to move from the USSR (I think) so quickly, they could well have been simply a response to the XI Corp offensive and almost certainly represented the only force capable of countering the Americans.

It is also likely however that their move had been planned well in advance - it takes time to shift so much fuel to so many component Divisions, modify engines and disburse the supplies amongst the subunits.

[Abbott Shaull]

Well I never got the Eastern Europe Resource Books. I am basing lot of what I know and assuming would happen off largely what GDW had published in their Version 1.0.

I am sure there were units who were lot more units still capable taking offensive action on both sides.

As the mention of a Czech unit taking on the 6th Light Infantry Division sounds much more like a raid than part of a larger coordinated offensive effort. Even during 1999 it seemed to be what many units did, in order to help survive.

[Legbreaker]

If you've got 1st ed you've basically got everything as far as unit histories go. The vast majority was simply cut and pasted into the 2nd ed books with slight alterations to account for changes in tech (the deletion of M1A2 "Giraffe" and inclusion of the M8 for example).

1998 and 1999 were, on the whole, periods of recovery and rebuilding after the nuclear devestation of late 1997. It's doubtful anything beyond raids could have been carried out in Europe during this time, however in areas such as the middle east where fuel was still plentiful and nukes scarcer, the fighting continued. 2000 in my opinion, was the first time a large scale offensive was possible in Europe - it had taken that long to get the participant units back into a reasonably capable shape again.

1998 particularly would have been hard. Almost nobody would have had enough food to eat as the cantonment system had not yet been implemented to any significant degree. Organised farming would have been a rarity so the only crops available would have been whatever was growing wild. Pre nuke food stocks plus whatever could be foraged would really have been all there was to eat.

1999 is likely to have been a significant improvement in many ways with organised farming by military units becoming a priority, however pre nuke stocks are likely to have been virtually exhausted.