ChalkLine's Desiderata

[ChalkLine]

Russian Shotguns

(This kinda doesn't fit for Poland games but I add it if your PCs ever get into ex-USSR territories)

While we generally tend to assume that every soviet citizen had a Kalash in the cupboard that really only applies to the post-soviet breakdown period. Of course soviet citizens had to undergo mandatory conscription so the idea that these trained individuals should have easy access to rifles was something the soviet authorities weren't keen to allow. Thus Russia had strict rules on rifle ownership, however shotgun ownership was common for hunting and as such were often used in places were rifles would be used in the west. This meant Russian shotguns usually had rifle sights and also rifled slug and heavy dart ammunition were not uncommon.

These slugs, darts and sabot rounds were varied and grew over time. Russia also adopted the plastic shotgun cartridge early and constantly refined them. Here's some of the basic slugs:
Brenneke Slug: Actually a German design, this was quite common in the 1960s to the 1980s. As an enormous amount of these were in circulation it's likely some would still exist.
Polev Slug: Designed in the 1980s, this is a complex plastic shell slug purely for big game. There are several variations but these were not in use in the Twilight Era apart from the first. The actual slug looks like a honking great pistol bullet and has the same damage potential as a big game rifle.
Mayer "Turbinka" ("turbine") Slug: Another from the 1960s, this slug is similar in some ways to the US Foster Slug in having a forward weight bias for stability. Notably a turbinka can be home-made if the sophisticated moulds are available however careful mixing of the slug material is important for bore life and accuracy.
"Udar" ("strike") Sabot Round: A sub-calibre round with serious armour penetrative ability and range. Originally a specialist round for government use it soon became a sought-after black market item for hunting and no doubt for settling the odd personal grievance.

Now, when it comes to Russian shotguns the name "TOZ", "Tulsky Oruzheiny Zavod" or the Tula Arms Plant is as easily recognised to a Russian as Winchester or Remington is to an American, it is a TOZ shotgun that will be on the wall or behind the door. TOZ made a plethora of civilian weapons and I won't list them all but I will note the most widespread shotguns.

TOZ-34 is an under-and-over double barrelled shotgun, 3.00kg
TOZ-66 is a side-by-side double barrelled shotgun, 3.00kg
TOZ-87 is a semiautomatic, 4 or 7 shot shotgun, 3.20kg

[EDIT]: Note that there are lots of Russian hunting rifles and in some very curious calibres, I'm just posting these as they are so common. Please don't think rifles were totally banned, it was just harder to get a licence for them.)

[ChalkLine]

(Summary: arctic troops should eat double)

Another nuclear winter is rolling in on my players and soon the winter whites will be part of the dress code. As it's going to be a long hard winter with even more famine and nutrition deficiency illnesses I thought I might make a few notes here about climate and food.

Firstly, modern westerners have different bodies to twilight soldiers. Since the 1970s our body fat content has doubled due to our modern food types. This layer of energy-rich insulating fat will be much missed by the troops who have been primarily eating potatoes and dog meat for over a year. They are lean and stringy rather than buff. You can see the average perfectly fit, healthy and enduring soldiers today that would be categorised as "moon faced" in former wars.

Twilight 2000 has us surviving on terms of kilograms, an annoying metric but useful for kit purposes. The net says one MRE is 1250 calories, well below the daily requirement for soldiers in tropical environments (3300 calories). Notably this number is for 1947 and is more presentative of twilight 2000 conditions. This is considered bare survival level and just above a starvation diet. Realistically twilight 2000 troops should binge occasionally and build up a body reserve, especially before it gets cold.

So, winter rolls in for Poland and the normal temperatures vary where you are. but -5ºc is the common bottom temperature. However we've thrown nukes about with MAD (pun) abandon so we could probably expect temperatures to hit -15ºc regularly. Note that this is a best case Nuclear Autumn. I can see really horrid blizzards rolling in off the Russian Massif going well below that. Don't forget wind chill lowers the temperature from -5ºc to -30ºc and even just slowly moving in a vehicle adds the minimum amount.

So what will the troops be eating?

The gold standard for arctic weather food intake is 4400 calories per day. We could argue that as a game mechanism that we could use double standard twilight 2000 rations of 2500 calories per day but I think this is being fairly lenient. 3750 calories, or triple standard rations, is actually more likely for troops who expect to be outside and active. Twilight 2000 life is hard, grinding work with little sleep and constant stress.

[ChalkLine]

So, your party of military hillbillies straggle into a Polish village short on fuel and food.
However, when they get there they find the locals aren't willing to trade. Their spokesman demands the group instead redeem the hundreds of Military Payment Certificates (MPCs) they'd been saddled with during a period of former occupation, reducing them to a poverty level even lower than elsewhere.
Of course the group can't pay and the sullen villagers send a runner to report the group to a local OTK outpost while being nice to their faces.

(In Vietnam the locals would regularly get saddled with MPCs, a form of military scrip designed to keep high value US dollars out of the Vietnamese economy and ruining it. These would regularly be changed over on secret "C Days" to a new type, ruining the local people who didn't understand and were kept in the dark on how the currency worked. After a few times of this they tended to join the Viet Cong and attacks on bases after C Days were frequent.)

[ChalkLine]

The Polish Government in Exile

When NATO goes over the border in the Twilight War they can't just rampage around in Poland without good reason, those things just aren't done (legally). So, they have to be invited in, and to do this they need a power that asks them to and this will be a hastily created "Government in Exile" (GiE) which of course will be instantly branded a "Puppet State" by the Polish People's Republic (PPR).

To be honest, political scientists get very cautious naming these entities because there's a whole lot of moral bias going on, the best description I've seen for them is a "Nominally Sovereign State". These can be as free willed as The Free French Government in The Second World War to something as blatantly controlled as one of the many Imperial Japanese puppet states*.
Usually these powers are complex and change stature frequently, at first supportive and then suddenly becoming obstructive. Like any political entity it may only partially be concerned with military rationales as they have to consistently tread a fine line between excusing their allies and appearing to be a puppet of their military guarantors.

However, in role playing terms it's first and foremost important to say that the PPR are going to hate these people with an incandescent fury. Not only are they to them national traitors but in communist terms they are also class traitors. They are everything a communist Pole is going to loathe, and seeing them fight alongside those who nuked, gassed and plagued as well as bombed their own country makes them implacable enemies (their own allies doing the same might be treated with a bit more lenience, what the average Polish survivor thinks will vary widely).
So, when the US 5th Infantry Division (Mechanised) goes under the first thing that is going to happen is a lot of unpleasantly harsh questions are going to be asked of the POWs about the 1st Polish Free Legion and where they are, what their strengths are and what their support is. Also are going to be some uncomfortable questions about who in the civilian population supported them. These questions aren't going to be asked by the Polish People's Army but rather by the less restrained political authorities.

It will be priority one for Polish PPA troops to engage, destroy and then capture any 1st Legionnaires. Note this will probably clash with Soviet war aims which will be to encircle and destroy NATO main force units. PPA troops will be extensively indoctrinated before engaging rebels to whatever levels are locally possible. If possible political troops will be integrated with PPA units to enforce discipline and deter desertion. A classic problem for political operations such as these is troops allowing rebels to escape because they can sympathise with them even if they don't agree with them.
Historically soviet forces avoid these operations but if they see the need to join in they will use the usual soviet method of ensuring success: overwhelming force. Unlike local troops soviet troops will see no problems with encircling and annihilating rebel units as a method of enforcing political orthodoxy (believe it or not but NATO will generally act in a similar way on their side of the border). World War Three is an ideological war fought for ideological aims and this means ugly ideological operations.

So, where does this place player characters? First off, Polish and Soviet players are at an even more increased risk than normal. Deserters who go over to the other side are always treated badly, and switching sides in an overtly political war even more so. Communists officials have historically treated traitors harshly and while Stalinism is over forty years dead at this time the very fact there’s a war on means that all sides will be run by hardliners.

Secondly, there will have been vestiges of the GiE here and there right across Poland. These people will most have left with retreating troops but a portion of those that remained will have survived. They may be operating as Stay Behind Troops or Partisans. Note; don’t expect normal military aims from a partisan group or any other paramilitary group. Quite often their operations have more to do with group dynamics than any coherent military aim. Of course many partisan groups are brave and dedicated people.

GiE officials may want to try and create enclaves in the desolate Polish rear areas. These cantons will draw military activity like honey draws flies. The players may well understand that eventually someone will inform Lublin for whatever reason and then the hammer will fall, Lublin is likely to tolerate the Black Baron far more than a GiE hamlet.

GiE offcials and infrastructure can be a help to the players. If they’ve had a series of awful rolls, bad outcomes or simply rotten choices then blundering onto a hidden GiE base can be a godsend. These are good plot devices because they can’t keep the players too long or they’ll draw attention, especially if the players have the usual gaggle of clapped out vehicles along. A GiE base can be rife with intrigue, betrayal and other drama the players can blunder into. Factional struggles, petty personal squabbles that blow up into existential threats and other threats abound. These are even more likely than the usual tiny village problems because of the massive overreaction that Lublin has for these groups so they have to maintain the utmost secrecy. Lublin is, of course, well aware that they are out there and has dedicated specialist TKO units that exist solely to root them out and destroy them.

Some missions that these groups give in exchange for their help can be at odds to the strictly military or survival orientated tasks the players are used to. Tax gathering (everyone loves the tax man! Not.), persuading villages to switch sides, drawing off inquisitive government forces, hearts-and-minds ops and some of the weirder Vietnam-era operations are all possible. The players might be happy to get on the road again.

Finally, traces of this organisation should be rife, even if they are grimly negative. Bodies strung up from lamp poles with placards on them remind the average Pole of who is really in charge, and usually it is Lublin. Some average Poles may be on the road because they made a bad choice out of two bad options in some situation where both sides demanded loyalty. Informers realise that both sides are willing to give precious food or security for information and that there are denunciation networks available to them.



(*I try not to use recent examples for obvious reasons)

[ChalkLine]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Polish_cheeses

'nuff said

[ChalkLine]

I haven't really gone into it but is the 5th Infantry Division's doomed ride even possible logistically?

The supply lines don't seem to make sense and they sort of would require rail transport to shift the tanks and other heavy equipment. I don't even think the trucks could actually be moved on the alcohol possible to the unit.
Has anyone ever had a look into this?

If it does require a higher level of logistical support it means the collapse the players see is happening really fast as everything just falls to pieces. This kinda follows the historical maxim of "everything varies with time and place" meaning the 5th Infantry division collapses logistically at the worst time when the Soviet units are looming over it.

Another thing that's always made me wonder is "where is the massive supply lines of the Soviet 4th Guards Tank Army?" I know a few logistical units are mentioned but they are nowhere near enough for a unit that's just powered across Poland. They also should be following rail lines now I think on it.

[ChalkLine]

Distinctive Soviet Tactics developed in the Soviet-Afghanistan War.

Most of the standard soviet tactics are the same as those of the west. However during and after the Soviet-Afghanistan War many innovations and idiosyncratic tactics turned up that are little known outside some tactical appraisal documents. Here's a few:

- Carrying heavy weapons forward.
After dismounting from their carriers soviet troops will lug their 12.7mm HMGs and 30mm AGLs along with them. This extra-heavy weapons group is attached to the normal heavy weapons group. Lightening these weapons and their ammunition has become something of an obsession in Russia since then.

- Bronnegruppa
"The bronegruppa is a temporary grouping of four-five tanks, BMPs or BTRs-or any combination of such vehicles. The BMPs (tracked combat vehicles) or BTRs (wheeled combat vehicles) are deployed without their normally assigned infantry squad on board and fight away from their dismounted troops. The grouping has a significant direct-fire capability and serves as a manoeuvre reserve."

- Enveloping detachments (obkhodiashchii otriad)
A fast moving, hard hitting group designed to sweep around and block avenues. Now, every force does this but this unit was specifically trained in the task. While they might mount an attack from an unexpected direction the emphasis of these troops was speed.
The soviets also radically changed their doctrine and when possible emphasised training in switching rapidly from pre-Soviet-Afghanistan War tactics to post-war ones. This includes armoured columns quickly reorganising into combined arms units for other purposes.

Many of the other innovations don't really carry over into the Twilight War phase. Note that after the Soviet-Afghanistan War there was a heavier emphasis on training for small unit actions, flexible logistics and units operating away from parent units due to the lessons learned in that war.