Flash fiction thread

Then i have all the weekend to make the new banner for it if you allow me.

Post them please!

"Good morning." The greeting was shy and muted, a greeting that came from a woman whose demure nature was noticable even to the most unobservant of passers-by. Manning offered a polite smile and motioned to the chair opposite his own, but the woman waited, seemingly caught between a melee of options. "Can I sit?"

"Of course," he replied. Bearing a stature that was intimidating to most and with an angry scar etched across the cheekbone on the left side of his face, Manning rarely allowed himself to forget that those around him would turn their heads in poorly-disguised horror at the sight of him. "You're Miss Cahill, I presume?"

Cold War ORBATs aren't my speciality & any comments are appreciated. 

March 3, 2020

General George Chatwin, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the most senior military officer in the United States Armed Forces was a man in an unenviable position. His post came with far more responsibility than it did power. Though he could dictate the orders of the National Command Authority - the President and the Secretary of Defence - to the combatant commanders of US forces in the firing line overseas, it was not his prerogative to issue such orders himself. The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 had seen a restructuring of the civilian-to-Pentagon chain of command and the position of CJCS had become a primarily advisory one. Nevertheless, Chatwin was arguably the man most suited to the job of heading America's Armed Forces during World War III. He was a combat veteran with over thirty years of experience in the US Army ranging from combat command roles to staff positions in Germany, Korea and the Middle East & North Africa. Chatwin held a deep respect within the Administration both because of his military competency and his political skills. It was his duty to brief that same Administration on the global wartime situation across all fronts on March 3, 21 days after Warsaw Pact forces had crossed the Inter-German Border and invaded NATO territory in Denmark, Norway and Turkey on February 11.

The briefing took place in the White House’ underground Situation Room with heavy security. When the conflict had initiated, President Mordon had been evacuated from Washington D.C. aboard Marine One, but she had opted to return to the capital – against, it must be said, the recommendations of her security personnel and the Joint Chiefs – in order to boost public morale. Despite the pair of Spetsnaz attacks at Tinker and Scott Air Force Bases, respectively in Oklahoma and Illinois, there had been no attempts on Mordon’s life or on the lives of her senior advisers. Nevertheless, D.C. was under a complete lockdown, with National Guardsmen from the 29th Infantry Division positioned in battalion strength at Andrews Air Force Base, the National Mall, and the Cabinet Offices. Armed soldiers of the active-duty 3rd Infantry Regiment – The Old Guard – patrolled the major entrances and exits from the city and US Marines from the Marine Barracks, Washington D.C. had traded their ceremonial dress blues for combat fatigues and assault rifles. Those Marines provided a roving patrol around the White House alongside the Capitol Police, while the Secret Service was responsible directly for the protection of both the White House grounds and the President herself.

General Chatwin was told to begin his briefing by focusing on the peripheral combat zones rather than those in West Germany. He told the President that the North Korean offensive towards Seoul, which had been launched a mere three days after the Warsaw Pact had attacked NATO, had been blunted and then stopped cold by the ROK Army and the US 2nd Infantry Division. This offensive drive from the north, taking place in three major prongs all across the Korean Peninsula, had at first threatened to encircle the South Korean capital with its population of some nine million people. However, determined resistance by the ROK Army and US forces forward-deployed on the Peninsula had stopped the North Korean People’s Army cold. The Army’s IX Corps had been moved to Korea from its forward basing in Japan during the pre-war international crisis, and two US Army formations, the 7th and 25th Light Infantry Divisions, had then gone to Korea to reinforce it. Those two divisions were now at full-strength in Korea and despite major losses, the ROK Army had initiated a series of tactical counterattacks to reduce the North Korean mechanized corps that had been stopped on the approach to Seoul. In addition, the entire III Marine Expeditionary Force was now in South Korea, reinforced by the over-strength Australian 1st Infantry Division. Chatwin informed his civilian superiors with the National Security Council that, while he believed US forces could repel the NKPA from South Korean soil, they would be unable to drive on Pyongyang while the bulk of the US Military’s power, both combat and logistical, was engaged in Europe. General Chatwin’s subordinate, Eighth Army commander General Thomas Munroe, had briefed the Chair-man of the Joint Chiefs on a joint operation that would see the North Koreans driven back to their own borders and then targeted by massive airstrikes and naval gunfire operations, while ROK forc-es would cross the 38th Parallel and capture the southernmost North Korean cities and logistical nodes. Secretary of Defence Maddison agreed with Munroe’s plan and was able to persuade President Mordon of its validity, thus giving the Eighth Army the authorisation to cross the DMZ once the NKPA had been forced back from South Korean soil.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs then moved his briefing to focus on the situation in the Middle East, where, until recently, US Marines had been sitting idly in the Saudi desert awaiting instructions. Yemen had responded to the seizure of Socotra Island by US Marines with military manoeuvres across the Bab-el-Mendeb which had quickly resulted into a series of clashes between the US Fifth Fleet and Yemeni naval and air forces. The skirmishes began with exchanges of fire between Yemeni gunboats on 17 February and escalated rapidly into full-scale fighting with Sanaa declaring that the Red Sea was now closed to US shipping. The Dong Feng-21 missiles employed by Yemen were used to enforce this new policy, along with Yemen’s small fleet of MiG-29s and gunboats. The Chinese-produced DF-21s, Chatwin told the NSC, needs satellite guidance which must have been provided by the Soviet Union. Though most of the missiles had missed their targets, the destroyer USS Bainbridge had been lost with 27 crew-members to a missile attack. Then, President Mordon had ordered the US Fifth Fleet, with the nuclear-powered aircraft-carrier USS Raymond A. Spruance at its head, to initiate full-scale operations against Yemen and bring an end to its participation in the war. This came as something of a surprise to Lieutenant-General Michael Maloney, commander of the 50,000-strong I Marine Expeditionary Force. During REFORGER, his marines had been deployed to Saudi Arabia in the expectation that Soviet forces would come storming into Iran, or even perhaps that the Iranians might send their army through southern Iraq and into America’s Middle Eastern ally. Though neither of those events had come to pass, Maloney’s I MEF – complete with a combat division and an air wing – was still ready for action. Chatwin said that the Marines had crossed the border into Yemen at a small desert settlement called Al-Wadiah with the 1st Regimental Combat Team of the 1st Marine Division taking the lead. The spearheads, the CJCS informed, had made excellent progress against mainly light resistance in the countryside. The Al-Abr District had seen a tough fight with US Marines engaged in close-quarters combat with not only enemy soldiers but apparent Islamic fundamentalist militants who were flocking to Yemen en masse. This was of little concern; the Administration had no intentions to occupy Yemen and deal with such an insurgency. The intent was the remove the pro-Soviet government from Sanaa and then withdraw, leaving I MEF free to fight elsewhere. Across northern Yemen, USMC regimental combat teams were bearing down on Sanaa, facing sporadic ambushes in the countryside but much tougher resistance in the cities. Only on a handful of occasions did the Yemeni Army attempt to fight with tanks and armour of its own, and these futile efforts at resistance where either torn apart by USMC M1A1-FEPs or by airstrikes called in by well-trained Forward Air Controllers or FACs. The RCT structure of the US Marines meant that despite being, in essence, a primarily infantry force, the 1st Marine Division had become fully mechanized. Tanks were assigned from the divisional armoured battalion to each RCT, while LAV-25s and AAVP-7 amphibious assault vehicles served as armoured personnel carriers. Chatwin told the President and her civilian advisors that he was totally confident of success in Yemen, quite possibly within the next week.

When it came to US and NATO forces in direct conflict with the Warsaw Pact, the story was differ-ent in many areas. There was good news in Norway; the US 2nd Marine Division and with it the rest of the corps-sized II Marine Expeditionary Force had fought bitterly against the Soviet 6th Combined Arms Army and the 11th Army Corps. The Norwegian Army had taken part in this ferocious fight and so too had the British with their paratroopers and Royal Marines. The initial Soviet airhead at Bodo had been wrestled back into NATO hands from those of the 76th Guards Air Assault Division back on February 21. The Soviet paratroopers had held on for far longer than expected, maintain-ing an ever-weakening hold on Bodo for some ten days. The port city had been recaptured by the 2nd Marine Division, with its 8th Marine Regiment using helicopters and MV-22 tiltrotor aircraft to transport troops all around the city. Bodo’s airport had initially served as the headquarters of the 76th GAD, but US Navy warplanes from the deck of the USS Gerald R. Ford had seen that put to a stop. The Soviet paratroopers were good soldiers, and they had some armour too, mainly BMD-3s and a small number of T-90s. However, they were totally unable to manoeuvre against the US Marines and their stocks of fuel and ammunition had been virtually exhausted by the time the amphibious assault against Bodo was attempted. Further out to sea off of the coast of Bodo, the combined forces of the US Navy, the Royal Navy, and the Royal Norwegian Navy had seen the Soviet amphibious forces meant to link up with the paratroopers at Bodo killed then their ships had been sunk by dozens of Allied warplanes, submarines, and surface ships firing Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles. A huge blow had been dealt to the Red Banner Northern Fleet when that spectacular naval battle had occurred on February 19. The 61st Guards Naval Infantry Brigade and the amphibiously-trained mechanized division travelling with the amphibious forces had been lost en masse without ever firing a shot. Many of those marines and soldiers had died horrible deaths, burning as their cargo ships were set ablaze of drowning when they became trapped below the decks of sinking ships. Northern Norway was also awash with successes for NATO. The 6th Infantry Division, a Norwegian formation, had been able to blunt the initial attacks of the Soviet ground forces through Finmark and when the border region had finally fallen, the Norwegian Home Guard had adapted excellently to the stay-behind role. More US Marines had seen action up here and especially around Alta, where the 131st Motorised Rifle Division had been destroyed in detail when the Americans held their advance and the British paratroopers of the 5th Airborne Brigade had moved into their rears and torn apart their supply and support units. USMC Cobra attack helicopters contributed mightily to the Allies’ firepower in Norway, and as February came to a close, General Chatwin had been authorised by the President to have II Marine Expeditionary Force participate in a counteroffensive to drive the Soviets from Norwegian soil in early March. This operation would take time and cost many lives, but Chatwin was confident that it would succeed by mid-March, thus freeing up US Marines and British forces for operations further north.

For NATO, the good news ended at Norway. Much of what General Chatwin told his superiors now was information they already knew, but he included this stale information in order to give a comprehensive picture of the situation in Europe. Zealand had been lost two weeks ago, when the Danish forces scattered across the island had finally succumbed to an overwhelming attack. The initial landings on the island had been mounted at Koge by the 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, with Polish marines and paratroopers belonging to their respective 7th & 6th divisions following on, and then a pair of Soviet mechanized infantry brigades. NATO had little in the way of forces to rein-force Zealand, and SACEUR, General Morris Eckhart, was highly reluctant to send his extremely limited reserves into a battle that he thought was certain to be lost. Thus, Zealand fell. The rest of Denmark was not far behind. On the first night of the war, Soviet paratroopers with their 106th Guards Airborne Division had landed around Highway-7 between Flensburg and Schleswig. The drop had been chaotic and many paratroopers had found themselves isolated or in the wrong place while others had never even had the chance to leave their transport planes as they were blown out of the sky. However, enough of the VDV men did get through the defensive effort, landing directly behind the lines of the multinational NATO LANDJUT Corps. An epic battle had occurred across Schleswig-Holstein as the LANDJUT Corps fought bitterly to halt the Soviet and East German advance. The Warsaw Pact troops had gone northwards, encircling Lubeck with the US 9th Infantry Division and several battalions of West German reservists. The 9th Infantry Division, a ‘motorized’ formation equipped with a mixture of M1A2-SEP Abrams tanks and Stryker fighting vehicles rather than the Bradley’s used by mechanized infantry units, had fought valiantly from the be-ginning, but became encircled on February 14. By the end of the week, the pocket had exhausted most of its ammunition, and Lubeck was a burning ruin with thousands of civilians and American soldiers’ alike lying dead in the rubble. Major-General Warton, the embattled commander of the 9th Infantry Division, was killed by an East German airstrike on February 20. Brigadier-General Manning, the division’s deputy commander, was left to surrender his command to the Soviets after destroying his radios and fuel stocks, burning the colours, and ordering his troops to smash the interior of their vehicles to avoid sensitive targeting and communications systems falling into enemy hands. Elsewhere in Schleswig-Holstein, the West German Army’s 6th Panzergrenadier Division had been smashed apart by Soviet tanks and then the Danish Jutland Division had been forced to with-draw into Denmark proper. It had taken the Soviets and East Germans until February 30 to secure the surrender of the major Danish military formations in their homeland, but by the end of the month all of Denmark was in enemy hands. Chatwin was already, however, discussing plans to liberate the country with General Eckhart. Such an operation, which could be launched at a later date, would see II MEF and also those British Paras and Commandos sent down from Norway to make an opposed landing on the Jutland Peninsula. The USMC reservists with the 4th Marine Division would soon be on their way to England to stage for such an amphibious operation, thus effectively dou-bling II MEF’s strength.

The Northern Army Group was commanded by General Sir Peter Winthrop-Kinley, a veteran officer much like Chatwin himself. The two officers had, in fact, served together when Chatwin had been assigned to Winthrop-Kinley’s fusilier company as an exchange officer. Winthrop was well-suited for his role, having commanded a reconnaissance troop in the 1994 Persian Gulf War and then as a Lieutenant-Colonel led the 2nd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, into battle in Libya in 2007. During the latter conflict, Winthrop-Kinley had personally led his battalion in the capture of an enemy fortress that had appeared impregnable. The British officer in charge of NORTHAG commanded five corps formations, one each from Britain, Holland, Belgium, West Germany, and the United States, with the latter having it’s III Corps as a reserve force. During the initial hours and then days of World War III, Winthrop-Kinley’s forces had been badly mauled by the Warsaw Pact armies arrayed against them and had been totally unable to stop the enemy advance. To the north of Winthrop-Kinley’s area of operations, I Dutch Corps had been effectively destroyed as a fighting force. Though the three divisions of the corps – one made up of reservists – was well-trained and equipped with modern Leopard-2 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, the sheer weight of the 2nd Guards Tank Army’s advance. Those Soviet tanks had broken through the Dutch defences on Feb-ruary 13 and driven a wedge between them and the LANDJUT Corps which had resulted in the defeat of both formations in detail throughout the remainder of the month. Fortunately, the US III Corps had been able to move as a backstop to the Dutch units, and by February 16, those American tankers and infantrymen were involved in ferocious fighting to defend the approaches to Ham-burg. Allied forces fell back across the Elbe as the attack became too much for even the powerful III Corps to bear. Hamburg was effectively abandoned to its fate, much to the dismay of the West German government in Bonn. However, the Americans had managed to withdraw in good order and were still largely ‘combat effective’ despite suffering some losses in engaging the Warsaw Pact troops. To the south, I West German Corps did somewhat better than the Dutch. They were able to consistently slow the advance of the 20th Guards Army but never did manage to stop those So-viet tanks in their tracks. Leopard-2 crews expertly destroyed T-90s and T-99s while infantrymen with guided anti-tank missiles also did their best. Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopters in the hands of the German and French armies and the Apaches used by the US, British, and Dutch forces also proved their worth. The British 1st and 4th Armoured Divisions as well as the 5th Infantry Division had borne the brunt of the fighting in I British Corps’ sector, mainly conducting operations against the 3rd Shock Army. The 5th Division had been wiped out as a fighting force and it’s surviving elements transferred to the 1st Armoured Division, which itself had taken major casualties with the entire 22nd Armoured Brigade destroyed. Furthermore, the 11th Armoured Brigade from the 4th Division had been cut off during its attempts to retreat. That British unit had taken a stand in the country-side around Hanover which had lasted for three days but had eventually seen the British unit forced to surrender. The southernmost element of NORTHAG, the Belgian I Corps, took heavy losses but was ultimately able to prevent a breach in the lines between NORTHAG and CENTAG. Those Belgian troops fought far better than their East German and Soviet opponents expected of them, never giving an inch unless forced to do so. Even so, the ground they held was steadily occupied by wave after wave of enemy tanks and infantry.

CENTAG, under US Army General John Bernard, was in only slightly better shape that its counter-part to the north. III West German Corps held onto the northern flank of the army group, its positions steadily blurring with those of the Belgian I Corps. The Germans never gave ground willingly, fighting so hard that their tenacity sometimes betrayed them; when German commanders were unwilling to abandon the ground they held, they often ended up encircled or seeing their units overrun and destroyed in place. The Soviet 8th Guards Army, reinforced by a division of East Ger-mans, had been unable to achieve its hoped-for ‘breakthrough’ in NATO lines, but they had dis-lodged the West Germans from even the most determined defensive positions. In the Fulda Gap, the US V Corps was in the midst of a ferocious engagement with the 1st Guards Tank Army. This battle had seen the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment destroyed when it was overrun by Soviet tanks on the war’s second day, while the 3rd Armored and 8th Mechanized Infantry Divisions had taken horrendous losses in blunting the Soviet armoured spearheads. Nevertheless, they had been able to hold the Soviets back throughout the war’s first week, clinging onto their positions with their fingernails. Though Soviet artillery got within range of Frankfurt, their tanks never made it into the city with the sheer ferocity of the resistance in their way. Yet further south, CENTAG came under attack by the Soviet 28th Combined Arms Army and its Czechoslovak allies. These attacks were launched against the US VII Corps and the West German II Corps. From the first day of the war until now, General Chatwin told the President, the Soviets and Czechoslovaks had been banging their heads against a brick wall. The terrain was favourable to the defenders and the Americans and Germans were excellently-trained. Morale amongst the defenders was high while the Czechoslovaks were an army that was fighting for a hated oppressor.

On February 27, there had been general exchanges of chemical weapons across the frontlines in Germany by both sides. Casualties had been extremely severe, but surviving troops had been able to don their respirators and protective clothing. The fighting had taken an even more savage turn after the use of chemical weapons, which had finally seen a breakthrough in NORTHAG’s sector between the West German and British formations there. With the breakthrough causing chaos in NATO lines and panic spreading, General Eckhart made the call to order a general retreat of NATO forces to the western bank of the Weser River, which took place on February 29, two days after the first wave of chemical exchanges. Chatwin had been gutted to see so much ground sacrificed to the Warsaw Pact, but he understood and supported Eckhart’s decision. Indeed the alternative would be to see NORTHAG destroyed in its entirety and thus the whole of northern Germany ceded to the enemy and quite likely the use of nuclear weapons after that which could well spiral into the global nuclear exchange which everyone dreaded. When President Mordon asked what would happen next, Chatwin informed her that US National Guard forces, newly-raised divisions manned by draftees and servicemen and women recalled from retirement, and most of the as-yet uncommitted French Army, as well as additional forces from across NATO’s ranks, would be deployed into West Germany and launch a counteroffensive over the Weser River to liberate occupied territory and then drive as far eastwards as they were told by the Alliance’s civilian leadership. While such a thing seemed unlikely right now due to the apparent gravity of the situation, the CJCS reminded his colleagues that NATO air interdiction operations over Eastern Europe were slowing the pace of Soviet re-deployments to a crawl. B-1B bombers were flying nightly sorties from Britain and the Azores which struck bridges, railways and marshalling areas with devastating effect. There had even been raids on the Kola Peninsula by the Second Fleet in support of NATO operations in Nor-way.

The final front to be discussed was that of Turkey. Soviet forces massing in the Caucuses had been unable to achieve any headway against the bulk of the Turkish Army. The mountains and the sheer number of Turkish troops meant that the USSR hadn’t pushed into Turkey beyond seizing a few mountain passes with paratroopers and Spetsnaz teams and shelling the Turkish formations below. The major fight on the southern flank of NATO had taken place in Thrace, where the Soviet 38th Combined Arms Army had crossed the border from Bulgaria with support from local Bulgarian forces as well as paratroopers and naval infantry from the Black Sea Fleet. Turkish forces had been deployed in strength in Thrace. They had been joined by the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division and the multinational ACE Mobile Force Brigade-Group. And yet, European Turkey, including Istanbul, fell into Soviet hands. This defeat had occurred on February 30, while soldiers in Germany were struggling to fight in a chemical environment. Here in Thrace, no direct gas weapons had been used, but instead thermobaric weapons had been deployed. The four combat battalions of the ACE Mobile Force, one each from the US, Britain, Italy, and Canada, had taken severe losses. Soviet tanks had rolled over the infantrymen in their foxholes. Turkish armoured units had resisted extremely hard, but they too had been wiped out by thermobaric bombs when resistance was too heavy for the Warsaw Pact forces to overcome. The 10th Mountain Division, pocketed at Kesan, had finally surrendered on February 29, while the last Turkish troops either dispersed in the countryside or fell back across the Dardanelles the following day. As he had planned for a counterattack to the north, General Chatwin maintained that there were options open to liberate Thrace. While the Turks had a massive and highly-mechanized ground force they could use to recover their territory, they lacked significant marine and airborne units to ‘kick in the door’, as the Secretary of Defence phrased it. So, when I MEF finished its task in Yemen, it was decided that all those US Marines would be going north through the Suez Canal. The 1st Marine Division was to be the boot that would kick the door open for the Turkish tanks.

Finally, as the briefing drew to a close, General Chatwin was asked if there had been any updates on the situation in West Berlin. The city, defended not by the Bundeswehr but by the American, British, and French armies, had been out of contact since February 17, and it was painfully obvious to all in the Pentagon and the White House alike that it had fallen. However, nobody knew the circumstances of its loss. Jamming had seen communications with the American and British garrisons lost, although a human intelligence, or HUMINT, source had reported that the commander of the American contingent had been seen signing a surrender document at the nearby airport. The surrender ceremony had apparently been videotaped but it had yet to be published. The CIA suspected the tape was being saved for the day that the Soviet people needed a morale boost. The fate of the British brigade in Berlin was likewise unknown, all though a number of reports had come in that the garrison had fought to the end. As for the French contingent, the story was somewhat different. In the spirit of the Cameron Tradition, the French commander had ordered that a breakout effort take place. Though its success was nearly impossible, the breakout had to be attempted for the sake of maintaining the honour of France. The effort was reported to have failed, and on February 17, the French brigade commander had sent a final message back to Paris. It read, “Out of ammunition. Vive Le France!”

Thanks. NATO is winning in Norway and just about holding on the Weser in Germany. Seoul having 30 million...that's my bad, I'll edit that. Not sure why that number was in my head.