Shanghaied - 2ACW

71 – Opening offensive

After nearly a week of preparations, the US Armed Forces launched their ground attack along the Main Front to smash the DAR’s military and begin the liberation of the West. That delay from the time when President Roberts had finally taken office to when the opening offensive started had been said by some (politicians mainly) to be too long while others had regarded it as too short (those in uniform mostly held that opinion).

Operation Shining Sword got underway on January 25th.


The US VII Corps struck into the northern half of Colorado on three axis’ of advance. Disestablished back in 1992, a year after completing the crushing of Saddam’s much heralded Republican Guard, the corps headquarters had only been re-established the same day that Roberts took office. It had been done with haste yet there had been contingency plans for that for years. Moreover, all of the forces and the majority of personnel were already in-place. That was how it looked in the Pentagon when it came to fielding the VII Corps: simple, just a matter of putting a staff in at the top and getting those below in position. The 10th Mountain Division – a light infantry division in all but name – began moving down into Colorado from out of Wyoming in the north, advancing south with the Interstate-25 corridor to be their main supply route (MSR) but without them tied to that road itself. In from the northeast, out of Nebraska, the 29th Infantry Division moved into Colorado too with the I-76 corridor once more as a MSR: those were National Guard units from across the East Coast. Finally, the 1st Infantry Division followed the I-70 corridor across from Kansas. That division, which had had all of those recent command issues, was reinforced while in Kansas – where it was based in peacetime at Fort Riley – by its third combat brigade out of Fort Knox off in Kentucky. The VII Corps had a three-to-one advantage over its opponent. General Fuller’s DAR Army had the Colorado Corps in the state after which that command was named with the 4th Infantry Division in the north and the 25th Infantry Division to the south: the former was positioned all by itself to try and turn back the VII Corps. As the battle was joined, with each side using air power, artillery and missiles on the offensive as well as the defensive, American soldiers began killing each other. There were some instances of shots being fired wide on purpose as well as a hesitancy to open fire when ordered yet with the large number of forces involved, when someone fired on time and on target, everyone else seemed to join in once blood was spilt. Casualties were quick to climb as the VII Corps moved forward, fighting a battle of manoeuvre with the outnumbered and outgunned 4th Infantry Division. The colonel commanding one of that DAR Army division’s brigades, the one poised to stop the 29th Infantry Division in the centre of the VII Corps triple attack, was shot dead within his mobile command post right as the battle got going. A fellow officer, someone like him who’d sworn to fight for the DAR yet who was from the Deep South, killed him before being gunned down in an exchange of fire with other soldiers. That disruption there in the CP was significant. So too was what happened to the 10th Mountain Division’s mobile CP on the move when the column of vehicles was bracketed by a flight of inbound Tomahawks. SM-6 air defence missiles took down several of them fired from deep with the Rockies against a high-value target being tracked by small, unarmed drones but not enough. When the moving front-lines were engagements took place between soldiers who were only so recently brothers-in-arms. There were clashes of foot and between armoured vehicles: tanks engaged identical tanks with once more M-1A3 Abrams’ being unable to destroy the other as had been found in Idaho during the preceding weekend. Ambushes were sprung by the defenders as they pulled back, in tighter to defend the approaches to Denver. The VII Corps tried to manoeuvre all around them and not get caught in as few fights as possible. Instead, there was much effort made to encircle and trap DAR units with the hope that once cut off they could be enticed to surrender. That worked on some occasions yet not on others. Other VII Corps elements blasted away at the opponents with a fury that couldn’t be understood by those on their own side. In places, everything was one giant mess for the attackers and defenders. Elsewhere there seemed to be perfect order in what each did. A couple of well-executed localised counterattacks by the 4th Infantry Division’s brigade on the right hand side against the 1st Infantry Division brought the incoming attack from out of Kansas to quite the embarrassing halt. That was helped too by what went on up in the skies above on that cold but bright winter’s day in Colorado.

MQ-9s flown by the DAR Air Force’s, from a squadron detached from the 57th Wing which had been part of the evaluation force at Nellis AFB, flew past where the principal fighting was and into the rear. They attacked follow-up elements of the 1st Infantry Division as it approached Colorado with hits all the way back into Kansas against combat and non-combat units. The burning of fuel trucks along Interstate-70 deep into Kansas closed that MSR. There were DAR Air Force units spread across Colorado, and back into Utah too, to support the Colorado Corps. Carrier Air Wing Two had only recently part of the US Navy at NAS Lemoore back in California. USS Carl Vinson, a Pacific Fleet carrier, was undergoing a ROCH at Norfolk in Virginia (thus lost to the DAR) and its air wing had been sent to Denver International Airport by Fuller to join other units there. No commercial flights were going in and out of there with military units instead making use of the six runways and wide open spaces. Navy Seabees had been busy on the ground to make defensive works for all of the jets there yet the US Air Force had struck hard, repeatedly, at the airport. Still, there were those aircraft from the DAR Navy in the skies above Colorado. FA-18Es, two-seat -18Fs and F-35s flew missions over that state as well as into neighbouring ones. Aircraft in both DAR and United States service shot down those on the other side and attacked ground targets. Target identification was extremely difficult due to all sorts of electronic warfare efforts going on to confuse the other side which more often than not managed to disrupt the efforts of the aircrews in friendly jets. Buckley AFB had F-16s there in Colorado Air National Guard service as well as F-35s from the 8th Fighter Wing (stationed in South Korea until the previous year). In the middle of ongoing air operations, the US Air Force got a low-level raid through all of the DAR efforts to counter that. Wisconsin Air National Guard pilots with their unit under federal control flew their F-16s over Buckley at a seemingly impossible low altitude while going supersonic. Bombs fell in their wake with noise of the explosions at first drowned out by the sonic boom. F-15Es with the 4th Fighter Wing were also attacking DAR targets inside Colorado and had been moved up from South Carolina to Forbes Field ANGB in Kansas: that place was hit by JSOW cruise missiles fired by FA-18Es and then bombed too. Air raids such as those on military airbases deep inside the American Heartland were meant to be the stuff of bad fiction. They happened though as the opening offensive against the DAR took place. Up above, so many multi-million dollar aircraft were successfully shot at and came crashing down. Pilots who took the time to confirm their target, who were confused by all of the interference in the electromagnetic spectrum or just plain unlucky lost the fight to stay airborne and fight a war which the majority of them really wanted no part of deep down.


US Marines fought DAR Marines in eastern New Mexico. The II Marine Expeditionary Force had a three-to-one advantage and made a big attack using the two marine divisions (2nd & 4th) as part of the opening move while keeping the Army National Guard assigned 28th Infantry Division back for follow-up operations. On the other side of the fight was the 1st Marine Division out of California which was part of the New Mexico Corps. New Mexico was a huge state with much of the east of it full of open spaces. There were towns all over the place, even big ones like Carlsbad and Roswell, as well as plentiful road connections. Still… it was deserted in so many more areas. It was also up on the Llano Estacado: the ‘staked plains’ which had so amazed European explorers who had ‘discovered’ America. US Marines had come up the impressive Caprock Escarpment on the eastern side, out of the Texan Panhandle (to join some who moved out of the Oklahoma Panhandle too), ready to cross it and fight their way to the other side of the plateau where the Mascalero Ridge was. The 1st Marine Division opposed that effort. Marines on each side moved about in trucks, amphibious tracked armoured vehicles, wheeled LAV-25s & HMMWVs and helicopters. They sprung ambushes and made tactical retreats as well as edging forwards to pin down opponents. Counterattacks and counter-counterattacks were made. There was plentiful artillery and air support: the latter involving aviation assets in the hands of fellow Marines. In addition there were also tanks.

Back in 2025, the 2020 decision made to remove main battle tanks from the US Marine Corps inventory had been reversed. That had been widely welcomed. Out of storage those M-1A2s had been taken and returned to re-established combat units. The attacking 2nd Marine Division and the 1st Marine Division on the defence each used them. Never straying far from the main body of marines engaging each other apart from in a few isolated cases due to how the front-lines moved, the firepower at hand from the tanks was used widely. With a real low risk of civilian casualties due to where the clashes took place, those tanks joined in with all of that other supporting firepower. AH-1Z attack helicopters, F-35 jets and some older AV-8Bs were all present. There there was all that artillery as well. Marine gunners were called upon again and again to kill fellow marines. Those in the fire support platforms engaged their opponents without the hesitancy seen elsewhere among those on foot up close and personal with the enemy. Seeing another marine, even if he or she was from a government not recognised by the one which they served, held the fire of many of those on foot. On plentiful occasions, the enemy was allowed to escape or would surrender when trapped. Commanders tried to make sense of it all and other marines didn’t do what their buddies did, yet it happened all over the place. However, incoming distant fire from heavy weapons was rarely held off. The 1st Marine Division was forced back and back. They came closer and closer to the Mascalero Ridge and the course of the Rio Grande as the 2nd & 4th Marine Divisions (the latter following the former) pushed onwards. Objectives such as Cannon AFB – which the DAR didn’t defend as it was too far forward – in the centre were taken as well as communications links around Rosewell. To the north, where the Santa Fe National Forest sat on the flank of the way ahead to the state capital Santa Fe and also Albuquerque, there was a hold up to the II MEF getting as far forward as required. A lot was done in one day but too much had been asked. The corps commander ordered the 28th Infantry Division to come forward and prepare for a night attack.


Like the VII Corps, the US IX Corps had been dis-established in the 1990s as well. ARNORTH under General Corrigan had brought that command back to life to serve as the northernmost component of his multi-corps opening offensive. However, the IX Corps had a lower number of available forces than others – not even enough to give it a two-to-one advantage where it was sent – and less-capable units too. Up in Montana the corps HQ was set up with responsibility for taking command of that flank fight with the additional spread of operational area made into the west of Wyoming too. It was winter and none of that area was in any way good ground for a major fight on the ground. Fuller’s Idaho Corps were in the same area and had been on the offensive themselves, in a limited way though, ahead of Corrigan having the IX Corps advance into Idaho with the intention to start the process of liberating that state. The IX Corps had the US Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade on-hand at the start as well as the ad hoc 163rd Armored Group of several Army National Guard tank units. Arriving just ahead of the fighting commencing was the 34th Infantry Division coming into the southwest of Montana with more national guardsmen with the 38th Infantry Division in that state plus in Wyoming. DAR air and missile attacks had stung them hard while moving in. Yet, the Idaho Corps had been hit hard itself from above as the US Air Force returned those attacks. Only the 41st Infantry Division was in-place, already bloodied too, with the 2nd Infantry Division not ready. The sparceness of the terrain, as it was down in eastern New Mexico, allowed for extensive use of firepower to be employed without having to worry that civilians were going to stray into the path of all of that. There were civilians though, those carrying weapons and acting as militia. The IX corps had no control at all over them. Green Berets had contact with some groups but no real supervision. Many of those militia were anti-government in nature who wanted a fight. The ‘invaders’ from out of the Pacific Northwest were their targets yet there was also plenty of desire to shot against those sent from DC too. The ‘unlawful combatants’ caused a whole load of mess to all involved. Air power was a big deal in the fighting up in the Inland Northwest. A lot of it, especially the US elements, was based some distance away from the fighting though requiring tanker support in-flight or suffering the penalty of lower war-loads and short on-station flight time. Local small airports in Montana were used by A-10Cs in US Air Force service while other aircraft were based further east in other states; there was use of both Gowen field ANGB and Mountain Home AFB by the DAR Air Force units though they too flew from distant states (Oregon & Washington) for many their air missions. F-15EGs taken from Republic of Singapore Air force service from their Mountain Home training base flew attack missions against United States targets. However, as had been seen over the weekend, once the Monday came there was another desertion to Canada by a DAR aircrew in one of those jets. That failed: an Oregon Air National Guard F-15C shot it down before it would cross into Canadian airspace. A lot of questions were asked as to what was the point of that?

On the ground, the 1st Armored Brigade from the 34th Infantry Division linked up with the two non-divisional elements of the IX Corps to engage DAR army units in the Snake River Valley. Idaho Falls was retaken during the opening offensive and there was a big fight over near the Craters of the Moon National Park too. The 41st Infantry Division had a missing brigade on the edges of Wyoming, far away from where the real fight was with the IX Corps. The commander of the Idaho Corps brought up some of the 2nd Infantry Division on the counterattack yet couldn’t retake lost ground nor establish any real defensive position, even an elastic one which was needed. That latter division full of US Army regulars whose commander had gone over to the DAR had lost too many personnel to defections and desertions. Its manpower was far lower than it should have been and there were also equipment shortages caused by extensive sabotage. A fight on the move to keep the IX Corps out of pushing into Idaho in the following days was lost on the first day that battle was met. Air power wasn’t enough to turn the ride for the DAR in that fight even when another carrier air wing without a carrier to fly from, on that occasion Carrier Air Wing Nine who had new bases in Oregon, was employed extensively. Those aircraft spent too much time fighting the US Air Force in the skies or recovering from attacks made against them on the ground to truly influence fighting taking place to try to halt the IX Corps from liberating more of Idaho. The rest of the 34th Infantry Division came forward with the 38th Infantry Division pushing in from the flank. The situation in the Inland Northwest of holding on to all that had been taken from a forward position looked lost for Fuller so early on.


On the far southern flank, in the south of New Mexico which was near El Paso yet also stretching out far to the east past Far West Texas, the DAR’s 40th Infantry Division had no forward positions out on their area of responsibility of the Llano Estacado. Fuller had given the New Mexico Corps commander the autonomy he gave elsewhere to fight smart due to the weakness of numbers available. That was needed with that second division under command (the other being the 1st Marine Division) with the New Mexico Corps. Lined up in opposition to them ahead of battle was the three-division, plus attachments, US III Corps. Both of the 36th & 48th Infantry Divisions with all of those well-equipped national guardsmen moved first. They struck out of Far West Texas to enter New Mexico while behind them the III Corps held back the 1st Cavalry Division and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment (the latter a mechanised brigade of Strykers flown home from Poland). Texan national guardsmen with the 71st Airborne Brigade made a heli-assault into the rear as part of the opening move with Nebraska attachments also in that force. They landed near to the White Sands and started to launch a multi-axis attack against Holloman AFB. That was being used by A-10s and drones rather than non-performance jets but was still important. Trying to deal with that penetration in the rear while being hit with a big frontal attack was a big ask for the 40th Infantry Division. They fell backwards, deeper into New Mexico behind the Rio Grande with a defensive position near Las Cruces to anchor upon. Other elements of the 36th Infantry Division – on the left flank of the two-division attack; the 48th Infantry Division hit almost empty ground – had already crossed the river near to El Paso though and sought to advance up the eastern banks to cut off that planned tactical withdrawal. Into the fight was sent DAR air power, lots of it.

The jets flew from Arizona where air support for the New Mexico Corps was based if it wasn’t up at Kirtland AFB near to Albuquerque. At Davis-Monthan AFB, Libby Army Airfield, Luke AFB and MCAS Yuma the DAR Air Force had a big combat force. Among all of that included a whole load of F-16s and F-35s which had been requisitioned from their foreign owners and others taken from AMARG. F-16s once flown by Taiwanese pilots had been sent to AMARG after that country’s fall: no one was going to give them to China when Beijing demanded that everything Taiwanese in the world belonged to them. Once more, the DAR had Singapore jets, F-16s in that case originally from Holloman. Then there were all of those F-35s which belonged to a variety of foreign governments: Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Norway and the Netherlands. The extensive multi-national training facility at Luke had been where all those jets had been taken into DAR Air Force service from. They filled the skies with former US Air Force jets and Air National Guard ones from several states. Air battles with the US Air Force commenced in the sky, something which drew in US Marines aviation supporting the II MEF in New Mexico on occasion, as each side tried to control the skies. Among all of the air battles above, that confusing mess due to electronic interference, the Singaporean & Taiwanese F-16s got down low among many A-10s also flying. The 71st Airborne Brigade around Holloman was targeted to a great extent and so too were the 56th & 72nd Infantry Brigades on each side of the Rio Grande. Those national guardsmen screamed for air cover while being blasted from above. Around Holloman, helicopters bringing in more men but especially supplies, were targeted in the air & on the ground as well. Patriot and SM-6 batteries could get any good number of kills in to make enough difference in time. The 36th Infantry Division was brought to a bloody standstill in both trying to stop the 40th Infantry Division retreating over the river in reasonable order and also there being an evacuation from out of Holloman. There was all sorts of other things going on at the time in southern New Mexico with the commander of the 80th Armored Brigade (a California Army National Guard unit) being assassinated by Green Berets and Biggs Army Airfield at Fort Bliss being raided by DAR MQ-1Cs when there were US Army helicopters aplenty there. More special forces teams in United States service arrived in the Lincoln National Forest and in the small city of Alamogordo the DAR civil authorities pulled out when ‘armed citizen action’ took place as residents there sought to liberate themselves ahead of the US Army arriving. That was all important in the big picture and so too was the movement forward of the regular US Army elements of the III Corps ready to carry on the fight overnight. However, DAR air power had done some serious damage and shown their immense value in the same region too.


The last corps-size force under ARNORTH taking part in the opening offensive was the US XVIII Airborne Corps. Right in the middle of the Main Front Corrigan had them positioned. They moved into southern Colorado to engage with the DAR-controlled 25th Infantry Division and the significant air power on-hand there as well.

The start of that move into southern Colorado was rather dramatic...

It certainly will.
I'm working on my air ORBAT. hard to do as tracking down units as they are now, trying to configure them plus changes for a hypothetical 2029 and get it all to make sense. Trying though and will be done at some point.
The Singapore Gov., like those European ones, will be mad: the Taiwanese are in no position to complain though since most were captured in Taipei in 2027 and are likely in Chinese secret interment camps somewhere on the mainland!

73 – Casualties & captives

Just shy of fifty-three hundred casualties were taken by the two opposing sides combined in the opening stage of the Second American Civil War. That was deaths and serious injuries totalled up and included more than a hundred civilians too. Of the latter, the majority of them were killed in accidents (with those responsible suffering the consequences of punishment) but there were also a dozen militia members, illegal combatants, also among the butcher’s bill. The two Americas took more losses than the Chinese did in their fortnight-long conquering of Taiwan: though that didn’t included Taiwanese casualties. The staggering figure took the breath away of those in the know. The two sides had at that point yet to commit their full forces and had only just began to tear lumps out of each other. Worse was certain to come, much worse. With the number of combat dead, the percentage of those injured on the battlefield who ended up losing their lives was far higher than in recent conflicts fought overseas by the United States in its seemingly endless wars in Middle East. Advances in modern medicine along with exception battlefield medical care practised in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Algeria & Egypt had previously saved so many lives from potential loss. All of that combat care was available for those fighting their brothers-in-arms at home. However, before late-January 2029, when had been the last time that American soldiers had been shelled by a battalion of heavy artillery or been underneath an airstrike by a squadron of high-preformance combat aircraft? Should US Marines have made it to Taiwan before the Taiwan Conflict ended, and faced Chinese marines & paratroopers in action, such losses would have occurred there. The casualty count inflicted at sea was bad enough in that fight yet would have been on par with what happened across the Main Front. Nothing like what those fighting in Colorado, Idaho and New Mexico, nor getting attacked in the rear, had been done to American soldiers in the field for decades before they did it to one another. The scale of it, the brutality was awful for all of those involved.

Overstretched yet heroic medical units did all that they could to save lives. As a consequence of the conflicts in the Middle East, US Armed Forces & DAR Armed Forces medical personnel alike went into the field armed to protect themselves. Insurgents had attacked them in the past and their training dictated that they be armed. Yet, at the same time, they also used clearly marked battlefield ambulances with big white crosses on them set against a red background. Vehicles had been repainted from the ‘standard’ camouflage pattern which had been abandoned in years past as another consequence of fighting in the Middle East against those who purposefully targeted such vehicles. Helicopters preforming the Dustoff role made no secret of what they were doing. They were likewise adorned with medical evacuation markings and flew missions with radio calls made in the clear about their activities. Accidental gunfire struck one of them when in New Mexico evacuating US Marines casualties – thankfully leading to no more injuries nor a feared crash – and the commander of the DAR Marines unit involved was aghast at what was done: he offered in the clear radio apologies to those his marines were otherwise fighting with full gusto and promised to punish the idiotic gunman responsible. The two sides treated each other’s casualties. American soldiers had done so on foreign battlefield against even some of the most reviled opponents but when it came to their fellow Americans, again who they’d been so busy trying to kill, when it came to treating casualties no effort was spared in doing so. When battalion aid stations and field hospitals fell into the custody of an attacker, no effort was spared in going in there and doing all that needed to be done to treat the wounded no matter which opposing government they had been serving. They kept on seeing each other as fellow Americans regardless of how hard they fought on the battlefield.

The majority of medical care units within the US Armed Forces before a significant portion defected to those in rebellion, and remaining the case afterwards, came from reserve units. There were some full-time regulars yet volunteer reservists, who’d been overseas many times throughout the Noughties, Teens & Twenties, who formed a great deal of the overall number of service personnel. In addition to them, there were likewise doctors and nurses (especially those in specialist fields) who had been put through medical school by the military and had a commitment to service if needed. Those volunteers worked in the civilian field in peacetime. They were called up for action though, to serve their country in the time of its greatest need. General Fuller’s DAR Armed Forces had identified a shortfall of personnel during mobilisation of the military forces of the Democratic American Republic when it came to the numbers of medical personnel. At many of the forward sites behind where battle was met along the Main Front, there were DAR Navy corpsmen/women present. Fuller had few ships at sea – there were various reasons for that – and used those who could have been out in the Pacific instead on land in the middle of the divided America. From the Pentagon, SecDef Ferdinand had followed the standard play-book with those call-ups from the civilian field aplenty: he’d also made sure that those reservists were pushed to the front of the queue in deployment schedules so they could be fast where they needed to be. Regardless of all of that preparation, no one seriously expected such huge casualties, especially so early on. Those trying to deal with all of the wounded were overwhelmed on many occasions. Behind the lines were were civilian hospitals to where many casualties ended up being sent: places already missing staff who were in uniform. Personnel from the US Public Health Commissioned Corps (PHSCC) – a uniformed military service though without combat forces nor great numbers – acted as administrators to help with that with regards to transfer, supplies and ensuring security. Plenty of excellent work was done though that didn’t mean that the issue of dealing with the large number of combat injuries was something under control.

Then there were the dead. With so many of them, either killed in combat or dying later despite all efforts to save them, there was localised overwhelming of those tasked to deal with the remains of fellow soldiers, marines, airmen & sailors. Other PHSCC staff assisted the efforts on each side by military units in trying to deal with all of the dead. Once more, the numbers weren’t expected in how quick they came. There were body-bags on-hand and transport to move the corpses of the dead… yet there were just so many of them. The bodies were treated with care and respect where they were dealt with. That included those from opponents too. The matter of ultimate fates of those remains, whether that be burials or cremation, and where final resting places were to be, was something that those involved in removing corpses from the battlefield didn’t directly deal with themselves. However, decisions on that had to be made by those at the top on either side of the great divide. Problems cropped up moving them even further than they initially were. Resolutions to the questions on whether to hand bodies of their soldiers over to the other side were something that was really tricky and was passed onto political leaders rather than those in uniform. Those involved asked themselves many a time if those politicians who decided that they wanted to settle their difference via bullets realised just what the real outcome of that was going to be when there were all of those fatal casualties and so many more certain to follow.


For several decades beforehand, the Pentagon had used three different descriptions when it came to captives who’d been involved in the wars which America had fought. There were ‘unlawful combatants’ who were generally classed by politicians as terrorists: those were unrecognised as legitimate fighters in conflicts yet who ended up at times in captivity. Prisoners of War were American soldiers held captive by the enemy, even if the organisations/groups were themselves unrecognised as legitimate opponents. And there were also Enemy Prisoners of War: captives taken from the ranks of recognised enemies. Unlawful combatants had ended up at places like Guantanamo Bay or had been subject to rendition to a black site in a friendly country for a fate which they certainly wouldn’t have enjoyed. POWs were ‘our guys’ which the bad guys had taken while EPWs were regarded as ‘their guys’ that America held as prisoners. Before the opening offensive was launched by the US Armed Forces on orders of President Roberts to ‘liberate the West’, the two sides fighting inside America anticipated that they would have captives from all three categories. Unrecognised militia were considered to be something that would be demanding to deal with in terms of how to treat them when they were still Americans. Yet, with POWs in the other side’s custody and EPWs held as well, nothing was expected to ever be easy. It surely wasn’t.

When it came to captives in uniform, there were those taken in battle who had surrendered either voluntarily or been forced into that. Numbers with that were figured by both Fuller and Ferdinand to be something high very fast once the fighting started. That didn’t mean that they wanted to take EPWs though nor have their personnel held as POWs by the other side. Arrangements were made as best as could be beforehand and standard operating procedures were followed once that occurred. Good treatment was done on a wide scale. There were many regretful incidents at the same time though. Detainees had a duty to escape captivity and military discipline was supposed to be maintained while in captivity. Military police units and PSYOP soldiers were busy, so too medical personnel who had wounded captives to deal with. Securing, transporting and ultimately guarding the numbers of captives was a big deal requiring major logistical effort and manpower. Escape attempts were made either at point of capture or while on the move. On plentiful occasions, the frequency of which commanders were not happy to discover, when captives ran they weren’t always perused either: for those involved in guard duties, to stop what happened would have meant shooting their fellow American soldiers who had already laid down their arms.

The two sides ended up with many defectors in their custody, those who had willingly surrendered. For those in US Armed Forces custody, they many had EPWs who claimed that they had been forced into taking that oath of service to the Democratic American Republic and had sought the first opportunity to make a run for it. There were those in DAR captivity who claimed that they didn’t want to fight either and didn’t believe that a fight between Americans was what they didn’t want to be a part of: they effectively took themselves out of the war by going over to the other side. Among these captives were those who wished to switch sides, to fight for those whose custody they were in. Motives were many and there was much suspicion about that. To give those men and women weapons and sent them back to fight against who they had just been fighting for wasn’t something that was preferred by the opposing sides. It would solve the issue of holding so many EPWs but it wasn’t regarded as the smartest move to make. There were high-profile captives who gained the attention of those holding them. If the conflict raging had been one fought against a foreign foe, those EPWs would have been ‘exploited’ with the other side worrying about what was happening to their POWs. The exploitation would have come to collect intelligence and for propaganda purposes. Fuller and Ferdinand, to say nothing of their civilian masters, didn’t want to do that at all, not to their fellow Americans. They had moral constraints themselves and also knew the uproar that would cause among those in uniform and also politicians. There were plentiful opportunities though with captives who knew a lot and could be very helpful. Information was sought from captives who wished to share it, to make themselves useful, but to force it out of others, even when it hung there so temptingly, wasn’t taken. In those early day of the conflict, that wasn’t done. Things would change in time though. The pressures of war would see excuses made and some bad things done on the quiet. Anyone who thought it wouldn’t was shown to be either a knave or a liar.

There was a Top Secret draft plan at the Pentagon for dealing with some of those worst traitors taken as captives as the conflict went on. For those holding the rank of a US Army Colonel and the equivalent in other services (O-6 rank) who had illegally entered into the service of the DAR Armed Forces, punishment was going to happen unless they could prove severe force being used to make them break all of their oaths to fight against their own country. Their punishment would be one of a final form in the end: they’d be shot. Only once the fighting was over would that be done, and too after there were military tribunals with justice seen to be delivered. It was to be something done to stop another armed rebellion of such magnitude in the future. The reason why that was kept secret was to not give those in command positions within the DAR Armed Forces, and Fuller too, a ‘Morgenthau moment’. Late in 1944, when Allied armies were closing in upon Nazi Germany, the then US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau had prosed a plan for the economic destruction of Germany post-victory. When leaked, it was used by the Nazis as a propaganda weapon to keep the country’s soldiers, and officers especially, fighting when all the odds were against them. To have those in the service of the DAR know that there would be the ultimate punishment for their actions, something confirmed rather than just a possibility, was believed to be quite counterproductive. Vice President Lee Mitchell had been tasked by his president to ensure it was kept under wraps after he pointed out how that plan if leaked could be manipulated within the DAR to make every single serving member of their military believe they might be shot for treason. They’d no longer serve the US Armed Forces once the fight was won, such was the agreement among those at the top of the Roberts Administration, but they weren’t going to kill hundreds of thousands of those who’d fought against them! The same plan for that punishment to be given to colonels, naval officers of captain rank, generals and admirals included among it military tribunals and the death penalty for those of other, lower ranks whose actions were especially egregious either during the building of the DAR Armed Forces or during the conflict. Again, nothing was to be done in terms of actual punishment among those taken captive while the fighting was going on, but the plan sitting in the Pentagon’s computers was to do just that.

Fuller and the DAR Armed Forces had no such official policy in the pipeline. There was no serious talk of that while their country was fighting to survive its infancy. Fuller wasn’t, as Ferdinand was, looking at the future reunification of the country where matters like that needed consideration. Some planning had been done to punish those who acted against the DAR in the most outrageous forms when it came to its military fight but nothing was official: there was too much else going on. However… the DAR took captives early on, and would continue to do so, who were unlawful combatants. A few were killed in extrajudicial punishment on the battlefield, ones which were far behind the lines, while others were held in secure custody. There wasn’t anyone who looked the other way when they tried to escape and nor was their much good treatment. Americans they were so Fuller didn’t have them tortured nor allowed for horrible things to be done to get them to talk yet they weren’t given EPW status and were not kept in custody alongside those who had been. Such captives as those were treated as one would a war criminal and punishing them to the fullest extent, especially once their number increased alongside brutal attacks being inflicted by others, became something more and more considered. A firing squad awaited them, something which was perfectly legal under internationally laws of war yet not something that was going to go down well at all should it be – and it would be – publicly revealed.

Still unsure about insignia.
I'll do a (basic) map later today.

Ah, there is no sign of that happening.
The secession wasn't done legally - and there is no legal way of doing that - nor with any real democratic mandate. Democrats in the East have been tripping over themselves to disown those who formed the DAR. If the US Gov goes over the top, and does something outrageous, even then the chances of further defections are near impossible. Civilian unrest is more likely than any more secession.    

Gold: Democratic American Republic
Green: United States of America
Pink areas: US-taken territory from the DAR

(click on map to enlarge)