Post by James G on Apr 26, 2021 18:24:51 GMT
102 – Sunshine and shuffling
A week into February 2029, the pair of winter storms which had battered the western half of North America had gone on their way. They had done their worst with nature unleashing her fury in exceptional fashion. The sun came out afterwards with reasonable weather promised for some time ahead once Ted and then Ulysses had departed. Below those clear skies, the opposing armies lined up representing the two sides of a political argument which had so divided America were still there. The time spent without any serious fighting being able to take place hadn’t been spent in efforts trying to stop any more of it. Each side had got their licks in where they could in bombing each other’s capitals and also with one retaking territory beyond the mainland lost the month beforehand. With the ability to get back to the fighting, those in position to do so followed orders to do just that. There was a civil war to be getting on with after the storms had gone away! There was once again death, injury and misery on an immense scale all for a political dispute.
As had been the case since its creation, the secessionist Democratic American Republic got a head start. Ted had hit the West hard but Ulysses less so. A few more days of preparation had been granted for those who had broken away from what their political masters regarded as the failed nation which was the United States of America. Troops had been moved around and so too supplies. Snow had been cleared from runways and key road links opened up as best as possible. General Fuller had been able to get to get the 2nd Infantry Division down from Idaho into the western half of New Mexico with the columns of wheeled Strykers having to take a detouring route due to where the freeways ran but still making it to where he wanted them to join with the smashed up New Mexico Corps. Using tactical airlift, he had also moved those two light infantry brigades of reservists formed on the basic of pre-war training brigades also into position to the west of where the Rio Grande ran through New Mexico. That river was quite something further downstream where it separated Texas from Mexico, yet where it ran across the middle of one of the front-line states of the DAR, half of which US forces occupied, it wasn’t much of a water barrier. Regardless, Fuller had ceded the eastern side to his opponents and gathered strength on the western side. The riverbank wasn’t defended in any real fashion apart from aggressive patrolling and air-scattered minefields. It was something that US forces needed to get across to defeat the New Mexico Corps though and then maintain their crossings to push on further forces and open up lines of communication. The DAR Armed Forces had a strong position there to oppose an invasion deep into the West going through New Mexico, across Arizona and towards the Pacific. Fuller had been shuffling forces around elsewhere too once the weather had started to clear up. He’d transferred about air units to give greater capability in the southern section of the Main Front as well. There were still many of them on-hand to fight in the north and the centre but the south was where the next major US move was going to be made. His military intelligence people had provided him with enough supporting evidence for his own gut feeling on where the next blow would fall. Fuller was ready to give everything to stop what looked like an attempt at a full-scale US offensive in that area working.
The 3rd Marine Division was meant to have been airlifted into Arizona and positioned in behind the New Mexico Corps as a tactical reserve. Only what was left of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment after so much of that unit had been torn apart near Albuquerque at the end of January was available to fulfil that role. Those marines didn’t make the transfer to Arizona because they had gone over to the counter-secessionists in Hawaii. There were others from Hawaii who remained fighting for the DAR though. Part of the 40th Infantry Division in New Mexico was the 29th Infantry Brigade. National guardsmen from Arizona and Guam joined with those from Hawaii as part of that unit. They’d all been blooded and done themselves proud in previous engagements. News had reached their senior officers – and filtered down too – of what had happened back where they called home with Fuller being unable to stop that. The reports back from those in the field had told him that the national guardsmen would continue to fight. Rawlings and members of the Council of Twelve (they’d renamed themselves after Governor Ito had done what she had) had concerns but Fuller didn’t. His belief was that they would continue to fight… as long as they regarded themselves as doing so for the right cause. He shot down a foolish idea presented to move them into the rear with the response that that would crush morale and see their ultimate loss. Not everyone agreed with that reasoning but Fuller stuck with those volunteer soldiers.
On the other side of the great divide, US NORTHCOM’s commander issued instructions for his subordinates to shuffle around forces when the sun came out and there was better weather. Northern Command was going back over on the offensive as soon as possible. LTG Lambert at the head of ARNORTH put his plans into motion to rearrange the command he had inherited. Preparation work had been done when first the snow and then the ice had fallen to make that something unable at that time doable once things clearer up. Once it could be started, Lambert made sure that it happened. He had a meat cleaver taken to the organisational structure of the US Army North with regard to where its component corps were located and their own components. Combat units were moved this way and that way and it was the same with supporting elements too. Both the VII & XVIII Corps were pulled southwards from out of Colorado and given a New Mexico mission. The II MEF, which controlled US Marines as well as national guardsmen, was tasked to expand its operational area up into Colorado was was assigned more of the latter. Where Lambert had inherited the disaster which was the IX Corps trying to break into Idaho from out of Montana and Wyoming, he expanded their operational area while giving that headquarters command of units he was unable to extradite yet taking away others. Like the II MEF, the IX Corps would no longer have an offensive role but rather be part of tying down opposition units. The III Corps already in New Mexico was joined by the VII & XVIII corps with a rearrangement of their dispositions too. He’d punch forwards on the left while defending on the right.
Lambert had the MSRs opened up from the blockages of snow and vehicle wrecks where possible. That allowed him to not just move about those combat units but to also get forward a resupply too. As was the case with his counterparts to the West, Lambert’s ARNORTH had gone through an extraordinary amount of ammunition, fuel and disposable stores while fighting for the short period before the two winter storms. The usage had defied all expectations… as always seemed to be the case in any modern conflict. Replacement equipment was moved forward too down those MSRs. The losses there in everything from tanks to trucks had been exceptional. There was only so many of that that could be replaced too: war-stocks weren’t infinite and despite what was announced in DC about wartime industry production, none of that was going to matter in the short-term. AFNORTH moved about its aircraft as it opened up airbases yet was behind the DAR in that respect. Lambert’s convoys in the rear paid the price for the delay as they suffered DAR air attacks. There were many strikes with weapons fired from afar via aircraft which had been unchallenged in the air. Munitions smashed into those making use of the MSRs. Interstate-40 through New Mexico and I-10 running across Far West Texas had long been magnets for enemy special forces activity. The DAR Air Force managed to close both of them in many places with their men & women in the shadows behind the lines doing what even Lambert had to admit was a sterling job in how they achieved that. The routes weren’t closed for long and never in any manner down their entirety, but the problem there was one which refused to go away. US special forces were doing the exact same thing down the same freeways which formed the MSRs for the opposition through Arizona – I-10 & I-40 were littered with air strikes guided in by spotters – but that provided little comfort overall when serious delays were inflicted upon ARNORTH.
Across the border in Mexico, in certain places it looked like that country was having its own civil war. Few north of the border, whether they be in DC or Las Vegas, were paying attention to what was happening. There was an awareness that Mexico was being badly affected yet there was too much on their hands and there was also nothing that the leadership of both the United States and the Democratic American Republic believed that they could do to avert that. Of course, they could have stopped fighting... but they didn’t.
Mexicans suffered the consequences of the Second American Civil War.
The trade disruption had come first. Western secession had seen demands made in DC that no third country trade with the DAR. Businesses had taken a massive hit on both sides of the border from the financial meltdown on Black Friday ahead of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence made in Las Vegas and then that secession compounded the economic free-fall that struck everywhere. The economies of the United States (as one and also separate) and Mexico were inter-linked just as those on both sides of the new divide across America was too. Everyone suffered financially. People lost theirs jobs and their livelihoods. US-Mexico trade was something that carried on across the Rio Grande but when Texas came under attack like it did from DAR air, missile & commando activity, and hope of some form of recovery floundered. Cruise missiles struck bridges over the river which defined the border all the way down as Brownsville next to the Gulf of Mexico. Where trade was cross-border attempted between Mexico and the DAR in an illegal fashion where those in Mexico City either turned a blind eye or were unaware, US air and missile attacks against the road links on the northern side – just inside Arizona and California – took place as well. DC wanted to cut those in Las Vegas off from the outside world and striking trucks on the freeways just inside the DAR did an excellent job of stopping the import & export of goods. The intention was to deny the DAR the ability to survive but Mexico was hurt just as bad.
Border controls to stop the movement of illegal drugs and the flow of undocumented people collapsed when the DAR was formed. There was an official policy of a secure border on behalf of the DAR yet it was one what was unable to enforce. The Mexicans cut official ties due to threats from DC about any form of cooperation. Wartime attacks by the DAR down into Texas also caused significant disruption along that section of the border too. Drugs and people moved north. Guns and money went south. So many of the usual interdiction efforts failed. The criminal enterprises behind all of that were trans-national and their whole system of cross-border movements were upended. In places, it was open season while elsewhere there was the inability to do what they wanted. Particular cartels collapsed as others tried to rise in their place. The violence of the Mexican Drug War went up to astronomical levels as a consequence. Mass murders of innocents for intimidation and also revenge killings for spurious reasons took place. Mexican police and military units lost control and there were large-scale defections to the cartels and gangs or desertions where personnel fled northwards trying to take their families with them. Mexicans died in the violence yet so too did non-nationals. There were Americans in Mexico who had fled from the civil war in their own country to end up losing their lives in a knock-on effect of that. Hundreds of thousands of migrants aiming to seek a better life in America were in Mexico. They’d left their home countries further south in Latin America either before or after the DAR was formed. Whether they wanted to go to the DAR – with lies spread by traffickers about unrestricted immigration – or to the United States (where cross-border immigration had been put on a firm halt due to the war), it didn’t matter. They were still caught up in the violence that gripped not just the north of Mexico near the border but increasingly across a large portion of that country. There was no escape for them from it.
Coup rumours ran with abandon in Mexico City. The president and his government believed that their rule, their very lives in fact, were at risk of ending. The threat was perceived as coming from the military who it was thought where itching to take over and ‘restore order’. If that was going to happen, it would have to be an order restored using a lot of bullets. Like many big cities far away from the Rio Grande and the frontier with the new DAR too, Mexico City witnessed killings and even explosions once February started. The wars between cartels, those rising and falling, came to the streets of the capital. Non-essential staff from the US Embassy were evacuated and the armoured convoy carrying personnel during that pull-out taking them to their airport came under fire from unknown gunmen. Other diplomatic compounds occupied by those representing further countries also saw the withdrawal of those deemed not essential beyond maintaining the bare minimum of representation. The US Government made formal requests for Mexico to provide oil supplies – to go direct to US refineries – in support of the war effort. It was something that President Mitchell told his counterpart in Mexico City that the United States was willing to pay for via a reduction in Mexico’s debt with DC paying over the odds for that oil too. The offer made was a generous one yet one which Mexico couldn’t fulfil. The violence had moved to effect oil production. Things went from bad to worse in Mexico and that was a key indicator of the serious trouble that the country was in. Even if those north of the border stopped their civil war and everything was resolved with handshakes & hugs, Mexico would still have been in immense trouble economically and in terms of civil security. Of course, they didn’t stop fighting in America either.
When what attention was paid, a certain number of US politicians in DC caused what in normal times would have been a major outcry when they suggested that Mexico should shoulder the blame for what was happening. Was not the DAR’s president an illegal immigrant to the United States who had come from Mexico? Maria Arreola Rodriguez and her quest for the US presidency, one which the Supreme Court had said she wasn’t entitled to, was what so many blamed for America’s civil war. Therefore, in the opinion of those who spoke out seemingly glad that Mexico was caught in such internal strife itself, Mexico deserved what it got. Several of them had the influence to make sure that no help came Mexico’s way. The punishment was unjust and fatal for so many in Mexico.
A week into February 2029, the pair of winter storms which had battered the western half of North America had gone on their way. They had done their worst with nature unleashing her fury in exceptional fashion. The sun came out afterwards with reasonable weather promised for some time ahead once Ted and then Ulysses had departed. Below those clear skies, the opposing armies lined up representing the two sides of a political argument which had so divided America were still there. The time spent without any serious fighting being able to take place hadn’t been spent in efforts trying to stop any more of it. Each side had got their licks in where they could in bombing each other’s capitals and also with one retaking territory beyond the mainland lost the month beforehand. With the ability to get back to the fighting, those in position to do so followed orders to do just that. There was a civil war to be getting on with after the storms had gone away! There was once again death, injury and misery on an immense scale all for a political dispute.
As had been the case since its creation, the secessionist Democratic American Republic got a head start. Ted had hit the West hard but Ulysses less so. A few more days of preparation had been granted for those who had broken away from what their political masters regarded as the failed nation which was the United States of America. Troops had been moved around and so too supplies. Snow had been cleared from runways and key road links opened up as best as possible. General Fuller had been able to get to get the 2nd Infantry Division down from Idaho into the western half of New Mexico with the columns of wheeled Strykers having to take a detouring route due to where the freeways ran but still making it to where he wanted them to join with the smashed up New Mexico Corps. Using tactical airlift, he had also moved those two light infantry brigades of reservists formed on the basic of pre-war training brigades also into position to the west of where the Rio Grande ran through New Mexico. That river was quite something further downstream where it separated Texas from Mexico, yet where it ran across the middle of one of the front-line states of the DAR, half of which US forces occupied, it wasn’t much of a water barrier. Regardless, Fuller had ceded the eastern side to his opponents and gathered strength on the western side. The riverbank wasn’t defended in any real fashion apart from aggressive patrolling and air-scattered minefields. It was something that US forces needed to get across to defeat the New Mexico Corps though and then maintain their crossings to push on further forces and open up lines of communication. The DAR Armed Forces had a strong position there to oppose an invasion deep into the West going through New Mexico, across Arizona and towards the Pacific. Fuller had been shuffling forces around elsewhere too once the weather had started to clear up. He’d transferred about air units to give greater capability in the southern section of the Main Front as well. There were still many of them on-hand to fight in the north and the centre but the south was where the next major US move was going to be made. His military intelligence people had provided him with enough supporting evidence for his own gut feeling on where the next blow would fall. Fuller was ready to give everything to stop what looked like an attempt at a full-scale US offensive in that area working.
The 3rd Marine Division was meant to have been airlifted into Arizona and positioned in behind the New Mexico Corps as a tactical reserve. Only what was left of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment after so much of that unit had been torn apart near Albuquerque at the end of January was available to fulfil that role. Those marines didn’t make the transfer to Arizona because they had gone over to the counter-secessionists in Hawaii. There were others from Hawaii who remained fighting for the DAR though. Part of the 40th Infantry Division in New Mexico was the 29th Infantry Brigade. National guardsmen from Arizona and Guam joined with those from Hawaii as part of that unit. They’d all been blooded and done themselves proud in previous engagements. News had reached their senior officers – and filtered down too – of what had happened back where they called home with Fuller being unable to stop that. The reports back from those in the field had told him that the national guardsmen would continue to fight. Rawlings and members of the Council of Twelve (they’d renamed themselves after Governor Ito had done what she had) had concerns but Fuller didn’t. His belief was that they would continue to fight… as long as they regarded themselves as doing so for the right cause. He shot down a foolish idea presented to move them into the rear with the response that that would crush morale and see their ultimate loss. Not everyone agreed with that reasoning but Fuller stuck with those volunteer soldiers.
On the other side of the great divide, US NORTHCOM’s commander issued instructions for his subordinates to shuffle around forces when the sun came out and there was better weather. Northern Command was going back over on the offensive as soon as possible. LTG Lambert at the head of ARNORTH put his plans into motion to rearrange the command he had inherited. Preparation work had been done when first the snow and then the ice had fallen to make that something unable at that time doable once things clearer up. Once it could be started, Lambert made sure that it happened. He had a meat cleaver taken to the organisational structure of the US Army North with regard to where its component corps were located and their own components. Combat units were moved this way and that way and it was the same with supporting elements too. Both the VII & XVIII Corps were pulled southwards from out of Colorado and given a New Mexico mission. The II MEF, which controlled US Marines as well as national guardsmen, was tasked to expand its operational area up into Colorado was was assigned more of the latter. Where Lambert had inherited the disaster which was the IX Corps trying to break into Idaho from out of Montana and Wyoming, he expanded their operational area while giving that headquarters command of units he was unable to extradite yet taking away others. Like the II MEF, the IX Corps would no longer have an offensive role but rather be part of tying down opposition units. The III Corps already in New Mexico was joined by the VII & XVIII corps with a rearrangement of their dispositions too. He’d punch forwards on the left while defending on the right.
Lambert had the MSRs opened up from the blockages of snow and vehicle wrecks where possible. That allowed him to not just move about those combat units but to also get forward a resupply too. As was the case with his counterparts to the West, Lambert’s ARNORTH had gone through an extraordinary amount of ammunition, fuel and disposable stores while fighting for the short period before the two winter storms. The usage had defied all expectations… as always seemed to be the case in any modern conflict. Replacement equipment was moved forward too down those MSRs. The losses there in everything from tanks to trucks had been exceptional. There was only so many of that that could be replaced too: war-stocks weren’t infinite and despite what was announced in DC about wartime industry production, none of that was going to matter in the short-term. AFNORTH moved about its aircraft as it opened up airbases yet was behind the DAR in that respect. Lambert’s convoys in the rear paid the price for the delay as they suffered DAR air attacks. There were many strikes with weapons fired from afar via aircraft which had been unchallenged in the air. Munitions smashed into those making use of the MSRs. Interstate-40 through New Mexico and I-10 running across Far West Texas had long been magnets for enemy special forces activity. The DAR Air Force managed to close both of them in many places with their men & women in the shadows behind the lines doing what even Lambert had to admit was a sterling job in how they achieved that. The routes weren’t closed for long and never in any manner down their entirety, but the problem there was one which refused to go away. US special forces were doing the exact same thing down the same freeways which formed the MSRs for the opposition through Arizona – I-10 & I-40 were littered with air strikes guided in by spotters – but that provided little comfort overall when serious delays were inflicted upon ARNORTH.
Across the border in Mexico, in certain places it looked like that country was having its own civil war. Few north of the border, whether they be in DC or Las Vegas, were paying attention to what was happening. There was an awareness that Mexico was being badly affected yet there was too much on their hands and there was also nothing that the leadership of both the United States and the Democratic American Republic believed that they could do to avert that. Of course, they could have stopped fighting... but they didn’t.
Mexicans suffered the consequences of the Second American Civil War.
The trade disruption had come first. Western secession had seen demands made in DC that no third country trade with the DAR. Businesses had taken a massive hit on both sides of the border from the financial meltdown on Black Friday ahead of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence made in Las Vegas and then that secession compounded the economic free-fall that struck everywhere. The economies of the United States (as one and also separate) and Mexico were inter-linked just as those on both sides of the new divide across America was too. Everyone suffered financially. People lost theirs jobs and their livelihoods. US-Mexico trade was something that carried on across the Rio Grande but when Texas came under attack like it did from DAR air, missile & commando activity, and hope of some form of recovery floundered. Cruise missiles struck bridges over the river which defined the border all the way down as Brownsville next to the Gulf of Mexico. Where trade was cross-border attempted between Mexico and the DAR in an illegal fashion where those in Mexico City either turned a blind eye or were unaware, US air and missile attacks against the road links on the northern side – just inside Arizona and California – took place as well. DC wanted to cut those in Las Vegas off from the outside world and striking trucks on the freeways just inside the DAR did an excellent job of stopping the import & export of goods. The intention was to deny the DAR the ability to survive but Mexico was hurt just as bad.
Border controls to stop the movement of illegal drugs and the flow of undocumented people collapsed when the DAR was formed. There was an official policy of a secure border on behalf of the DAR yet it was one what was unable to enforce. The Mexicans cut official ties due to threats from DC about any form of cooperation. Wartime attacks by the DAR down into Texas also caused significant disruption along that section of the border too. Drugs and people moved north. Guns and money went south. So many of the usual interdiction efforts failed. The criminal enterprises behind all of that were trans-national and their whole system of cross-border movements were upended. In places, it was open season while elsewhere there was the inability to do what they wanted. Particular cartels collapsed as others tried to rise in their place. The violence of the Mexican Drug War went up to astronomical levels as a consequence. Mass murders of innocents for intimidation and also revenge killings for spurious reasons took place. Mexican police and military units lost control and there were large-scale defections to the cartels and gangs or desertions where personnel fled northwards trying to take their families with them. Mexicans died in the violence yet so too did non-nationals. There were Americans in Mexico who had fled from the civil war in their own country to end up losing their lives in a knock-on effect of that. Hundreds of thousands of migrants aiming to seek a better life in America were in Mexico. They’d left their home countries further south in Latin America either before or after the DAR was formed. Whether they wanted to go to the DAR – with lies spread by traffickers about unrestricted immigration – or to the United States (where cross-border immigration had been put on a firm halt due to the war), it didn’t matter. They were still caught up in the violence that gripped not just the north of Mexico near the border but increasingly across a large portion of that country. There was no escape for them from it.
Coup rumours ran with abandon in Mexico City. The president and his government believed that their rule, their very lives in fact, were at risk of ending. The threat was perceived as coming from the military who it was thought where itching to take over and ‘restore order’. If that was going to happen, it would have to be an order restored using a lot of bullets. Like many big cities far away from the Rio Grande and the frontier with the new DAR too, Mexico City witnessed killings and even explosions once February started. The wars between cartels, those rising and falling, came to the streets of the capital. Non-essential staff from the US Embassy were evacuated and the armoured convoy carrying personnel during that pull-out taking them to their airport came under fire from unknown gunmen. Other diplomatic compounds occupied by those representing further countries also saw the withdrawal of those deemed not essential beyond maintaining the bare minimum of representation. The US Government made formal requests for Mexico to provide oil supplies – to go direct to US refineries – in support of the war effort. It was something that President Mitchell told his counterpart in Mexico City that the United States was willing to pay for via a reduction in Mexico’s debt with DC paying over the odds for that oil too. The offer made was a generous one yet one which Mexico couldn’t fulfil. The violence had moved to effect oil production. Things went from bad to worse in Mexico and that was a key indicator of the serious trouble that the country was in. Even if those north of the border stopped their civil war and everything was resolved with handshakes & hugs, Mexico would still have been in immense trouble economically and in terms of civil security. Of course, they didn’t stop fighting in America either.
When what attention was paid, a certain number of US politicians in DC caused what in normal times would have been a major outcry when they suggested that Mexico should shoulder the blame for what was happening. Was not the DAR’s president an illegal immigrant to the United States who had come from Mexico? Maria Arreola Rodriguez and her quest for the US presidency, one which the Supreme Court had said she wasn’t entitled to, was what so many blamed for America’s civil war. Therefore, in the opinion of those who spoke out seemingly glad that Mexico was caught in such internal strife itself, Mexico deserved what it got. Several of them had the influence to make sure that no help came Mexico’s way. The punishment was unjust and fatal for so many in Mexico.
