Shanghaied - 2ACW

132 – Sin City

The Democratic American Republic had been subject to quite the extensive hostile propaganda originating from the United States which it had broken away from since the outset of that illegal independence. There had been the ‘white’ propaganda organised by the Congressional-mandated Public Information Office aplenty yet so too had come both ‘grey’ & ‘black’ propaganda too into the country. Those were from private organisations/individuals and secret government sources where half-truths and outright lies had been spread. The scale of that activity had been quite something. Much of the black propaganda had delivered a twisted narrative with it not all appearing to those on the receiving end to be actually coming from the United States at all. There were things said about the DAR to make it look like that the DAR was itself doing that with the end goal to have its citizens think badly of the leadership when the supposed intention had been to gain praise instead. Fighting back against that had been difficult but attempted. Some of the grey propaganda was even more difficult to counter: the most challenging was the ‘leaked’ videos where deep-fakes were created by influential & powerful non-government sources back in the East including pornographic footage of leadership figures engaged in sexual liaisons with each other or strangers. When the first mention was made of Carrillo in propaganda directed against the DAR, it came with him and California’s Governor Pierce together. Samuel Pierce had been an ‘out’ homosexual throughout his entire political career and had fought for equal rights for everyone regardless of sexual orientation outside of California just as was the case within that Blue state. Carrillo was labelled in the faked videos of the two of them so those who didn’t know who he was – which was nearly everyone – could put a name to the face. The PIA back in Washington DC then released that white propaganda with firm allegations made against Carrillo and the businessman was by then nowhere near as anonymous as he had previously been.

The assertions that he had long been blackmailing Pierce to allow for the flourishing of his illegal criminal enterprises moving drugs and people across the border from Mexico were different from the deep-fake porn for certain! On top of that came the claims that it was Carrillo who had murdered Shauna McCleary in December 2028. Her death in federal custody had exploded the already polarised political situation at that time and had been one of the key events in the eventual forming of the DAR. For Carrillo to have arranged for her murder, and Pierce to have known about it, was just as explosive as that murder had first been. The PIA broadcasts concerning Carrillo’s alleged activities weren’t seen by everyone in the West. With a tightly-controlled media acting under government supervision, for the purposes of public safety, the hi-jacking of television & internet signals to get people to see them wasn’t reported on afterwards by what was left of the news media. The incident was treated as if it didn’t happen. Those who did see it all and wanted to talk about it found themselves unable to do so through any electronic means. ‘Carrillo’ became an instant banned keyword for online communications, one fast added to along with others making reference to him in a coded manner. Excessive efforts made by certain people to try and find a way around that banning of the mention of him by state censors drew attention towards them from the authorities where Ministry for Public Safety agents became involved.

Members of the Council of Twelve weren’t subject to such restrictions. The DAR political leadership all knew about those allegations in detail. Governor Pierce denied everything, comparing the matter to those deep-fake disgusting videos, and played down how much he knew Carrillo. He told his colleagues that it was another smear directed against him coming out of those back in the East. On the matter of McCleary, he expressed outrage at the idea that he had any input in her death: she was someone he had respected and her death had hurt him like it had others. It had been he and Vice President Padley (then VP of the United States, later VP of the DAR) who had recruited her to put herself forward as a willing martyr so that she could be imprisoned by the federal government at the end of the previous year. No harm was ever meant to come to McCleary but when it had, blame for that was one whomever back in DC arranged for that to happen for whatever misguided reason they had. Maria Arreola Rodriguez didn’t believe that Pierce would have killed McCleary. The nation’s president was joined by several governors supporting Pierce as well when he defended himself. There were a few governors who stayed silent though and then there was Padley’s different course of action. She believed it. It just rung true with her the moment she heard it all. Things fitted together in her mind when it came to previous events. She joined up the pieces all over the place in what had been a jigsaw of unexplained coincidences and unexpected events going back for many months. Pierce was guilt as far as Padley was concerned. She told him and the rest of the leadership that too.

Another massive row broke out among the Council of Twelve. A few days before they had that argument over the Carrillo-Pierce connection on the last day of February, there had been strong divisions, and subsequent harsh words exchanged, when it came to the sending to sea of the Trident-armed DARNS Las Vegas. Pierce had pushed for that to happen with the same supporters that he had with him over the matter of denying the ‘lies’ about Carrillo on his side then. MAR had stayed neutral when it came to the submarine, not voting with either side over the division, in something she had done before and no one had liked, before giving her consent once a majority of votes had won out. She moved to then support Pierce over the allegations against Carrillo to break that pattern of abstention. The rest of the split within the Council into two camps came down to a six-to-four division. Pierce had support from the governors of Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington; Padley had backing from Guam & the Marianas, Idaho, and Nevada. With there being an absence of a representative for Arizona on the council and then MAR expressing trust in Pierce, his camp was left even stronger than it had been beforehand: seven-to-four. On Padley’s side, one of those state’s governors had seen his state overrun out there in the Western Pacific while hardly anyone else had any faith in Idaho’s governor because he was a Republican. The Vice President was left near isolated. She had a belief that there were those in Pierce’s camp who actually might have believed what was said about Carrillo yet for other reasons, ones they thought more important, they stuck with him: she couldn’t understand MAR’s position though. When vice president under Walsh during his presidency, Padley had witnessed the complete collapse of moral authority in his government and so firmly broke with him and the United States in response when it had finally been too much to stomach. Witnessing the majority of the Council of Twelve, MAR especially, side with Pierce when she knew in her heart that the allegations were true, saw her storm out of the virtual meeting that the leadership had. It was too much for her to accept.

The principled abandonment of the corrupt, politically-bankrupt United States done the year before by Padley had been something that had inspired many others to do the same. The lead she set had been followed with several governors of the Blue states in West doing the same based upon her justifications… though for other, unsaid reasons too. When she stormed out of that meeting on February 28th, the behaviour of Padley was questioned by a couple of them as to whether she was likewise doing that again: turning her back on the country which she served as vice president of. It was known that she was strongly-opposed to the political crackdown underway alongside her firm opposition to that nuclear-armed submarine being sent to sea to give the DAR ‘options’ if it needed them. Padley was in fact against even more things being done which she had been outvoted on in her opposition to. Governor Diaz, who had most of her home state of New Mexico under occupation, was really worried about that. Pierce, then MAR, followed too by a good few others, told her not to fear. Padley wasn’t going to re-defect to the United States!


Padley had spent months in Las Vegas. Most of the leadership was either permanently there or spent the majority of their time there: among them the Governor of Guam & the Marianas couldn’t go home. They still had their Council of Twelve meetings virtually even when all together in the same city and gatherings of any more than two of them at a time were mandated by security measures to be done remotely. Even before they lost Hawaii’s governor, and then Arizona’s one later on, the fear had been that an assassination would come via drones, a bomb or gunmen had been present. Padley went back to where she was staying within the DAR’s capital and didn’t begin planning to make a run for it. She steeled herself to stay and keep on fighting for what she believed was right. She’d chosen the new DAR over the failed United States, and wasn’t about to give up on the nation which she had helped to build. Unaware directly, though strongly suspecting that it was the case, she was being spied upon by Pubic Safety agents but they found nothing disloyal in her activities. What they did listen to and intercept electronically was something that the new minister, Thompson, did pass on though to his leadership patron: Pierce. It was troubling for California’s governor to hear and he started weighing up options on how to respond.

Las Vegas had long had the nickname ‘Sin City’. Pre-war city politicians and officials had never liked that name. They wanted the tourists, even accepting that what many would call sins would be committed by those visitors deservingly gave the Nevada city that name, yet they didn’t like it one bit. Regardless, that was just the way things were. When it became the capital of the DAR and the Second American Civil War erupted, so much of the sin ceased though. Tourists from within what had once been a coast-to-coast United States stopped coming and international arrivals no longer took place either. DAR citizens didn’t go to Las Vegas to gamble, have wild parties nor secret liaisons because they couldn’t. Travel restrictions, economic collapse and individual financial dire straits put pay to the vast majority of the sins. Las Vegas lost over a hundred thousand residents in the first month of the DAR. Those were those who worked in industries – legal and illegal – which allowed for Sin City to live up to that name. Still… there remained a little of that around. Where the DAR government made Las Vegas its new home, those serving it wanted to take the edge off. The DAR was a socially-liberal country but even then some of the things which went on among government members and often exploited city residents was far from legal. Both the United States’ and the DAR’s intelligence organisations kept their eyes open. They also helped to create certain situations so the evidence of events which went on could be useful in the short- or long-term. Furthermore, uncoordinated yet with the tacit nod to not intervene in what the other was doing, the opposing sides made efforts to stop external foreign intelligence agencies from getting a look in. Neither wanted outsiders hostile to the two regimes in DC and Las Vegas exploiting what was happening in Sin City where important DAR figures left themselves open to blackmail. If their fellow Americans did that, that was fine but foreigners were gone after. That was not something that either government would explain to their public yet it happened quite a bit. Talking with members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Director of the CIA explained to them to think of the whole situation as some sort of twisted version of the 1942 film Casablanca. There were bad guys, bad-bad guys, good guys and good-good guys.

The CIA was active in Sin City and had become aware of the split within the Council of Twelve into two camps. There was an awareness of all of that and efforts made to consider how to exploit that: the task took priority over much else, even hunting Russian & Chinese intelligence efforts. What they didn’t though was that Thompson’s Public Safety agents were looking to shut down that split. He had his people seeking to limit the number in Padley’s camp and isolate her as best as possible from her internal opposition. That meant that they did some outrageous things which Thompson reported to Pierce alone on. He was meant to be a servant of the citizens of the DAR, represented by the full Council of Twelve, but he had moved to placing his loyalty with just one member of that body. Thompson wasn’t the only senior figure in the country’s leadership doing that: the Minister for Defence & Security had set the lead with that ahead of him. Pierce began to increase his strength, his position of prominence. His allies, his president too, were not part of his plans to share with all which he intended to gain for himself. His power play was well underway when February came to a close.

134 – Fifteen thousand KIA

An official Department of Defence count placed the number of direct deaths attributed to the Second American Civil War to be at fifteen thousand plus by March 2nd. All sorts of sources, including ones lifted from the breakaway Democratic American Republic, allowed the DOD to reach that figure. The fifteen thousand KIA number was quite the accurate number. What it didn’t include was that many civilians among those who had lost their lives because few had been direct war casualties. Yet, there was a separate figure for those indirect ones and that was estimated to be close to three thousand: it couldn’t be proved that the number was that high (or low) but it was a best-guess to be that. However, the DOD was counting only war-related casualties in their official numbers. Unbeknown to those who had relocated from the devastated Pentagon – the top people to Raven Rock, most personnel to various scattered sites not underground –, the DAR had its own count running. Their figure by March 2nd was even greater, at seventeen thousand casualties when both sides losses were combined, with indirect civilian losses at four and a half thousand. Briefing President Mitchell and the National Security Council on his own count, SecDef Ferdinand saw the faces of those who heard the number at the top secret gathering. There was shock. So many were aghast at such a number. Mitchell wasn’t but he was near alone in not being stunned at how costly the fight had been. Everyone else struggled to comprehend the number. The 50th President had seen the human cost of war himself during his days in uniform… in addition, that figure had been in his President’s Daily Brief several hours before the United States’ military leadership met. As had been the case previously with other ‘big’ numbers – one thousand, five thousand, ten thousand – many people had something to say. None of that was any real significant though, nothing stopped the progress of that number upwards even as they met. Should Mitchell had said the words ‘it must stop’, then that would have countered for something, but he, like President Roberts (during his short ten days in office) and also Maria Arreola Rodriguez as President of the DAR out in Las Vegas, had said no such thing.

That number was secret. It wasn’t one released to the public and when politicians were told about it, the figure was only given to select Members of Congress. A good few of them promptly babbled, as everyone knew that they would, though it didn’t make the news due to the mass of self-censorship going on across the United States. Out in the West, there was likewise no reporting on their estimates of the number of war death but the non-reporting was down to harsh state-enforced censorship. Across the great divide forged by civil war, caskets containing the remains of loved ones turned up throughout the United States and the DAR. Not every family received one – there were the ‘missing, presumed death’, no remains which would be safety retrieved or located and a variety of other upsetting reasons – but where they did, the scenes were generally the same coast-to-coast. Men and women who had gone off to war, some willingly, most not very eager to, returned home with their lives snuffed out by conflict. A whole range of human emotions were on display among the families of those who came home early from the war. No one at that stage, no one of any importance with enough power, was willing to allow for those scenes to cease either. There was still a fight to be had, to win a political battle, with the rights & wrongs of the fighting bitterly debated, and until those who could stop the conflict were satisfied, the death counts which each side undertook continued to climb higher and higher.


The same day several mass casualty events pushed the number of KIA even higher. In the Eastern Pacific, the USS Navy’s missile-destroyer USS The Sullivans was torpedoed and sunk. Named after five brothers killed in 1942, an event part of the inspiration for the 1998 film Saving Private Ryan, the warship was an Atlantic-assigned vessel which had come through the Panama Canal during early February back when Hawaii had been part of the DAR. The Sullivans was one of many warships taking the fight to the illegal secessionists and was in the Pacific to help enforce the blockade against the West Coast. Smugglers were targeted whether they had the backing of the DAR or were out on their own acting in a pure criminal manner. The DAR Navy had shrunk significantly from it early war high following surrenders, re-defections and combat action. There were still aircraft, ships and submarines active though. One of the latter attacked The Sullivans. What had pre-war been the USS Mississippi, a Virginia-class fast attack boat, the DARNS Narwhal had been rechristened while at-sea and came across the US Navy destroyer by chance. An attack was made where the Narwhal struck with a volley of Mk.48s. Two hits were achieved with the strikes made from close-in. There was very little warning before impact and the devastation was overwhelming. The Sullivans had its back broken and the volume of seawater which flooded the vessel so fast ripped it in two. The attack came in the middle of a storm as well, worsening the situation where an Abandon Ship undertaking was made. Of the three hundred and seventeen souls aboard, less than two dozen would survive. The sea took the rest of them in a shocking tragedy.

Near to Flagstaff in Arizona, national guardsmen serving with the 29th Infantry Division, assigned to the US VII Corps as part of United States Army North, undertook extensive stand-off attacks using heavy weaponry to continue their mission of isolating that city and causing the defenders to withdraw. DAR air power had shifted elsewhere and in the reprieve, the stalled VII Corps authorised the unleashing of heavy artillery, mass rocket firings and an armada of armed drones. The Arizona Corps had part of the war-ravaged 25th Infantry Division in the Flagstaff area with a withdrawal order awaiting on the corps’ commander’s approval. He waited for the air situation to improve enough for an attack rather than a retreat and had those soldiers who’d fought previously in Colorado and just barely escape from disaster there hold their positions. A huge time-on-target attack was made by the 29th Infantry Division’s fire support plus VII Corps assets too. There were free-fire zones all around the outskirts of Flagstaff with other areas flagged for non shelling due to the presence of civilians. When the barrage began, those civilians almost to a man (and woman & child) took immediate shelter because accidents do happen. A volley of badly-targeted 155mm shells and a handful of M-26 rockets did go off target, killing half a dozen civilians, but the overwhelming majority were on-target… a success rate which mattered nought to those innocents killed and wounded when ‘their city was shelled’. A ring of fire erupted all around the edges of Flagstaff where DAR soldiers came under that attack. A couple of hundred of them died when caught in it. Few of the casualties were those close to where the forward edge of the battlefield were due to their protected positions. Instead, it was personnel in the rear mainly in support roles on the end of the barrage. At a truck park taken over by the military, where a forward vehicle maintenance point had been set up to aid in the combat repair of tanks & armoured vehicles, almost fifty lost their lives; nearly the same number died when a trio of forward refuelling and rearmament points were also hit. Gray Eagles came in after the shells and rockets to fire missiles and even drop guided bombs. Their attacks increased the casualty count around Flagstaff.

In January, the Idaho-Montana state line had been one of the first flash points of the war. Plentiful attention had been directed towards there with a back-and-forth series of engagements occurring where the front-lines had moved dramatically with near abandon. A change in the leadership of ARNORTH and the reassignment of priorities by him, plus his opposite number in DAR service, had seen the serious fighting die off right before those two big winter storms hit. Political attention on that theatre had lessened over time too, especially once the situation had stabilised in a manner which made it look to the outsider that a firm stalemate had developed. The Idaho Corps in DAR service and the US IX Corps had each seen transfers out of troops and a change in operational areas & mission priorities. Still… the area was a battlefield with low-level engagements going on throughout February. There was armed activity from irregulars during that: illegal combatants. Anti-DAR militia fought in both Idaho and into occupied slices of Montana too. US forces tried in some ways to stop volunteers passing through their lines to go off and join the fight, as per orders coming from above to not allow that, yet there was a lot of looking the other way going on. When caught by the enemy, partisans faced detention and harsh conditions by the DAR if they were lucky: extrajudicial punishment in the form of a firing squad was their fate if they were unlucky. Once more, come early March, it was armed volunteers with the Patriotic Corps (affiliated to the wider White Star Militia which for several years had been active in the Inland North-West area) who were at the heart of another big battle between real soldiers. Their actions near to the small town of Lima, off Interstate-15 just inside Montana, saw national guardsmen from Oregon with the DAR’s 41st Infantry Division engage US national guardsmen from the 38th Infantry Division out of the Mid-West. The freeway ran through a valley near to the Continental Divide and a portion of the 41st Infantry Division went in towards Lima to rid the area of militia staging out of there who were causing them all sorts of difficulties. Weather conditions were far from idea with little air support for those on the attack. Tanks were used but only a few: most of the attack was done on foot. Michigan & Ohio Army National Guard sub-units within the 38th Infantry Division were fast to stop them and were able to get some strong air support. US Air Force A-10s flew at almost tree-top level in the middle of a fierce and growing storm. The weather affected their operations but they kept on flying, using their toughness and long loiter time to ensure that the defence was successful. Nonetheless, they were unable to stop two companies of Ohio national guardsmen from 1/148 INF from getting massacred when they moved up out of the valley into the forested high ground. The opposing 2/162 INF had failed to get into Lima to deal with those partisans but held their ground while unleashing every weapon at-hand against those coming towards them. The A-10s couldn’t identify friend from foe due to communications issues and the weather. The whole battle was one giant mess overall for everyone involved. It resulted in more than a hundred deaths, plus a lot of wounded, for nothing really gained.

Up and down the front-lines, deep into the rear, at sea and in the air, deaths occurred that day during the war like they had on previous days. March 2nd was especially bloody and President Mitchell saw the DOD count the next day approaching sixteen thousand KIA for both sides. On and on it all went, all that killing.

Numbers have that special way of telling things. Oh, for now, there is still a willingness but that might not always be the case.

I have been thinking about the GlowWorm virus and what military plane’s it would not affect and there are not that many at all.

B52s should be able to fly as some of them have not been fully converted and still have the good old none fly by wire systems due the affect EMP has on computer systems
A10 a old plane some are still not modernised I believe.

I am sure that there will be others around that are not dependent on computers. One other thing flying around my head is why the US does not approach some of the NATO allies for a loan of some of there jets for example the U.K. for F35s and Typhoon etc. However the Russian Bear being awake could stop it I would like to see what happens if they are asked hint hint as they say.

Because the Europeans need those assets. Also, I'm not sure if the USAF has trained on Typhoons and Tornadoes.

136 – No escape

President Mitchell gave his approval for the planned escape of what was left of the US Army’s 1st Cavalry Division out of southeastern Arizona, across the Mexican border and then back into US-controlled Arizona. Time was exceedingly short. There was little delay in the flight of the soldiers from one of the regular divisions assigned to United States Army North fighting against secessionist forces with the Democratic American Republic away from being caught and destroyed. They got their marching orders and made a dash for the border. Only when they were moving did the 50th President have a call connected to his opposite number down in Mexico City. SecState Renzi had wanted him to do that first but Mitchell, plus the rest of the top tier of the National Security Council, decided that to do so would cause an unnecessary delay. The United States would tell Mexico what was happening rather than asking their permission – and waiting for what would likely to be a refusal – instead. Jo Renzi told her president that it was probable that Mexico would call it an invasion. She was right too. There came absolute outrage over the telephone link-up. Mexico’s president, his nation gripped by violence and economic chaos due to the civil war within its northern neighbour, declared that any crossing on the US-Mexico border, or DAR-Mexico border as some might consider that stretch of the frontier there in Arizona, would be an illegal act. His nation’s sovereignty wouldn’t be violated like that, so he declared. Mitchell held it together and didn’t make the exchange of words hostile on both sides. He carefully explained what was happening and expressed grave regret for the ‘temporary crossing’ of the border. It was happening too, he let the Mexican President know, regardless of what was wanted down in Mexico City.

The 1st Cavalry Division made a run for it during the night of March 3rd / 4th. They were cut off from the rest of the US III Corps with the only way out of the trap placed around them to go through Mexico and then back again into friendly territory. Going through Mexico had been something considered the month beforehand by ARNORTH planners. General Lambert had allowed for his staff to study what was called the ‘Mexico option’ to outflank DAR forces in Arizona by sweeping around them, on the southern side of the border, and approaching California from effectively behind. US Northern Command had been presented with that plan then and rejected it – as Lambert had anticipated – due to the political considerations of that. Going the opposite way though, the US Army was running for its life when it undertook an unplanned ‘Mexico option’. The area which the 1st Cavalry Division moved to pass through was somewhere that had been given a study (though on an east-to-west axis of movement) to look at terrain and Mexican military dispositions. They had portions of their army on the border in the area where the Sonoran Desert lay just as there were other forces spread from California to New Mexico as well. The Mexicans were there engaging criminals and trying to enforce order in a region thoroughly de-stabilized by events to the north. Drug cartel militias were giving them a rough time. Civilians had been caught up in the mess too, so many of them refugees and migrants moving north towards both the United States and the DAR from far further south than just Mexico. For those making the mad-dash escape, seeking a way out of encirclement, they had tight ROE for what they could do when in Mexico. Fighting the Mexican Army wasn’t to be done unless there were direct attacks against those on the run and even then, anything like that was supposed to be conducted in a hit-and-run fashion rather than a stand-up fight. Contact was civilians of any nature was to be avoided too!

Hostile aircraft chased the 1st Cavalry Division as it moved down to and over the border. The ground units with the Arizona Corps had done all that they could do to trap the US Army formation and were unable to effectively pursue. The DAR Air Force had no such constraints. Weakened by weeks of fighting, they benefited from near clear skies though. Their own F-22s were up and preforming the air dominance role which they were best suited too: the US Air Force couldn’t fly their own ones. Those fighters were able to make sure that no enemy fighter interference came against aircraft operating lower down on attack missions. A-10s, F-16s, FA-18s (from the DAR Navy) and F-35s raced in to hit the helpless below. They dropped their bombs and fired missiles against the 1st Cavalry Division when it was on the northern side of the border and out in the open desert. With permission granted all the way from the highest level, the leadership body of the Council of Twelve, air strikes continued when those fleeing south went over into Mexico. Minister for Defence & Security Rawlings undertook a live press conference where she discussed what was happening in those hours of darkness.

Military forces of the Democratic American Republic where helping to halt an illegal invasion of sovereign Mexican territory by United States forces.

Only part of the 1st Cavalry Division got out of Arizona and into Mexico. Air attacks stopped the rest, and then savaged those who had made it across too when they thought they might have been ‘safe’ across the frontier. The strikes made by DAR aircraft when those were undertaken inside Mexican territory were carefully targeted and less intensive yet still did the job in the end. It rained death from above and that brought a stop to the attempted escape. The death toll for those on the receiving end was immense. So too was the level of destruction wrought to the military units on the move. A lot of vehicles and equipment had been abandoned in the rush to escape encirclement but what was left didn’t fare too well when below enemy-infested skies. Tanks, armoured vehicles and trucks were picked off time and time again. Ordnance expenditure was high for attacking DAR units and there was a shortage of many munitions in the end: they ran out of missiles and bombs at a tactical level. Guns and rockets were used instead, more than they had been at first, before, finally, the air missions came to a close.

Major-General David Hart surrendered what was left of the 1st Cavalry Division. He survived the massacre from above which so many of those serving under his command didn’t. His act of calling for a local ceasefire and then turning over what was left of the 1st Cavalry Division inside Arizona to the DAR was opposed on the ground by several of his junior officers. Men loyal to him stood firm though and stopped that illegal seizure of command. They believed as he did that the fight was lost and carrying on was akin to murder. Hart was quickly held up by DAR propaganda. Not as a weak defeated enemy, but as a gallant and moral man who had done his best but let his conscience guide his decision. He didn’t play along willingly with that and knew he was thoroughly used in something that aggrieved him. Regardless of his wishes, it happened. What occurred north of the border was far less complicated than events south of that violated frontier. Remnants of the defeated 1st Cavalry Division who had made it into Mexico didn’t stop on command from Hart. They tried to keep on going. Mitchell was on the phone to Mexico City telling the president down there to not fight nor stop US army troops. Threats ended up being made in veiled form rather than openly yet that didn’t mean much when it came to the situation on the ground. Those who had made it out of Arizona couldn’t go any further after all of the attacks from above. They were in dire straits before they then clashed with well-armed militia. The 1st Cavalry Division was a fully-mechanised force with tanks but couldn’t bring them not any real hardware to bare. Engagements with militia in confusing fights was had using lighter weapons. Mexican Army units showed up too. They fought the militia themselves yet physically blocked the way for 1st Cavalry Division elements. Their president said on thing but those on the ground did another. Local ‘agreements’ were made. Junior US Army personnel demoralised and overburdened with casualties allowed themselves to be interned by the Mexicans: some even fought alongside the Mexican Army against the cartel’s militia before turning over their weapons. Aid was provided to the wounded by the Mexican Army and the militia were eventually chased away.

Mexico found itself with new guests. There were already many Americans in the country, deserters from each side of the civil war plus civilians who’d fled the civil war at home only to find themselves in a desperate war-torn Mexico, and another two thousand odd joined them. Further strong words were exchanged between Mexico City and DC over the eventual fate of those guests of Mexico. They were invaders who’d entered Mexico armed in the opinion of that country’s president. For Mitchell, he wanted those personnel released and returned home. While arguments ran back and forth, from out of Las Vegas there came interference where they saw an opening to sew more discord in US-Mexico relations to help fulfil their own ultimate aim. Meanwhile, as to the 1st Cavalry Division, it had been destroyed. It was more than combat-ineffective: it was no longer active in any form. The DAR gained a lot of prisoners, more guests than the Mexicans received, and played the propaganda triumph for all that it was worth. The 1st Cavalry Division was one of many US Army units which had been active against them and big defeats had come before for each side on the battlefield, yet the opportunity wasn’t wasted. No escape had come for those trying to get out of Arizona and plentiful attention was focused upon that. The defining outcome of all of that wouldn’t be the dispute between the governments of Mexico and the United States, nor a significant change on the battlefield (ARNORTH still occupied a good chunk of Arizona), but a political sh*tstorm back in DC.