On this day 25 years ago (Commentary Thread)

[chico20854]

March 2, 1998

The sailors aboard the Soviet ballistic missile submarine Barrikada begin to count the days until they can abandon their patrol and return home after a nine-month patrol. (Unofficially, they are nervous about the fate of their families but exhausted by the strain on endless months of combat patrol as the last of the fresh(ish) food received from a supply ship a month ago has been depleted, forcing them to subsist on canned and preserved food.)

The remnants of the Jugoslav and Romanian high commands begin to reform units to oppose the Soviet occupation forces. The forces are structured to live off the land.

Unofficially,

As news breaks of the governing arrangements of the newly forming Franco-Belgian Union, Dutch speakers and diehard Belgian nationalists in northern and central Belgium begin protests, with isolated outbreaks of violence. Within hours, heavily armed gendarmes (both French and Belgian, but uniformly French-speaking) in armored riot control vehicles arrive to break up the protests. Recriminations reverberate for years, with the authorities claiming that they quelled dangerous violence before it could spread and others claiming that the French-speaking population, capitulating to French interests, violently suppressed opposition to the deal, which was never put to a referendum.

The food provided by American authorities to civilians (and soldiers) has changed over the past several months as American food processing plants remain shuttered by lack of electrical power. Frozen food was the first to disappear, followed by refrigerated (in warmer areas) as fuel and electricity grew more scarce. By early in the year, much of the preserved food being distributed was canned, with the vast majority of specialized ready-to-eat and dehydrated foods reserved for military use. What remains to be distributed are fruit and grains that have been in storage, locally produced food and, increasingly, foods preserved using older methods, such as smoking, pickling and salting.

US troops at the front lines along the Czechoslovakian front are pleasantly surprised when they are issued French RCIR rations. They are most impressed with the small bottles of wine that each contains, and the menu items are exotic to troops that have begun to miss the much-dreaded MRE pork patties, ham slices and chicken-a-la-king. They (relatively) feast on salmon and rice, Basque chicken and hare pate.

In northeastern Victoria, Australia, the small town of Glenrowan is raided by a "bushranger" (rural bandit/rebel). Wearing a homemade steel helmet and multiple bulletproof vest, the charming raider claims his name is Ned Kelly before he and his friends vanish into the countryside.

[chico20854]

March 3, 1998

The Americans and their Iranian allies are not completely without concerns. Large marauder bands have formed during the winter. These bands are a mixed lot of guerrillas from all sides, refugees, deserters from various armies, and just plain bandits. Some of the bolder groups engage in firefights with U.S. and Iranian units. Many marauder bands openly claim control of areas and challenge the Iranian National Emergency Council's authority. U.S. and Iranian military units begin a series of search and destroy operations with the goal of clearing the Bushehr-Shiraz-Bandar Abbas triangle. The 9th ID and the 101st AAD participate in the operations, as do marines from I MEF in Bandar Abbas.

The 342nd (my 81st Guards) Motor-Rifle Division is withdrawn from Manchuria to help restore order and provide security in western Siberia. It is ordered to take up positions in the city of Novokuznetsk.

Unofficially,

Despite the near-total collapse of crude oil production as a result of EMP damage to the electrical grid, America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve remains over half full. The SPR had been run up in the months leading up to war, to a 120-day supply of crude, including the commissioning in early 1997 of the newest SPR sites at Irontown, Ohio and Lexington, Kentucky and the reactivation of the Sulphur Mines, Louisiana site. The damage inflicted on the nation by the Soviet nuclear strikes have disrupted the transport links (rail, barge and pipeline) to discharge the SPR, and with massive portions of American refining offline the 120-day supply could quite easily last for over twice that time.

The 11th Airborne Division has managed to force the Soviet defense of Fairbanks largely into the area surrounding the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus, with isolated pods of resistance scattered elsewhere throughout the city. Both forces are out of artillery, mortar and large caliber ammunition, missiles of all types and are rapidly running out of grenades and anti-tank rockets.

In occupied Breda, Netherlands, a patrol of the French 403e Rgiment d'Artillerie (an air defense unit re-roled with internal security duties due to the lack of enemy air activity) is ambushed by unknown assailants. After 15 minutes a quick reaction force arrives to reinforce the survivors, but the unknown attackers slip away into the city.

The cruiser USS Virginia departs Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, Puerto Rico on a patrol of the central Atlantic.

The troops of the Hungarian 53rd Mechanized Rifle Brigade are sobered as their troop transports pick their way through the ruins of Ulan Ude, Siberia, after the city's rail infrastructure, industry and military headquarters were struck by American bombers in December. While they had become familiar with the devastation wrought by Soviet conventional munitions in China, the effects of the strategic nuclear warheads is of an order of magnitude greater. Worse, the American attack succeeded in damaging the vital rail junction between the Trans-Siberian and Trans-Mongolian Railroads, forcing the unit to have to partially dismount in the heart of the blast zone and manually repair the line. The silence is eerie and the soldiers are deathly afraid of the radiation; the engineers have an abundance of soldiers willing to work feverishly to speed the unit's departure from the radioactive zone.

[chico20854]

March 4, 1998

Heavy rains ravage Kenya wreaking havoc on both civilians and the military forces on both sides as floods devastate the country, washing out roads and temporarily cutting the rail lines.

Unofficially,

The 2nd Platoon, 221st Ordnance Company (a unit of 21st TAACOM) in central Germany completes an update of a Peacekeeper Armored Car that arrived on the last convoy of reinforcements; the vehicle had previously been used for airfield security. The update includes applying camouflage paint, an engine overhaul and substitution of a M2 Browning .50-caliber machinegun for the captured Soviet DShK machinegun that had been added to the vehicle in Poland.

In fighting in Alaska, the paratroopers of the 11th Airborne Division are reinforced by combat engineers of the 109th Engineer Group (Combat) (South Dakota National Guard), whose expertise in demolitions and destroying obstacles are expected to help in overcoming the dug-in Soviet troops on the University of Alaska campus. Elsewhere in the city, the gunners and ammo handlers of the 197th Field Artillery Brigade begin clearing isolated pockets of enemy resistance, acting as dismounted infantry after their howitzers shot off their last rounds.

Dutch troops infiltrated into the occupied zone launch another guerrilla attack on the occupiers, ambushing a supply convoy headed for the Eindhoven garrison.

[chico20854]

March 5, 1998

The 40th Training Division, formed from the remnants of the 40th Infantry Division that took heavy losses during the fighting in Poland, is relieved of disaster relief, security and reconstruction duties in Oregon, and placed under command of the newly-activated 63rd US (my II) Corps and moves south by road to California

The survivors of the Dutch 103rd Reconnaissance Battalion move to the town of Zutphen.

Unofficially,

The last contingent of ships from the laid-up merchant fleets in the North Sea completes the shut-down process, loading aboard the (former East-)German corvette Prenzlau and oilfield supply ship Merk Dragon.

In the heavily-damaged German naval base of Wilhelmshaven, the German naval command has concentrated its remaining assets, a motley collection of ships and craft and exhausted sailors and shore staff.

The anti-bandit sweeps in Iran yield their first success when a patrol from the 9th Infantry Division's 3rd Battalion, 47th Infantry stumbles on a remote fortified hamlet that has been terrorized by a band of Red Army deserters (mostly Georgians and Armenians, who resented the dominance of Russian and Ukrainian troops in their units). The deserters succeed in destroying the lead HMMWV gun truck, but the rest of the patrol retreats and calls in reinforcements. Unlike the MVD's experience in Lithuania, the support is well coordinated, with a AH-1 Cobra attack helicopter dispatched to provide overhead cover for the reinforced company team that responds, as well as fires from a composite battery of 105mm and 155mm howitzers from a nearby firebase. The American attack is quick, fierce and successful, with the desert band being wiped out and only seven American casualties (including the three lost in the HMMWV).

Noting the difficulty Soviet occupying forces are experiencing in maintaining control with the limited numbers of troops and supplies they have, the Italian 5 Corps along the Sava River basin begins forming formal collaborator units as auxiliaries to the overstretched Italian occupation force. Taking advantage of the desperation of individuals as well as centuries of conflict between the various ethnic and religious groups, the call to take up arms (and receive weapons and food) receives an enthusiastic response. The Italians establish the "independent" puppet states of Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia from the remnants of the former Jugoslav republics, granting Montenegro to Serbia and splitting Bosnia-Herzegovina between Serbia and Croatia. Each of the satellite states establishes an army, usually a co-opted local militia or band of armed nationalist fanatics, which receive limited logistic support from the overstretched Italians. Ironically, much of that support consists of transfers of abandoned Soviet equipment as well as stocks of Jugoslav weapons that had been captured by the Italians during their conquest of Jugoslavia. The newly-formed forces are called the Croatian Nationalist Army (CNA), the Liberated Slovenian Armed Forces (LSAF) and the Serbian National Army (SNA).

[chico20854]

March 6, 1998

American and Kenyan military and civilian personnel do their best to distribute relief supplies and food to the flood-affected areas but over 350,000 Kenyans starve before food can reach them.

Unofficially,

Troops of the 36th Engineer Group (Construction) restore power from the first of six hydropower plants between Knoxville and Chattanooga. (The colonel in command of the group had incurred the wrath of the Tennessee Valley Authority in early November when he took the plants offline and shielded their transformers underground). On the other side of the nation, troops of the 115th Engineer Group are forced to abandon their attempt to restore the control system of the Grand Coulee Dam, America's largest hydropower plant, as it becomes apparent that the system has been irreparably damaged by the Soviet high-altitude EMP during the Thanksgiving Day Massacre and that there is no way American industry can produce a new system.

The commander of the 28th Infantry Division (Pennsylvania National Guard) makes the difficult call about which subordinate units to deactivate. He makes his judgements on a variety of factors - seniority and combat history (recent and historical) of various battalions, their condition and current strength, the likelihood of receiving replacement troops and equipment (high for some sort of replacements for infantry battalions, low for the armor and artillery battalions) and the strength of their surviving command staff. Each of the division's brigades deactivates one battalion, and the divisional support command and other divisional units (Air Defense Artillery and Military Intelligence battalions and MP and Chemical companies) deactivate one third of their force, on average.

The nuclear-powered cruiser USS Virginia arrives off Freeport, Bahamas as it searches for Soviet raiders rumored to be sheltering in the region.

The Italian corvette Sfinge departs Bizerte, Tunisia; US Naval Intelligence agents note its departure but are unable to track it once it disappears over the horizon.

In Brownsville, Texas, BMSA (Boatswains Mate Apprentice) Rodney Cutler, assigned to a refugee camp that is overflowing with refugees from both sides of the nearby border with Mexico, is caught taking liberties with an underage female, offering her food from his slim rations. The girl's father is enraged when he catches the startled sailor, and the panicked Cutler shoots the father with his assigned Ruger P-85 pistol. The gunshot and subsequent hubbub draws an increasingly large crowd and Cutler loudly exclaims that he was ambushed by the family, who wanted to steal his food and weapon. The situation continues to escalate, not helped by the lack of Spanish-speakers in Cutler's command staff, and soon the camp's naval detachment is facing a full-scale riot. Cutler is badly beaten but manages to extract himself, and the camp is locked down as the naval guard force deploys lethal force. 48 refugees are killed in the gunfire and over a dozen other sailors are hurt,

[chico20854]

March 7, 1998

President Munson begins to show signs of strain as the challenges facing the nation multiply and resources continue to diminish. Communication is growing increasingly difficult as emergency equipment begins to fail after months of heavy use and fuel tanks of even the longest-lived post-strike emergency facilities run dry.

The 16th Marine Regiment, the remnant of the 6th Marine Division, engages Soviet troops along the new front line in Korea.

The Dutch 103rd Recon Battalion begins to incorporate local police and militia units into itself, to maintain its strength and centralize control.

In Iran, the 101st Air Assault Division is reunited for the first time in months with the return of its aviation elements from Saudi Arabia. With the return of its aircraft, the Screaming Eagles form up at Bushehr and take part in the clearing operations in the Bushehr-Shiras-Bandar Abbas triangle. The division's unmatched mobility allows it to undertake highly effective search and destroy missions, able to insert blocking forces behind armed bands that are fleeing other Allied forces.

[chico20854]

March 8, 1998

Alberta closes its borders to protect itself from marauders who are after the province's petroleum resources. Brigadier General Parker, the senior Canadian Army officer in Alberta, names himself Prime Minister of Alberta and establishes a capital at Bowden, where the refinery complex has not been completely destroyed, and a trickle of refined petroleum products enables the local government to retain a measure of autonomy. Alberta's self-isolation severs the supply lines from eastern Canada to British Columbia and has a crippling effect on the Canadian Army units fighting the Soviets in British Columbia and the Yukon Territory.

Unofficially,

The Mexican government makes a formal protest about the death of its citizens in the Brownsville, Texas camp riot.

Dutch guerrillas in the town of Maastrich fire bomb the French gendarme station in the Mariaberg district, killing five of the occupiers.

Soviet, Hungarian and Czech authorities succeed in completing a continuous rail route between Uzhgorod, Ukraine and Munich, Germany, traversing Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria. The route uses several sections of local track to avoid areas of the mainline that were damaged by NATO airstrikes, and the route is dependent on a POW camp at the Czechoslovakian-Soviet border for labor to manually transfer cargo from broad Russian-gague cars to standard-gauge ones.

Jugoslav rebel troops break through the defenses of the Zenica steel mill, headquarters of the 158th Motor-Rifle Division, which they have been attacking for several weeks. While some Soviet troops head into the catacombs winding underneath the plant to continue the fight, most of them (including the division commander) surrender. The commander of the division's northernmost and strongest motor-rifle regiment, the 549th, assumes theoretical command of the division's remaining outposts, all of which are surrounded by hostile troops and are largely out of communication

While few Soviet replacements are arriving at the front, those that do are most frequently mostly or completely untrained. The few older recruits (most recalled reservists to date have been in their 20s, but desperate authorities are dispatching men as old as 55 to the front, often as a means to reduce the number of mouths to feed in their local area) retain memories of their decades-ago military service. The younger ones, including women in their 20s and teenaged boys as young as 16, have had paramilitary training as part of their schooling but require training in their units.

[chico20854]

March 9, 1998

The return of the 101st Air Assault Division's helicopters to action in Iran presents an opportunity for the 6th Air Cavalry Combat Brigade to once again withdraw to Saudi Arabia for rest and long-overdue maintenance.

The 25th Infantry Division (Light) is reformed in Korea with fewer than 1000 surviving personnel. The "Tropical Lightning" Division had been hit by six Soviet tactical nuclear weapons in October before being overrun.

Unofficially,

As fuel supplies, food and spares dwindle, the staff of the Gulfwind oilfield off Brownsville, Texas begin shutting the platforms, subsea installations and pipelines down. They take care to ensure that the facilities are prepared as possible to survive the harshest weather the Gulf of Mexico can inflict (all offshore facilities have a long-standing hurricane plan) and hopefully last an extended period of abandonment. Similar activities are underway in dozens of other oil fields between the Mexican border and Mobile, Alabama.

In Fairbanks, Alaska, fierce combat continues along the eastern end of the University of Alaska campus as the Soviet defenders fight with a ferocity their forefathers in Stalingrad would have been proud of.

Recognizing the excellent performance of its service as part of 21st Army in southern Germany in the 1997 campaign, the commander of the Western TVD raises the 48th Motor Rifle Division to a Guards unit.

Also in southern Germany, military authorities, working alongside the Austrian government in exile, gather stragglers and isolated units of the Austrian Bundesheer together into a single, unified formation. The combined force is given the title of the Bundesheer's only prewar division, the 1st Panzergrenadier, and assigned to the German IV Korps in southern Germany. The Austrians retain a roughly regiment-sized force to guard the remaining government in the extreme western province of Vorarlberg, nestled between Lake Constance and Switzerland and unconquered by the overstretched Italians.

[chico20854]

March 10, 1998

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

As the transportation system breaks down in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, the first food riots break out in the camps holding recently arrived Mexican refugees. The 3rd Texas Regiment, a state defense force unit formed from part of the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets, is sent in to restore order; its troops are met with gunfire from the heavily armed Mexican gangs which are attempting to assert control in the camps.

As the fighting in Fairbanks continues, the commander of the 147th (my 261st) Motor-Rifle Division makes the decision to preserve his command rather than commit his men to further slaughter as American paratroops and combat engineers blast them out of the tunnels and shattered buildings of the University of Alaska campus. Preparations are begun for a breakout.

With food stocks aboard dwindling, the master of the Danish containership Susan Mae, anchored in Long Island Sound, sends a team ashore to obtain supplies.

The USS Virginia departs Bahamian waters after taking aboard a dozen shipwrecked American sailors, both Navy and civilian Merchant Marines.

[chico20854]

March 11, 1998

Another day when canon is silent. Unofficially,

Quebecois forces, who have been stalled outside the NATO air base in Goose Bay, Labrador, finally launch their attack on the post. The defenders beat back the attack, taking and inflicting heavy losses.

In Fairbanks, the remaining troops of the 147th (my 261st) Motor-Rifle Division launch a daring and fierce attack on the screening force the 11th Airborne Division threw up along the western end of the University of Alaska campus, which had been a (relatively) quiet sector. They break through the paratroops and in a matter of minutes are attacking the lightly-manned blockade positions maintained by the exhausted 1st Infantry Brigade (Arctic Recon) on the highway leaving the city. By lunchtime the Soviet division has broken through and begins evacuating south and west; the exhausted troops of X Corps unable to pursue effectively.

Dutch troops strike yet again, firing a mortar at a French Air Force C-160 transport that is unloading replacement troops at the nuked Gilze-Rijen air base; the airplane is riddled with shrapnel and abandoned by the aircrew before it is consumed by flames.

The surrounded and increasingly desperate troops of the 158th Motor-Rifle Division begin to mutiny, disobeying their officers and fleeing their positions, heading for the perceived safety of the Sava River valley. The garrisons in Maglai, Doboj and Modriča collapse, leaving the 549th Motor-Rifle Regiment's positions along the Sava River at Bosanski Šamac as the sole remaining portion of the division.

The 1890th Assault Gun Brigade, forming a significant portion of the garrison of the Central Asian city of Samarkand and faced with isolation, disease, privation and hostile citizens, begins to lose troops to desertion. Fortunately, most conscripts slip away with their personal weapons and not the brigade's massive SU-130 assault guns.

[chico20854]

March 12, 1998

An Italian air strike heavily damages the last fully operational oil refinery in North Africa at Bizerte in Tunisia, with Italian attack aircraft pressing the attack home in the face of SAMs and Tunisian and US jet fighters. As a result of the attack, the US must greatly curtail its naval and air operations in the Mediterranean.

Unofficially,

At Goose Bay, Labrador, the Quebecois commander once again offers a parlay. He offers a continued ceasefire, repatriation of non-Canadians to their homelands and evacuation of Canadians to Nova Scotia in exchange for evacuation of the base. With supplies running low, the NATO commander and his Canadian counterpart accept the offer.

The 147th (my 261st) Motor-Rifle Division's retreat from Fairbanks, Alaska is celebrated by the 25th Corps headquarters in distant Anchorage, which dispatches a force equipped with captured civilian vehicles to speed their return to Anchorage.

With the coming of warmer weather, ice on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway system has broken up enough for ships to transit. A number of smaller freighters, which have been frozen in for the winter, begin to resume their voyages.

[chico20854]

March 13, 1998

Nothing official for the day. Unofficially,

With the threat of additional nuclear strikes appearing unlikely for the time being and resources running low, TACAMO flights (relaying orders to submerged missile submarines) come to an end, ordering remaining boats to return to designated dispersal ports on a staggered timeline.

1st Western Front, stationed along the Oder River (the Polish-German border) receives a contingent of reinforcements from the USSR - 1500 unruly and scared teenagers from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania grabbed from refugee camps, farms and semi-ruined cities by press gangs organized by rear area authorities in the Baltics. The untrained teens lack uniforms, equipment or weapons; the front commander suspects that Party authorities decided to unload 1500 mouths on him to feed and control, relieving themselves of the responsibility.

The German corvette Prenzlau and oilfield support ship Merk Dragon arrive in Wilhelmshaven, Germany carrying supplies and sailors from the 40-odd merchantmen laid up at lesund, Norway, the final batch of excess ships in the North Sea for now.

The supertanker Kapetan Panagiotis, seized in the Arabian Sea from its Greek owners in 1997 and pressed into service transporting crude oil from Saudi Arabia to Japan before the nuclear exchange, completes its overhaul and upgrade in Bahrain. The ship, renamed the Captain Pickering after the CENTCOM logistics officer killed in the Spetsnaz raid in May, begins moving to Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, where it will load over 350,000 tons of diesel, aviation fuel and bunker fuel before being dispatched to Diego Garcia as a strategic reserve for CENTCOM.

[chico20854]

March 14, 1998

Nothing official for the day! Unofficially,

The landing party from the Danish containership Susan Mae returns to the ship at anchor in Long Island Sound. They report that law and order ashore has broken down and that food is not available. They refuse to go ashore again unless they are armed with more than the single pistol that the master entrusts to them.

In Goose Bay, Labrador, a trio of Air France 747s land to evacuate the NATO defenders. As the last plane takes off, headed to Europe with mostly German Luftwaffe ground personnel aboard, the demolition charges they had placed throughout the base detonate, rendering most of the base's fixed facilities useless. The Royal Canadian Navy begins to assemble the remnants of its fleet in the Maritimes in the Strait of Canson, the narrow but deep body of water that divides mainlain Nova Scotia from Cape Breton Island.

Adapting to the decline of global transportation, Nhaziern Khazi, a small-time drug smuggler abandons his trade running hash from Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf. He, two cousins and some followers join a Pasdaran militia unit instead.

The nuclear cruiser USS Virginia continues its patrol of the central Atlantic, turning to the southwest from a point 300 miles west of the Azores.

[chico20854]

March 15, 1998

While the orders received by the Soviet submarine Barrikada permit the boomer to end its time on station in the North Atlantic, the boat cannot return to its homeport outside of Murmansk, which was heavily damaged in the fighting of 1997 and, naval command believes, at risk of being captured by NATO troops. Instead, the sub must head for what remains of the port of Vladivostok in the Pacific. Barrikada's captain decides to make way to Vladivostok via the Arctic, and the boat turns northeast.

Unofficially,

The Lieutenant Governor of New York, who is effectively single-handedly ruling western New York, scores some valuable assets when the Liberian freighter Holstenracer arrives off Buffalo on Lake Erie, continuing its voyage to Europe with 11,000 tons of Wyoming coal aboard after being frozen in Lake Erie over the winter. The ship is detained by quick-thinking Buffalo Police patrol boats, which bring the ship and its' valuable cargo to the city's pier.

Dutch special forces troops (for that is who now constitute most of the active guerrilla force) in occupied Holland launch another attack, once again ambushing a French supply column despite its escort by French VAB APCs. The attack outside Nijmegen destroys four escorting VABs and six trucks; a dozen more carrying various supplies of food, fuel and munitions, are driven off by the Dutch troops. By dark the food and fuel have been distributed to the remaining local population and the trucks burned on remote roads.

In an early test of effectiveness, the resurgent Romanians beseige an outpost of the 97th Guards Motor-Rifle Division in a remote pass in the Carpathians, surrounding the Soviet firebase and subjecting it to constant artillery, mortar and small arms fire while cutting off the flow of supplies to the base and capturing a dismounted patrol the overconfident Soviet commander sent out to investigate his attackers.

Internal strife in Saudi Arabia makes a brief flare into public view, with early morning clashes in the city of Taif between the remnants of the Army Royal Guard Regiment and troops of the National Guard 1st Mechanized Brigade. By 8 a.m. quiet retuns to the city, although a strict curfew is in effect, enforced by the Bedouins of the National Guard. During the mid-afternoon, General McLaren is informed by his Saudi hosts that Prince Badr has assumed the throne after the sudden death of his cousin, King Abdul, who himself had assumed the throne following the death of his uncle King Fahd as a result of Soviet nuclear attacks on Riyadh late in 1997. Prince Badr is a graduate of RMA Sandhurst.

[chico20854]

March 16, 1998

Although the national (and state-led) relocation effort has been abandoned, refugees continue arriving in western Pennsylvania. Hostile locals discourage them from settling on their farms and in their already-overcrowded towns, so some set up camp in Oil Creek State Park, a 6,250-acre haven north of Pittsburgh. While the park does not have a campground, desperate refugees set up camp at the park's picnic areas and near the administrative buildings.

The 82nd Airborne Division is returned to action in Iran, again committed to combat in central Iran near Shiraz where it fights the first of a series of sweeps and raids to clear the area of armed bands.

Unofficially,

In Lake Erie, the Buffalo Police seize another freighter headed for the Atlantic; this time the prize is the Grenadine Tasmia, carrying 9,000 tons of Manitoba wheat.

French occupation authorities order a search and destroy mission by the Nijmegen garrison to locate and annihilate the attackers from the prior day. French Gendarmes travel behind the Army troops, searching civilian homes for the food distributed the day before. Some civilians resist and are shot, others reluctantly surrender their bounty (and are arrested anyhow), and in a disappointingly few cases the Frenchmen have mercy on the suffering civilians and allow them to carry on their hardscrabble and miserable existence.

In the first naval action in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in many decades, the Royal Canadian Navy performs a sweep of the waterway leading to breakaway Quebec. While a mere shadow of operations of a year ago, it represents a major effort by the Canadians and is more than sufficient to counter the weak Quebecois force at sea (whicch is composed of requisitioned civilian vessels and the lone RCN vessel which went over to the secessionists, the auxilary minesweeper HMCS Anticosti). A lone CP-121 Tracker martime patrol aircraft (one of the aged type's last operational missions) sorties across the Gulf, locating and identifying craft at sea. The aircraft's radar locates the Anticosti and a mass of rebel ships sheltering off the town of Sept-Zles on the Gulf's north coast. The Canadian task force that has assembled in the Strait of Canso in Nova Scotia departs at the greatest speed available fuel supplies will permit.