GWOT VI - This Madness Has To Stop

GWOT VI - This Madness Has To Stop

I slowly came back to myself. Watching my friend Mo zipped into his body bag was part of it. We'd joked, more than once, that we'd need several body bags or a broom and wire brush for him. Bomb tech. Occupational hazard. But he'd disarmed his last device and he was all in one piece, except for all the bullet holes.

The screaming of the Xtian child soldier trainers as they were tortured to death also helped. It wasn't California doing it. It was the Refuge troops. They'd been taught all about the mechanics of tiring by the Xtian militias. They were getting their own back, one screaming burning running victim at a time.

Yet California soldiers were present and we weren't stopping it.

Never give an order you know won't be obeyed. If I tried to stop it, I probably couldn't. I also didn't want to.

The more important work was taking place on the other side of the school bus. Like a well oiled machine, the Californians and Refuge medics and a couple of Red Lion Helpers were sorting and triaging the children. Refugee children held as hostages. Xtian children who had been used as combatants. We didn't care. Save them all, treat them all, restrain them all. We'd already found two grenades.

A flare up of dust nearby as a Red Lion contract medical helicopter landed, under the muzzles of our guns. Red jumpsuited flight medics helped the line medics make the decision of who would fly and who would die. There were plenty of Xtians who would shoot it up just for practice, but I wouldn't stoop to using it for military purposes.

As ground ambulances arrived, they departed just as swiftly, fully loaded with drives of hours ahead of them. Some chance is better than none.

Covered in blood, cut from broken glass and the blade of a child I'd shot under his chin, the most pain I felt was from the recoil of the machine pistol savagely hammering my right wrist. I'd been a little busy. Shooting children. To save them.

The charges had been disarmed. A technical intelligence team, well trained by their now dead boss, were documenting them prior to disassembly. With his body still cooling, his people were doing their jobs. No higher accolade can a leader receive.

I could do no less.

###

To: UNNAPID Command, New York
From: Major Echo 18, Army of the Republic of California Expeditionary Forces

CC: [the usual]

Re: mandatory reporting of war crimes involving the use of child soldiers; mandatory reporting of genocide

It is my duty to inform UNNAPID and through it the UN Human Rights Commission, that on this date, militia forces aligned with the Xtian separatist movement made use of child soldiers between the ages of six and twelve to breach military obstacles, shield their forces from small arms fire and land mines, directly execute non-combatant men and women and children in violation of the Geneva Conventions, and to the point, assist in the kidnapping of innocent children who were later that day used as hostages and repeatedly threatened with execution.

There has been a certain hesitation in openly declaring that what the Xtian forces are doing in Iowa is a genocide. This triggers certain obligations and responsibilities of the United Nations and of the entire world, in the face of an atrocity on the same level as the Holocaust, as the Balkans War, as the Rwandan genocide.

"None dare call it genocide."

I call it genocide. I have seen too many bodies in piles. Our national aid society, Red Lion, has documented tens of thousands of killings of non combatant refugees in Iowa. More than a thousand took place in the last twenty four hours, and the actions of child soldiers were instrumental in making this latest mass killing possible.

I have therefore determined that it is inappropriate for the California forces deployed in the Iowa counter-genocide operations to recognize any Xtian separatist forces as lawful combatants.

As this is inconsistent with the obligations of UN peacekeeping forces in the field to obey international humanitarian law, I therefore withdraw California forces under my operational control from any further United Nations operational control or direction. Nor will we ask for any support, noting for the record that we have not received any support to date in any case.

The Commander, California Expeditionary Forces, provided in my orders the option for me to take this highly unusual step. Until and unless I receive orders to the contrary from my lawful chain of command, i.e. Commander - CEF, Commanding General CAR or GovCal, my operational intent is to destroy all irregular Xtian forces without compunction or mercy, as the most effective means of ending this genocide.

THIS INCLUDES DIRECT ATTACKS ON THEIR CHURCHES AND HOMES.

Only barbarians make war on children. Yet it is something worse than barbarism to make children into living weapons. Something that stinks of death camps and mass crematoriums and the pious, lying claim that "It will never happen again."

It is happening. It is happening here. It is happening now.

If making war on children is the only means left to California to stop this genocide, let the world call us barbarians.

But we are not barbarians who wrap ourselves in lying words and false promises while using the latest in technology and tactics to murder, not in a random or criminal fashion, but in a studied and determined and methodological manner - building factories of death in which child labor is employed.

Summary:

- Xtian forces are no longer recognized as lawful combatants.

- California forces under my control hoist the Jolly Roger, the black flag. We ask no quarter, we give no quarter.

- If this is mass war using children, I have no choice but to consider Xtian churches and schools nothing more than madrassas, barracks for child troops, and I shall smite them as the terror sites they are.

Given under my hand, this dark and bloody day

Midford, Iowa

GWOT VI - Armored Car

GWOT VI - Armored Car

I'd known intellectually that prior to the Firecracker War, there had been Americans wealthy enough to collect literally anything. Not just stamps or coins or gems. Or guns or china or crystal. Or swords or paintings.

Military vehicle collectors, they had called themselves. The next to last stop for military vehicles from past eras, between decommissioning and demilitarization on the one hand and disassembly and destruction on the other.

Some of the collectors - who tended also for some reason to be farmers or at least live in rural areas (have you ever tried to park a tank downtown?) - had dozens of vehicles. Some even drivable.

Most military bases had obsolete equipment on display at the gates. The aircraft were junk. The tanks and cannon were ... not quite junk. Filled with concrete in the barrels, but barrels could be replaced. Non-working engines, but there were plenty of trucks and tractors to provide a donor engine. Or two or four.

Then there were the armored vehicles in police use. Scratch a sheriff's office, find an armored vehicle or two. Usually rusting in someone's storage yard, but not always.

Then consider that the military bases also have storage yards, and what might be rusting in them.

All told, there weren't a lot of first line battle equipment coming out of America's factories any more. But there was an awful lot of obsolete gear that could be reconditioned and put into service.

California had done it. It was one of the ways we'd won our fragile independence.

I shouldn't have been surprised that the churches had done it as well. Tractor, tank, truck, an engine is an engine and tracks are tracks.

Machine guns are not difficult. Homeland and the FIrecracker War had created a great hunger for ammunition, and factories all over the Americas had delivered. And kept delivering.

Light cannon, such as the 37mm on the wrecked World War II 'Greyhound' armored car in front of me, I hadn't expected. I should have. Just a bigger gun. Casings are easy, powder is easy, warheads are not that hard. If you really want to do unto others before they do unto you.

If I had brought more anti-tank...

I still wouldn't have had it at the control points. I'd have just brought more mines.

It's difficult to see anything in an armored car. You need ground guides.

Snipers are good at picking those off.

I hadn't expected child sappers.

Of these minor details are wars won and lost.

I kicked the cooling hull of the car. Now it was just scrap, if you wire brushed what was left of the crew - carbon - off the springs of the seats and the floor.

But there were a lot more out there just like it.

I needed more anti-tank. I wouldn't be getting it from the UN. California couldn't afford to send more forward, even if I could spare the cubic from the other explosives.

Let the enemy be my quartermaster.

They had technicals and killdozers. Now they'd revealed the ability to at least support armored cars, if not reconstruct them.

A 37mm is an anemic cannon. About the same penetrating power as a 40mm grenade. A modern Mk-19 automatic grenade lanucher had a 37mm beat on everything but range. I didn't have any Mk-19s. But someone had made or found 37mm shells.

It was time to poke my intel squirrels. And go back and do a little military history homework.

I knew, and we'd taught the Refuge forces, all the improvised and infantry anti-tank tricks. Cocktails, satchel charges, anti-tank grenades, the ridiculously heavy and not very effective anti-tank rifles, the reloadable recoiless rifle and bazooka and RPG-7, the single shot anti-tank rocket.

The gyrostabilized heavy barrel on a California gun truck could have destroyed that armored car from beyond its own effective range. Powered servos beat hand cranks every time, and my crews were good. Gun truck, not very armored, but World War II armored car, not _enough_ armored. There just wasn't a gun truck nearby when I'd - and a thousand dead refugees - had badly needed one.

I couldn't get more gun trucks any more than I could lay hands on California or American main battle tanks.

I could take, and steal, the enemy's armored cars.

It was, well, something to do.

GWOT VI - A Few Good Men

GWOT VI - A Few Good Men

I'd scrubbed in a bucket, changed uniforms, moved to the next objective. Revising our vehicle control points to provide some limited anti-armor protection. Reaffirming with our snipers that "anyone trying to open the gate" includes the short soldiers.

"Sir, you gotta see this."

This was an official video feed from Army of God, pushed to their social media.

###

A convoy of Army of God arriving at a church complex.

I counted. Crap. Six armored cars. Two tanks on lowboy transporters. Real tanks with turrets. Hard trouble. Would cut through a vehicle control point like a hot knife through butter.

Trucks, trucks, troops, troops.

Another meet and greet. The church was very happy to see Army of God.

Army of God was not, however, happy to see them.

The church troops were two platoons of militia and a platoon of what might in peacetime be generously called Boy Scouts. In this war, their existence was a war crime.

As I watched, the tank turret lifted, spun and pointed at the hosts. Army of God leveled their weapons.

The Boy Scouts were required to drop their weapons and put their hands onto their heads.

The other two platoons were machine-gunned as the horrified congregation was made to watch.

###

I paused and watched again. Army of God had just attacked a church irregular group.

Very professional about it, too.

###

"We fight in the service of God. We do not make war with children. We do not make war _on_ children. We are civilized men and women defending our community and the Body of Christ. We will not tolerate those who commit atrocities and by so doing have fallen into Satanic hands. We have saved them from further sin. May God have mercy on their souls."

###

"Intel confirms. That was the church the school bus came from."

Holy. Shit.

The officer commanding the Army of God detachment addressed the former child soldiers. They were then searched and made to board the trucks.

"Army of God accepts an obligation to shelter, succor and retrain for a normal life all child soldiers in this conflict. If you are a child soldier, make your way to the Army of God and we shall take you in. This offer applies to all child soldiers of any alignment including any who may have served with the illegal G forces."

That was a safe offer; they wouldn't get many takers.

But they made the offer.

Killing takes a moment and costs about a quarter per round.

Feeding, housing and schooling children - for years and years - that's expensive.

The Army of God had found a bribe that I had no choice but to accept.

I had my PR team draft a press release reaffirming the combatant status of AoG, the cease fire between AoG and California, and our thanks for taking in the children.

They may have done the right thing only in terror for their homes and families.

They still ... did the right thing.

May we all.