GWOT VI - Runnin' & Gunnin'
Jun. 28th, 2023 03:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VI - Runnin' & Gunnin'
I wondered how I would explain all this if I survived to lecture about it at the California War College.
Or even how I would document it.
As a practical matter, the workflow was very straightfoward.
California Command - safely located in Pleasanton, CA, well beyond the reach of Iowa forces - processed operational intelligence from all sorts of sources. Some of it came from my own forces, especially HUMINT or Human Intelligence. Our observations including our observation posts, scouts, prisoner interviews, live and dead drops. Other stuff came from Iowa to California Command through methods we had no need to know about - the California call center using international (formerly domestic) phone calls, text messages, E-mails, other electronic means. Pesky bears even in the absence of woods. ELINT - Electronic Intelligence. Whenever a Iowa genocide unit touched a radio, we learned something from that. Radios are very convenient. Talk too long and they attract our kindest attentions. Satellite imagery. We had amazing satellites, apparently, and could pick up all sorts of stuff.
Truth be told, we had a friend in the sky, a little bit lower down. But that knowledge was very closely held.
California Command would pass on the data to California Control, sometimes with directions ("Do this...") and sometimes with suggestions ("Today's target of opportunity list is as follows...")
California Control was a dispatch center run out of a van and a couple of tents. It moved often, several times a day. Our comms people made sure that no radio traffic originated anywhere within what we thought was artillery range of its temporary parking spot. Secure means relayed messages to temporary transmitters that also moved frequently, and sometimes had to be replaced. We were not the only ones who could dole out kindnesses.
Our field units were organized daily. They were always on vehicles - Iowa was just too big for infantry to be a factor, except in fixed positions such as our control points. The typical vehicle was a civilian pickup truck modified to carry soldiers and one or more heavy weapons on a hardpoint. In military terms, a "technical." We eked out our limited number of personnel with "G"s - refugees - that were recruited only from those who had the strongest personal motivation to be loyal to California forces even unto death. A mother who had driven a load of wounded children to one of our field hospitals, because our soldiers had stayed behind after interrupting a massacre in progress. Some had lived. Not her son and daughter. So I'd recruited her. A safe bet. But such people were few and far between, winnowed out with a fine-tooth comb from the larger group that had self-organized as the nascent government of Refuge. She'd been sworn - taken the oath - so she was ours now. If she lived (unlikely) she would be a California resident, and if she served five years, a citizen.
That was one of the two ways I had to replace my casualties. The other was to bring them in via the Red Ball Express, the truck runs we were doing from Minnesota and through South Dakota. In the latter state we had help - an anti-American insurgent movement supported by Bear Force, which controlled everything outside major towns. The former was still mostly lawful, and had legitimate relief operations running through our own Red Lion. MSF had had to shut down its Nebraska logistics support and reroute through Minnesota after the Nebbies had finally hard closed their border. But our Red Ball Express was frankly military, with huge California flags. We made much of carrying refugees, particularly the ill and children, out of the combat zones. We did not publicize what Red Ball was carrying south, including but not limited to bullets, beans and gasoline.
Minnesota was ... cranky. They turned around combatants and refugees alike at their border. So the number of replacements I could sneak in was very limited, using the "smuggling camels" dodge. A fit for duty guard sent south, a casualty with wound concealed sent north as if they were a guard. South Dakota had no such issues.
So our vehicle-borne troops, perhaps two or three vehicles and six to ten soldiers, only one or two of whom would be a 'G' or locally recruited guide, would drive out, deliver care packages or kindnesses or smite as appropriate, and visit spots they could refuel (important!), rearm (almost as important), rest and clean up (less so, between sleeping in seats and baby wipes), and last but not least, do basic maintenance and repairs on their vehicles.
Care packages. We always went out fully loaded with drinking water. Red Lion would give us a list of places that needed water, food, medical attention, and refugees in need of protection. We couldn't do much but we did what we could.
But some of our care packages were intended for genocidaires. Anti vehicle mines in particular. Although Refuge was starting to give us lists, of places to drop off weapons and munitions. They might be drilling with sticks, issuing uniforms consisting of "G" on an armband, and sending out squads of troops with one rifle and one pistol per squad, but they were starting to become "a factor," in the antiseptic language of a war that was anything but.
Kindnesses. This war was as much propaganda as direct action. We bragged of our exploits by press releases and video clips, particularly YouTube. We had embedded news media, mostly "stringers" whose deaths would not disturb an employing media network. So did our enemies. And when they became famous, we liked to applaud them in an honest and direct fashion. Then their burning churches and dead bodies would be the subject of our press releases and video clips.
(Yes, I know, the bodies of combatants were to be treated with dignity and respect. They were genocidal criminals. Fuck that. Respect is given where respect is earned, and those who make piles of bodies should expect to end in a pile of bodies.)
We didn't have artillery. I hadn't managed to co-opt or steal the Indian tubes, and didn't have enough artillerymen to use them if I had. But I did have mortars. Those we could use to devastating effect against "soft targets." I.e. things that don't move. Towns, churches, buildings. In this war, a church was not a place for noncombatants to shelter. It was a barracks for enemy forces to preach, organize and roll out from.
We had a handful of long-range snipers, mostly on the venerable but still potent .50 caliber platform. We had a lot of medium range snipers. The Gs were training more.
However, by far the most effective thing our troops could do was to drive up on someone who couldn't resist, and well, smite them.
Our mobile forces couldn't go past enemy roadblocks. But every genocidaire staffing a roadblock was one less out with a machete doing God's harvest work.
We could dismount and sneak up on a roadblock, snipe them, harass them, etc. But always ready to run back to the vehicles, and we did mean run.
When our mobile forces met enemy mobile forces, it was a brief punishing contest we usually won. We saw them from farther away (thanks California Command!) or even sought out the meeting (thanks California Control!) and hit harder and more accurately in the brief moments where our ranges overlapped.
But if we fucked it up, which happened, more than once, we lost that unit. All dead. Because the only Christian organized force that took prisoners, the Army of God, had a shaky ceasefire with us. And you didn't want to fall into the hands of Christian irregular troops alive. They'd literally skull fuck you. As in through an eye socket.
All California troops carried grenades. You never used your last one, for the same reason that you never used your own first aid kit on anyone but yourself.
So if enemy forces could resist, who were we smiting?
Their adherents. Their neighbors. The towns from which they came.
We would drive into a town. The town's defenders would be out killing refugees. So we would gather their townsfolk, confiscate any weapons we found, confiscate useful vehicles and parts, give a short rousing speech. As was our right as combatants, we would kill anyone who resisted enough to require it. Object lessons in a war we didn't start.
We would also destroy rolling stock. Cars and trucks. Buses on a high priority. So far we'd mostly prevented enemy forces from using buses to gather up refugees to massacre them out of sight of cameras and out of range of California retaliation. But that was because we kept stealing or burning them.
Out of fear of a visit from what a wag had started calling the Rainbow Coalition (us and the Gs), a town's defenders would stay home. Which also meant that they weren't out with machetes doing God's work.
So our handful of troops, constantly moving, tied up a larger number of would-be genocidaires on the defensive.
It was our major contribution to the Iowa war. Slow down the murdering.
###
California Task Force Six
Road 32
Central Iowa
"We have the following footage from a reporter embedded with California forces in rural Iowa."
A shaky hand-held camera showing grim faces in a truck cab. Festooned with weapons. Prominent California Republic flags and logos. Subtly different from before the Firecracker War. No star. Just bear.
All wore scarves over their faces. If you had family, this was a war that could follow you home, thousands of miles and even decades later.
A narration.
"I'm Corporal Stewart. I'm an MP, that's Military Police, in the 2nd MP Brigade. I'm in command of this detachment. Our mission today is to interdict enemy movement on Road 32."
Road 32 was not impressive. A two lane road, in indifferent shape in peacetime and now pothole laden. But straight and flat and mostly still paved.
"We have a motorcycle scout out ahead of us. She reports a column of dust. That's enemy vehicles. We checked. Not humanitarian either. We're the unit furthest east. So we're going to park a little ways away, do a little digging, and wait to make friends."
A little joking, drinking water, using shovels and picks to scrape depressions in the ground. Hides.
"Classic L-shaped ambush. Lead vehicle gets a present."
The present was a tow strap tied to a log festooned with large metal spikes and wrapped with concertina wire. Pulled out in front of the lead vehicle like a pre-war police spike strip, with the strap invisible lying on the road until too late.
The truck, and the two trucks towing trailers behind it, collided with each other even before the Californians opened fire.
A quick approach, all Californians on a line with guns at ready.
"Drop your weapons. Crawl out! Empty hands or die!"
A few more shots. Then a clot of shocked, bleeding survivors under California guns.
"This isn't a game. This is murder. Go home," the Corporal lectured.
Unstated - genocide, or what happens when militia goes up against troops?
A quick glance through wrecked vehicles and documents doesn't show any damning evidence. If it had, nooses were tied and waiting. But every survivor, their pictures were taken and names - likely fake - recorded. But facial recognition can't be lied to, and recorded voices have their own tells.
So instead of execution, their boots are thrown into a bonfire made with gasoline from a wrecked truck.
"You can keep your socks. Walk east. Don't be seen by us again in this war. We will kill you on contact."
A survivor starts to object, and his own drag him away before Stewart can point his pistol. He sighs and holsters.
"They wouldn't be out here if they weren't looking to fight. They should be at home with their loved ones."
###
[Two days later.]
Frago KIA Report. Corporal Kevin Stewart, 2nd MP Brigade. KIA near mile marker 72 on Road 32. Shot and killed during meeting engagement with Iowa irregulars. Multiple GSW to the chest and abdomen, one through the right armpit and therefore armor did not protect. Two other California soldiers wounded, one seriously. California forces return in captured enemy vehicle, the only one able to be repaired. Body recovered. To be backhauled to South Dakota. Family notified per SOP. End frago message.
I wondered how I would explain all this if I survived to lecture about it at the California War College.
Or even how I would document it.
As a practical matter, the workflow was very straightfoward.
California Command - safely located in Pleasanton, CA, well beyond the reach of Iowa forces - processed operational intelligence from all sorts of sources. Some of it came from my own forces, especially HUMINT or Human Intelligence. Our observations including our observation posts, scouts, prisoner interviews, live and dead drops. Other stuff came from Iowa to California Command through methods we had no need to know about - the California call center using international (formerly domestic) phone calls, text messages, E-mails, other electronic means. Pesky bears even in the absence of woods. ELINT - Electronic Intelligence. Whenever a Iowa genocide unit touched a radio, we learned something from that. Radios are very convenient. Talk too long and they attract our kindest attentions. Satellite imagery. We had amazing satellites, apparently, and could pick up all sorts of stuff.
Truth be told, we had a friend in the sky, a little bit lower down. But that knowledge was very closely held.
California Command would pass on the data to California Control, sometimes with directions ("Do this...") and sometimes with suggestions ("Today's target of opportunity list is as follows...")
California Control was a dispatch center run out of a van and a couple of tents. It moved often, several times a day. Our comms people made sure that no radio traffic originated anywhere within what we thought was artillery range of its temporary parking spot. Secure means relayed messages to temporary transmitters that also moved frequently, and sometimes had to be replaced. We were not the only ones who could dole out kindnesses.
Our field units were organized daily. They were always on vehicles - Iowa was just too big for infantry to be a factor, except in fixed positions such as our control points. The typical vehicle was a civilian pickup truck modified to carry soldiers and one or more heavy weapons on a hardpoint. In military terms, a "technical." We eked out our limited number of personnel with "G"s - refugees - that were recruited only from those who had the strongest personal motivation to be loyal to California forces even unto death. A mother who had driven a load of wounded children to one of our field hospitals, because our soldiers had stayed behind after interrupting a massacre in progress. Some had lived. Not her son and daughter. So I'd recruited her. A safe bet. But such people were few and far between, winnowed out with a fine-tooth comb from the larger group that had self-organized as the nascent government of Refuge. She'd been sworn - taken the oath - so she was ours now. If she lived (unlikely) she would be a California resident, and if she served five years, a citizen.
That was one of the two ways I had to replace my casualties. The other was to bring them in via the Red Ball Express, the truck runs we were doing from Minnesota and through South Dakota. In the latter state we had help - an anti-American insurgent movement supported by Bear Force, which controlled everything outside major towns. The former was still mostly lawful, and had legitimate relief operations running through our own Red Lion. MSF had had to shut down its Nebraska logistics support and reroute through Minnesota after the Nebbies had finally hard closed their border. But our Red Ball Express was frankly military, with huge California flags. We made much of carrying refugees, particularly the ill and children, out of the combat zones. We did not publicize what Red Ball was carrying south, including but not limited to bullets, beans and gasoline.
Minnesota was ... cranky. They turned around combatants and refugees alike at their border. So the number of replacements I could sneak in was very limited, using the "smuggling camels" dodge. A fit for duty guard sent south, a casualty with wound concealed sent north as if they were a guard. South Dakota had no such issues.
So our vehicle-borne troops, perhaps two or three vehicles and six to ten soldiers, only one or two of whom would be a 'G' or locally recruited guide, would drive out, deliver care packages or kindnesses or smite as appropriate, and visit spots they could refuel (important!), rearm (almost as important), rest and clean up (less so, between sleeping in seats and baby wipes), and last but not least, do basic maintenance and repairs on their vehicles.
Care packages. We always went out fully loaded with drinking water. Red Lion would give us a list of places that needed water, food, medical attention, and refugees in need of protection. We couldn't do much but we did what we could.
But some of our care packages were intended for genocidaires. Anti vehicle mines in particular. Although Refuge was starting to give us lists, of places to drop off weapons and munitions. They might be drilling with sticks, issuing uniforms consisting of "G" on an armband, and sending out squads of troops with one rifle and one pistol per squad, but they were starting to become "a factor," in the antiseptic language of a war that was anything but.
Kindnesses. This war was as much propaganda as direct action. We bragged of our exploits by press releases and video clips, particularly YouTube. We had embedded news media, mostly "stringers" whose deaths would not disturb an employing media network. So did our enemies. And when they became famous, we liked to applaud them in an honest and direct fashion. Then their burning churches and dead bodies would be the subject of our press releases and video clips.
(Yes, I know, the bodies of combatants were to be treated with dignity and respect. They were genocidal criminals. Fuck that. Respect is given where respect is earned, and those who make piles of bodies should expect to end in a pile of bodies.)
We didn't have artillery. I hadn't managed to co-opt or steal the Indian tubes, and didn't have enough artillerymen to use them if I had. But I did have mortars. Those we could use to devastating effect against "soft targets." I.e. things that don't move. Towns, churches, buildings. In this war, a church was not a place for noncombatants to shelter. It was a barracks for enemy forces to preach, organize and roll out from.
We had a handful of long-range snipers, mostly on the venerable but still potent .50 caliber platform. We had a lot of medium range snipers. The Gs were training more.
However, by far the most effective thing our troops could do was to drive up on someone who couldn't resist, and well, smite them.
Our mobile forces couldn't go past enemy roadblocks. But every genocidaire staffing a roadblock was one less out with a machete doing God's harvest work.
We could dismount and sneak up on a roadblock, snipe them, harass them, etc. But always ready to run back to the vehicles, and we did mean run.
When our mobile forces met enemy mobile forces, it was a brief punishing contest we usually won. We saw them from farther away (thanks California Command!) or even sought out the meeting (thanks California Control!) and hit harder and more accurately in the brief moments where our ranges overlapped.
But if we fucked it up, which happened, more than once, we lost that unit. All dead. Because the only Christian organized force that took prisoners, the Army of God, had a shaky ceasefire with us. And you didn't want to fall into the hands of Christian irregular troops alive. They'd literally skull fuck you. As in through an eye socket.
All California troops carried grenades. You never used your last one, for the same reason that you never used your own first aid kit on anyone but yourself.
So if enemy forces could resist, who were we smiting?
Their adherents. Their neighbors. The towns from which they came.
We would drive into a town. The town's defenders would be out killing refugees. So we would gather their townsfolk, confiscate any weapons we found, confiscate useful vehicles and parts, give a short rousing speech. As was our right as combatants, we would kill anyone who resisted enough to require it. Object lessons in a war we didn't start.
We would also destroy rolling stock. Cars and trucks. Buses on a high priority. So far we'd mostly prevented enemy forces from using buses to gather up refugees to massacre them out of sight of cameras and out of range of California retaliation. But that was because we kept stealing or burning them.
Out of fear of a visit from what a wag had started calling the Rainbow Coalition (us and the Gs), a town's defenders would stay home. Which also meant that they weren't out with machetes doing God's work.
So our handful of troops, constantly moving, tied up a larger number of would-be genocidaires on the defensive.
It was our major contribution to the Iowa war. Slow down the murdering.
###
California Task Force Six
Road 32
Central Iowa
"We have the following footage from a reporter embedded with California forces in rural Iowa."
A shaky hand-held camera showing grim faces in a truck cab. Festooned with weapons. Prominent California Republic flags and logos. Subtly different from before the Firecracker War. No star. Just bear.
All wore scarves over their faces. If you had family, this was a war that could follow you home, thousands of miles and even decades later.
A narration.
"I'm Corporal Stewart. I'm an MP, that's Military Police, in the 2nd MP Brigade. I'm in command of this detachment. Our mission today is to interdict enemy movement on Road 32."
Road 32 was not impressive. A two lane road, in indifferent shape in peacetime and now pothole laden. But straight and flat and mostly still paved.
"We have a motorcycle scout out ahead of us. She reports a column of dust. That's enemy vehicles. We checked. Not humanitarian either. We're the unit furthest east. So we're going to park a little ways away, do a little digging, and wait to make friends."
A little joking, drinking water, using shovels and picks to scrape depressions in the ground. Hides.
"Classic L-shaped ambush. Lead vehicle gets a present."
The present was a tow strap tied to a log festooned with large metal spikes and wrapped with concertina wire. Pulled out in front of the lead vehicle like a pre-war police spike strip, with the strap invisible lying on the road until too late.
The truck, and the two trucks towing trailers behind it, collided with each other even before the Californians opened fire.
A quick approach, all Californians on a line with guns at ready.
"Drop your weapons. Crawl out! Empty hands or die!"
A few more shots. Then a clot of shocked, bleeding survivors under California guns.
"This isn't a game. This is murder. Go home," the Corporal lectured.
Unstated - genocide, or what happens when militia goes up against troops?
A quick glance through wrecked vehicles and documents doesn't show any damning evidence. If it had, nooses were tied and waiting. But every survivor, their pictures were taken and names - likely fake - recorded. But facial recognition can't be lied to, and recorded voices have their own tells.
So instead of execution, their boots are thrown into a bonfire made with gasoline from a wrecked truck.
"You can keep your socks. Walk east. Don't be seen by us again in this war. We will kill you on contact."
A survivor starts to object, and his own drag him away before Stewart can point his pistol. He sighs and holsters.
"They wouldn't be out here if they weren't looking to fight. They should be at home with their loved ones."
###
[Two days later.]
Frago KIA Report. Corporal Kevin Stewart, 2nd MP Brigade. KIA near mile marker 72 on Road 32. Shot and killed during meeting engagement with Iowa irregulars. Multiple GSW to the chest and abdomen, one through the right armpit and therefore armor did not protect. Two other California soldiers wounded, one seriously. California forces return in captured enemy vehicle, the only one able to be repaired. Body recovered. To be backhauled to South Dakota. Family notified per SOP. End frago message.
