AAR: Long Generated Campaign US v Communist

[Hermit]

The team has been sent to China, our first deployment against them since the cease fire in Korea was signed last year. There are reports that many American POW's from the war are still in the hands of the Chinese. We have been sent on a reconnaisance-in-force to determine whether a small town is a POW site, and to resuce any Americans we find.

The terrain is still barren in this late winter expedition, although there are only a few patches of snow in the area. The ground is hard, with none of the infamous mud that we've encountered on previous battles with the Chinese. The trees are almost bare of leaves, which will help with the reconnaisance mission. The terrain is mostly flat, with a few level 20 hills scattered here and there, with scattered groups of trees as well. There are two E-W roads in the southern operational area, which converge near our launch point, and another on the far northern part of the area.

We're scheduled to launch the operation just after dawn, as soon as visibility gets to about 500 meters, the maximum range of our small arms. Because of the nature of the mission, and the pull-back of regular combat troops, the only divisional support available is some on-call airstrikes and a handful of recon teams that have been tasked to locate the detention camp. Those six platoons of scouts will fan out ahead of our two battalions, hopefully finding the objective and marking any enemy positions for engagement by our main forces.

As usual, we will be splitting into the two battalion-sized forces to advance until the enemy is discovered. The southern group will travel on the hard-packed earth between the two roads, while the northern group threads its way cross-country between the small hills and woods clusters. Just as we started off, some of the enemy's regulary patrol planes must have spotted us, because artillery started falling around us, although thank heaven none of our units were hit. They have started using the BIG guns against us this time, probably because we're on their own soil. At least two batteries of 152mm were heard blasting the earth up in the distance. We were also caught by surprise when an IL-10 Beast (yes, that's what its called) dove out of the sky and started an attack run over our position. Fortunately, our Dusters had not yet packed up for moving, and they were able to throw up a hellacious barrage of shells that distracted the Chinese pilot's attention. All the AAMG's in our group opened up as well, and the "Beast" ended up a smoking hole in the ground after it was hit several times. I counted at least three times his plane shuddered from the impact of our AA fire, but it wasn't until he had already headed for home that we were finally able to bring him down.