Battlefield Taiwan

Vilnius, Lithuania

Major General Paul Austin was still fuming that his division had been forced to retreat from Minsk and fall back all the way to Lithuania. His division had fought fiercely in Belarus for nearly two full weeks before the order had come down from General Cotton, the NATO commander, to fall back to the country they had just invaded from.

“If I had been provided the air support I was promised, things would have turned out differently and my division would still be in Minsk,” he thought.

As he placed his coffee cup down, General Austin looked over to the right of his desk and saw the most recent newspaper sitting there. He briefly picked it up, reading the headlines. Russian Troops Amass on the Borders of Baltic States… Russian Ground Offensive Underway in Nordic Countries… Korean Ground War Turning into Bloodbath… Taiwan’s Beleaguered Military Continues to Hold Out. Austin placed the paper back on the desk.

“These newspapers have no idea what’s really going on. They’re just trying to scare people and drive up sales,” he said to himself, disgusted with how the media continued to portray the war.

A loud knock at the door brought General Austin back to the moment.

“Enter,” he said loudly.

Colonel Wright, his G3 or operations chief, walked into the room along with Colonel Polski, his intelligence chief, or G2.

“What have you got for me, guys?” General Austin asked as they walked towards his desk and took a seat in the two chairs across from him.

“The Russians have moved several divisions towards Estonia and Latvia. It looks like they plan on invading them soon,” Colonel Polski replied briskly. He was accustomed to General Austin’s style at this point and never beat around the bush when talking to him anymore.

Austin nodded, then turned to his operations chief. “What orders do we have from headquarters on how they want us to handle this?” he asked.

Colonel Wright, a man who always had a determined and serious look on his face, responded gruffly, “Right now, the 82^nd Airborne units are preparing defenses in Estonia and Latvia. The British are moving a tank division in that direction, but that’s about as much support as those countries are going to get. With the 6^th Tank Army still here in Belarus and three divisions sitting less than 100 kilometers from us, we’ve been ordered to stay in place.” Wright seemed almost disgusted by the orders he had presented. He wanted to fight.

General Austin let out a soft sigh. “I hate playing defense,” he thought. “I want the enemy reacting to us, not the other way around. I guess no one wants to risk a couple of divisions getting trapped and cut off like what happened in Kiev again.”

Austin could see that his G2 was itching to tell him something, so he signaled for him to go ahead and speak.

Colonel Polski nodded and announced, “General, our intelligence drones and other assets in the area indicate that the divisions marshaling at the borders of Latvia and Estonia, along with the Nordic states, will likely invade within the next month. The Russians are probably looking to establish a buffer zone to delay our forces when we launch our attack in the summer. It also looks like they’re starting to prepare a network of defensive positions along the various approaches to Moscow and St. Petersburg.” Like General Austin, Polski was a straight shooter, direct and to the point with information; he liked to present the facts directly and let the decision makers decide what to do with them.

Austin scratched his chin for a moment, contemplating the information he’d just received. “If the Russians do launch a winter offensive, then it won’t be long before they hit our positions here. So, how do we best counter what we know is most likely going to happen?” he wondered. He picked up the wooden puzzle he kept on his desk, fiddling with it as he weighed the options. Suddenly, an idea came to him, like a lightbulb turning on.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” General Austin began. “I want our brigades to stay mobile. We’re not going to get locked into a defensive position where we can’t maneuver. Our best defense is our ability to shift and move our armor and mechanized assets to where they’re going to be needed. Make sure our artillery is also staying mobile. I have no idea how much air support we’ll be able to request or receive, so we ‘e going to have to rely heavily on our own artillery support,” he said, issuing his first orders for how he wanted the division to plan on defending Lithuania and their assigned area.

Once the two officers had the rest of their marching orders, they left his office to pass on the new orders and further develop the plans for what to do when the Russians launched their winter offensive.