Operation Red Dawn and the Siege of Europe

Alaskan Autumn

The battle for Alaska had raged on for the entire summer and well into the fall, with the lines changing very little after the first month of the invasion. Despite hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers using massive human wave assaults, they had not been able to break through the American lines. Both sides had been sustaining enormous casualties, and neither side wanted to capitulate. The Americans continued to pour tens of thousands of new recruits each month into Alaska, and had filtered in 100,000 soldiers from the SAMF. The South and Central American governments began a second draft, this time conscripting a total of three million additional young men and women to fight in the MNF.

As the first snowflakes began to fall, it became apparent that America was not going to be able to remove the Chinese before the end of the year, when the long winter settled in. They had hoped to bring the Third Army into the fight, but after several months of equipment delays, it was determined they would not be ready to redeploy as an army until closer to the end of the year. By then, the heavy winter snows would have settled in, making any armored advance or assault a lot less likely to succeed.

Meanwhile, the fight in central and northern Alaska between the Russians and US Marines continued to intensify as the Reds began to pour more soldiers into the battle. At first, the Russians thought they had it easy going up against a much smaller Marine force. They quickly found out why the Marines were called “Devil Dogs.” They fought like men possessed.

The Russians were going up against the US 5^th Marines; the 5^th had been reactivated once the war with the Islamic Republic had started and the President reinstituted the draft. The last time the 5^th Marines had been activated was during the Vietnam war back in 1966 (5th Marines were later deactivated in the end of 1969). Now they would be the force defending central and northern Alaska from the Russian invasion. The 5^th Marines had grown from their original strength of 19,000 Marines to now 60,000. Three more Marine divisions were currently in training in southern California and South Carolina, and would add their own weight to the fight in the near future.

Sergeant Jake Lancaster was a Marine gunman attached to an infantry battalion on the front lines in Alaska. His job was to provide counter-sniper support and take out any high-ranking Russian officers as they identified them. They had already taken out four Russian snipers in the last three weeks-it was not that the Russian snipers were sloppy at their trade-the Marines just had better equipment to identify where the enemy shot came from, which gave them a very precise frame of reference when searching for the enemy.

One of the Gunnery Sergeants in Alpha platoon had nearly gotten his head shot off while acting as a decoy for his own snipers. The Russian sniper had shot a hole in his battle helmet as he hoisted it above the trench line with a stick… he was understandably a little shaken up. “Sgt. Lancaster, have you found that sniper yet?” he asked through the HUD.

The report from the sniper rifle had given Sgt. Lancaster and his spotter the direction and location of where the shot had come from. It was about 1,600 meters to the left just behind the Russian lines. “Yes Gunny, we have spotted his location. I’m going to be taking the shot shortly; he’s about to reposition and I want to catch him mid-move,” Lancaster replied.

“Roger that. Let us know if you want any suppression fire before you shoot or once you start moving yourself.”

As Sgt. Lancaster looked through his telescopic lens, he saw the enemy sniper slowly backing out of his firing position. He made a few last minute adjustments, and then centered in on the sniper’s head. For a brief fraction of a second, the enemy sniper looked right at Lancaster, just as he pulled the trigger. In an instant, Lancaster’s modified M5 AIR sent a .25mm projectile right into his enemy’s face, exploding it as the sniper’s body went limp. Suddenly, there was movement five meters to the right of the sniper as another soldier moved quickly to find new cover. Lancaster quickly moved his rifle to the new target and fired another single shot, hitting the enemy soldier center mass before he was able to complete his escape to a nearby foxhole.

“Sgt. Lancaster, look to the right twenty-five meters. We have movement in the gun bunker,” said his spotter, who had found them another target.

Lancaster moved slightly to reposition his rifle; he quickly saw two figures manning a heavy machine gun. Suddenly they began to fire in the general vicinity of their location. The bullets began to fly over their heads, hitting nearby tree branches and shredding them into little splinters. He quickly took aim and shot the machine gunner, and then swiftly moved to fire at the assistant gunner. Just as they silenced the machine gun, they began to hear whistling as several mortar rounds began to land nearby. Suddenly, their world went black… a mortar round landed less than five feet from their position, killing them instantly