Scorpions in a Bottle: 'For Want of a Nail' Expanded

[SpanishSpy]

Norris versus Wyndham in the Rockies

In the early days of September the CNA's General Sullivan Wyndham was moving his forces into the Rocky Mountains with San Francisco in his sights. However, the Rocky Mountains were a significant change in pace than the fighting in India, and yet were eerily similar in that they involved on the side of the CNA's enemies a form of unconventional warfare that was different than what was taught in the various British-written texts that the CNA had studied in great detail since the 1840s. This was not open battle on the Great Plains; this was a war that would be like that in the Alps or the other mountain ranges of Europe that Britain only had a slight interest and experience in.

The winding roads of the region on the way to the Mexican northwest were wrapped around mountains and were dotted with small towns in the various flatter areas. It was in these areas that the CNA military excelled, and was exceptional in defeating the armored forces of the United States at towns such as Norcomville and Robinsonburg and various others. CNA terramobiles outclassed Mexican terramobiles in many ways due to the large amount of help that British engineers gave North American engineers during the design process in the days leading up to the invasion of India. The same could be said for airmobiles and gyromobiles; however, the CNA could not be said to have had complete control of the skies; it was the usage of the Mexican Air Force that would even the odds between the two sides in that front of the war.

On September 14th, a CNA convoy of terramobiles and warmobiles was making its way through a mountainous road when a Mexican fighter squadron was preparing to fire on the North Americans. These vehicles were heavily defended by anti-air weaponry on freightmobiles escorting these vehicles. The squad leader, Garret Harrelson, ordered the fighters to continue moving in the general direction of the convoy but not get too close. Then, Harrelson ordered a strike on a rocky peak of a mountain that they would be crossing shortly at just the right moment, causing a rockslide that sent the CNA convoy plummeting down into a valley. This tactic led to Harrelson being promoted and becoming the basic guideline that the Mexican Air Force would operate under in the Rockies.

Partisans were also instrumental in breaking what had previously been an inexorable advance by the North Americans and turning it into yet another quagmire that India had been for the longest time. Working with the Mexican military, the Sons of the Old North led CNA forces into ambushes and set booby traps, such as supplies rigged with explosives, to keep the North Americans on their toes. They also destroyed bridges, like they had done at Slocum Pass, and used some decidedly less than completely humane forms of resistance (or less so than the average level of humaneness inherent in war).

The large amounts of vehicles required by the CNA necessitated large amounts of vulcazine to be transported to the front. Partisan commanders noticed this and captured sources of vulcazine to make makeshift weapons, such as handheld explosives in bottles which were capable of destroying terramobiles. These were hardly the only weapon they used, and far from original; the concept had been pioneered during the First Global War. This was not the only flame-based tactic they used: on several occasions, at temporary CNA encampments they would set up leaking containers of vulcazine and use various methods of lighting them, such as leaving a trail of vulcazine that would ignite in its entirety if it were lit, and put these in the ashtrays of officers for the purpose of a surprising explosion that would inevitably kill several if positioned rightly.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Mexico's South and Central American Allies, and La Guerra Granadina

The invasion of the United States of Mexico by the Confederation of North America sent worry into the various states of South America, most staunch and committed allies to Mexico for several years. Already having recalled their ambassadors to Burgoyne in 1971 and 1972, they were willing to stand with their erstwhile ally through the uncertainty of the Invasion of India. John Paul Lassiter, President of Mexico, had declared that "My brothers and sisters throughout your continents, I give you my nation's highest thanks for joining with us in this great crusade for international liberty" when he met with various leaders from those countries in 1972. The invasion proved that this relationship was not weakened by the adversity of the CNA, but rather strengthened by it.

With the notable exception of New Granada, when the klaxons of war were sounded and its dogs let slip, young men throughout the continent enlisted in droves to help their economic and social benefactors and friends in that country, expecting the leaders of South America to declare war jointly. They did so, and armies were raised in Rio de Janeiro and Lima, Quito and Buenos Aires. The sinking of the Brazilian cruise liner, the Curral do Rei, named for the city in that country, only galvanized opinions to fight the North Americans even more.

And yet New Granada was obstinately opposed to going to war, as its leader, President Enrique Hermion, was far less pro-Mexican than the rest of the continent, having negotiated with the British company Imperial Vulcazine to have petroleum drilling rights in the country's Caribbean coast. Thusly, the nation had some good relations with the Imperial bloc, having restored its ambassadors to Burgoyne, London, and the other members of the UBE in 1974, and expelling Carlos Wilson, the Mexican ambassador in the New Granadan capital of Bogota. The beginning of the war had Lassiter denouncing Hermion as the "lecherous whore of a continent of otherwise noble leaders of great nations, willing to do whatever a North American or a Briton does for the right price."

Backing up his rhetoric with action, Lassiter instructed his Latin American allies to not send their forces to Chiapas, but to instead invade New Granada, something they did with an understanding of the responsibility but with obvious disappointment that they would not be able to fight on Mexican, or even North American, soil. Lassiter promised that they would one day, but that the treachery of New Granada was of more immediate importance on that continent and must be dealt with swiftly, something that they obliged. The Guatemalans assembled their forces in the southern part of their country and invaded the Panama region of New Granada on August 30th. The day after, the armies of the rest of the continent began their invasions through Rio Negro and Quito.

There were three generals on the Allied side of this war: Javier Mendoza of Guatemala, Cristian de la Pava of Peru, and Cesar Gouveia of Brazil. On the New Granadan side of the conflict were generals Tomas Gutierrez, Alvaro Santos, Julio Moreno, and Andres Gomez. Each of them were all of the highest ranks of their respective militaries, but were still less powerful, well-equipped, or trained than the armies of Britain, Germany, Mexico, or North America. A Mexican observer in the Peruvian army, Allan Borromeo, contemptuously described the fighting of the GAP forces in New Granada as "two armed mobs chasing each other around the jungles and the plains" and not professionally armed forces doing 'civilized' battle, to whatever extent that phrase can be applied to what boils down to murder on a mass scale.

However, this characterization of the militaries of Latin America as being simply armed mobs is a gross simplification of the actual combat occurring, and the horrors of the war in that country. Both New Granada and the invading armies all had armies equipped with Mexican arms, vehicles, and aircraft, which were quite formidable when used correctly; fear of a possible North American incursion in South America during the Mercator administration had led to a surge in military sales to Latin American countries. Even if they were from the 1950s and the 1960s, this weaponry could dish out significant amounts of harm to its opponents.

Such was the face of the war in New Granada. Confusion often occurred due to almost identically equipped and designed terramobiles, and friendly fire was common. However, the most expensive fruit of the Mercatorist weapon sales was only unleashed on September 19th: that of flamethrowers. Flamethrowers, initially used during the first Global War in China, were effective if often costly weapons in that front, and their brutality lead to a popular outcry in Mexico to press Alvin Silva, the president at the time, to ban their usage. With Silva's overthrow by Mercator and his allies, flamethrowers were used against various rebel factions in Durango, where the popular consensus against the weapon became even more virulent. Understanding the need for public support, Mercator banned the usage of the weapons once he was in power by the Mexican armed forces, and left them sitting in warehouses until selling them off for large sums of cash to his Latin American allies.

Flamethrowers were used in horrifyingly great effect when Peruvian forces burned the New Granadan town of Bosque de Bolivar with flamethrowers in an attempt to route a New Granadan force hiding in that village. The New Granadans retaliated when they mounted flamethrowers on warmobiles and charged into Peruvian infantry lines, creating a new, distinctly New Granadan weapon, dubbed the Mapana, named after a venomous snake of that country. Public reaction was mixed; one commentator in Bogota said that "apparently we will burn our own forests to save them."

Mexico, despite her preoccupation with the North Americans in Jefferson and in the Rockies, was able to aid the coalition invading New Granada from the naval and air bases in the Mexican Antilles, the smallest state in the Mexican union in both population and in area, including the islands of Saint Thomas, Saint Croix, Saint John, and Martinique. Most notable of this aid was the bombardment of La Guairá, a major port on the Caribbean Sea. A Mexican squadron under the command of Admiral Maximilian Arenas moved towards La Guairá, where the formidable Mexican Navy was able to take down the paltry New Granadan navy and begin shelling the city, the site of the largest naval base of that country. What horrified the world, however, was the usage of air-deployed stickzine bombs on the city, causing the various buildings of the city to be set ablaze, an action that appalled the world, even some of the minor members of the GAP such as Spain and Portugal (certainly, those in Berlin and Rome objected, but not publicly).

In the Caribbean, Cuba, Porto Rico, and Santo Domingo, three Spanish-speaking nations of little military might but of great spirit, pledged to aid the Mexicans by having their navies harass North American shipping and naval forces moving from Georgia to Veracruz and Jefferson. These forces often did very little but harassment, but were able to sink some cargo ships as well as the H.M.N.A.S. Michigan City as it was moving towards Veracruz. Despite the fact that there were several other fronts needing attention, Governor-General Worden authorized the bombing of Habana via bases in the Florida peninsula of Georgia, and the landing of North American Marines in Cuba.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Veracruz Landings

On October 10th, with the North American armies under General Jared Ethan continued their advances in Jefferson towards the capital of that state, a fleet under admiral Stephen Dalton descended upon Veracruz. Long range bombing campaigns using Marquis-class bombers were used to destroy critical ships of the Mexican Navy docked in the port of Veracruz, and more bombers dropped stickzine onto the city, causing large swaths of it, mostly the poorer parts, to be lit aflame.

The invasion of Veracruz set a record for the largest amphibious landing in the history of human warfare, with over a thousand vessels carrying troops descended upon the beaches of the areas adjacent to the city, supported by air and naval bombardment upon the city proper. General Eduardo Bermudez, the commander of the Veracruz garrison and a former Mercatorist coup leader in Chiapas, had made sure to deploy his troops in such a manner that would hopefully deflect the invasion. The Mexican Air Force, under its commanding general Rutherford Ballinger, was sent to intercept bombers from the North Americans, with a reasonable success rate. At Veracruz, unlike Jefferson, Mexico was actually having a meager amount of success.

The reason for this initial success was due to the anticipation of a landing of North American forces somewhere on Mexico's Gulf Coast. However, the full amount of forces defending the Gulf were not at Veracruz; Mexican strategists had predicted that a landing would be either at Veracruz or at the Yucatan. However, they had not predicted the sheer monumental scope of the invasion, which stunned the world in its size. Machine gun nests and rocket pads on the beach were able to stop the advance for some time, but General Charles Congable's North American marines and infantry were able to move forward with the help of armor and artillery from various brigades.

This whole strategy by Admiral Dalton and General Congable was part of what Worden deemed "the second Conquest of the Aztecs," hence the names "Operation Cortes" for the entire operation. The route that they would take was similar to that of Hernan Cortes, the conqueror of the Aztecs, who moved from Veracruz to Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, which the North Americans would emulate, to symbolize "the culling of this rabid beast, just as the Aztecs sacrificed thousands to their own depraved false deities." Dalton, in particular, felt quite strongly about this plan; his father was a correspondent for the Burgoyne Herald during the Mercatorist revolution in Mexico, and was killed by the Mexican military in Chapultepec during a counterinsurgency sweep of the area. Dalton, therefore, ensured that the Navy would "pound all Veracruz into submission" and ordered Congable "to give them hell." Congable, a loyal Imperativist, obliged and carried on the mission.

As General Bermudez ordered his troops to fall back from the beachheads, he gave a desperate call to Palenque, the capital of the state of Chiapas and, more importantly, the headquarters of the Mexican forces in that state. Under General Miguel Cardenas, most of the forces under his command were in the Yucatan waiting for an invasion that was not going to come. Upon getting Bermudez's call, the Chiapan forces began their march northward. Their arrival would be the decider in the Veracruz front.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The French Insurgency

With the German army, navy, and air force pounding the southern coast of England, the French Republic, a constituent part of the Greater German Empire, was at best lukewarm towards the war. Jean-Baptiste Tremblay, the French President, was a supporter of the war, but not without the occasional prodding from the German general in Paris, Vester Kreuse. Nevertheless, he was a proponent of the peace and was elected as such in 1969 and again in 1973. Under his administration, the armies of France were given under command of the German general staff and thusly would be used against the British. As part of the Empire, France was obligated to send its forces to the war effort, and thusly planes of the French Air Guard were sent to bombard Southampton and Portsmouth on the English coast, and some additional raids on Christchurch, Plymouth, and Exeter.

Despite the war being mostly of Kiermaier's manufacture, rather than Tremblay's, the French people who were against the war blamed their president as it was under his administration did their homeland join with the Germans in their Empire and their war. Thusly, it proved ample recruiting fodder for the Sons of Fanchon, the rebel group that had caused violence in Paris in the days after the union with Germany, which gained large amounts of young men and women who, disenchanted with the state of their country, were willing to take up arms to defend it. The new leader of the Sons of Fanchon, Leopold Herriot, was a veteran of the attack on Paris and had only narrowly escaped with his life; he had seen Stephane Pascal, the organization's former leader, die at the hands of the Germans.

The Sons of Fanchon were in many ways inspired by the Indian Liberation Movement and its leader Shamba Pandya. While the occupation of that country was underway, Herriot had made radio declarations of sympathy with the ILM, and admired the terrorist organization's "willingness to show no mercy." When it was decided that the time to strike at the occupiers of the Patrie, similar brutality would be used. "They are inhuman, they are animals, they are barbarians!" called out Herriot to a meeting of his followers. "Kill them like the swine that they are!" And so the Germans would feel the wrath that North America had suffered.

The first of such attacks was a minor but symbolic one, at a restaurant in Paris on the Seine which was a popular site for German soldiers to take their French lady friends for dinner. In what Herriot dubbed a "reclamation of French women for Frenchmen, and Frenchmen alone," gunmen loyal to the Sons of Fanchon burst into a popular dining room, killed all the German soldiers and anyone else who resisted, and ripped off the hair and tore the clothes off of the women who had been consorting with them. Their lips were sealed shut with a gag, on which read the word "putain," meaning "whore" in English, and left to serve as an example for those who followed Tremblay.

This initial act of brutality was followed by another even more unsettling one, where the Sons of Fanchon copied the ILM's locobomb tactics and drove a locomobile rigged with explosives to detonate inside a crowded shopping mall in Paris, and specially rigged to cause an explosion more fiery than usual. This succeeded masterfully; 482 innocent civilians were dead in the blast, and the mall utterly devastated by the blast. Firefighters were dispatched immediately, but the damage could simply not be undone.

Convoys throughout the country were raided, as were passenger autobuses. Of all the raids on transportation, though, the most dramatically diabolical was the capture of an anti-air gun in the general area of Toulouse. From there, the militants were able to fire upon civilian and military aircraft leaving the city and moving towards Germany. After downing three successive flights, forces of the French army were deployed to take them down. By November of 1974, France was a war zone.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Alaskan Front

With the invasion of the United States of Mexico by the Confederation of North America, Mexican President John Paul Lassiter ordered the commander of all forces in the state of Alaska to head southward to participate in the defense of the Mexican Old North. General Charles Medwin, a native of the state, supervised the transference of all forces southward to prevent the North Americans from invading through the Rockies, and hopefully stopping an invasion of San Francisco and Puerto Hancock.

However, such a move was anticipated by the North Americans, and thusly they dispatched, from Belton, Manitoba, an assault force under the command of General Justin Harrison was dispatched to invade the southern portions of the state and prevent the forces there from linking up with the forces in the Rockies. Firstly, an aerial assault was launched from an airbase outside of Dickenson, Manitoba, and bombarded several towns in the area including Borisovgrad, Alaska, which was a staging ground for the Mexicans to move southward, as well as supply convoys. The continuous bombing was enough to demolish the small village of Salamanca, Alaska, which was outside Borisovgrad.

Concurrent with the ground invasion spearheaded by Harrison, a naval force was launched from the Arctic location of New Carlisle, Manitoba, under the command of Admiral Scott Strickland, and moved to bombard Point Harrington, the northernmost settlement in both the state of Alaska and the United States of Mexico. This naval force bombarded the town and then landed North American Marines, who were able to defeat the remnants of the force that had not been relocated to points southward from the town. From there, the North American Marines were able to execute whatever military or civilian figures that they could find, and forced the rest of the civilian population to provide them with supplies, which were either used there or ferried back to Manitoba.

General Harrison's army was moving westward into Alaska, engaged in the similar Locust Warfare that the entire North American Armed Forces were using from the Rockies to Jefferson, causing a massive amount of damage to the civilian population. As they moved towards Nikolaevsk, General Medwin's forces met Harrison's forces in battle in the town of Merioneth, which was a stalemate between the two forces; both retreated after losing several terramobiles in the wreckage. Again they fought at the town of Carlson Point, where the North Americans won a slight victory but was ultimately inconclusive.

Conclusiveness was reached on October 12th, when the Mexicans and the North Americans did battle at the town of Barracksville, where, using the terrain to their advantage, the Mexicans were able to route the North Americans. This small but significant victory was proclaimed far and wide among the Mexican news media as a sign that the Mexicans were successfully repelling the North American invader; however, the war in Jefferson and Durango was appearing to show otherwise.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Battle of Lafayette

The North American capture of Henrytown was only the beginning of what Theodore Worden saw as a burgeoning offensive towards Mexico City, where he fully intended to, in his own words in a speech in Burgoyne, "Personally shoot that damn fool Lassiter." The next target after Henrytown was the city of Lafayette, halfway between the former city and the state capital of Jefferson City, a city that North America would need to control to have any hope of taking Mexico City. General Jared Ethan vowed that he would take Lafayette and prevent the Mexicans from obstructing the way to the south.

However, what most historians and aficionados of war technology was the unique weapons deployed by the North American army in the beginning stages to confuse the Mexican army, during the battle to take down artillery emplacements and delay reinforcements, and after the battle to cause as many casualties during the retreat. This weapon was designed by a team employed by Kramer Associates, dubbed the Ladybird, in Taiwan. The chief engineer of the project, Michael Desmond, was a North American scientist that had worked with Kramer Associated since the 1950s, helping with calculator design and applications, working with figures such as Samuel Herring.

The Ladybird was a small tracked vehicle, about the size of a small wagon, and special in that it was controlled via radio signal in consoles by human operators, who mounted a small camera atop of it for ease of navigation. This vehicle was equipped with a reasonably large explosive, essentially making it a remote-controlled bomb. The ladybird was based off of French designs from the First Global War, which were used in the ultimately futile defense of the country during the German invasion. Desmond's design was substantially more practical than the French designs, which required a wire and view of the battlefield by the operators.

The battle of Lafayette opened with the usage of ladybirds to destroy Mexican terramobile patrols, and then against infantry deployments; one particularly well placed ladybird was able to kill about two hundred troops in its single detonation. As the Mexican forces came closer and closer to the city limits, the usage of ladybirds was halted temporarily, and Ethan called in the Marquess bombers to drop more stickzine on the city, causing massive fires that forced the Mexicans to either move outward towards the North American forces or to burn in the city. To support the Marquesses was a steady stream of smaller bombers, mainly of the Baron class, attacked more precise targets; Ethan ordered them to attack petrol stations in particular, making evacuation significantly harder in addition to causing collateral damage. Fighter airmobiles took down whatever Mexican airmobiles that were deployed.

Then moved in the North American armor, which engaged Mexican armor in the suburbs of Lafayette (which itself could be argued to be a suburb of Jefferson City). Houses were regularly used as garrisons by the North Americans, civilians be damned, and looting was especially common. North American armor, generally superior to Mexican armor, was making mincemeat out of their opponents. Usage of ladybirds to take down terramobiles was employed to great effect, and the bombing campaign did not relent. Eventually, General Recinos called a retreat.

During the Mexican retreat, bombers and ladybirds destroyed as much Mexican materiel as they could, lest it could be used elsewhere. However, the point was made clear. On October 20th, 1974, the North Americans took Lafayette, and their next target would be Jefferson City.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Media in the North American Front

As the North Americans pushed further and further into Mexico, President John Paul Lassiter of the United States of Mexico needed a way to drum up morale. He therefore looked to the media, loyal to him as a matter of a good deal of it being controlled by the Progressive Party's political 'consultants' installed when Mercator took power. In a twisted, sadistic sense, Lassiter could say that he was lucky that the North American assault was so brutal; it was ample fodder for the newspapers and vitavision programs.

The initial invasion of Jefferson and subsequent bombardment of Henrytown became a key point in the early stages of Mexican media in the war; the newspapers would run pages extolling the heroes of Henrytown. In particular, a young man from that city by the name of Michael Burwell, who had enlisted in the Mexican military to fight against the invaders and had died sacrificing himself by throwing a grenade into a North American terramobile as his comrades escaped the city, was used as the ideal Mexican soldier that young men across the country should emulate as their role model; a "noble servant of the Mexican nation," said Lassiter in a speech in Ciudad Victoria, Durango.

The tactics of Locust Warfare in Jeffersonian towns by the North Americans led to a constant stream of demonization campaigns by the Mexican newspapers. Stefan Garrido, a writer from the Puerto Hancock Enquirer, came up with his famous description of the carnage of the battles in Jefferson:

"It is like seeing hell open up on Jeffersonian soil, as if Satan himself decided to rend the Earth and unleash his demons to destroy us. And yet they were not portals to the domain of the Devil; they were the burning husks of villages left by the North Americans as they went on their rampage across our lands. They were not demons; they were the invaders."

Shortly thereafter, large public posters were displayed in even the smallest of towns portraying the North Americans as literal creatures from hell. Caricatures of North American political and military leaders, such as Theodore Worden, Isaac Whitley, Ernest O'Donnell, Jared Ethan, Sullivan Wyndham, and Stephen Dalton, with horns, pointed tails, and pitchforks were common, and the North American flag was displayed on posters within a fiery plume, showing that, as far as Mexico was concerned, Satan's nation was North America.

The Rocky Mountain front also provided the Mexican media with ample fodder, as the militant resistance organizations, such as the Sons of the Old North, were natural heroes to be used by the wartime partisan press. The partisan victory at Slocum Pass made the ideal victory to be trumpeted, but all in all there was very little that was ultimately made as propaganda during the early stages of the war coming from that front other than the Sons and the skill of the Mexican Air Force; the North Americans had ransacked the areas heading into the Rocky Mountains, and a Mexican victory on that front was far from assured.

The most impassioned usage of the media, however, was in the Durango front that had been opened with the landings at Veracruz. Most Mexicans from the states of Durango and Chiapas did not have the fullest zeal for the war that those from the northern part of the country did; some iconoclasts had expressed joy at the invasion due to the fact that the Anglos, the historical oppressors were bearing the brunt of the invasion until Veracruz. At that front, President Lassiter made a point to speak to the defenders personally, calling upon them to "take not one step back in the defense of the Mexican motherland."

 

[Kuamong]

Liked the updates. Really looking forward to the battle of Jefferson City, and hoping the Mexicans can manage to hold the line against the North Americans.

Have the Mexicans attempted a hail mary style attack like the Doolittle Raid, or is that out of the question with a good portion of 2-3 states under attack?

 

[SpanishSpy]

Liked the updates. Really looking forward to the battle of Jefferson City, and hoping the Mexicans can manage to hold the line against the North Americans.

Have the Mexicans attempted a hail mary style attack like the Doolittle Raid, or is that out of the question with a good portion of 2-3 states under attack?

They've bombarded New Granada but that's about it; there are four big fronts that they're fighting the North Americans on.

I'll get to the Battle of Jefferson City soon; there's some things I want to cover before that.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Battle of Tlanapana

After the landings at Veracruz on October 10th, the North American advance towards Mexico City continued its inexorable movement, defeating the Mexican forces at a variety of small towns west of the city of Veracruz. The Mexican general in charge of the defense of the capital, Eduardo Bermudez, was desperately attempting to hold out for the forces of Miguel Cardenas, the commander of forces in Chiapas, which were hurrying to the city of Tlanapana, where Bermudez had established his regional headquarters. Forces under Edmundo Lopez, one of Bermudez' subordinate officers, were making their stand against the North Americans at the city of Santa Margarita on October 16th.

Radio communications between Bermudez and Cardenas were continuously clear, but transportation between the two states had been impeded significantly by North American bombers being launched from carriers in the Gulf of Mexico, destroying both parts of the Chiapan force and, more importantly, large swaths of the highway system that had been established during the Mercator administration. In the morning of October 16th, as Lopez was moving towards the North Americans at Santa Margarita, Cardenas informed Bermudez that, God willing, they should be able to make it to Tlanapana to assist in the attack on the North Americans, and that Lopez should not move until reinforcements arrived.

However, Lopez was a stubborn, obstinate commander who disliked Bermudez and, more importantly, thought that the North Americans could be beaten then and there, and that if he waited, that advantage would cease to exist; hence, he felt that there was no time for waiting and ordered his forces to strike from Santa Margarita. However, the North American forces, under the command of Bertrand Carlson, were about one and a half the size of the Mexican force and were better equipped, with armor leading the charge. However, faulty intelligence had persuaded Lopez that the force was significantly smaller (a postwar investigation revealed this was the work of spies under the employment of the Confederation Bureau of Investigation), and thusly he moved forward.

This proved to be a terrible mistake. As at the battle of Lafayette, the battle of Santa Margarita was spearheaded by the usage of ladybirds that decimated advancing Mexican infantry and armor, and then a strategic bombing campaign, supported by missiles in part guided by calculators. As the infantry continued to roll in, Lopez realized that the situation was untenable for the Mexicans and called a retreat towards Tlanapana, where Bermudez was waiting for him and Cardenas' forces were en route to reinforce him, having to face the specter of being remembers as the perpetrator of one of the most egregious tactical blunders of the Mexican Army during this war. By October 18th, two days after the travesty of Santa Margarita, the North Americans were sighted not far from Tlanapana.

The forces from Chiapas had arrived in Tlanapana and were able to bolster Bermudez's forces, but it seemed that within hours, the North Americans would be arriving with a vengeance. Hastily, defenses were constructed and the Mexican Air Force scattered, with its commanding general, Rutherford Ballinger, ordering the interception of as many bombers as possible before the armor came. It seemed like a desperate gambit, and indeed, morale was plummeting. But then, what seemed to be divine intervention occurred.

John Paul Lassiter, President of the United States of Mexico, had chosen to visit in person the defenses at Tlanapana mere hours before the North American advance, and had asked to give a speech to the soldiers who were preparing their defense. Something morale-inducing, encouraging was expected; it was not what they received. In this speech, Lassiter excoriated the "cowardice displayed at Santa Margarita," and publicly shamed Lopez for his retreat. Then, he ordered Lopez to stand in front of the gathered soldiers and apologize, and the commander did so profusely.

To set an example, Lassiter brandished his pistol and shot Lopez dead in front of all of them. After this, he said the following words:

"If you dare retreat, like this insolent swine, you proclaim yourself to be a loving follower of the monster Worden in Burgoyne. This is why I issue the order: not a single step back against the invading North Americans! All those who flee the battlefield like children are to be shot on sight. Those that somehow survive are to be executed publicly."

It was in this climate of fear the Mexicans met the North Americans in battle. North American armor met with Mexican anti-armor weapons, including rocket launchers and mortars within entrenched fortifications. After Ballinger's air forces were able to route a North American air assault (despite the destruction of large amounts of eastern Tlanapana), to the shock of the North Americans and General Carlson in particular, Mexican bombers, mainly of the Tzotzil class, were able to significantly hamper the North American assault. With the aid of the first combat deployment of the Xipe Totec-class Gyrogunships (gyromobiles outfitted in a manner similar to naval gunships), the Mexicans were able to successfully route the North Americans.

During the battle, an estimated four hundred Mexican soldiers had been shot dead as they retreated or fled the battlefield, on one occasion falling to Mexican machine guns. Lassiter felt them to be of no consequence; indeed, he issued an order saying that no retreating man would have any place in a war memorial, and their families would cease to receive pensions and be sent to containment camps in the deserts of Mexico del Norte and Arizona. However, it cannot be denied that the order worked; recollections from that battle say that it was the most energetic that the Mexicans had fought.

The war, at least in Durango, seemed to have been drastically changed in the favor of the Mexicans. Lassiter demanded that his men "continue their valiant efforts to expel the North Americans from our lands." Chillingly, he also announced that the Cowardice Order, as it had been branded, would apply to all fronts, including the coming Battle of Jefferson City.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Prelude to Butchery: Commencement of the Battle of Jefferson City

On November 2nd, after weeks of massing forces in the husk of the city of Lafayette, the North American forces under Jared Ethan numbered in the hundreds of thousands, with state-of-the-art terramobiles, warmobiles, gyromobiles, aeromobiles, and calculator-guided missiles, in addition to large amounts of ladybirds. That day, Ethan reported to Governor-General Worden and told him that the force was ready to "take down the city second only to the Mexican capital." As Worden assented, the force moved on. Jefferson City was on the highway route to Mexico City, and if captured, it would be able to provide a direct route to the latter and allow General Ethan's forces to meet up with Bertrand Carlson's forces that were in Durango. In a speech to his soldiers, Ethan said:

"The fate of North America and her dignity depends on our success in this battle. If we fail to take this city of treason, our nation will fall to the dust heap of history."

First came the ladybirds, which were able to take down several anti-air emplacements around the city. General Julio Recinos, the Mexican commander in charge of the Jefferson front, had anticipated that ladybirds would be used as the initial attack, and specially trained soldiers were sent to guard the emplacements. They did so, and about half of the original number survived. Then came the missiles, which took out about a half of the remainder, leaving about a quarter of the original defenses intact. Then came the bombers, which were armed with the most powerful explosives that the North American pound could buy and thusly laid devastation throughout the city, destroying many historical buildings including the Jefferson State House, formerly the site of the Jeffersonian Congress before its incorporation into the United States of Mexico.

As the armor and infantry came rolling in, the Mexicans revealed themselves by "coming out of the woodwork of the city," in an ambush that used evacuated civilian buildings as garrisons. However, North American artillery and gyrogunships were able to clear several, and a massive duel between North American and Mexican armor in the northeastern neighborhood of Hamilton resulted in a North American victory. However, Jefferson City was a large city and thusly was far from captured. It would be a long fight for both sides.

As the artillery emplacements came in (mostly howitzers), the North American forces found themselves bogged down in the city. Jefferson City, despite being founded by those who had escaped the CNA, was completely foreign to the invaders. As the Mexicans were pushed back to the city center, reinforcements arrived from the northern parts of Durango as well as the southern parts of the Old North, which were instructed to, rather than move northward to the Rockies (most soldiers from California were being sent there), to defend Jefferson City to the last man. Mexican convoys were destroyed via ladybird, and Mexican fighters sparred with North American fighters over the city, and bombing raids were felt by both sides. This created a situation that would only deteriorate as time went on, and would last for a grueling slog that would last for six months.

Stories from Jefferson City, when viewed from a vantage point from after the war, seem like that of a horror writer desperately trying to make a story set during a battle and succeeding in a terrifying manner. The battle was so thick and the troops from either side so close that on occasion Mexicans would hold one floor of a building and the North Americans another. Improvised explosives were widely used by the Mexicans in particular. A particularly popular explosive was what was deemed "Pulque para el puto" in Spanish or "Worden's Wine" in English, made by pouring vulcazine into a bottle, putting a rag hanging out of it, and lighting the rag, resulting in a grenade-like explosive that caused large amounts of fire. Then came the bombers that dropped stickzine by both sides of the battle, burning three quarters of the city by December. Then came the horrendous hand-to-hand combat between them. In the words of Victor Walmsley, a North American infantryman:

"I had never known hell until I went to Jefferson City. Worden and Lassiter both knew what they were creating, and they both deserve to hang for this."


The Light of Man-Made Suns: The First Usage of Atomic Weapons in War

As Jefferson City dragged on and on, the need for additional troops in the Durango front became ever more necessary for the Mexicans. Raymond Portillo, Lassiter's secretary of state, was frantically urging the various South American countries to end the Guerra Granadina and take down New Granada, thereby freeing up their forces to be sent to fight the North Americans. Despite this, Enrique Hermion's generals were holding off the flamethrower-armed forces of South America. Even with aerial bombardment from the Mexican Antilles, Hermion would not surrender. He would continue to fight, and told the Mexicans that he would "only give up when Mexican troops marched into Bogota and kill me personally." Obviously, due to the Mexican preoccupation with the war with the CNA, this was an untenable proposition.

Lassiter met with his remaining general staff in Mexico City to discuss the possibilities of ending the Guerra Granadina by December on November 12th. Some generals, such as Andrew Palmer, supported the deploying of troops in Chiapas to New Granada to reinforce the Guatemalans. Others supported no intervention and to let the South Americans deal with their own war. However, Lassiter was not satisfied. He wanted the war over soon, and the reinforcements that the Mexicans so urgently needed. General Ermenegildo Ziesler, however, proposed something that initially horrified all except Lassiter: the usage of an atomic bomb.

The generalship was fervently against such a proposal. Raymond Portillo, speaking via telephone, said that the United States being the first to use its nuclear weapons would set a dangerous precedent and risk the usage of North American atomic bombs on Mexican cities. Julio Recinos objected on the grounds that it would make the Mexicans seem like butchers. However, Lassiter was open to the possibility, and after some consideration, authorized the usage of an atomic bomb on Bogota.

The bomb was shipped from the port of Chetumal in Chiapas to St Croix, where it was boarded onto a Chantico-class heavy bomber and sent towards Bogota. As the bomb dropped, the crew onboard took pictures of the resulting explosion, a sight of horror that is even now iconic. Those in the New Granadan countryside say that the explosion made the sky look like sunrise and was visible for kilometers around.

International reaction was that of horror, with even Kramer Associates president denouncing Lassiter as a modern butcher. Worden called him a "merchant of death," while British Prime Minister Gordon Perrow said that Lassiter was "the harbinger of the Devil." More muted criticism came from Mexico's German and Italian allies, and South Americans said practically nothing.

The New Granadan provisional president Guillermo Hermion (Enrique had died in the blast) announced a formal surrender to the invaders and the Mexicans, and held the Treaty of Caracas, which ended the Guerra Granadina and ordered New Granadan forces to fight the North Americans, and expelled Imperial Vulcazine from its territory. Soon, troops from all across South America would be arriving in Chiapas to fight the North American scourge.

Worden, however, knew that he had a superior nuclear arsenal at his disposal, and seriously considered using it on Mexico. However, his generals warned him of the Common Risk of Annihilation, which could spell doom for both countries. However, Worden hated the prospect of appearing weak to the world, and looked for a target that would not draw too much Mexican ire while simultaneously proving North American strength. Ernest O'Donnell, head of the Confederation Bureau of Investigation, proposed the capital of some Mexican-aligned Caribbean nation, which Worden supported heartily.

North American marines were busy rampaging around the Cuban countryside but were unable to enter the city of La Habana without significant difficulty. General Christopher Tatum, the commander of operations on Cuba, was open to the usage of the atomic bomb on La Habana to prove a point. With little dispute, the action was approved.

Habana, like Bogota, went up in flames.

 

[kimblephilip]

this thread was great ,I hope that there is more to the story

 

[SpanishSpy]

this thread was great ,I hope that there is more to the story

It's not done by any means; I have ideas for at least the 1980s.

 

[SpanishSpy]

Insurgencies within the United Kingdom

As Britain underwent its second terrifying bombardment in the 20th century, there was still cause for some radicals in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to have a disconnect with the government in London. Nationalists in these constituent countries of the Union were looking for methods to break free from what they saw as Westminster's oppression of their home nations and thusly saw Germany as a potential ally. Inspired in part by the Indian Liberation Movement's war against the British and CNA, radicals in each of these nations were eager to gain German help in their wars of liberation.

Germany, naturally, had spies all throughout the United Kingdom, and thusly these nationalist movements fell under intense interest by the German Ministry of Defense. The Minister of Defense, Guntram Falk, personally ordered the assistance of "Welsh, Scottish, and Irish nationalist rebels in the United Kingdom itself." To do this, he secured a large amount of German thalers for the purpose of funding rebels from the German Exchequer, despite the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Engelbert Stosser, protesting what he thought was another "frivolous waste of thalers." Even so, such funding was put into weapons and other supplies.

Oliver McNamara, the leader of the Irish nationalist party Erin go Bragh, had declared at the beginning of the war that "violence was now permissible for the defense of the Irish homeland." Minor attacks had been perpetrated throughout the island but were not able to cause any major damage to the British war effort; local defense forces were able to quell riots in Kilkenny, Belfast, and Tipperary, among other smaller towns. However, a German submarine was able to establish contact with Irish rebels on the coast of County Waterford, and gave them explosives and guns, which were used in a damaging raid on a British training encampment nearby, where approximately three hundred servicemen in the British Army were killed (it is to be noted that most of these were Irish men who fought with Britain; separatist feelings were in a prominent minority - reforms throughout the 20th century enabled fair representation in Westminster for Irish constituencies). Forces from the army moved from their nearest base in County Wexford to suppress the rebellion. Similar insurrections happened in Counties Sligo, Cork, and Armagh in the last months of 1974.

In Scotland, however, a far more devious plan was being hatched by the Germans. In conjunction with the Scottish National Front, which had made a similar permission of violence to that of Erin go Bragh, General Manuel Brahms of the Imperial Air Force and Admiral Ferdinand Halle of the Imperial Navy were preparing an attack on a British airbase in Lamberton, Berwickshire, which was providing a significant amount of air support for the Royal Air Service over the English Channel. Submarines were dispatched to supply weapons to Scottish rebels, and a German squadron of battleships came moving towards the town, as well as a single aeromobile carrier.

Starting as a diversion, German bombers began dropping their payloads over the town of Lamberton, forcing the British airmobiles to intercept them, as well as diverting many ground forces into the town from the airbase. Shelling of the town provoked British bombers to scramble, where they were fired back at by German guns. As this occurred, the SNF insurgents drove captured freightmobiles and busmobiles into the base and destroyed several hangars and administrative buildings before being forced out by security guards. This marked the first and most successfully raid on the island of Great Britain proper during the war, and struck fear into the British public.

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

Just discovered this timeline - really enjoying it! For Want of a Nail is one of my superstar tag-team of favourite AH works, so seeing a continuation is awesome. And this war is tense...

Just one question - how come you had Japan set up a puppet regime in Siberia? I would've thought they'd just directly annex it, given the comparatively low population and the major metal deposits. Don't get me wrong, that's not a criticism - just an idle question Or is it only an allied/puppet regime in the same sense that Manchukuo was?

 

[SpanishSpy]

Just discovered this timeline - really enjoying it! For Want of a Nail is one of my superstar tag-team of favourite AH works, so seeing a continuation is awesome. And this war is tense...

Just one question - how come you had Japan set up a puppet regime in Siberia? I would've thought they'd just directly annex it, given the comparatively low population and the major metal deposits. Don't get me wrong, that's not a criticism - just an idle question Or is it only an allied/puppet regime in the same sense that Manchukuo was?

That is actually from For Want of a Nail itself - it's mentioned that the Japanese install a puppet regime after the (first) Global War.

 

[theg*ddam*hoi2fan]

That is actually from For Want of a Nail itself - it's mentioned that the Japanese install a puppet regime after the (first) Global War.

My bad... I remember now (I lent my copy to a friend, so couldn't look that up). Sorry!

 

[SpanishSpy]

My bad... I remember now (I lent my copy to a friend, so couldn't look that up). Sorry!

There's a wiki that I use for quick reference for writing this; its main contributor, Johnny Pez, commented on this some time ago.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The War in Baluchistan

Through the months of August and September, the remnants of the forces that invaded India under the pretenses of destroying the Indian Liberation Movement were busy clearing out the vestiges of that organization; Governor-General Theodore Worden of the Confederation of North America had insisted that the Indian task be completed to "rid the world of the radicalism that caused the deaths of thousands." Indeed, the war on Mexico and the war against the Indian extremists were seen in the same light: the crusade for worldwide liberty against those who advocated the destruction of the stable world order (one could rightly call him a hypocrite for starting both wars in the first place, especially after the atrocities in the Mexican Old North and the atomic bombing of Habana). Worden refused to withdraw the forces from India; indeed, only a fraction of the North American Armed Forces were there.

However, as the system of alliances caused the war to go global, in addition to the ongoing war between Germany and Britain in Europe, war would logically come to India. This necessitated the division of the forces in India in two: one to invade Tibet and another to defend the Province of Baluchistan, in western India. The former will be the subject of another entry; the latter is the focus of the one currently being read. The commanding general in charge of coalition forces in the country, Eustace Levitt of the United Kingdom, was forced to make such a division; he had orders from Prime Minister Gordon Perrow to both "defend the Raj and to support Jiangsu in China." Thusly, he himself moved immediately to Quetta, where he set up the Baluchi Front's main base of command operations.

On September 30th, through a combination of diplomatic agreement and German heavy-handedness, the forces of Anatolia and Persia launched their invasion of Baluchistan with the intention of capturing Quetta as a preliminary objective, but the main target was, ambitiously, the city of Bombay, which lay in in the province of Gujarat on the coast of the Arabian sea. The joint Anatolian-Persian force was led by General Esin Tufeksi, a veteran of the Global War who fought in the Invasion of western India at that time, and supported by his second-in-command Houshan Khanbata, a Persian veteran of that war. The two of them had known each other to a degree during the last years of the war as they were in the joint service of the Ottoman Imperial Army, and joined the armies of their respective states upon its dissolution. They were both German allies and, despite the longstanding agreements between them, yet could not gain the support of the German armies in Arabia for the invasion.

Reinhold Kiermaier, Chancellor of the Greater German Empire, which included Arabia as a part of its dominions, was afraid of the possibility of an Arabian revolt on the scale of the Indian rebellions; to do so, he had instituted Empire-wide conscription with the intention of fighting in Europe; this served to take the population of young Arabian men that could form the core of an insurgency and have them disciplined into the life of an Imperial soldier; it was under this pretense that he refused to support the invasion. However, the fact of the matter was that the Baluchi front was solely a diversion for the forces in India; he wanted them away from Europe so he could focus on the pounding of Britain via air and sea, and the pacification of France as a hotbed of rebel activity. He frankly did not care if they reached Bombay or not.

But the German contribution to the Baluchi front was not zero; forces of the German navy, based in Muscat, were provided to assist in the bombardment of British naval bases on the southern coast of the province, and air strikes from Dughmur Air Base outside the city of Sur supported the invasion in the early days of August. During this time, the joint Anatolian-Persian force was able to seize control of several villages and establish a forward supply base in the city of Dalbandin, with the intention of soon taking Quetta. However, it was immediately apparent that the weapons of the invaders were at best old 1950s-era German materiel that had been sold to them by the governments of the time, and at worst First Global War-era hand-me-downs. By October, it became clear that the Baluchi front was going nowhere.

 

[SpanishSpy]

The Invasions of Tibet and Siam

As the Pacific Joint Defense Pact and the Osaka Agreement threw themselves into effect, the entire area of East Asia was thrown into havoc and war. The various states in China that had formed out of the collapse of the Chinese Empire in the wake of the First Global War were happy to go to war once more, if such wars were already not in effect. Now, full mobilization was completely permissible in the international community; they were not likely to care due to the wars raging in North America and in Europe. However, there were two fronts where the great powers intervened in Asia: in Tibet and in Siam. When British Prime Minister Gordon Perrow, on the advice of his general staff, gave the order for the commander of the forces in India, Eustace Levitt, to invade Tibet, the latter also chose to dispatch part of the force to invade Siam.

Levitt, through several political favors within the North American military, had Beauregard Stanton, previously a Brigadier General, promoted to a full-fledged General, placing him in command over various generals such as Charles Keating and George Godfrey. To further solidify Levitt's trust in Stanton, the latter was put in charge of the entire East Asian theater of the Indian front. Doing so diligently, Stanton relocated his command to Gangtok and prepared his forces for an invasion of Tibet. From there, he sent George Godfrey as the commander of the invasion of Siam to his own command in Rangoon.

To prepare for the mountain warfare that he would be facing in Tibet, he looked to the Rocky Mountain front of the war in North America, and Sullivan Wyndham's command there. Stanton, known to not be fond of Wyndham, made a commitment to be nowhere as brutal as the generalship in North America was being, and to not fall for the partisan traps that Stanton was falling for. However, the odds in Tibet would be significantly in favor of the Imperial forces in this front, rather than the rapidly fading advantage in the North American favor in the Rocky Mountains. The Tibetans had none of the large, advanced military that the United States did; Lassiter had sold them very little weapons as he did not think that the North Americans would risk invading such territory. However, Stanton believed that he was fighting for the right cause and thusly saw the need to pacify Tibet. He is on record saying the following:

"I believe that the situation in China was caused by the poor autocratic government that was in place beforehand. Many arch-conservatives, like Wyndham or Ethan, think I am not sufficiently faithful in Imperativism and in North America and in democracy. Rather, I am none of these things. I believe in Worden's message and I believe that it needs to be spread."

Every offensive into Tibet would be supported by a very detailed air sweep, something that Wyndham had a tendency to forget, followed by scout teams to seek out insurgents or military emplacements. Then, the doctrine of Locust Warfare, employed first in India and then in Jefferson, Durango, and the Mexican Old North, would be eschewed, with the emphasis on a "winning the sympathies of the oppressed Tibetans." Civilians were not attacked, and air strikes were ordered to be as precise as possible to minimize civilian casualties. However, in actual combat with Tibetan forces, his strikes were brutal and decisive, and he lost not a single battle in the initial invasion. By the end of November, he had taken Yadong, and was well on his way to taking control of Lhasa.

Similarly, General Godfrey invaded Siam with similar principles. However, it was expected that the Siamese people would form a significant amount more insurgents than in Tibet. The ruling government in Siam was popular with the people, with its king having ruled since the First Global War, where he was a nationally renowned war hero. Likewise, the status of a former prime minister of the country, Kulap Sunan Metharom, the Secretary-General of the Global Association for Peace. Thusly, the partisans that he encountered were ruthlessly exterminated, but innocent civilians were spared. Due to Stanton's philosophy, the Tibetan and Siamese fronts are known to be significantly less brutal than the North American front's crimes against humanity.