Excerpts from the Diary of Niujiswardjan Lofaredja: War in Lussia
Arriving in the country, I was almost immediately hit by how incredibly cold it was. Unlike Niujisland, Lussia had a wet coldness to it, the air was heavier with fog in the mornings and everything was covered in hoarfrost when we went about our things. Before I was sent to the interior, I was treated to an overnight snow storm which saw most of the town we were occupying buried. The men were quick to start digging out the trucks and making exits from the barracks, while the locals seemed content to just wait it out in their abodes. Before long, we had cleared enough of the vehicles and had fixed ploughs to their fronts. Setting fires in order to warm the trucks, we were able to get them started and began the difficult task of clearing the roads. Eventually, one of the lieutenants had a smart idea and sent teams of threes and fours to round up locals and drag them from their homes. Before long, we had the dogs clearing snow and we were able to relax by their fires in shifts while some of us watched over the work teams.
The first few weeks of operations went smoothly, the Armoured Rifles were formed from veterans of the Tholish War and the tank companies available to us and had made quick work of some towns we had stalled on. I had seen them personally, as we were investing a small fortress; the enemy only had some minor field guns with them, but they well dug in and seemed to have the number of every position we took. Rushing them was out of the question, as they had already deployed machine guns to every quarter and had been generous with the usage of land mines and barbed wire. Instead, we had been forced to halt our advance, waiting for them to starve or for more men to arrive. The generals in charge, in their wisdom, did not see this as acceptable and soon conspired to send us reinforcements. When the Rifles arrived, we had managed to halt the construction of some additional breastworks and were in the process of fully circumvallating the enemy, but we were slow at it due to periodic sorties from the fort in the middle of the night. The Rifles took up their positions and had their artillery join with ours, soon through some hard pounding, they were able to breach the walls of the fort. Mounting up on their tanks, they went forward and soon were burning the place and its defenders, leaving no survivors.
No sooner had they finished, they were off and heading back to the rear. Their role seemed to be that of a quick response force and thus they were always fresher and better rested than us. It spoke to the limited supporting elements, that we had needed to concentrate them all into a single brigade like that, but it was not worth thinking about. One cause for delays which was less easy to address was the chronic lack of farms. As we went, we found that there were few actual farms beyond the coastal regions, but not from an lack of suitability. It seemed the island primarily concerned itself with self-sufficiency, as their farms were quite extensive and large, but the interior was dominated by isolated mining towns. Periodically, we would come across such a town and take from its stores, but more often than not, we were reliant on supply trucks and hunting to see us through. This state of affairs did help our moods and soon we found ourselves being harsher in our encounters with local forces.
One such time, we had captured a group of outriders who had not seen us in the forest while they were crossing a clearing. We had made quick work of their horses, using our rifles to kill the beasts and wound the riders. They put up a token resistance, but this only served to enrage the other men, for as soon as we had them, we took to abusing them and torturing them. Some semblance of order was maintained, as the captain saw to actual questions being asked, but the men were not to be dissuaded from their games. As soon as the captain had received what information he was after and the prisoners were unable to think of anything they could use to stall us, they were quickly stripped and forced to carry tow cables and other metal objects against their bare skin. They had their nails pulled out, their teeth shattered, and one man took to carefully cutting the bottom of a prisoner's feet with his bayonet so as to make every step sting and hurt. A few were killed outright through these and other ministrations, but most were able to walk and so were brought along. When one started to lag and slow from hypothermia, he was formed to drink boiling water and soon expired from the trauma. The others were killed once we made camp and then carried a ways away so as to avoid attracting animals.
...
Such was our time combing through the wilderness, clearing sectors and dealing with encounters. After a few months, we were pulled back and replaced with another unit, as some Dunwikki had come to observe what was going on. They had originally arrived months prior and had been there to see how our gas and urban fighting was. They had arrived early enough to see some of it, but now they were being given to us as we were to be rested and then sent to deal with some city in the interior which had been found and now besieged. It was not a long rest, but it certainly helped us feel better. By now, we had established proper garrison towns on the island and were able to fully relax without too much worry. It was good timing too, as the weather had recently taken a warmer turn and the snow was beginning to melt. We spent that week reading the news, magazines, playing cards, and listening to the wireless, the Dunwikki joined in for some of the activities and stayed apart for others. The language barrier did not allow for easy communication, so it was understandable.
Once we were deemed properly rested, we were loaded onto trucks and began a trek into the interior along a road which the locals had built. Halfway along to our siege, we must have taken a wrong turn, as our column came under attack from an organised enemy unit. The enemy had not been skilled, as they had made the mistake of attacking the lead vehicle first and foremost and not waiting for us to get further into their ambush. As soon as the sounds of combat were heard, our trucks pulled off of the road and we were disgorging and taking up positions in ditches. Soon we had oriented ourselves and alongside elements from the Schwao-en-Zhwaosta Ezoland-Biligrsmakojasibja, we were now fighting the enemy with everything we had. The enemy seemd[sic] to have underestimated our numbers, as besides two or three push-guns, they had no real armour with them to speak of. Our armoured cars, which had been at the rear of the column, were able to advance alongside infantry as we pushed into the forest either side of the road and up. Sadly, we came off of it worse than they did, as the initial attack had destroyed three trucks and a good two or so platoons were killed in the fighting. From what we could tell, we were facing less than twenty men.
We spent the next half a day travelling back the way we came and found the turn we were meant to take. If the driver of the lead truck had survived, he likely would have been in serious trouble for this and received the ire of all involved. Fortunately for him, he likely died in an instant. We were reprimanded on arrival for our tardiness, but otherwise welcomed well enough into the siege. The town in question was not too large, with at most thirteen-thousand inhabitants, but it was larger than most of the interior settlements we had come across. Unlike prior places where I had fought, this one had proper guns on its side and there was a respectable no-man's land between the lines, as trenchworks were established and both sides took to barrages periodically. The town's defiance was mostly put down to our not bringing gas with us this far in, but even once that had arrived, they kept fighting on. They had managed to scrounge up enough gasmasks that the defenders could keep going, which had left us with a bit of a pickle. We were not well suited to this sort of warfare and the engineers we had with us were quick to point out that the ground was too soft to dig tunnels easily through, so we were forced to sit tight and wait as they began their deep siege shafts and then made their way to the enemy lines.
The ground was so muddy by now, that we had to spread large tarps over the ground to be able to properly walk. More than once, I was sent out on patrol and found myself losing a boot because of it, though we were thankfully able to set-up proper abodes and supply-lines, making the situation tolerable. As the spring wore on, news came from the rest of the war telling us that only a few pockets of resistance were left. The generals had chosen by this point to treat the island as pacified, and so had begun the seizures and clearing of towns while we were stuck besieging the last hold outs. An odd product of this, was that we were sent wonderfully made-up catalogues of things looted and were given booklets allowing us to choose and spend our shares of the loot to acquire things. As I already had a home in Niujisland, I opted to not take any land here and instead went mostly for cash bonuses and slaves, due to them being unusually cheap. A friend in my unit on the other hand was enamoured with a building in one of the major port towns, so chose to take that and some discounted lots next to it. The building itself was a half ruin, having been hit by a shell during the city's fall, but all of the lots around it were fully rubble. According to him, he thought it would make a good hotel and the lots next to it a bathhouse-laundromat and apartment buildings.
Seeing some sense in his idea, I chose to give him some of my cash bonus and we formed a contract as joint owners, as he did not have enough money to do all the building and renovation at once. A few of the others popped by when we talked about the matter and seemed interested, but they were from the country and as such did not feel comfortable venturing into such an urban project. It was like so, that we fell into a routine of waiting for the soil to harden and listening to artillery go over head. As we...
...
By Midsommer, we had finally breached the outer-defences and through the tunnels had blown up several key positions. The Dunwikki observers, now fully integrated with us and somewhat able to understand our speech, seemed thrilled to see us go into the town. I for one was rather unhappy about the affair, as we were now fighting room to room, like my grandfather had done in Duom. He had told me about city-fighting, I did not particularly wish to experience it, yet I had to here. The flamethrowers were brutal, with teams of them now with every platoon and we used them to clear out trenches, positions, and sometimes entire buildings. It was all very dangerous too, as we were all fully masked up and could barely breath for the heat, but we had to remain so as the artillery had switched from high explosive to gas and more gas. One man had been next to me when a piece of wood-frame slashed open his mask and he had quickly drowned in his own fluids. We would fight for around three days and nights and then retired to some safe quarter, but most kept their masks and filters on even when in the rear as the enemy had taken to using chemical weapons too.
During the nights when I was allowed to sleep, I would generally try to find some attic or some such elevated position to sleep in. The rough shape of the roofs and the height meant they were often times cooler, and I would risk taking off my protective gear as the height would protect me from the often times low settling fumes. It was during one such night that a giant cannon roar was heard, but it was different from any I had heard thus far. It sounded like a bassier boom, lasting longer and it sounded like it came from further away. When no explosion followed it, I relaxed somewhat, though it did stir up our own gunners as they seemed to answer it with renewed bombardments of the areas which the enemy was holding onto, as well as starburst shells which made sleeping a tad difficult. It was later that I learned that it was the sound of a giant volcanic eruption, one which had just ruined the lives of many a farmer. The first it impacted me, was when we suddenly were hit by unseasonably strong showers of rain. The ground, which had only just solidified, was now once more turned to mud and everyone was made to feel miserable for it. Thankfully, the fighting was soon to end as the enemy was likewise being drowned in rain and were closer to the river the town was on...
