Entry 01: We found some paper
Date: Unknown. My watch broke a long time ago. Probably...September?
Reporting: Sgt. Mossberg, Clayton E., U.S. Army 5th Mechanized Division
Location: Klobuck, Poland
It has been about six weeks since we got the ol' "Good night and good luck" message from the brass. The Major had to relay that one to us himself, and I don't think he liked doing it. We have been heading away from Kalisz for a while now, trying to hook up with some other elements of the division or any NATO forces, but haven't really found anyone. The radio in the M1126 is pretty quiet these days. While we can theoretically hump that mother along at a hundred kay, the truth is, we ran out of fuel a long time ago and have been getting by brewing our own, which isn't nearly as energetic as old, gooey dinosaurs. Plus, it requires a chunk of time each day collecting plants to render, and brewing. So, realistically, we can't run around the clock, or else we'd have made it back to Normandy by now.
We have been going from town to town, chasing rumors and salvaging through wreckage. Picking through abandoned dwellings and farmhouses all along our path. We found a scythe, which makes gathering all the plants for our gas tank a lot easier. Recently, just southeast of a burg named Narnyslow (Narnyslaw? Map's hard to read on account of it being smudgy in places and slightly...burnt) we found a sheaf of paper. People may want the shit out of a pile of blank pages, or it might be one of those things that collects dust in our trade bin. Who knows. For right now, I'm gonna swipe a few pages and start keeping track of what the hell we are doing here.
For introductions, I am Sergeant Clayton Mossberg of the U.S. Army. I am part of the 5th Mechanized Division, and we were assigned to the Eastern European Theater as part of a larger NATO command to counter Soviet aggression. Things started getting hot, and we were sent to put the hammer down on some Russians in Kalisz, Poland. While they may have outnumbered us, we had way better C3, and the higher-ups thought this made the confrontation a risk worth taking. We started duking it out, and were holding our own until we got blindsided by a Ukrainian division that skirted around and hit us from the rear. After that, it was a rout. In my company, I was the senior medic (I was set to fucking retire after this tour, dammit), and out of a rifle company consisting of 13 ICVs and a few other support vehicles, there is now me, our CO, a mechanic, two grunts and one M1126.
Yeah, we got chewed up pretty bad. Especially the Major. His vehicle ate a rocket or something and about half his face was tore off, but as I was running away (don't judge; all the cool kids were doing it, too), I was able to drag him out of the burning wreck and get him patched up. Specialist Spencer was able to get a damaged ICV that had been abandoned running again, and we picked up E4 Eddie Broglio (formerly of Brooklyn, NY) and E4 Simon Wharton (from Indiana, with the coordinates of the cornfield of his birth as yet unspecified). I would go into more detail about the Major (Manfred), but I don't know how to spell his last name. He is something of a unicorn: A Kraut with a sense of humor. He's pretty cool so far, and seems to have the opinion that the five of us are kind of a family now, and he is our dear old dad. I think I might be older than him, but I'm not sure, yet. At any rate, he was assigned as a NATO liaison to our company, but since he's the highest ranking survivor that we've found, he's taken on the mantle of responsibility for us, once he wasn't bleeding all over the place and could talk again.
Shortly after the battle of Kalisz, we got reports that more nukes were set off all around the world, and our government basically folded in on itself like an origami swan tossed in a campfire. Then high command told us we were on our own. Six weeks of travelling and scavenging our way across Poland later finds us just outside of Narnyslow, or wherever, on the road to Kluczbork. On the road, we encountered some civilians from Kluczbork, and their Mule. We made friendly with them, and did the usual verbal reconnoiter, asking where they were from, where they were heading, if they'd seen anything interesting, that sort of thing. It appeared that they were out on a scavenging run, and were heading back home. Their town had been settled recently by a bunch of Russian soldiers who had a formidable garrison there. This might seem like bad news, but after all the bombs dropped, a lot of old animosities seemed to fall by the wayside. Institutional rivalries have given way to the fact that people want don't want to starve or get eaten by mutant wolves while one shivers in a cold forest at night. The Russians in Kluczbork rolled in and told the townsfolk that for a small cut of their food, they would stick around and offer protection from marauders and some other acquisitive types like someone called the Margrave of Silesia. Since the Russians weren't too overbearing, the local Poles agreed, and they have gotten along all right, so far. Since we were heading to Kluczbork anyway, we offered to escort the young scavengers back home, hoping it would earn us some good will. On the way, the Major and I took turns chatting with them, since we speak Polish well enough, and learned some of these details about our destination.
On the way, while we stopped to get water and take a break, the Major found an old cave that had a dead guy in it. The dead guy had been keeping a journal of his own, in which he had been detailing some of his groups' exploits, as well. Evidently, they came across some pile of gold and relics and shit, to include a priceless painting called "The Black Madonna." Amongst the locals, it is like a religious national treasure, if I remember my history correctly. The author of the journal and his people clearly had a bad time trying to get the goods. The journal was frustratingly short on worthwhile tactical information that could help anyone figure out what they had been up against, but that was likely due to the author having been severely mauled or shot or something, at which point his penmanship went to shit, but he did start writing bigger, so his missive was easer to read. Oh, and before I forget, his last entry was about hearing "dogs or something" outside, so, what I wrote earlier? See? It pays to make friends in the wasteland. This dead guy was also clutching a golden cup that was crusted with gems, like a tweenage girl had gone ham on it with a bedazzler, which sort of gave some credence to his story and led us to the possibility that the depiction of events in the journal might have been real, and not some kind of radiation and injury-induced fever dream. The location of the cache was supposed to be in the city of Czestochowa, which was roughly 110 km from Kluczbork, as the crow flies.
Upon our arrival at Kluczbork, a distant battle was raging. We could hear the periodic popping of rifles way off in the distance, beyond the town. The main road had an old BMP-2 parked across it, and some palisade walls had been thrown up around the place. As we approached, a few guys in Russian uniforms ran from the town and crossed paths with the civilians. We had parked the ICV out of sight while the Major, myself and Spencer (who had been taking care of and riding a horse we found a couple weeks ago) approached. The locals didn't seem to perturbed by the battle and were heading toward town ahead of us, but the Russian soldiers wanted to swipe their mule. After a couple warning shots and some tactical positioning (and calling in our cavalry), the Russians became much more civil. We made nice with them, and asked to get into town for trading of goods and information. We met with the leader of the garrison, "the Lieutenant." If he had a name, I forgot it, sorry. We traded a belt of 30mm cannon rounds we had found since we didn't have any 30mm cannons, and got some field radios and a bit of food out of the deal. Likewise, none of us had a 40mm grenade launcher, so we traded off some of those for 3 sets of IR goggles and some food. I was able to entice a local to trade a bicycle just taking up room in our rig for a pair of binoculars, since none of us had any, or any scoped rifles.
From the Lieutenant, we learned a bit about some local areas of interest. Further to the southeast was the town of Olesmo where Captain Borisofsky was in charge. The town of Krzepice supposedly had marauders in it, and they didn't know who or what was in the town of Dobrodzien. The Major took interest in the Klobuck not only because of the marauders, but because it was on the way to Czestochowa. The Russkies ponied up a few warm bodies to help out, but they couldn't spare much, just enough soldiers to fill up the empty seats in the M1126. We planned for a night-time recon of the town, and headed out. This also had the side effect of not requiring us to camp people out in the rig to make sure sticky-fingered Russians didn't try to appropriate it.
The Major was some kind of German special forces hondo back in his day, so when we got close to Krzepice, he had us hold fast while he snuck out and took a look around the town. The defenses were shit, and he wanted us to roll into town. When we did, we found out the defenses were shit because there weren't any marauders there, just a bunch of civilians who had been preyed upon by marauders a few months ago. These people had been run over by Russians, and been run over by U.S. forces trying to roll over the Russians, then by marauders, and now, it looked like they were gonna get rolled over by us. The Major cooled things down quite a bit, and dialed the hostility down. The Russian soldiers with us wanted to scavenge the blasted T-80 in the town square. Finding the marauder lead was old, outdated news, we left the people of Krzepice unharmed, and headed southeast through a forest toward Klobuck.
Upon arrival at Klobuck, we encountered a ghost town. Movement was spotted in the second floor of a building at the first intersection (but not by me, as I was too busy dicking around with the Geiger counter). The Major stealthily advanced, and found a kid working as lookout. About that time, a couple of slavic types up the street started throwing lead around, and the Major Rushed them, as he had been saying for several days now that "I have a growing urge to crush somebody." Well, he squeezed the shit outta that first guy. Another one up the street got peppered by me and Spencer, but was ultimately taken out by the Major who rushed up and shot him with his pistol.
We talked to the lookout and his sister, who had a newborn with her. They had been pressed into servitude by a small band of Ukrainian soldiers, and had no loyalty to them. The rest of their group was out of town right now, and would return later. To prevent these kids from facing their wrath, we decided to stick around and handle these bullies. We didn't stow the rig fast enough, though, and it appeared we scared them off as they approached, at which point we gave chase. With Spencer on the horse and the rest of us in the ICV, we formed the pincers that rounded up these tough guys. Then it was just a matter of what to do with them.
Of course, there was talk of summary execution. Or stripping them of all their gear, which would essentially be a death sentence, too. We weren't feeling so far gone as to start murdering people just yet, so we settled on a compromise. We let them live and took most of their stuff, and told them to beat feet, since the kids they had formerly oppressed were now more heavily armed than they were, and held a bit of a grudge. We settled down with the brother and sister for the night, planning on heading to Czestochowa in the morning.
