The Southern front

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The Auxiliary guard were barely more than men with rifles used to fill in where needed, the deployment of over 100,000 of them to Pozhal via train would take some time but not as much as walking on foot to Juaz. They were being led by General Huzkya a man of little military success who assumed the command thinking the most he would do is put down small riots and protests. The exact thing he thought they were being sent to do, but deploying the entire guard seemed excessive to him. 

The train lines into Pozhal were now restricted by the UST military to allow the guard into the city, "Once we arrive, establish order immediately, these rabble are to return to their homes and marshal law is to be implemented." the general told his officers, in a matter of days the guard would begin spilling into the city, arresting anyone who refused to cooperate. 

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The train arrived carrying hundreds of infantry, it would stop outside Pozhal unloading them as they made their command base. General Huzkya pulled up a map of the city, his plan was simple, surround the city and enclose it. If he sent everyone in it could repeat the disaster at Le Troi and his men weren't as combat ready as the 5th. The trains would continue to bring in companies and allow the guard to build their encampment, before long they would begin their move against the Golden Turban rebels.

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    With nearly all of Pozhal's non-infantry men either on patrol or attending training on the grounds of the military base, and the women and children staying inside their homes, the scene is mostly peaceful on Pozhal's outskirts.  Patrols would only challenge Union troops if challenged or threatened by Union troops first, or if Union troops attempted to enter Pozhal proper or they came too close to Pozhal's military base grounds.  Any attempt by the Union to blockade any supply shipments - which at this point was nearly all food, raw materials, and other civilian supplies - from reaching Pozhal would also lead to being challenged. 

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General Huzkya broke his deployment into three strike groups. Each broken down to about 33,3000 men, he didn't know the strength of the uprising and assumed it was still rabble. He ordered a group to strike at the supply base in the North, a group to march into the city itself and establish a base of operations within the city and a Southern group to retake the Army base. He expected resistance as the looted bases could give the Turbans access to UST weapons.

Any armed Turbans were to be met with hostile action, the rail line would be used to funnel in supplies to the guard and cut off the city from the rest of the Southern region.

Blue squares are guard detachments moving into Pozhal.

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    Pozhal (City Proper)

    Even outnumbered 3-to-1, the infantry waiting in Pozhal had several big advantages.  For one, the defending infantry were highly trained, experienced, and battle-tested.  Secondly, they would be fighting from within a city, which always favors the defending forces.  Thirdly - and likely the largest advantage - with this being urban warfare, there were bombs & IEDs scattered and hidden throughout the city, snipers along with light & general purpose machine guns hidden on top of various rooftops, and armed infantry standing at the ready inside every building not already occupied by women, children, or the elderly.  UST troops would be walking into the most hellish situation they in all likelihood ever had, and quite possibly ever will in their lifetime - a literal death trap, in every sense of the word  - if they are even fortunate enough to come out of this engagement alive.

   Patrolling conscripts and the handful of infantry corporals that were leading these patrols would already be in skirmish formations, and would only lightly engage with any UST troops that engaged them, keeping casualties to a minimum and retreating back into the city, military base, or supply base to raise the alarm.  Shortly after, the city's civil defense sirens would begin to sound.  Upon hearing the sirens, those infantry and conscripts that were patrolling the streets within the city would find cover and ready themselves to launch ambushes, should any unsuspecting UST soldier happen their way.

    Once UST troops began to enter into the city, all hell would let loose, with all rooftop snipers and machine gunners within range and line-of-sight would begin suppressive and - when necessary - cover fire (from the machine gunners) or direct/sniping fire.  Meanwhile, Radio Pozhal would be heard in around a dozen different places throughout Pozhal via loudspeakers.

Casualties: 3 conscripts

(Part Two - the Bases - Coming Thur/Fri)

     

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Both Bases

    Being encircled and outnumbered, there were only three real options: Surrender, mount a defense from inside the fortified bases, or go for a break-out maneuver. Of the three, both General Zhang Jue and the Lt. Colonel in charge at the supply base much prefered the third option.

    

Military Base

    The military base - like pretty much any other military base - was well fortified and defended - including three pillboxes and two concrete machine gun posts, all manned with MMGs, HMGs, and their respective machine gunners, as well as a Gatling Gun that sat at the ready inside each concrete post. The base was also guarded by a large, raised (7 ft), concrete bastion/artillery platform that protected a 40-gun howitzer battery.

    All these artillery guns, MGs, and the 4 infantry support guns that the base had on hand would all be directed to concentrate their fire at certain coordinate to both suppress it and to soften/weaken it as much as possible.  Once the enemy forces in that coordinate were deemed to be thinned adequately enough, the howitzers would cease fire.  

    Knowing that they had a very limited window of time before that coordinate became reinforced by the enemy, General Zhang would quickly send the 35,000 conscripts under his command advancing forward to take advantage of the momentarily thinned and weakened area, in a large, concentrated effort to open a hole in the enemy's encirclement and break through it, as well as - hopefully - create some chaos and break the enemy's morale.

Supply Base

   

     The supply base is guarded by a raised (7 ft) bastion/reinforced artillery platform that protects a 10-gun howitzer battery and a concrete machine gun post with two Medium Machine Guns and one Heavy Machine Gun.

    A similar strategy to the one used at the military base would be employed by the artillery, machine gunners, and 15,000 conscripts stationed at the Supply Base: suppression of the enemy soldiers, concentrated bombardment of a specific area, quickly following up with a concentrated, all-out assault on the weakened area/spot in the enemy's encirclement in order to break out of the encirclement as well as hopefully create confusion and loss of morale.

    

    

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OOC: This is being redone, the Southern rebels are now the Bianjingren an Elenrian Empire (Sanshan empire) remanent of human majority. They are rising up to reject the UST and establish a autocratic state that is more akin to the old empire.


Lai Zhang overlooked the central square of Pozhal as several people began piling up barricades and passing around seized rifles from the nearby army base, several Bianjingren UST soldiers had already defected to join their rebellion when word of the guard being deployed to retake the city got out. "They're coming!" Zhang turned to see a man yelling from his bike of the approaching UST forces, he came to a screeching halt, Zhang approached him "How many?" the rider trying to get his breath managed to get out, "Maybe....a couple....thousand...all shoulder to shoulder....coming here." Zhang began yelling orders, "Get on the rooftops, get behind the barricades, prepare those guns!" 

People scrambled getting behind cover and loading rounds into their rifle, the defected UST soldiers rowed up behind the forward barricade preparing to fire on their former comrades. Silence fell the square as Zhang loaded several rounds into a revolver he took from the base, the silence was broken by the sound of marching feet. The guard had arrived, unlike professional UST soldiers they were more or less glorified police, they marched carefully shoulder to shoulder with the first row of them having their rifles lowered and pointed ahead fixed with bayonets. An officer in the back was yelling, "You are violating Union law, surrender now!" he would repeat this over and over again as they began to approach the barricade. 

After coming in close Zhang yelled out, "NOW FIRE!" and a chorus of gun fire rang from the square slaughtering several guardsmen, the sudden volley sent a panic into the guard as their officers screamed to get control. "Maintain ranks! Maintain ranks! Main-shit! Fire!" the guards fired wildly in all directions as the Bianjingren continued to cut them down, "Where are they!?" "There's a barri- (shot)" "Ahhhh!" the guards were completely lost at what to do as the cobblestone street beneath them flooded with blood. Some even began slipping from the blood as officers yelled, "Retreat! Fall back!" even as the guards ran off they would be picked off. 

After the guards were out of sight a round of cheering would be heard, "We did it sir!" a confident soldier called out to Zhang, but the rebel leader shook his head. They had only begun. 

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It had been months since the outbreak of the Bian rebellion, Lai Zhang's forces had grown seizing several towns and villages in the southeastern region while the guard struggled to do anything against them. Repeated attempts to get Noscovo to send support was met with deafened responses that the Southern army needed to remain in place near the capital. The UST only had 250,000 troops left not engaged in any part of the war but they were fresh new recruits that Okeena was keeping near him out of paranoia.

The guard were outright being cut down by the rebels. General Huzkya looked over the map of the southeast, he was rapidly losing ground with his best lines being around the makeshift railroad encampment West of Pozhal. "If this keeps up we could lose the entire region" he muttered. His men weren't combat troops, Zhang was training his people for war and had more and more defectors every day from Bianjingren nationals in the UST military.

At the rate they were going his main encampment would be besieged soon and the thousands he brought would be cut off. He deployed hundreds to engage in taking back villages and towns surrounding Pozhal. Fighting broke out in isolated portions of the countryside, but the worst was always in an actual settlement. When a firefight broke out between Bian and guard forces it would be a literal back and forth until one side gained just enough of an advantage to force the other side to retreat.

Meanwhile, Zhang was trying to consolidate as much territory as possible but also spread the guard out into the countryside. If he could force more and more enemy companies to leave the rail station, he could launch an assault and take it. Taking the station would give his people considerable control of the region and control the flow of UST forces. Despite getting a lot of support from the southeast he still needed more to break the stalemate now settling in.

Most of Pozhal would be in his control in a matter of weeks but he still needed to raise more troops wherever he could find them.