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Footnote 2 has vanished. I wonder what this Amerika-Bomber esque aircraft was?

Interesting update in any event. :)
 
Kurt_Steiner Well, for the moment he's flying late model 109 Fs, but later on.. who knows.


El Pip Footnote [2] was referring to Hitler having an obsession with bombing raids on North Africa, Algiers, Tobruk and Alexandria especially. And thanks.
 
Chapter 255

I'm a country girl, I ain't seen a lot
But you came along and my heart went pop You took a little street car to my heart And an apple of love fell off my apple cart!
You looked at me, my heart began to pound
You weren't the sort of guy I thought would stick around Hey, but it don't have to be eternally My bad, bad Angel put the Devil in me! You put the Devil in me...
You lured me in with your cold grey eyes
Your simple smile and your bewitching lies One and one and one is three My bad, bad Angel, the Devil and me!

You put the Devil in me...
You put the Devil in me! You put the Devil in me!
My bad, bad Angel, you put the Devil in me...

So, now my dear, I aint the girl you knew
Cause the Angel's got Heaven, but I get you And the tree of life grows tall, you see My bad, bad Angel, you put the Devil in me!

Oh, you put the Devil in me!
You put the Devil in ME! You put the Devil in me... You put the Devil in me...
My bad, bad Angel, you put the Devil in me!​


The Corporal was quite obviously in a very good mood this night. The troops of the Rifle Section belonging to 2nd Battalion, Royal Queensland Regiment were glad about that, because however horrible the Corporal's singing was, he only sung when he was in a good mood and that meant that they were either going to be relieved and would get out of the log bunker overlooking the Pathein River on the extreme western edge of the Irrawady Delta, covering a ford with a Vickers .50 Calibre Machine gun.

The 14th Australian Division covered a stretch of the river between two of the few fords that could take not only Infantry but also vehicles and so received more attention than others. This particular Machine Gun section was one of three that had this crossing sighted, backed up by two 6pdr AT guns and four Mortars, with the entire 2nd Company of the Battalion in the position and serving these weapons. The 14th Division had the 6th Field Regiment, Royal Australian Artillery for support and each position, including this one, was wired back to the Artillery positions and had an RAA Forward Observer attached.

“Oy, Corporal, what are you making of this?” one of the men, the loader, said.

“What am I making of what, Jenkins?”

“Of that, Corporal.” he said and pointed at the dark and utterly quiet opposite bank of the river.

“Bloody hell. Private Jenkins, are you bleedin' drunk again?” the Corporal asked half-joking even as he picked up his binoculars. On the opposite bank, in the other half of the abandoned hamlet that had existed around the ford before the war nothing was moving, as it had been for the entire last two week shift. Most of the time the Chinks and their Nipponese masters came into the village and tried to reconnoitre the Australian Defences until the 6th decided to signal it's displeasure. Two weeks in the trenches, two weeks out of the trenches, with the occasional Japanese probing attack had been the fare of the Australian troops for the last couple of months, and for the last shift it had been quiet. So quiet in fact that the ordinary soldiers knew that something was very wrong, and this was why the Corporal was only joking when he accused Jenkins, as young as spring and the son of Expatriate Mormon parents of being drunk. The lad might have a weird religion, but he was an ace with a Lee-Enfield and even more so with the heavy Vickers, because for reasons unknown he hated the Japanese with a passion.


Just as the Corporal watched, the sky in the distance of the opposite side began to light up, soon followed a sound like ripping linnen.

“INCOMING!” was his last word before a a shell from one of the last six Chinese sFH 18's hit the bunker directly, collapsing the roof and killing everyone in it.[1] It would have been little consolation to the Corporal and his section had he known that the five Divisions of the Chinese 42nd Route Army was the elite of the “Defence Force of the Chinese State” that had replaced the National Revolutionary Army. It was extremely lavishly equipped by Chinese and well equipped by British standards with a mixture of leftover Nationalist and brand new Japanese equipment, and that included the heaviest Field Artillery that the puppet Government possessed. The 42nd Route Army had proven itself in the battles at the border between inner Mongolia and Mongolia itself, now little more than a Soviet Republic. When the Soviet advance had stalled and more 'Regular' Chinese Army Divisions had formed up and taken over the 42nd's sector it had been moved south together with the 12th Route Army, less well equipped by still a large force. Together with the Japanese South-West Area Expeditionary Army (six Divisions, one independent Armoured Brigade) these were now hurling themselves against four British and Commonwealth Divisions that held the main defensive line in the south up to a line roughly halfway to the Chinese border. The Australian 14th was the second up from the coast after the 20th Australian Divison, north if it the British Burma Division and the 30th Indian Infantry Division held their part of the line. The Chinese General was one of the few who commanded genuine respect within the ranks of the Imperial Japanese Army, which was the reason why the Japanese area Commander had actually worked together with him when the Officers had developed the plan for Operation Red Mountain.

The plan was relatively simple, the 42nd, the 12th and the South West Area Expeditionary Army would attack and pierce the Allied line in three places, thus either splintering the enemy into little bits that could be destroyed at leisure by the low-quality second line forces that were waiting behind them. The Asiatic Commanders had all reason to feel confident. Their troops did not consume as many and as varied supplies as their Allied counterparts, and what they did need could be carried on the backs of mules and more or less willing and hired labourers. The buildup had been difficult and lengthy, but now they had enough to keep them going for several weeks of combat operations, even though the few German-made guns that still served with the 42nd Route Army had very little Ammunition with them and would be abandoned once it was fired since the plant that made the shells had been destroyed in what the Allies called the Second Sino-Japanese war and what the Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere called the Chinese Pacification and Liberation war. Only 137 High Explosive shells were left.

In any case, the Chinese Assault company that attacked the positions of the Royal Queensland Regiment took frightful losses, but eventually overran the blocking position at the ford, with no prisoners taken. The rest of the Regiment and by extension the Division was alerted both by the sound of gunfire and the frenzied reports that came in from all over the forward line. By the time the Major General was awoken it was clear that the 14th Australian Division was heavily engaged at all the fords which had fallen by then and was loosing further ground. Farther north the picture was no better. The attack by the 12th Route Army not yet pierced the line since the Division had been alerted 'on a hunch' as the Division's Commander would later say, but the sheer number of Chinese troops that flooded over the river had forced the Burmese British outposts to withdraw on their main line of defence. That their southern flank was essentially gone wouldn't be known to them until mid day. A combination of Artillery, lack of Air support and general mayhem prevented much co-ordination which frustrated General O'Conner to no end and would only subside over the next few days. Meanwhile bad news continued to flood into the General's Headquarters some twenty miles behind the front.

In the north of the Operation the SWAEA had detached the three-Division 22nd Corps to launch an attack against the brand new and therefore very green 30th Indian Infantry Division. The Japanese attack was driven home with even more zeal and brutality than the Chinese wings down south and the Indian troops, while they never really broke and dissolved into Chaos[2] they withdrew more easily than Veteran troops would have. By the time he had finally eaten breakfast at around 10:30 AM, General O'Connor was fully aware that this southern Flank had dissolved or was in the process of doing so. The retreat was always going on in good order, the Japanese tactic of infiltrating small groups and erecting roadblocks to induce panic and hopefully the surrender of some elements did, when the Allied lines could be infiltrated in the first place not very successful unlike in China. Training and Discipline told and probably saved the Commonwealth position from even more total disaster on this first day. Even so, over the course of the morning those units that hadn't been cut off were forced to retread and leave hundreds of men behind who were sitting in hedgehog positions and awaiting the inevitable.


By mid-day the dissolution of the southern Front was complete, and adding to the chaos that was that General O'Conner had disappeared without a trace when he had been forced to abandon his headquarters in a hurry, so the 14th Army was in essence leaderless at a most critical time. Between eleven in the morning and three in the afternoon no one in Far Eastern Headquaters in New Delhi knew what was going on in Burma, only that the Southern flank had been pulverized by a triple Asiatic Hammerblow.

Burma-Offensive-Jap-42.png

[3]

On the front things were still very fluid, even though by the time General O'Conner managed to regain contact with most of his units the situation had deteriorated so far that in a meeting with Field Marshal Auckinleck the Indian Executive[4] began pulling units from the western border where they guarded against a feared Soviet Drive through Afghanistan and Persia and also contemplated holding the third wave of reinforcements for Europe back until further notice, so great was the fear that the Asiatic pact might cross the border. These actions had some merit, because by this time the situation was beyond bleak. Down south the bulk of the 14th Australian Infantry Division had been cut off from the remainder of the Army when it had become entangled in brutal urban fighting in Bassein City. The Division, along with elements of the 1st Burma Division was now fighting for it's live in and to the immediate north to the city and held the Bassein district against massed Chinese Infantry charges that were sometimes supported by Light Armour, with only the recovering Air Support and superior Australian Artillery breaking the enemy attacks, while the rest of the Army was retreating towards the mountains, the enemy hot on their heels and the refugees from the cities and settlements in front.

In the air on the other hand the situation was far clearer. During the morning and throughout the afternoon the Japanese had surged carefully husbanded (because of the RAF, RAAF and RIAF) and hidden (because of SAS and ISAS) aircraft of the newest types, the venerable and ubiquitous Mitsubishi A6M Reisen, (called the Zero by Allied Intelligence) was for the first time joined by two new types, the Nakajima Ki-44 Shōki (dubbed the Tojo by the Allies) as part of the IJAAF and a replacement for the Ki-43 and the Nakajima J1N Gekkou which was in the same class as the escort Fighters used by the Allies and Axis forces. While these new types weren't having the desired impact on their own, the sheer number of aircraft took the Allies by surprise and many field bases were under periodic attack throughout the day, preventing them from rendering effective air support to the Army. However the Air Forces bounced back even faster than the Ground forces for two main reasons. For one the British had constructed various aerodromes to the west of the mountains already on Indian soil that, while being placed at sometime underwhelming locations in terms of air routes to the Battle Area, where as hardened and all-weather as RAF Biggin Hill or RAF Northolt meaning that concrete shelters and concrete runways were much harder to destroy and meant that fewer aircraft than expected were destroyed on the ground. Secondly the Allied pilots flew support missions for the Army with utter disregard for their own casualties as everything that could fly was thrown into battle, even elderly Fairey Battles, Mk..I Spitfires and Hurricanes were pulled from training duty and sent to war.

Spitfire1602a.jpg

RIAF Training Command Spitfire Mk.I on 4th August.

The Beaufighters, Spitfires, Hurricanes, Hurribombers, Mosquitoes and Wirraways took frightful losses and at the end of the day the 14th Army was still retreating. The Japanese High Command had all reason to be proud of itself and the units at the front, for they had managed in a day what had seemed impossible to accomplish in almost a year beforehand: they had shattered the Allied front.

[Notes: Things like 'Chinks' or 'Nips' aren't the personal opinion of the Author.]

[1] The Chinese bought 24 of them in 1934 in OTL, that sale still happened, since there was still the butterfly net around continental Europe and Asia.

[2]i.e. Like the Malaya Campaign of OTL.

[3] Just a rough-ish map knocked up in a few minutes to give you a very general idea.

[4] Actual elections for a Prime Minister will be held after the war.
 
Is there any secret and ancient British tradition than rules to be caught with the trousers down in Burma? :confused:
 
An excellent update of South-East Asia. Also, were there a couple of Chinese Generals that the Japanese co-operated with? Or in the story's case, respected?
 
Griffin.Gen Well, they did catch me by total surprise. I was so focused on pushing into Austria that I had utterly forgotten about this front.

Kurt_Steiner The tradition of being a bit busy in Europe at the same time perhaps. To paraphrase someone on another forum:

"You have reached the British Empire. We are a bit busy at the moment, but please leave a message after the beep and we will win your war for you as soon as possible."

soulking Thank you. The relations between the IJA and the Chinese National Army depend on where you are looking. In Tokyo they still hate the Chinese for being Chinese but have a grudging respect for their soldiers earned in the fighting against the Soviets, the mid-to upper level Officer Corps in the Field genuinly respects and sometimes even likes the Chinese Soldier, the lower-level Officers mostly like their Chinese counterparts while the ordinary soldier believes the same thing as the ordinary man on the street in Japan, i.e. gallant asian allies against the evil Westerners.
 
Well, now that the Forum is back up and I have finally managed to choose a stylesheet that uses all of my monitor width (the settings section is bugged btw) I can tell you that the next update is about a third done.
 
A little teaser:


ceb8602a.png
 
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Thank you, Good Sir! I hope we have another regular Commenter now.
 
That warning...

As if Germany were a country of pickpokets... :D:D:D
 
Chapter 256

“Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them, Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell, Rode the six hundred.”

-Charge of the Light Brigade



The German Light Flak battery consisted of four Quad 2cm Flak 38 situated on both ends of a bridge over a narrow but deep valley near the southern edge of the Austrian Alps, itself defended by two Squads of German Infantry that were commanded by a freshly promoted and very edgy Oberleutnant of the Heer who was already known throughout the battery for never being seen without a cigarette between his lips except when the Captain arrived to inspect everything. The Bridge was only 50 metres long, so one could easily shout to the other end and be heard perfectly fine, but even so the Lieutenant had insisted on a Field Telephone line being laid the first thing after they had arrived. Some of the mostly Bavarian Luftwaffe Flak troopers grumbled that they were under the command of a young Wipper-snapper Heer Officer from Hamburg, but that had settled down when their daily routine, consisting of scanning the sky for enemy low-flying Jabos in the day and having two poor souls patrol back and forth on the bridge at night. All the men, their commander included had served in France and Italy before and were more than happy to know that their duty station was within the Reich and thus didn't have to deal with the constant threat of Partisan attack.


The Lieutenant was on the field Telephone with the Company when the connection suddenly died. That was nothing special in warzone, from less than reliable telephones to drunken Russian lorry drivers everything severed the connections all the time. Still, the Lieutenant was annoyed, but most likely that was because he was down to his last packet of cigarettes.

“Lieutenant, Aircraft engines coming in from the west, and a lot of them!” yelled one of the troopers as he stuck his head through the door of the small hut that was the Lieutenants Quarters. He grabbed his helmet from the back of the chair where it had been hanging and a G-41[1] from the weapons rack. He checked the magazine and then ran outside, putting his helmet on as he went. Much to his satisfaction his men at both ends of the Bridge were already at the guns and had their quad barrels trained skywards. By now the sound of aircraft engines was overwhelming, but the Lieutenant could already hear more than see that they were far too high to be anything but Strategic Bombers, 'viermots' in fact. Usually the sound stopped after a while, but this time it remained and only got louder and louder. The Lieutenant was already going back towards the hut to report this in when he saw a a dark shape descending on the flat area near the west side of the bridge. At first he thought it was a damaged plane simply crashing, but them, just as Artillery fire was beginning to sound in the west he knew what it was and even while he tried to regain control of his wits the first came in for landing and several more appeared.


“GLIDERS!” he yelled, but the nearest gun was already coming around and just as the first glider touched down, a torrent of high-explosive rounds laced with tracer smashed into the glider and tore it to shreds.

The next two gliders landed farther away and just out of range and while the Lieutenant scrambled back towards the trench near the closest gun position he could see dark figures emerging in the light of the fire of the first glider that had erupted from the tracer rounds. He raised his rifle but realized that shooting now would be a waste of ammunition as by now the gun that had downed the first glider was covering the..It had to be the British..the British Paratroopers even though it was still too dark to see what they were doing with any sort of detail. Around him his men prepared for the attack and had also set up one of the Machine Guns, so he left them to it safe in the knowledge that the Sergeant was competent. He zig-zagged back to his hut and only then remembered that the Telephone wasn't working which was probably no coincidence after all. He tried again in vain but then heard gunfire and explosions breaking out outside so he slammed the phone down, cursed loudly and took a handful of the loading strips from the box under the weapons rack.

Outside he could see that his men had beaten off a British attack but at a great cost to both of them. The gun that had killed the first glider had been partially knocked off it's mounting and the gunshield had been penetrated by a PIAT, the crew lying around it in a bad state of mutilation. Of the men in the trench at least two were dead, leaving him with twelve counting the three walking wounded that he could see and not counthing the eight men of the guncrews and sentries on the other side of the bridge that guarded the detonator for the explosives. He leapt into the nearest trench and looked over towards the British. By now it was almost totally light and what he could see through his binoculars 200 yards away didn't improve his mood. Beyond the two Light Machine Guns that he could see were two mortars, one already set up to fire. A bit more forward, near where the Infantry had taken cover he could see the British Para helmets and red berets sticking up from behind the cover that the men had made for themselves. Great. Paras. If the British Paras were anything like their German counterparts, and by reputation they were, then they would be Light Infantry, but Light Infantry that would fight like demons to achieve the objective. With that he thought of the explosives and the bridge for the first time and wondered if it might be prudent to abandon the single operational gun on this side, retreat to the other and simply blow the bridge behind them. He was interrupted in his musings when the firing picked up again. He raised his rifle, took a deep breath and pulled the trigger. He never knew if he had hit anything with that first wild round, but he kept shooting at the British that tried to rush his position three times over the next ten minutes, failing each time. Again the cost was high, at least six more dead Paras lay in the field and two more of his own men were dead. Way back in the field inbetween the gliders he could see what had to be an Officer rallying his men, and unlike the Germans most of the British were unwounded.


“Time for a tactical retreat.” he muttered and then yelled to be heard over the racket: “Sergeant Hausser!” “He's dead, Sir!” came a voice back. “Well, whoever is the still around,” the Lieutenant adapted, “we will fall back to the other side now.”

The Lieutenant was the last across, and luckily for him the British let them go except for a few stray rounds and some mortar shells that destroyed the Lieutenant's hut.



Six miles away Colonel Anthony C. 'Nuts' McAuliffe was feeling tempted to curse the gods of war, but then again he had councelled against a glider assault on the Bridge. Lieutenant Winters[2] had just reported that it had been blown up after the Germans had offered unexpectedly fierce resistance, not to mention that E-Company had lost several gliders to light ackack that had somehow been missed on the photographs and the surprisingly eager defenders and of course the loss of ten percent of his men and all but one of his PIATs. Whichever idiot had decided that putting most of them into the first glider would most certainly have a meeting with the Colonel very soon. Overall the picture was very very mixed. The 101st Parachute Regiment had achieved it's objectives, but at a cost that ran far higher than expected and overall the drop and airlanding of the two Regiments into the Gailtal and to various bridges and had gone well and now the two Regiments were dug in very, very deep around a small hamlet and the main objective, two steel bridges, brand new and supporting the great Highway system the Germans had been building, and in a case of the Germans learning from the Soviets it had been decided to build a Munich-to-Rome road over the Mountain passes, with the road on both sides thus far reaching towards the edges of the Austrian Alps, and which wouldn't be finished until several years after the war. For the moment the daring Allied assault had netted them a crossing over the river that could take Tanks and the only non-natural chokepoint on the road towards the cities of Finkenstein and Klagenfurt. All the Paras had to do now was keeping the landing zone for supplies and reinforcements open for the next several days until the Army crossed the border less than ten miles away south of Arnoldstein and linked up with them. McAuliffe didn't know, but it was expected that the 1st Irish Infantry Division would most likely be the one to make the link and also that General Browning and Major General Gale had protested very loudly with Euro-HQ in Rome that the plan depended on the Irish making good progress through rough terrain against an enemy who was battlehardened.


What the Colonel did know was that two Hamilcar Gliders on each side of the river had delivered a mountain Gun apiece and that these guns had done a lot beating back the two half-hearted German counter-attacks. The units that had attacked them from the north , south and east had come from any number of units of the 756. Infanterie-Division, so it was a good bet to think that the scratch 'Able Force' had landed somewhere between the main line of resistance and the forward supply units, which would make the job of the 1st Irish easier, and if he was not mistaken McAuliffe could already hear Irish Artillery in the distance. His headquarters was nothing more than a dugout with some camouflage netting draped overhead with nothing more than a singular 40mm Bofors as a direct defence, so he hoped that Major General O'Doherty and his men were at least somewhat on time.


ceb8602a.png

Private Francois Lahey, 1st County Tipperary Infantry Regiment, 1st Irish Infantry Brigade, 1st 'Thunderbolt' Division guarding the crossing into Germany


The Irish troops crossed the border into Germany right on the dot at 5:11 AM on 5th August and proceeded along the Raccolana valley and the route of the modern Italian A24 Motorway while down south the rest of the Allied Army made their own crossings. This time tactical and Strategic surprise had not been achieved, but this didn't damp the confidence of the Allied Generals. The Irish crossing profited from the confusion created by the parachute drops, but their lack of experience still told as they struggled to come to grips with the veteran German troops that had been fighting the Allies almost without pause since 1939.


The Germans on the other hand were still recovering from the chaos that the Paras had sown but even so they put up a stiff resistance against the Irish advance, in fact the 1st CTIR was stopped cold by a company-sized German holding attack and this created a massive traffic jam, but after two hours and lot's of cursing Major General O'Doherty sorted out his units, pulverized the Germans with Artillery and then resumed the advance if somewhat slower and with less confidence than before.

Later that day Private Lahey was staring down the Ironsights of his rifle and the road towards where the Germans had created a barricade out of some rocks and wood. He saw a helmet, took aim for a second, held his breath and pulled the trigger. Without bothering to check if he had hit he dropped down behind the cover of the ditch and worked the action. Beside him the section Bren Gunner opened up more to keep the enemy's head down. Lahey knew that they would advance again very soon, since the Brits had somehow thought that shoving men out of perfectly good airplanes was a good idea and now needed the Irish Army to rescue them.

The road they were advancing along was littered with the dead and the remnants of at least a dozen other barricades like this one and he had been relieved of a lot of the .303 ammunition he carried with him and two of the rifle grenades strapped to his belt. He and the rest of the Division still feared that at any moment the Germans or the Soviets would unmask the mountain guns on the peaks alongside the road and begin a merciless shelling of the one road the Irish advanced along. That hadn't happened yet and so they continued to battle their way through the German defences where the enemy had the edge. They had inner lines and three men and a machine gun could potentially hold up the advance for hours. As he thought of this Lahey heard a growl and the clinking of metal tracks behind them, and as he turned around a Comet camouflaged with branches but with the blue stallion emblem of the 1st Battalion, The Blue Hussars visible came up with them, the massive 17 pounder gun already pointed down the road. Lahey and the others barely had time to turn away and cover their heads before a massive flame erupted from the muzzle, the gun boomed and a fraction of a second late a high explosive round exploded against the front of the German barricade, sending splinters in every direction and pulverizing the German light Machine gun.

His ears ringing Lahey rose to his feet and looked over to the smoking ruins of the German position.

“Goddamn bloody Donkey Wallopers!” he yelled to hear himself over the ringing. A head appeared in the driver's hatch with a sorry look on his face turned up and someone with a Dublin accent asked: “Can I give you lads a ride?” which was met with acceptance. Even though for them the road only lead downwards for now and they could see that at least right now no more blockades existed, it was still some distance to the bridge, and after almost deafening him, this was the last thing they could do. Blue Hussars... just because they escorted the President of the Republic they got all pretentious.

Half an our later the Comet came to a stuttering halt when five figures with the maroon beret and Para helmets came out of the undergrowth. The man obviously in charge wore the shoulder tabs of a Lieutenant on his Denison smock.

“Winters, 101st” was said in the way of an introduction. “Laheya, 1st County Tipperary Infantry.”



[Notes: And thus we jump into the abyss...]


[1] Basically the OTL G-43. The Germans got a few examples of the SVT Series and someone decided to fix the first G-41 Prototypes before they went into production.

[2] The very same. A nod and salute to the man himself and the men he commanded.
 
Winters? Where is "Gonorrhea" Guarnere?
 
Kurt_Steiner Most likely in some conscription training camp.

Griffin.Gen
Of course one cannot. I drew a lot of inspiration from Band of Brothers.

soulking
:D Well, the Irish formed the Division out of nothing from the bits and pieces that were the Irish Army before the war, and 90% of the manpower actually deployed to Italy are conscripts and volunteers. Having some odd naming is inevitable there I think.
 
Damned good thing that came off, though I must admit if I'd been one of the Paras I would have been bricking it. Trusting on green troops to rescue you is bad enough, but relying on a formerly purely ceremonial unit that had never seen a tank prior to a few months ago.....

Still it worked out in the end and should help spud muncher morale no end.
 
freelander007 Thanks.

El Pip Mind you, if it had been the original plan, then the link up would have been done by only the singular Irish Brigade that was then in Italy, and the Blue Hussars at least got to train with the British. This time it worked, but it won't be the last overt display of overconfidence that'll happen in the next couple of in-Story weeks. Lightfoot is one of the most over-used PODs in TTL's Alternate History literature for a reason. :(