The Polanians never really noticed the many Belkan Airbornes marauding the Greater Polanian region. Words don't travel as fast when they lack radio communication, and runners aren't fast enough to convey the alarming reports that, indeed, the Belkan Reich has counter-invaded. There's also the fact that these isolated ssengers, another way of calling small-scale Polanian patrols who sohow laid their eyes on the 3 Airborne Divisions' force deploynts, are quite easily intercepted and eliminated. As such, when the first rays of sunlight shine over Europe, the Polanian military command doesn't even know that they have enemies in their very backyard. Quite hilariously, they're still busy squabbling whether or not to go ahead and march over to Belkan soils. Hours had already passed since they fired the first barrage against the Belkan outposts, and the Polanians were afraid of the elents of surprise slipping away from their grasp. However, none of the newly minted Generals can seem to agree on a plan of action with the few, but illustriated old guards. This indecisiveness highlights the lack of unity in the hastily reford Polanian Army, a major weakness that can be easily exploited by pretty much everyone in the global theater. And of course, the Belkan Reich is not one to not drive a knife deeper into that weakness. Facing such a disunity enemy, all it takes is a swift and relentless offense to break them whole. To achieve this, other than landing a host of the deadliest fighters known to man, Belkan High Command resorts to a highly favored opening tactic:
Rockets. Lots and lots of rockets.
Much like the opening salvo that kickstarted the collapse of the Maginot Line on the Western Front, the Eastern Front Army Group D also employed the Lynx MLRS systems to carry out the initial barrage. Although Army Group D doesn't have the ridiculous amount of rocket trucks that the three Western Front Army Groups maintain, they have the recently modernized version. The Lynx Mk.2 has a better fire control system, an improved engine, and an expanded payload, going from thirty-six 122 mm or thirty-two 160 mm rockets to forty 122 mm or thirty-six 160 mm rockets. More rockets an more fun for the whole family, right?
Woe be the foolish Polanian High Command though that they opt to gather their invasion force in big blobs of camps and structures instead of spreading them out. While this allows military officers to have an easier ti managing their units in an era where radio communication is disabled, it does unwittingly paint gigantic 'Bonk ' signs for Belkan aerial recons. Of course, the Polanians haven't forgotten the burning of Warsaw by a lone aircraft so they do have a surprisingly large amount of anti-air installations all along their borders and staging areas. However, with no radar at all, the Polanians are unable to detect high-flying Belkan Barracuda UAVs, much less an SR-72 Darkstar zipping all over their national airspace to refresh battlefield map data. In short, the movents of these Polanian Army units and their laughable attempts at masking and covering them up are in plain sight for the Belkan Reich to see. Bunching up in greater numbers only ans they have beco an even greater threat in the eyes of ONI analysts. And, once a threat they have beco...
Well done. You just beca a priority target.
With the enemy staging areas, trenches, bunkers, and fortresses along the Belkan-Polanian borders marked, hundreds, if not thousands of rocket tubes with calibers ranging from 122 mm to 160 mm are directed over to the Polanian side. re monts after dawn, curtains of smoke and fla rise to bid the Polanian soldiers a good morning, much to the confusion of the Polanians stationed in the frontline trenches. For these Polanians, a land-based weapon system that can outrange field artillery is unheard of. So, no one knows what to make of the barely visible smoke plus far behind the Belkan line.
After seconds of nothing happening, however, the Polanian soldiers resud what they were doing before. So resu their patrols, so sit and wait for new orders, and so make campfires to cook breakfast. No one even stops to wonder if it's an enemy attack or not, their brains don't know what to think or expect so they carry on as normal, at least until bullets start coming their way. Well, what exactly is about to co down aren't bullets per se, but they do warrant enough of an alarm when the sky starts screaming bloody murder.
"ARTILLERY!"
No one knows who shouted that warning, could be a veteran who witnessed artillery bombardnt, or it could be so other smart officer, but by the ti the warning registered, the whistling sound was already on top of them. The sky itself is seemingly split open as blackened blurs, too many to count, land all over the Polanian borders. In the aftermath of their touchdowns, explosions, carnages, and absolute devastation, are raised all across the ranks of the Polanian Army units stationed by the borders. Trenches are excavated unceremoniously, bunkers are batted away, and fortresses are squatted flat... Nothing that the Polanians constructed survived a strike of a heavy 122 mm warhead, much less a larger 160 mm, and there are a great many of them that were launched. A sort of mini-Maginot happened as the entire Polanian borders were detonated nearly at the sa ti. The smoke plus raised by the catastrophic destruction block the morning sun as they cast a large shadow through a swath of terrain. Dayti is once more inverted montarily by the scale of destruction brought about by the Belkan war engines.
Quite frankly, there's little to no way for contemporary nations to withstand such a ga-changing Alpha strike. As ironic as it may sound, even the Belkans themselves will have trouble intercepting all of the rockets launched by them today, much less an outdated nation like Polania. That's the beauty of rocket artillery, a perfect ans of delivering saturation bombardnt when you do not need to worry about collateral damage. The true embodint of quantity has a quality of its own.
Now that the entire Polanian side of the borders is made into an ashen hellscape, the bulk of Belkan Army Group D moves out. Where needed, deployable bridges are set up over the Oder River while in the air, fighter jets and VTOLs constantly patrol the airspace as the ground force crosses into hostile lands. Preliminary ONI analysis indicated most of the major Polanian Army hotspots are wiped out. Polanian casualties can range from 150000 to 300000 after the initial barrage, with little to no Polanian force deploynt around the border crossings. It's safe to say that, barring a few survivors, nothing is stopping Army Group D from making headways into Polanian soils. However, with the Polanian Army fielding more than a million soldiers prior to the rocket barrage, the outco of the conflict is not yet set in stone as a cornered rat can still bite back. As such, Army Group D, and the three Paratrooper Divisions behind enemy line, proceed with tad ferocity.
It's decided that in the early days of this Belkan-Polania war, the Belkan Army units will proceed to sow as much chaos as possible to eliminate the nurical superiority of the Polanian regi. This ans the overall strategies and tactics are to eliminate local Polanian leadership, supply lines, and strong points. The ultimate goal is to split the nurous Polanian Infantry Divisions into more manageable sizes before beginning the land-grabbing phase. This more thodical approach contrasts the hamring blows conducted by the combination of Army Group A, B, and C in the Western Front. It's quite understandable why this is the case, however. Other than the already presented Paratrooper Divisions and soon-to-arrive Marine Corps, the Belkan Reich fields only one Army Group D against Polania. This is not because Belka doesn't have enough troops available, it's because there's really no need to expend too many resources in an unattractive land like Polanian, yet. The pact between Belka and Rusviet clearly indicates which lands in Polania will go to whom when the war is over. With 2/3rd of Polania going to the Rusviet Union, the Reich has no need for an overwhelming amount of military power when a singular Army Group is enough to swallow 1/3rd of the state.
Other than cleaning up a thorn in everyone's side though, this small and quite inconsequential war is seen as a great opportunity for ONI to deploy so of their... Shall we say, interesting plans.
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Corporal Jan struggles awake, his skin pales and bleeds in places while his body feels strangely cold. Then and there, half-sunken into all the dirt, mud, and other detritus, Jan would have accepted Death's embrace if not for his eyes catching the sight of a head. That head belongs to a man, and the patch on his shoulder shows that he is part of Jan's unit. Yet, Jan can't make out who he is, not anymore. That head, barely connected to a legless torso, has a gaping hole where the nose, eyes, and most of the brain were. The liquid that cos pouring out of that hole then fuses with the mud around, turning it into one murky thing that reminds others of a war long ago. That very mud is the sa one Jan finds himself coated all over. Because of this, the Corporal screams incoherently, struggling and crawling on all fours away from the corpse of his compatriot. Jan isn't one to be afraid of death, not when this world has already taken so many things from him: his family, house, and even his dog. So joining this Army, to participate in this war, is Jan's conscious decision. He is, at his core, a death seeker. Yet, to accept his fate now, to die in a literal cesspool like this... That ain't no way to go. Jan doesn't see himself as sobody great, but at least his way to go out should be sothing of a defiance against sothing, or soone greater.
For now, Jan rejects Death. His ears are beating the drums of tinnitus, sure, but it ain't no bell.
With great effort, the Polanian Corporal wipes his eyes clean of dirt and whatever the hell that got into them when he was half-buried. When his vision is partially cleared up, Jan is stunned to see that the very trench line he was forced to dig for the past few months was excavated in monts, with the dead and the living buried together in the great upheaval earlier. Jan could have sworn that soone scread an artillery warning before his consciousness was cut off briefly. Still, can an artillery barrage obliterate a trench line made specifically to withstand it? The answer is a surprising no, but they shouldn't be destroyed to the point of being unrecognizable, at least. In fact, it's a bloody miracle that Jan survived with limbs and head still attached to his body. Thinking up to this point, the Corporal throws up. Finally, the vile, disease-inducing taste of whatever Jan accidentally ingested earlier has registered in his shell-shaken brain. So foul is whatever stuff that lingers in his tongue causes Jan to ironically regret not dying altogether. Only Heaven comprehends what exactly is in Jan's mouth right now, and the Polanian Corporal knows for sure that he won't like the answer.
In haste, driven by his survival instinct and adrenaline, Jan fishes out a dented water canteen from the rucksack on his back and pours all of its content into his mouse. Swiftly, the man spits the dirtied liquid out, accidentally splashing the totally-not-half-a-head re steps away. Taking ragged breaths, Jan wonders why Death didn't just straight off taking him away. Why let him caked in No Man's Land as if he's just traveled twenty years back?
But then the Polanian Corporal finds the ground rumbling as gravel and loose soils bounce up and down in an enchanting rhythm. Unable to trust his ears, Jan looks around the smoky haze of No Man's Land, his shaky gaze trying to pierce the Fog of War to no avail. Then he sees it, a tank, yes, but at the sa ti not a tank? Dwarfing the familiar tankette in the Polanian arsenal and towering over two n stacked on top of one another, a chanical hulk of steel and Belkan identification marking lumbering forward. One big turret with a big cannon, a smaller hull-mounted gun, and a pair of sponsons fitted with twin autocannons. The tank seems to carry way too much firepower for whatever vehicle the Polanians can bring to bear. However, that's not all, as Jan soon sees many vehicles following right behind the Belkan armored beast. So look to be just like the first one while others are smaller and remarkably different.
Looking at the endless wall of steel that spans the seeable horizon, Jan can only spout a single word.
"Fuck..."
By Jan's side lays a rifle, blown away by the explosions earlier, but it's a rifle nonetheless.
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