Strike Witches '68
Same War, Different Warriors
Same War, Different Warriors
Stealing the great Eviram's OP layout for this one since I like it and I feel it'll work here.
History
If it weren't for [the Neuroi], they'd have us taking sides and killing each other instead.
Air Marshal Minna Dietlinde-Wilcke, 1944
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BRIGADIER-GENERAL MARCILLE WILLIAMSEN, USLMC
Air Marshal Minna Dietlinde-Wilcke, 1944
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BRIGADIER-GENERAL MARCILLE WILLIAMSEN, USLMC
This isn't your mama's war, this is motherfucking Vietnam.
Why we're here? What, you need a history lesson, or have you been listening to so much of that Commie shit they spew out of New York that you forgot? Well fine. Consider yourself lucky that I paid attention in school for you, then. Grunts.
I'll start with fifty years ago since if you're dumb enough to not remember why we're here you sure as hell don't remember the last twenty. Well, fuck - that puts us at the end of the First war, let's make it fifty-two. Nineteen sixteen. The great European powers of Britannia, Gallia, Belgica, Orussia, and Romagna on one side, and Karlsland, Venezia, Ostmark, and Turkey on the other - along with a few other unimportant nations like Greece and Dacia.
They were engaging in the great European pastime of killing people by the thousands, something that had become so popular in Africa and Asia they decided to take it home, except there were no savages to bring into civilization there so they had to make up pointless bullshit reasons for it. And they couldn't just kill their own people so they had to kill each other. It was a grand ol' time that us of Liberion dismissed because it was just your usual European being European.
It only took two years to drive the Neds off but the damage was done. It was a bad few years, and there were Commie uprisings throughout Europe, and while Orussia had it the worst, nothing came of them, even when our own economy went under in the '30s.
Then the Neds came back in '35, over the Pacific near Fuso. And that was the first battle of the Second Neuroi War, and that was ugly. But you know about the Second Neuroi War, right? The League of Nation's legendary 50X squadrons and all that, El Alamein, Gallia, Britannia, Liberion and Fuso retaking Indochina from the Neds, Operation Victory Arrow, the nuking of the Pacific Hive, right? There's enough movies to last a lifetime about it already. Go watch South Pacific when you get the chance.
That ended on June 3, 1948, when the Pacific Hive got blown in half by firing a nuke-tipped rocket from an AA cruiser at the Hive Core - I think it was the Oakland. There was a big celebration in gay ol' Paree and all the world leaders were invited - FDR, the Kaiser, the King of England and ol' Churchill, the Fuso Emperor, et cetera, a grand old time, except the Tsar. He was busy being dead after gettin' his brains blown out by a Red.
Turns out the Bolsheviks had just been waiting for the Neuroi to leave before they made their move. And it wasn't just Orussia that was feeling the red heat, otherwise we woulda stopped it before it could've started. Fusoan Manchuria declared independence and went red too, and Fuso and the Chinese both asked to help to keep it from spreading. Us and Britannia moved in to help, but with the now-USSR pushing in from the north it was all we could do to keep them from reaching Beijing. And China broke up anyway - in 1954, with the north and west going to the People's Repression, the southeast going to the Republic of China, and Tibet splitting off to do... whatever Tibetans do. Gallia and Karlsland couldn't help because Karlsland was putting itself back together, and Gallia was dealing with Commie problems of their own.
See right as the Tsar's head was becoming modern art in the Winter Palace, some red by the name of Ho Chi Minh managed to wrest control of Vietnam from the Gauls, and by the end of the Manchuria War in May of '55 had managed to deprive them of all of Indochina as well. Laos promptly broke off and became an unimportant shithole,
Cambodia briefly went Commie but instead became fascist (and also an unimportant shithole), and South Vietnam was capitalist and therefore a friend of Liberion.
And friends help friends, right? And so we did. At first it was just supplies, then military advisors, then military advisors that can shoot back, then troops, then more troops, and soon enough we had a full-blown war on our hands, a big ugly war that Congress can't get into their thick skulls that it's actually a war and not 'military advisory campaign' or whatever bullshit the lily-livered bleeding hearts in Congress are calling it to avoid declaring war.
And here we are, in '68. JFK and Kruschev pulled the world away from a world war after finding nukes in Cuba and Kennedy got a bullet to the head, LBJ gave blacks the same rights as mighty whitey and the whole South flipped its shit, and this not-war of ours has only gone downhill from here, even with Witches, those marvelous girls in their flying machines that saved the Second Neuroi War with magic and lead, being thrown into the mix in 1964.
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Homefront
The war is simply an obscenity, a depraved act by weak and miserable men, including all of us who have allowed it to go on and on with endless fury and destruction – all of us who would have remained silent had stability and order been secured. It is not pleasant to say such words, but candor permits no less.
Noam Chomsky, 1969
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WILLIAM "WILLIE PETE" PETERSEN, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Noam Chomsky, 1969
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WILLIAM "WILLIE PETE" PETERSEN, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Okay before we start this I wanna make one thing clear. I ain't a damn commie, all right? I just don't think we're doing things right here. A lot of people don't, really. Which is probably why we're still there, among other reasons. But I digress. You wanna know the home front, what it's like over stateside whenever you get the golden R&R ticket and get to go back to Hawaii or, God have mercy, San Fran? I'll tell ya.
Well, the Packers won that Super Bowl thing back in February, but you probably found that out by now if you're within 50 miles of any Wisconsinite. Stalin's daughter defected to America, but you probably found that out within minutes since the military papers still won't shut up about it.
Fuck... '67 was a mess. You ask me? I blame MLK for this one. He denounced the war in April and all Hell broke loose. Not two weeks later, huge marches in San Francisco and New York. And if that was all, well, that'd be a dull year wouldn't it? We got some blacks taking over a college and the Black Panthers doing what they did best - intimidating people - but that paled in comparison to the summer.
What a summer, folks! Over a hundred and fifty riots all across our beautiful Liberion from California to the New York Is-land! Y'all'd've thought it'd stop when Loving v Virginia passed, but instead it just got worse! Even DC got riots, but Detroit had it worse when half the damn city almost burned down, and LBJ had to call in the damned army to stop it.
Everyone's mad as Hell over this war, and everyone has a good reason to be. The conservatives are mad 'cause we're still there, and the hippies are mad 'cause we're still there. Due to this overwhelming consensus, the whole country's a fucking tinderbox just waiting for an excuse to go off. I got yelled at by some lady in a tie-dye shirt and leather the day before my plane to Bangkok left, why? I was wearing a green shirt! I've never even been in the Army, 'cause I'm allergic to half the shit they put in C-Rations, which is also why I'm stuck here in Saigon.
No matter how you look at it, we're doing SOMETHING wrong or we'd be done with Vietnam by now. I mean, they're armed with, what, AK-47s, T-55s, and Second Neuroi War era Strikers at best? Maybe a few MiG-21s if that, and they can barely put a dent in us. Yet we just keep holding the line. One things for sure, however this war goes someone's head's gonna roll, and I wouldn't be surprised if it took a few heads with it on the way down.
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Magic
Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science.
Unknown
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YOSHIKA MIYAFUJI (宮藤 芳佳), PROFESSOR OF MAGIC ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
Unknown
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YOSHIKA MIYAFUJI (宮藤 芳佳), PROFESSOR OF MAGIC ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
Hello everyone, and welcome to Magical Engineering 101. I am your professor, Yoshika Miyafuji, yes that Yoshika Miyafuji, no I'm not going to talk about the war, it's a stupid war that I do not agree with, no I am not a Communist I simply believe that after losing almost ninety million people we would have gotten it into our heads that maybe war with each other is a bad idea, moving on.
The syllabus is on your desks, I expect you to have read it by now, or if not by our next class on... Friday. Let's start with the most important aspect of Chapter One, that is, History of Magic in Humans and the History of Magical Engineering.
The ancient Greeks believed magic was taught to the women of Greece by Hecate, and that the secret was spread to the world by an ancient turncoat whose name has been lost deliberately to the sands of time. The ancient Egyptians believe that the secret of magic was learned by a woman of Memphis after a cat stole a scroll that had been dropped by the god Thoth. Judeo-Christian tradition holds that magic was taught to Sarah, wife of Abraham, by an angel - whereas Chinese and Fusoan tradition holds that it was gifted to the daughters of an ancient king by the south wind. Curiously enough it is only the cultures of the Americas and the Australian aboriginals that lack an explanation as to why magic exists, to them it has always been present.
However, this is a science course, not a sociology course, so we must naturally deal in facts.
Magic is believed to have first evolved in humanity some time around 1 million to seven hundred fifty thousand years ago, during the era of Homo Erectus. The current consensus in the paleoanthropological field is that humanity evolved magic as a way to protect the physically weaker females when the males were off hunting, which explains why the previous, less social, ancestors of mankind did not develop it - or if they did, left little to no evidence. Certainly humans were not the first species to use magic, nor were or are they the only - dragons still exist in the far remote lands of the world, and Britannia still maintains a small herd of wild unicorns in the wilds of Scotland, among other notable creatures.
Impressive, yes, but not godly as the legends claim - in the past the only way to exceed this would be to use 'magical weapons' crafted via various means, which are now state secrets. What changed this was James Watt in 1775 with the introduction of his steam engine, and the subsequent development in 1796 of the Wilbur engine, the first mechanical device that converted magical energy to mechanical energy, as well as noticeably boosting the abilities of whatever Witch was powering it, going so far as to manifest the 'aspects' - that is, the ears and tail for eared mammals, wings and tail for winged animals, and just the tail for everything else - of a Witch's familiar for the first time. A breakthrough for sure, but it remained a curiosity at best for over a century.
The First Neuroi War, which interrupted and concluded the Great War, was the second largest outbreak in human history up to that point, exceeded only by the Great Atilla Hive of the fifth century AD. Its destruction led into further research into the Wilbur engine and its properties, which ultimately resulted in the first magic-powered vehicles - motobrooms, invented in 1919 in Canada. Essentially an internal combustion engine powered by the Witch riding them, these were ungainly, bulky things that swiftly proved completely worthless for combat during the Chinese Civil War. Further development led to the first Strikers, developed in Karlsland - the 'backpack' Striker. Its engines were stocking-like devices attached to the legs that used a combination of energy supplied in a pack and the Witch's own naturally-produced aether to power itself. It was faster, had superior range, superior mobility, and freed both hands, but it still suffered problems due to total reliance of the energy pack.
It wasn't until 1933 when my father, Ichiro Miyafuji, developed the packless Striker that Witches were truly able to join the front line fight against Neuroi once again. By using ether drawn directly from the atmosphere, it removed the need for an external power source besides the Witch herself entirely. While all previous Striker designs increased the powers of a Witch beyond the unassisted norm, the packless Striker did so exponentially - an average Witch could produce a shield that could stop bullets from a tank cannon, create explosions with the strength of the average unguided bomb, or detect and transmit radio signals half a continent away, all this without the assistance of 'magic weapons'. With its reciprocating engine and superior thrust-to-weight ratio compared to any aircraft of the time, it proved almost as dangerous to the Neuroi as the Neuroi were to humanity. Production models were introduced to militaries around the world by 1935, and just in time because the Second Neuroi War would start less than a month later.
For the most part, piston-engined Striker Units has remained unchanged since then - technology has improved, civilian models have grown cheap enough for the common woman to afford thanks to less expensive materials, the electronics have improved dramatically, but the inner workings remain the same. The biggest change besides the jet engine is really the land variant - bigger, heavier, and slower, with most of the engine's output pushed towards enhancing shield strength and physical strength, allowing Witches to carry cannons ranging from small howitzers to full-blown artillery pieces. Does anyone know what things have changed for aviation Strikers? Anyone at all?
...yes, that's right. Miniaturization runes, and the jet engine. Etherjet engines as they are called in industrial practice were invented by Ursula Hartmann in 1944, but they were largely unusable due to excessive power drain until an improved ether intake was developed in 1947. Miniaturization runes, meanwhile, enabled Striker Units to carry munitions and equipment themselves, instead of requiring the Witch to carry them in awkward satchels. While miniaturization runes have proved most useful in fields such as firefighting and cargo delivery - as well as the military - outside of the field of constructing Striker Units, it is the ether intake that has revolutionized the world of magical engineering. No longer do engines need massive tanks or a supply of Witches or magical creatures to power them, they can now draw power directly from the atmosphere. Some researchers say ether engines may even replace fossil fuels, and power everything from cars to homes to entire cities...
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The Unit
The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1945
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COLONEL THOMAS PERRAULT
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1945
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COLONEL THOMAS PERRAULT
Ladies, gentlemen, welcome to First Marine Division HQ, Chu Lai, Vietnam. You in particular are part of one of the greatest modern traditions of the United States of Liberion's Marine Corps - the 1st Heavy Reconnaissance Regiment. First devised during the Second Neuroi War, the heavy recon regiment could be considered a microcosm of the Marine Corps itself - it has just about everything a recon unit could possibly need - barring helicopters, and let's be serious, who needs the ugly bastards anyway?
All right, all right, relax. You all know what we're here for, and what our purpose is, and if not you shoulda found out about it on the trip here, but there's media yuppies here from the New York Times so I'll tell you anyway. Heavy Recon units are designed to do two things: be real mobile and be real deadly, two things they exceed at. They were formed back in the war with the Neds after General Vandegriff noticed a sort of informal strategy forming between what armored units he had and the Witches under his command - tank and armor would use themselves as bait to lure the Neds out, and Witches would blow them away. If they found they couldn't, they'd distract the Neds and the tanks'd give 'em a free window. So he decided to cut out the middleman of carriers and separate command structures and create you, the 1st Heavy Recon. Your task is to be able to do anything that could be needed in an area to achieve your goals, which will mostly consist of general land and aerial reconnaissance, providing extra muscle to other units, helping with insertion and extraction for special forces and the odd spook, and the good old-fashioned art of fucking Charlie's shit up.
I'll be frank, you have pretty big boots to fill. The First Heavy Recon has never gotten the fame other units have had - though we were certainly there at Iwo Jima and the landings at Kyushu that finished the Neuroi for good, the media always wanted to focus on the legendary League of Nation's 50X squadrons or the more 'pure' infantry units of the war, and First Heavy Recon spent most of Manchuria getting pinched between Soviet and Communist forces.
But we survived. We made it out of that blockade and gave the PLA a response to every shell they sent against us. I'm not saying that I want you to win glory - glory hounds make good money for recruiters and undertakers - but it'd be nice for First Heavy Recon to get some recognition on its own for once.
Kick ass out there, and get back alive. That's all I need of you. That's all the Marines need of you. That's all your country needs of you. And relax! The Vietnamese Lunar New Year is soon, and Hanoi has called a ceasefire for the duration until February 3rd. So you all still have a few days before the shit starts flying again. Just be sure to be sober by the fourth.
