Pool Monument, Cypress Lawn Memorial Park, Colma, California
.:.
Prologue
1968
O Holy Angel of God, guardian and protector of my soul and body, forgive me every transgression which I have committed this day.
Deliver me from all evil influences and temptations, so that I may not anger my God by any sin.
Pray for me that the Lord may make me worthy of His grace and to become partaker of His eternal Kingdom
with the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of all the Saints. Amen.
Sunday, 4th March 2018 | 19:30 hrs [PST]
Rugi, Liaria, Poja | Poja Television Broadcast Center
For those viewers tuning into PTV on this Sunday evening, they found themselves watching the widely popular, weekly news show named Poja Investigates, an hour-long program that focused on exposés, whether of current or past events. Tonight's episode was the second in a three-part series on the ten-year, Pojan Emergency that began in 1964. The first episode, which had aired the week prior, had focused on the run-up to the Emergency and on the history of Poja. Tonight's episode picked up in 1968 when the Pojan Emergency morphed from a political and economic crisis into a full-blown conflict, namely the Chernarussian Conflict, a six-year conflict that ended in 1974, along with the Emergency.
After the title and the opening credits rolled, the viewers were treated to the presence of veteran reporter, Tin Petrovic, a fifty-six year old investigative journalist who'd been with PTV for the past thirty years. Petrovic had a smooth way of talking and he carried significant clout with the people of Poja because he was seen as honest and undeterred by ethnic tension. He was Adjinuan by birth but his wife was Liari, he a Roman Catholic and she a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. All throughout Poja, such relations were seen as problematic but in the eyes of the people, Petrovic somehow carried enough clout to avoid ridicule. He sat in a chair dressed sharply in a navy, pinstripe suit with a maroon tie, his hands folded in his lap with his wedding ring clearly visible. Behind him was a backdrop consisting of a photograph montage, each of the photographs in black and white and capturing a time not of the present. Looking at the camera, Petrovic began, reading a Teleprompter but so seamlessly that no one would know the difference.
"Good evening, this is part two of our three-part series on the Pojan Emergency, which lasted from nineteen-sixty-four to nineteen -seventy-four. In tonight's episode, we look at the six-year conflict known as the Chernarussian Conflict, Poja's first conflict as an organized nation and one that left deep scars on Pojan society. It came at the tail end of a four-year political crisis following the discovery of oil in the Chernarussian Autonomous Region. Chernarussian President Sergey Kolesnikov, an ardent Chernarussian nationalist, sought independence for Chernarus and he ran on this platform. Ultimately, when efforts to come to an agreement with Pojan President Petar Jovanovic failed and broke down beyond repair, Kolesnikov declared independence in nineteen-sixty-four.
"A four-year effort to avoid conflict fell to pieces when on the Fourth of March, Nineteen-Sixty-Eight, Pojan troops entered Chernarus with the intention of bringing the region back into the fold. The six-year conflict that resulted was, until two-thousand-and-ten, the bloodiest conflict in Pojan history with over twenty thousand soldiers and fifteen thousand civilians killed and as many as one million civilians displaced." The one-minute lead-in provided by Petrovic set up the stage for the next segment, a short video of interlaced clips from the Chernarussian Conflict. It ran for just two and a half minutes but it showed the grim horrors of warfare captured in not only black and white but in color as well. Soldiers shouted for medics, artillery salvos were launched, civilians fled in terror, fighter jets buzzed overhead and dropped bombs on their targets, and throughout it all, a nation burned.
The camera changed to a tight frame of a graying man almost seventy years old. All that the viewer saw was his face, old and wrinkled from weather and time and his shoulders and tie. His shirt collar was buttoned tightly to his neck and he looked at the camera through bifocals that perched high on his nose. Across the bottom of the screen, he was introduced as Tomislav "Tom" Kovacic and he was a veteran of the 25th Motor Rifle Regiment (1968 - 1974).
Petrovic introduced him, his voice sympathetic, "Tomislav "Tom" Kovacic bore the rank of desetar, which was a relatively low rank, just grade three on an eight-grade scale. He was among the first soldiers into Chernarus in nineteen-sixty-eight and he was one of the last to leave six years later. Tom has been awarded the Order of the Pojan Star, our nation's highest medal for bravery, not once but twice, making him one of only nine people who have received the award more than once. He was wounded several times over those six years but he refused medical evacuation, leaving the conflict as a starji vodnik, a grade seven rank."
The camera focused closely on Kovacic's face and he began speaking. The editing had removed the question by Petrovic because it wasn't necessary. "I was nineteen, actually it wasn't yet my nineteenth birthday, when we went into Chernarus. My unit was a motorized rifle company. We had one hundred and ten men in that company organized into three rifle platoons, one heavy weapons platoon, and the company headquarters. There were twelve BTRs in the company. I was in Alpha Squad, First Platoon. Each squad consisted of nine men and each platoon had three squads with the platoon commander.
"I'll never forget that Sunday so long as I will live," Kovacic's face changed as he remembered that day, some forty years earlier, as if it had only just happened hours earlier. The viewer could see the change in the way he stared at the camera, the way his eyes focused, and they could see how this Liari, who was not even nineteen yet, had seen the horrors of war before he'd known what life was. "It was cold, very cold. The temperature may have only been two degrees and it was raining, well misting. The air was water and it was the kind of cold mist that just hung there, drenching everything slowly. You thought that you would be dry and then fifteen minutes later you were soaked and shivering and you didn't know how it happened.
"I'll never forget it. We were inside of the BTR, warm because of the diesel engine and its heater but scared. We could see nothing from inside and we were the lead vehicle. My squad leader was named Ivica. He was twenty-four and we looked at him like he was forty-four. My squad consisted of a vehicle driver and a vehicle gunner, a machine gunner, a grenadier, three riflemen, a marksman, and our commander. One of the riflemen acted as a medic. My job was as a rifleman and assistant grenadier, which meant that I had to lug extra rifle grenade rounds for the grenadier. We used the AKM assault rifle, the grenadier the RPG-7, the sniper an old bolt-action rifle, an RPK light machine gun, and some people carried pistols, our BTR crew and the grenadier, and the commander, and the sniper. I had only my assault rifle.
"Our BTR had a large machine gun in a turret on the roof and a smaller machine gun next to it, a coaxial gun as we called it. We had five hundred rounds for the big gun and three thousand for the smaller gun. That sounds like a lot but it isn't…"
Sunday, 4th March 1968 | 06:30 hrs [PST]
Noyarovsk, Chernarus, Poja | Noyarovsk-Horovo Border Checkpoint
The BTR-60PB jolted as the driver gave extra pressure on the accelerator pedal. The armored personnel carrier needed some extra gas to maintain its speed as it surmounted a slight incline. The vehicle was the first of a twelve-vehicle convoy leading Pojan government forces into the breakaway Chernarussian Autonomous Region. Five kilometers behind these vehicles there were another twenty-four BTRs in two groups of twelve, the rest of the battalion's motorized rifle companies. Trucks carrying the rest of the battalion's units were further behind them. The whole battalion consisted of five hundred and twenty-five men in eighty-four vehicles, fifty of them armored BTRs. Yet this battalion, like the vehicle up front, the platoon behind it, and the company further behind it, was just another segment of a larger unit. This was the 25th Motor Rifle Regiment, consisting of twenty-five hundred and twenty-three men across three motor rifle battalions, a tank battalion, and all of the support battalions, companies, and platoons that made up the regiment.
The tip of the spear was that single, BTR-60P and its nine-man crew in the lead but it was part of a much larger fighting force that made up the Pojan Ground Forces, much of which had been committed to the invasion of Chernarus. The squad was led by Vodnik Ivica Stankic, the twenty-four year old "father" figure to the eight men underneath him. Driving the BTR was Mladi vodnik Ognjen Lukic and manning its heavy gun was Desetar Slobodan Vukovic. The squad's machine gunner with his RPK was Desetar Branimir Jovanovic and the grenadier was Razvodnik Filip Jovanovic. The senior rifleman and assistant squad leader was Mladi vodnik Zdravko Ilic and Desetar Tomislav "Tom" Kovacic was the second rifleman and assistant grenadier. Acting as rifleman and medic was Desetar Ljubomir Miloševic and last, but not least, the sniper of the squad was Desetar Gordan Kovac. Most of them were between the ages of eighteen and twenty with only Ivica being over twenty-two. He was just twenty-four and yet so much older than the rest of his squad.
On the radio came the voice of their platoon leader, Potporucnik Borivoj Milic. He was just twenty-one but he'd completed the officer candidate school and thus he bore the rank of officer, grade 1. "Stankic, your vehicle is approaching the checkpoint, is it not?"
"Yes it is," Stankic responded, "do you have instructions?"
"Proceed forward at all costs."
"Is there resistance expected?"
"Unknown at this time," Milic responded, which was far from a comforting response. The border checkpoint was just three kilometers away and Stankic's vehicle was ascending an incline, which made it very vulnerable since its gun could not depress far enough to strafe anyone close to the ground. An RPG team could easily knock out the BTR and kill the nine men inside. It was for that reason that the men were on edge. They were the first vehicle into Chernarus and the one most likely to take hostile fire. Command hadn't been able to assemble much in the way of reconnaissance for the border crossing and so this unit was more on a "reconnoiter by force" mission than it was on something better planned and better orchestrated. The three BTR-60PBs would, if hostile forces had prepared an ambush, come under heavy fire. The aim would be to prevent the remaining column pass easily down the main road and thus force them off-road where more ambushes and potentially mines were likely to be placed.
According to the men in these BTR-60PBs, it was unusual that they and not the regiment's tanks were leading the way. The regiment had forty T-62 tanks but those were arranged only after the first motorized rifle battalion. It would be thirty-six BTR-60PBs first and then the T-62s with their bigger, 115-millimeter cannons instead of the 12.7-millimeter DShKs and 14.5-millimeter KPVTs of the BTRs. These BTR-60PBs represented the most modern vehicles in the Pojan Ground Forces and yet they were nothing more than armored trucks with eight wheels and a few millimeters of welded steel between the passengers and the outside. A heavy machine gun with armor-piercing ammunition could easily penetrate the hull of the BTR-60PB and riddle its passengers with no effort. In some places, the armored was even too thin to protect against the 7.62x39mm rounds of the AKM though these were mainly unreachable spots for someone carrying an AKM. Generally speaking however, the passengers inside were protected against the assault rifle rounds of the AKM and the RPK.
The ground underneath the BTR-60PB evened out and it did just in time as the border checkpoint came into view. Under the Pojan Confederacy, travel between the regions was considered free and open but the Chernarussians had built a series of border checkpoints in the past four years, a major grievance for Rugi. These border checkpoints were staffed mainly by militiamen organized into squads of similar size to the squads in the motorized rifle platoons, that being nine men. They were given similar weapons as well but the general assumption on the Chernarussian Militia was that it was mostly inexperienced volunteers rather than the trained military units that had defected to Chernarus in the past four years. Still, even an untrained sixteen-year-old with an RPG could kill nine men and so the BTRs couldn't rush towards the border checkpoint but rather approach it cautiously, the gunner ready to lay waste to anyone who appeared hostile.
Vukovic had his eyes glued to the sighting system, which was focused on the border checkpoint approximately fifteen hundred meters forward. "What do you see Vukovic?" Stankic asked as he too put his eyes on the target from his own sighting system, a simple periscope that allowed him to look all around the vehicle without exposing himself through the roof or side hatches.
"Nothing, it looks very quiet," Vukovic answered.
"Don't trust it," Vukovic nodded in his sight to the words of his squad leader but he did not answer. He kept his eyes pinned to the sight and his sweating hands on the trigger. His weapon selection was the main gun and the fifty rounds of 14.5x114mm bullets were locked, loaded, and ready to go. Each one could easily tear through the border checkpoint and lay it to waste but there were only fifty ready to go at any time. The remaining four hundred and fifty were arranged and easily accessible on nine belts but each one would have to be hooked up to continue firing the KPVT heavy machine gun.
Suddenly, as the vehicle approached eight hundred meters, Vukovic saw movement. It was just a flash but it was a scrambled flash, someone crouching low, moving behind a sandbagged emplacement that would provide them with cover. In those brief few moments, Vukovic wasn't sure if what he saw was really what he saw and he began to doubt himself, so quick was the movement in his scope. "I think, I thought, I saw something." He said, his voice trembling.
"Well did you or didn't you?" Stankic asked over the intercom.
"I did, behind the sandbags to the right of the road."
"Okay one second," Stankic moved his sight over and began to look. The BTR-60PB was approaching the checkpoint at only 20 km/h and that meant a distance of eight hundred meters would take just under three minutes to traverse. Thus, they had time but not too much time. "If they're there, they are keeping their heads down. Wait a moment," he switched radio channels, " Milic, this is Stankic, we may have movement ahead. Do we have permission to fire spotting rounds?"
"Negative Stankic, you must have visual confirmation of the enemy."
"Ten-four," Stankic answered, slightly disappointed. He'd wanted to order a few rounds fired into the sandbags, just to see if anyone emerged but that was denied and in these early days of the conflict, orders were paramount. "No go Vukovic until you see hostiles."
"Okay, I'll keep looking," and Vukovic did just that and the vehicle passed the five hundred meter mark. From this point onward, the BTR-60PB was within "close range" of the border checkpoint. Heavy machine guns had ranges in excess of one kilometer but the RPG-7 didn't have an effective range under two hundred meters though its maximum range, which the BTR-60PB was now within, extended out to five hundred meters. Poja's grenadiers weren't really trained to fire at maximum range and they wouldn't want to anyway for fear of giving up their position too soon. However, Chernarus' militiamen were not as disciplined and truth be told, they were terrified. Like the men in the approaching BTR-60PB, they were at the tip of the spear and like the men in the BTR, they were young, younger in fact with the oldest of the nine being just nineteen years old. Most of them were teenagers still, fifteen and sixteen years old. They'd joined the militia because they wanted to be heroes, they wanted to see war, and they wanted to defend Chernarussian sovereignty.
They were fools. Vukovic saw the fifteen-year-old Boris Bobrov peek above the sandbags once more. By now, the vehicle was within three hundred meters of the checkpoint. Bobrov, nervous and itching to fire his RPG-7, was trying to keep an eye on the BTR's approach. He thought that it might be close enough to shoot at but he wasn't sure. His training course had lasted only a few days, during which time he fired the RPG-7 only once as they needed to conserve ammunition. Earlier in the morning, hours before the BTRs approached, he'd picked up the heavy tube and rammed down the PG-7V grenade, perhaps a little too hard but it had clicked into place and all appeared fine. He'd been told to employ the weapon at ranges of one hundred meters or less, where the probability of a hit was over 95%. He would have to account for the wind and the misting rain, something which he'd only been given a short lesson on but he figured that he would not miss. The BTR was a big vehicle.
"Now I see him, he's there," Vukovic said.
"I saw him too, open fire, that is an order." Stankic said, giving the order that unleashed the first rounds of the Chernarussian Conflict. Vukovic hardly waited before he squeezed on the trigger of the KPVT heavy machine gun. The rounds were well-sighted and tore through the sandbags with no effort. They kept going and the young, fifteen-year-old Boris Bobrov was caught right in the chest. His body flew backwards as the rounds' kinetic energy bore into his body, tearing it to pieces.
The firing of the KPVT was loud inside of the BTR and it took everyone but Vukovic and Stankic by surprise. Kovacic nearly fell out of his seat, so startled was he. The ten rounds that barked out of the machine gun were the loudest ten rounds they would ever hear and the scariest. That brought the conflict home to them and told them that this was no training exercise and no civil action.
The border checkpoint was peppered with machine gun fire from the other BTRs as well and before the lead BTR-60PB reached the other side, all nine militiamen defending it were dead. They'd not even fired a single shot in anger, caught instead by surprise and frozen in place by the fear that accompanied the loud banging of the KPVT heavy machine guns. The dismounts from Alpha Squad poured out of the lead BTR when it finally came to a stop and there, Kovacic and the rest came face-to-face with the grim horrors of war. They searched the outpost and looked at the mutilated, dead corpses of the nine men - boys really - defending the checkpoint. They'd all been cut down and left in horrific poses. Kovacic vomited just a meter from one of them as the smell of copper and feces filled his nostrils, all the while hearing in the back of his head, "Welcome to Chernarus…"