A Brief History of the Great War of Daimiaena
By Sir Kolan Beneer - Professor of Military History (University of Phelor City)
Introduction.....
Though it has been many years since the great war there are still those living today that can remember it.....I have interviewed many of them for this history on both sides of the war and also have been given exclusive access to the military records covering the three year conflict for which I am truly grateful to the Ministry of Defence.....Thanks to the Natural people's heritage initiative I have also been given a great deal of previously unavailable information regarding the Natural peoples involvement in the conflict......My gratitude to Nightwalker and all her staff is unbounded.......
Enough I believe has been written about the years preceding the conflict that I do not think anything can be gained from further discussing those dark days....Instead I hope to provide an unbiased history of the conflict itself and shall therefore be concentrating on describing the events of the war only and not delving into the reasons behind it.....
For obvious reasons I will be referring to Daimiaena II as the Leader throughout this history rather than our glorious leader as he was called at the time.....I will also be using the older name for the Natural people....Tribals.....Excepting when the Natural people refer to themselves, in which case I will attempt to use their own tribal names.....this is to give a sense of historical accuracy and colour.....My apologies in advance for any offence this may cause.....
Chapter One......
Trouble in the jungle.....
It Began as a simple road building program......The capital and two of the southern cities....Deetoo and Surronn had already been connected by road.....Both of the northern cities to the east of the mountains had likewise been joined.....The trouble only really began as the road neared Phelor City on the south west coast.....It began quietly at first....various of the road workers began disappearing into the jungle.....equipment started to break down inexplicably....It wasn't until the first deaths amongst the road crew that Intsec first became involved......Under Colonel Artud the Internal Security had been slowly losing it's power in the country...Colonel Artud saw this as an opportunity to impress the Leader and to increase his influence in the Cabinet.....
Sending in a small force of elite Intsec troops Colonel Artud then sat back and waited for the accolades to roll in as his troops beat down the Tribal rebellion.....At this point Sergeant Dulan one of the Intsec troopers on that first operation takes up the story......
"We were choppered into Phelor City, about two hundred and fifty of us, including support troops. maybe one hundred and seventy five troopers, divided into three groups of fifty troopers and a command group of twenty five officers, radio operators, medics, etc.
The local Phelor Intsec greeted us with disdain, having come from the capital we were considered soft by them, interfering in their domain. We basically flicked them off and got into our Humvee to head out to the road building site.
Our support team had already gone ahead to set up base. as usual they had done us proud. Barracks, catering, positions for our heavier weapons, all surrounded by a Intsec's best friend, A couple miles of razor wire wrapping. The first couple of nights were quiet, just pulling guard duty and sending out ten man patrols in the close proximity of camp but there was no sign of the tribals. We were guessing that the killings had more to do with rivalries amongst the road crews.
That was until corporal Agreb returned alone and bloodied from dawn patrol on the third day. I had never seen a grown man in such a state of shock before, crying hysterically and covered head to foot in blood. The medics examined him but could find no wounds. Once he had calmed down enough to report, his story shocked all of us, it spread through the camp like wildfire, His patrol had set out as normal at dawn and had been travelling into the jungle to the north of the point where the road had been built, when the point trooper just dropped flat on his face, dead. They took up repel ambush positions, but could see no targets. Two more men died before they could see where the arrows were coming from, they laid down suppressive fire, and attempted to advance towards their target. The heavy machine gun crew suddenly stopped firing, a trooper ran to them but could find no arrows. The tribals behind them had been using blowdarts. Now surrounded by an invisible force of indeterminate numbers they decided to radio for back up while attempting to make a break through back to camp, only to find the radio a victim of a well placed arrow that had rendered it useless. Out of contact with camp, they still knew the right direction to head in. They made a dash for it, only to find themselves confronted with a hundred or so machete wielding tribals. Only Corporal Agreb survived the massacre. It was almost as though they had let him live deliberately."
It was at this point that the Leader became involved. Though the road building program had been publicised as a means of increasing trade and communication in the country, it can be seen from private e-mails between the leader and General Otho and also from the minutes of the cabinet meetings immediately prior to the commencement of the program, that the road building was in fact a preparation for a huge military operation to quell subversion and unrest in the northern cities. This explains the unusual order that the leader issued to Intsec.
"From:-The offices of Our Glorious Leader Daimiaena II
To:-The offices of Colonel Artud.Head of Intsec
Top Secret.
Eyes only.
You are hereby authorised and ordered to fully implement Operation Arrow. This is to be Intsecs priority. I expect you to place all your troops at the disposal of this operation immediately."
Operation Arrow was the codename given to Intsecs operation to suppress the Natural peoples in the region of Phelor City. It was under this order that almost all the Intsec troops and agents in Daimiaena were sent to Phelor city, leaving only a skeleton force manning their Bases and offices, mostly support troops and administration staff. As we shall see later, this allowed Northern forces accomplish their aims with much greater ease than they had anticipated.
The actual numbers of Intsec forces that were choppered into Phelor City for operation Arrow are vague to say the least as a lot of Intsec records were destroyed towards the end of the war, but it has been established by various ex-operatives that there were several thousand troops and at least eight hundred agents mobilised during the one week operation. They followed the usual procedures of Intsec, Sending in support troops to set up base camps on the eastern outskirts of the city, then sending in the combat ready troops after.
Since the dawn massacre all patrols were stopped from Base Alpha. This irked the troops who were eager for revenge for their lost companions. As seargent Dulan illustrates here their temper was tempered by certain knowledge.
"As we were first into this Op. We knew we had the jump on any new troops coming in, we knew the area now and had been blooded. Therefore we would be given first crack at the "Savages" as we now called the tribals. We were real glad that the Regs(Regulars: The name given to the Regular army by Intsec) hadn't been drawn in to this.It was still our fight and we were confident with the numbers being thrown into the Op that we could sort it out ourselves."
Shifting to the third perspective in this war, we now refer to the Natural People's history of that time. It seems that as soon as the road building had begun an unprecedented meetings of the various tribes in Daimiaena were being held in the main camp of the Crying crows. There were representatives of every tribe in the country, apart from the People eaters in the southeast and for the first few weeks their was no contact from the Hidden people who lived in the north west behind the mountain ranges. All the other thirteen tribes had someone to put their case and offerplans to deal with the crazies ( the Natural peoples name for Urbanites) and their black river ( the Natural peoples name for the roads).
It is unsurprising perhaps that many of the tribes unaffected directly by the roads were slow to anger against the black river. The Dancing fish people for example merely moved there camps further into the interior. The Orange faces simply refused to act on the stories of the other tribes at all, claiming the other tribes had merely been cursed somehow and were having waking dreams form which they would soon wake. This goes someway to explain the state of unreadiness when the southern army ploughed through their lands.
To begin with it was only the Phelor Tribesmen that not only advocated, but also practised armed response to the crazies encroaching on their world. Clearly the Phelor had no real concept of how many troops they were up against. As they had won in their first encounter, the Base Alpha massacre, they were filled with confidence that their ten thousand warriors were more than capable of delaying with any threat from the crazies.
(Note; All numbers of Natural people warrior counts are estimates based on their oral histories. It is fair to conclude that the original are either under or over exaggerated for dramatic effect during the passing on process. I have attempted to give a feasible estimate based on their relative population sizes.)
As more Intsec troops began arriving, bases Bravo to Kilo were established each slightly further into the jungle than the last. The Phelor continued their guerrilla tactics against the Intsec troops but there were to be no repeats of the Alpha Base massacre.
