This first pic is from behind our lines. We're in Barstow, way out in the Southern reach of the Valley - old-reckoning town that's pretty much bombed out now. Us Woodland Milita boys are in the building - the two-story near the old trailer. You can see the Stockton guys around us, and the few of the Visalia unit that didn't get parceled out to that non-event up in Three Rivers. We even had the Isleton unit - well, five of them anyway. The sixth stepped on a rattlesnake during the march and was laid out in Lodi with a swelled-up leg.
The Nazis are formed up on the other side, nothing but a bunch of bombed-out cellars between us and them. They're a pretty mangy lot, although they've got a decent amount of armor. I think some of it came from a museum, but when all you've got is a Winchester and a bandolier of home-loads, armor is armor.
They started out trying to flank us by coming down a side street. I'm not sure what the point was since they were still under our guns, but maybe they thought they'd get a covered firing position near our troops. "Near" turned out to be a big thing in this tussle; the shooting I saw that day was abysmal, and I'd say any trailer skank more than ten or fifteen yards away from our lines was safe enough to take a nap. I gotta point out that I haven't shot at anything besides deer and coyotes and such for the last four or five years. Maybe that's no excuse, but once the bullets started zinging around me I wasn't doing any better than the guys to my right or my left. Or any worse than the self-proclaimed Nazis. These scuzballs weren't exactly SS, if you get my drift.
Take a closer look at the flanking maneuver, you'll see how hard-up these guys were for material. Not only are these museum pieces, but check out the tank-killer that's breaking off from the group - it's nothing but a pickup with metal welded onto it! I coulda taken the thing out with a pistol, at least if I hadn't been shooting like a moron that day.
You also see the tricked-out caddy leading the charge. It looks like one of those warrior-gang vehicles from the ruins of South L.A., probably because it is. There was talk of the Nazis and the Angelites hitting the Central Valley in tandem from opposite sides and dividing the booty. But that never works out. Nazis tend to grease over anyone that ain't related three ways to their sister, and the Angelites know it. Before they can ever get coordinated someone will hold a "white pride" rally and it's all over. Or Mohammed Kilhuitey comes out of his cave and starts spewing off. The idiots deserve each other, if you want my opinion.
These guys in the caddy must have gone over as emissaries or something before the alliance fell through and gotten stuck on the wrong side. I'm surprised the Nazis didn't just ice them straight off - although I guess making them head the charge in an unarmored vehicle isn't too different. I ever mention that "dividing the booty" is Angelite speak for spreading your cheeks apart after you've bent over? 'Nuff said.
This is a shot from off on the flank after we both started moving up. The Nazis were hungry for blood, and we wanted to get people into the ruins ahead of our strongpoints so they couldn't creep up on us. You can see one of the Nazi scout-tanks laying on its side smack in the middle of the action - a mortar round flipped it right over. You'll see it quick because it's just about the only casualty out there. Did I tell you we were all shooting like twelve-year-old boys that day? I don't know how you get so close to each other, with vehicles and machine-guns no less, and see this little damage. I'd say we ought to drill the militia every season, but then I wouldn't get my storehouse moved ever. Besides, the Nazis and the Angelites might get the same idea and then we'd all be killing each other instead of making a big noise and burning off our extra powder. So maybe it's just as well.
Now we're starting to see smoke coming up out of the Nazi lines. I think we finally got so close to each other we couldn't help but hit something. And I heard that it took until almost this point in the fight for Stockton's APC boys to get the ammo belt seated in the twenty-mil, but that's third-hand and I'll be darned if I'll ask 'em that to their face. The miracle is that they didn't get overrun and greased altogether, looking at how many Nazis made it to our lines on the left side. But if they were smart enough to do a decent overrun, they wouldn't be prancing around with swastikas on, now would they?
