RogerJNeilson -> RE: Play up, play up and play the game.... Flashman returns (3/25/2021 7:12:59 PM)
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23rd August Flashman was finding Rashin very pleasant, it was a total backwater where nothing happened….. He had now perfected his trips to the border zone, ostensibly to pass on secrets to Valentina, but actually to trade stuff from the plentiful Allied stores for a rather potent bottle or two of vodka. Life was good - apart from one thing…. he was missing Totty…. the locals were not to his taste and since Valentina was vaporised he had not had the pleasure of female company. It did look as though things would be wrapped up soon. Good thing as well as he gathered that Rashin was not the warmest of places in the winter. He hoped that the groundlings would get on and end all of this so he could perhaps take a slow ride back home, via Hong Kong and Singapore of course. He was following progress keenly, but from a distance. The forces based on Kyushi were basically bottled up and holding positions at Hiroshima and east of Shimoneski were basically keeping them out of the war. Forces on Shikoku were impotent - no naval or air forces so they were just sat there waiting it out. Similarly on Hokkaido where Sapporo and Wakkanai were still in Japanese hands but nothing was happening. Ominato likewise was invested by a screening force. Meanwhile the assault forces for Tokyo were massing. Maebashi with over 100,000 estimated Japanese troops was being watched by forces at Nagaoka and Nagano, well dug in in case of a sally, and ready to move forward when it was judged right, Utsonomiya was to be taken by a force of the 9th Aus Div, 96th Inf Div and 5th Ind Div with armour and combat engineers in support, The main attack axis was to be out of recently taken Gifu, down the coast at Nagoya and Hammamatsu, then removing enemy occupation of Shimizu. This force would then advance upon Tokyo as the main hammer. Supporting these moves would be ship to shore bombardments from all the allied BBs and CA/CL forces based out of Sendai and Osaka and latterly out of Nagoya when it was in allied control. Once Shimizu and Chiba were taken there would be no targets left for the ships to bombard - one sally to Yokohama had shown that was simply not a fight to get into again. The CVs were off back to Pearl, with nothing to do and a routine bombing of Tokyo mainly was underway. It all seemed to Flashman so simple now, but it was inconvenient that lack of totty…….
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