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The exploration of Germany late in 1965, when Danish and Swedish forces reached the borders with Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, revealed a country in complete disarray. All large cities, centres of industry and every foreign military installation had been heavily bombed, to the point that several bases were assumed to have suffered 100% casualties. The pre-October War population of both the FRG and GDR had been annihilated. Estimates put the casualties at over 30 million, almost half the pre-war population of both Germanys combined. Berlin and Bonn had both been completely destroyed, unsurprisingly; however, some cities remained largely intact and had weathered the post-war horrors by effectively hunkering down, arming their police with the heaviest weapons available and rationing food and water. Kiel, surprisingly, had emerged damaged but in decent condition. It was here that the Scandinavian Union hosted the European Conference of Reconstruction with representatives from

By the wailing pool of black, sat a table, a table marble white. As white as the fountain pool, as sinister as liquid black. Upon this table white rested a checkered square, a checkered square of red and black to match the roses there. Many a game and many a night were lost atop these checkered squares, found on table marble white next to a pool of liquid black. And as the pool of liquid black sat on fountain of marble white, so did these checkered squares rest dolefully on blood spilled there. Many a man would wager there upon the checkered squares against the man of petal black. And many a many would lose more than he dared on games of checkered squares. What drove sane men to seek him there, he never knew. What stirred the men to wager more than dare and lose a flower there. A flower just discarded upon a checkered dare. Woe to the poor girls, for this isn’t fair, for they dared to not be there, now they shall lay bare. But a clever man, the petal’d man is, for

He was a fool. Such a fool indeed. Simon thought for once, things would start changing for the better. But that dream became tainted. Just like everything else in his life. Tainted by Darkness. He had such hope. He might have just ruined everything. Simon honestly, truly thought that Luna would be the one to break the curse. When he was sure, he had told his servants. They all thought they had a chance at being free. They even had a little celebration, as it had been so long since they had something worth celebrating. It was just a small feast. They had Artichoke with butter, shrimp, fancy cheese with crackers and fruit, peta bread and hummus, spinach and cream cheese dips, and lavender lemonade. They enjoyed it around a huge bonfire. But there was a moment where the fire suddenly turned blue and raised higher. It died down, but left a swirl of amber floating down, which quickly became smoke and blew away in the wind. Everyone took it as a sign. Something was coming. If only

Toulon, southern France. 0730 CEST (0530 GMT); 6 August 1965. There was a feel of inevitability in the air. Well, that or terror. For over a year, ever since Brezhnev and Shelepin had embarked on the frankly insane Operation Chastise to cut the West off from Arabian oil and seize a warm-water port in the Persian Gulf, there had been Soviet “advisors” in France. Their orders had been simple: keep the Red Dawn lunatic fringe in control of the multitudes of local fiefdoms that had cropped up in the south of France since the collapse of central government. These lunatics would be supplied with Soviet weaponry and instructed to keep sticking the knife into any American or British forces in the region and thus distract them from the USSR’s true plans. Andrei Stepanovich Stakhanov was, on paper at least, a colonel in the KGB. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he was in effective exile in France, tasked as the senior advisor to the self-proclaimed Bountiful People’s Democratic

Palace of Nations, Geneva. 25 September 1965. It had been a slog. There was no doubt about that. But after almost a month of swearing, recrimination and idle threats, the people sat around the table had finally hashed out an agreement on the future of the world. Geneva had been Denis Healy’s idea. The failure of the peace talks in San Francisco the previous year resulted in the British PM making the suggestion that a neutral site and change in negotiators might see the rump Soviet government agree to make compromises that went beyond the late Alexander Shelepin’s threats and demands. Sure enough, progress had been made. While the formal re-establishment of the UN would still be some time away, there was at least a blueprint for how to go forward. An official cease-fire and non-aggression treaty had been signed by the UK, USA and USSR on behalf of themselves and allied countries, but that was not the main issue. The summit had resulted in an assurance from the Americans and the

Kusong, Pyongan Province, North Korea. 1700 (local); 6 June 1965. 12th Cavalry Regiment had reached the airbase in the early hours of that morning. Their M60’s sat idling on the taxiways as the brass tried to work out exactly what had happened. Three days earlier, a North Korean intelligence officer tried to collapse a cave on top of a load of PoW’s that had been marched to the airbase, for reasons unknown but very much suspected to be their usefulness as human shields. Clearly, said spook had disagreed with this assessment and tried to dispose of a load of people he saw as nothing more than useless eaters. If it hadn’t been for the efforts of Colonel Kim Nam-joon, nominally the base’s commander after all the more senior officers made a run for the border, then he might have succeeded. Colonel Kim had his men digging the collapsed entrance out, mucking in himself even with the threat of a rock fall. By the time the 12th Cav arrived, any survivors had been rescued and the Norks were

Pusung, 9 km north of Pyongyang. 0800 (local); 2 June 1965. Three weeks ago, the enemy had crossed the former DMZ. That was the inescapable fact of the matter. Nothing the Korean People’s Army had been able to do had restored discipline in the rank-and-file of the military. It didn’t seem to matter how many people they shot; the cowardly bastards kept deserting. The General Secretary kept demanding wholesale imprisonment of the families of anyone that had surrendered; as if they could actually tell who had surrendered and who was dead at this point. Marshal Ri Dong-hyun was convinced that the General Secretary’s already tenuous grip on reality was finally slipping. Ten days earlier, Kim Song-ae, the General Secretary’s second wife, had boarded a plane at her husband’s insistence along with three of his four children and was sent to China. Their aircraft was reported as being shot down by PLAAF interceptors, with no word of survivors; however, the General Secretary refused to believe

The ascension of Manuel Fernandez, a staunchly conservative Peronist and military veteran, to the office of Argentinean President in 1999 is considered a strange quirk of history that has created waves through South American politics that continue to be felt over twenty years later. That such an impact could come from someone that, on the surface, seemed to be an unassuming man with few pretentions, is all the more remarkable. Manuel Domingo Fernandez was born in Buenos Aires on 31 July 1938, to relatively affluent middle-class parents. Growing up throughout the tumultuous era of the 1940s and 50s, he joined the Army at the age of 18 and qualified for officer training. After completion of training and earning his commission, Fernandez spent the next twenty years working his way through the ranks of the armoured corps. Fernandez, having achieved the rank of Colonel by 1982, was not directly involved in the Falklands conflict as his regiment of upgraded Sherman tanks was deployed to