REDLINE 4, BETTER RED THAN DEAD
25th of April, 1985
Vinjesvingen, Norway

Weeks after the beginning of military operations the Soviet army encountered stiff resistance on and around the Rhine river. The initial movement, meant to last only 7 days, took nearly the entire month and ended in a Soviet strategic failure. This time allowed NATO allies to pour resources and troops into uncaptured European ports, prolonging the military conflict significantly.

American divisions supported by air power and superior electronic intelligence claw back territory that Warsaw Pact forces had managed to secure. Amongst ruined cities and a starving population, however, movement is significantly slowed. Wherever they go, communist forces offer ferocious resistance even as entire battlegroups violently disintegrate.

Bogged down in failing defensive fighting in a Europe shattered by a tactical nuclear exchange, the USSR looks to other important strategic locations and bolsters them in expectation of a NATO counter-attack. Their modest regional successes in Sweden and Norway now seem under threat and the collapsing European security situation offers the US and NATO allies opportunities that they didn’t have in the early days of the war.

The US Navy, supported by the remnants of European coastal fleets and blue water vessels, operates nearly unopposed on the Skagerrak after the failures of the Soviet baltic task forces in decisive battles. The battered but unbowed Norwegian and Swedish militaries fight from further in-land, clinging to strategic reserve military resources and roadside airfields in the hopes that help is coming.

A decisive blow must come somewhere, and on a cool April morning in 1985 the speartip of democracy materializes in the form of an American task force off the coast of Vinjesvingen. Caught by surprise due to lack of radar coverage, the Soviet garrison on the airfield scrambles to defend it but fails to stop the American MEU.

With reinforcements tied down in the fighting elsewhere, it’s left to a small understrength mountain infantry battalion to halt the American advance and throw them back into the ocean. The men of the 1st Company, 796th independent Reconnaissance Battalion, mount their BRDMs. In the dim glow of the early evening sun, they drive south to make history - or to become but a footnote inscribed in the death throes of the Soviet giant.