Zero Affect

ZERO AFFECT

By

Jesse Davis



It was one of the greatest military disasters in recorded history.  But it was worse than that; it was a campaign of repeated failures, each in their own right jockeying for position as being the worst humanity had ever seen.  More than nine-thousand U.S. soldiers perished, thousands more wounded and maimed, and it was all on the count of one man’s profound ignorance and stupidity.  If it had been a nuclear accident it could have been excused and maybe even understood, but it wasn’t.  No, the cause was far from something that could be explained using rational human thought.

The U.S. was in a full scale war with its two neighbors, Canada and Mexico.  It all started in May, 2015, when the Mexicans, sick and tired of being poor, destitute, and brutalized, stormed across U.S. borders in hordes, flooding the American market with cheap labor.  Liberals in Congress did little to stop it, as they considered them all potential voters. 

The stock market collapsed and the dollar fell to ten cents to the dollar.  For a time, there was anarchy in the streets.  It wasn’t until Executive Order 4,084,021 (initiated 6 months later, after rioting in the streets by Mexicans demanding amnesty nationwide had cost the American taxpayer nearly $200 billion dollars) that National Guard units began herding the Mexicans back across the border on what is now known as “The Great Evacuation.” 

Once the evacuation was complete, the war began.  Mexico launched a preemptive strike with their entire air force, which consisted of five F-5A Talons.  Those fighters struck the Alamo, in San Antonio Texas, strafed the Dr. Pepper plant in Dublin, TX, and bombed a corn field in central New Mexico.  The other two crashed when they flew into high tension wires in southern Louisiana.  Both pilots ejected and survived, but later died when Mexican rescue helicopters flew into the same high tension wires; the flaming debris rained down on them like the wrath of God.

The U.S. responded, and high tension wires were immediately strung up along the border, stretching from California to Louisiana.  There have been no further incursions by the Mexican Air Force.

Things with Canada were slightly less complex.  Alec Baldwin, actor and entrepreneurial politician, organized a large following of anti-American French Canadian militants.  What started out as a fan club turned into a political organization that soon seized control of the government.  It wasn’t long before Canada’s miniscule but well-trained military began raiding border towns across the U.S. border.

Overall, the war was going poorly for the Americans, due mostly to the poor leadership abilities of Byrd Hatcher.

General Hatcher had been given command of an army with specific instructions to repulse and crush the Canadian/Mexican threat.  His command consisted of poorly trained National Guardsmen from nine states; they were all the continental U.S. had left to defend itself.  Clustered together to form his XXX Corps, the casual observer didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

Fifteenth Infantry Division consisted of guardsmen from Louisiana, Oklahoma, Georgia, Texas, and New Mexico.  Michigan, North Dakota, Washington, and Maine formed the 34th Armored Division, busy fighting the Canadian onslaught.  The regular combat units in the U.S. military were spread out across the world, leftovers from Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Kosovo, a half dozen countries in Africa, and the Ukraine.

Late in the prior year Hatcher had suffered a bitter and embarrassing defeat by the Mexican Army along the Texas border, during which 50,000 screaming Mexicans, armed with pitchforks, sombreros, and muzzle loaders, repulsed his guardsmen numbering around 10,000.  He suffered nearly 2,000 combat fatalities, another five-hundred later dying of wounds; wounds not incurred by the enemy, but by his incompetent medical command.  The devastating losses in combat could have been avoided if Hatcher had taken the simple precaution of insisting ammunition be kept in close proximity to personal and crew served weapons.

Worse still, during the same month, Canadian attack helicopters decimated an entire armored brigade, leaving nearly a hundred M1 battle tanks burning along the countryside.  It took three weeks to gather the remains of U.S. dead.  Not a single enemy casualty had been inflicted.  In hearings shortly afterward, Hatcher admitted to consulting a psychic prior to launching the attack, during which time he’d been told one brigade could hold itself against the entire Canadian army.  He neglected to listen to his staff intelligence officers who repeatedly warned him of such an operation.

As of February, 2016, XXX Corps had had zero affect against the hostile forces and the only enemy KIA reported had been killed by the wires in Louisiana.  A combat streamer was later added to XXX Corps’ guidon, signifying that victory.

Then on March 7th; Byrd Hatcher ordered15th ID to launch an all out attack on the Mexicans and things really changed.  Either unwilling or unable, he failed to complete a terrain analysis and ignored planners at all levels of command.  Amidst bewildered stares from his battle staff, Hatcher plotted a straight line travel route on a map that ran across the state of Arizona. 

The next evening, poorly equipped units rolled across the Arizona desert in bad weather, zero visibility, and with no support of any kind.  Hours after the division should have reported their position at the Mexican border, Hatcher began to worry.  It was at that time he realized the nearly five hundred tanks, armored carriers, trucks, and other support vehicles had driven straight over the edge of the Grand Canyon and had piled up into twisted, burning wreckage of metal and cooking human flesh.  Unexploded ordnance cooked off, the explosions and muted cries of anguish echoing throughout the valley.

Byrd summarily shit himself.  Stepping out of his operations center to clean the feces out of the seat of his pants, he realized then and only then that he should have spent more time understanding the nature of warfare and combat operations instead of shopping online, sleeping twelve hours a day, and taking two hour feeding breaks in the chow hall.

AFTERMATH

Byrd Hatcher faced a General Court-Martial for his repeated and blatant acts of negligence which resulted in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and costing U.S. taxpayers $165 billion dollars. 

He was convicted by a military panel of senior officers for seventeen instances of dereliction of duty, five counts of criminal negligence, and numerous charges including manslaughter, misbehavior before the enemy, destruction of military property of the United States, and waste, spoilage, and destruction of private property. 

The charge of defacing a national park was dropped when his lawyer proved Hatcher had no knowledge that the Grand Canyon was in Arizona.

General Hatcher was reduced to the rank of E-1, fined six months pay, and is being sent to a military penitentiary where he will spend the rest of his natural life.  Once he reaches age 70, he will be released to the International Criminal Court to face a war crimes tribunal.