They’re now deployed! Thanks Dave.

Well, the beauty of being the author is you can send them on a deployment to Kandahar without having to consult FORSCOM.

I hadn’t thought about wheeled Strykers. That probably would screw up the story. But thanks for letting me know, I’ll have to think on it.

Guys like me will notice, but I don’t think it would affect too much to leave it. Inserting 3ACR might upset your story’s timeline if you want to stay realistic about it – Strykers are wheeled, and they could move to the border without needing HETTs. The SBCTs at Ft Lewis self-deploy over Snoqualmie Pass on I-90 to Yakima all the time. In this case, they’d send logistics officers to every truck stop between Hood and the border to buy diesel with Uncle Sam’s credit card. They could probably have the lead squadron on scene within 24 hours of a movement order.

If you want to base 4ID out of Carson, you might also railload 1ID units from Riley. Actual deployment time wouldn’t be much longer, if at all, especially if the rail cars were already at Riley. Or just use all 1CD units. The heavies aren’t getting much play in Afghanistan.

In your scenario, 1AD probably wouldn’t be relevant to your story, since they’d probably be moving to cover the border out in west Texas.

Damn it! You’re not making this simpler. 🙂

Not sure what to do with those numbers, I’ll wait and see what an editor says. Thanks guys.

Thanks Boyd. I’m pretty amazed that there’s still so much emphasis on paper printing. I’ve had an agent tell me my story sounded great, I was doing everything right as far as getting critiques and test readers, I had the right background to tell the story. . . but he wouldn’t even look at it unless I cut at least 40,000 words. Printing costs make publishers limit books from new authors to 80,000 or less.

Thanks for reading and commenting, and I hope to hear your feedback after you read the entire book.

Gotcha, good catch. Do you think it would detract from the story if I left it that way, or does it feel better if I change it to 3rd ACR?

Major Army formations in TX are 1st Cavalry Division and 3rd ACR (Stryker) at Hood (plus III Corps HQ and I’m sure a bunch of supporting units. The MI Bde assigned to III Corps will have a LRS company, IDed on the org chart as a Cav squadron), and 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss.

Eowyn: Ic ácorde!”

Writing out the numerical designators reads better IMO, and allows you to avoid the sin of beginning sentences with “number” numbers. For example, one would not write something such as “Visitors to the park came from many states. 7 were from New Hampshire, 12 from Connecticut, …” The “12 is okay because it’s greater than 10* and in the middle of a sentence, but most editors would change the “7” to “Seven.”

Admittedly it gets complicated when a character is “Six” for some group itself denoted by a number.

Nonetheless enjoying the story and look forward to its publication.

* Weirdly enough some professional journals are directing authors to ignore the rule of spelling out small cardinal numbers (i.e. “we saw only one case of fungal yecchiosis” instead making it ” …only 1 case of fungal …” ostensibly to save space and reduce page count.