In 1942, there are three types of Legion: Armored,
Mechanized, and Special
—
Airborne, Mountain, and
Amphibious. The Armored/Mechanized constitute about 95
percent of total strength. Organization is (roughly) as follows
:
Table of Organization and Order of Battle Citizen Force
Armored Legion, 1942
Draka Unit Commander's Total Title
Title personnel
Our Equivalent
(approx.)
stick monitor 4
lochos decurion 8 squad sergeant
tetrarchy tetrarch 33 platoon, 2nd
lieutenant
century centurion 110 company, captain
cohort cohortarch 500 battatlion, major
merarchy merarch 1,500 regiment,
colonel
chiliarchy chiliarch 4,500 brigade,
brigadier
legion strategos 13,000 devision,
general
At higher levels (e.g., Army Corps), formal rank designation
would be "Arch-Strategos"
—
roughly, Senior General
—
with a
functional qualifier to designate role. Note that each grade
would contain junior/senior levels, and also that the Draka
concept of rank is rather flexible
—
ad hoc units under relatively
junior commanders can be patched together at need
.
At full strength a Legion of the Regular Line will contain
roughly 9,200 Citizen personnel and about 3,000 serf
auxiliaries. These are unarmed support troops and fill most of
the lower-level noncombatant functions. Thus, over 75 percent
of the Citizen troops in a Legion will actually be carrying rifles,
driving tanks or stuffing shells into guns; the percentage of
auxiliaries increases with distance from the front. (In the Air
Corps, most of the ground crews, etc., are auxiliary personnel.)
The percentage of officers is low (about 4.5 percent) and "lead
from the front" is an axiom. It is more dangerous to be a
company commander than a private. Given the lavish state of
their armament and high motivation, a Citizen Force Legion is
a devastating opponent; its weak
ness is
its lack of reserves. The
Citizen Force is designed as a specialized instrument, an
army-crusher, built for short-duration, high-intensity combat
.
An armored legion has most of its infantry/armor teams
integrated down to cohort level: two tank centuries, two
infantry, one support and miscellaneous (medical, signals, etc.).
(The model used here is the Archonal Guard Legion, 1st
Armored, as of March 1st, 1942.) It would be organized roughly
as follows:
Two three-tank lochoi plus a command tank to a tetrarchy.
Three of these make a tank century. Two of these per cohort:
total 40 tanks, 200 effectives. The tanks are Hond III, crew of 5.
Three infantry lochoi of one APC each plus H.Q. lochos: one
infantry tetrarchy. Three of these to an infantry century. Two
centuries per cohort: total, 28 APC's, 280 effectives. The APC's
are Hoplite-class, modified Hond III hull, 8 infantry and 2 crew.
One fire-support tetrarchy, 7 Flail SP mortars on Hoplite
chassis, 40 effectives. A 160 mm automortar, crew of 5.
The legion would essentially consist of six of these cohorts,
plus several "pure" armor and infantry cohorts, giving a total
of approximately 300 main battle tanks, 2,000 infantry
(including APC drivers and gunners), the reconnaissance
cohorts (amored cars and Cheetah light tanks), and a
merarchy of SP guns
—155
gun-howitzers and 200mm rocket
launchers on modified Hoplite chassis, for a total of about 100
heavy-bombardment weapons. There would also be combat
engineer, signals, medical and other units in proportion. Units
larger than the cohort are "plugged together" as needed, but
would usually consist of three merarchy-sized combat teams
with supporting arms attached. Standard Draka practice
(insofar as this exists) is "two up, one back
."
A mechanized legion would be similarly organized, but with
an armor/infantry ratio of 1/4 instead of 1/1. Independent
chiliarchoi of varying composition also exist, to increase the
flexibility of an Army or Army Corps commander. The reserve
formations available to such a commander would include
heavier artillery (200mm howitzers and 175mm guns, all
self-propelled), engineers, and the support "slices" as
appropriate.
The special-purpose units (Airborne, etc.) differ mainly in
that they are foot-transported once dropped or landed. Their
auxiliaries and mechanical transport are prodded by the
Logistics Corps as needed, and more of their maintenance and
support units are Citizen personnel (which also increases their
emergency reserve of infantry replacements).
Training cohorts are maintained for each legion, but in
emergencies, individual "fillers" may end up in units outside
their cantonal recruiting areas.
A notable feature of the Citizen Force is the attitude toward
"discipline." In most armies, there is an analogy between social
and military rank
—
the officer as gentry, the enlisted personnel
as peasants; not least in the American Army (in both
timelines). The Draka have no such tradition. Every private is
an aristocrat, and military rank is regarded as equivalent to a
medical degree
—
a technical qualification worthy of respect,
but no trace of social awe. "Creative disobedience" is an
honored tradition, and approved provided it works. Certain
aspects of discipline
—
march and fire discipline, for
example—are excellent, and the long training in teamwork
provided by the Draka educational system makes for intelligent
cooperation in the field. (Peer pressure tends to restrain
barrack-room lawyers and congenital screw-ups, said pressure
manifesting itself as anything from mockery to a grenade
rolled under the bunk.) Formal military ritual is sparse
everywhere and nonexistent in the field. Looting and rape, so
long as they do not interfere with the mission, are officially
recognized prerogatives of troops on foreign soil. Draka armies
are notoriously atrocity-prone and utterly intolerant of
attempts to restrain them in these matters
.
The weakneses of the Citizen Force are made up by the
Janissary Corps. This is the serf army, commanded by Citizen
Force officers and senior NCOs. Most Janissary legions are
"motorized rifles"
—
strong in rifle infantry, antitank weapons,
and towed artillery, but with considerably less heavy armor.
Training ana discipline in the Janissary forces are much more
conventional and routinized than the Citizen Force, aimed at
producing unthinking obedience. About two thirds of the
Domination's infantry are Janissaries. Recruitment is by levy
on private serf owners and the Combines. Given the privileges
of even the lowliest Janissary private, volunteers are never
lacking. The Janissaries are also extensively used for
internal-security work in time of peace. AU services are united
under the Supreme General Staff. In practice, this means the
Army dominates, since the Draka are a continental power.
Draka tactics and strategy both emphasize the indirect
approach
—
overwhelming an opponent with movement and
firepower rather than head-on battering
: "Winning
battles by
attrition is to the Art of War as a paint-by-numbers kit is to the
Mono Lisa." By the 1940's the armed forces of the Domination
were not only of high quality, but also very large indeed. At
maximum strength (early 1943) the Domination mobilized
4,200,000 Citizen Force troops, 6,500,000 Janissaries and
3,000,000 auxiliaries (not soldiers by Draka reckoning, but
fulfilling functions that would absorb uniformed personnel in
other countries), for a grand total of just under 14,000,000.
And the Domination's war economy was capable of equipping
them with the best weapons of the day, in any quantity needed
.
Currency and prices:
The Dominations currency is gold-backed. The basic unit is
the Auric (A), 1110 of an ounce of fine gold, divided into 10
denarü (d) and 100 pennies. In 1942, an auric is rated at $3.72
U.S. (Geneva exchange rate).
Comparative prices:
Entry-level Citizen wage: A2,500 per annum.
Purchase price, Archona/Central Police Zone:
Standard unskilled serf: A200
Machine tender serf
(assembly-line): A350
Skilled domestic servant: A250 (up to 1,000
for fancy
items)
Three-bedroom house in: A30,000,
depending
Archona: on neighborhood.
Dinner for two with house A1.5 (two-star
restaurant)
wine
KeUerman mini four-seat A800 (will last 30
years if
maintained)
Airship ticket from Archona to A90.35
Tasjhkent:
Walking shoes: A6
Litre of fresh milk: 3p.
Kilo of sirloin: 25p.
Developed plantation in A1,250,000
(includes labor force, manor)
Police Zone:
10,000 hectare grant in Free, if settled and
New Territories: developed by
claimant
Prime interest rate: 3.5% (Landholders
League
Bank)
Maintaining a serf in a large city, at accepted standards,
would cost about A25 per year, not counting housing.
Science and Technology:
The pure sciences are roughly equivalent to our history in
the 1940s: Nuclear fission is near, the Bohr model of atomic
structure is current, the first applications of quantum
mechanics are moving out of the laboratory. Biology is slightly
more advanced; high-energy chemistry slightly less so.
Technology is somewhat more advanced than our 1942, and
has developed along rather different lines. For example,
vulcanized rubber and the pneumatic tire were developed in
the 1820s, for autosteamers; natural asphalt from Angola and
Trinidad was used for roads at about the same time. Steam
engines of all types, particularly piston engines and small
portable turbines, are more advanced than in our history. In
this timeline, Africa is a "developed" region; accordingly,
tropical medicine and agriculture are more advanced, since
they received concentrated attention. Problems such as
buharzia, sleeping sickness, and river-blindness were overcome
in the 19th century. By the 1940's the hydroelectric power of
the Congo and the geothermal energy of the Great Rift were
being harnessed, and the Sahara was in retreat before
reclamation and afforestation projects. The Domination is
particularly strong in civil engineering, transport, weapons,
and large-scale "process" industry, which are accordingly
ahead of our timeline.
All this implies certain economic differences as well. The
United States reaches far into what we know as Latin America,
and the parts of Asia which fell under the Domination in
1914-1919 have been forcibly modernized. Accordingly, there is
less "Third World"; there are fewer and larger states, fewer
tariffs, more trade, more surplus available for reinvestment (or
war). World income per capita is higher up until the 1940's;
urbanization greater; birth-and death-rates rather lower. The
world population is roughly equivalent in both timelines up
until the 1940's, but the world of the Domination drops behind
rather quickly after that. The low cost and early availability of
air transport make remote regions more accessible. Tibet
becomes a vacation center in the 1920's, for example, and
Chinese fruit is air-freighted by dirigible to Europe in the same
period.
Some Points of Difference
A. Steam transport got under way about a generation
earlier than in our history, and steam cars have been common
since the 1820's, gradually improving. By the time the internal
combustion engine came along, so much effort had gone into
developing automotive steam engines that they remained
dominant in all but aeronautical and armored fighting-vehicle
applications. Petroleum or coal oil has been the dominant fuel
for autosteamers since the first Egyptian oil fields were
discovered (by teams drilling for water) in the 1810's. Modern
(1940) autosteamers have pressure-injected flash boilers with
high superheat, operating safely at 1,200 psi; the standard
operating unit is a triple-expansion uniflow with extensive
electric auxiliaries. Heavy, articulated trucks are common,
particularly in the Domination. The autosteamers of the 40's
represent a "mature" technology
—
fairly uniform everywhere,
rugged, easy to maintain and very long-lasting. Performance
and price are both lower than the equivalent
internal-combustion machines of our history, but reliability is
greater. Since they are relatively simple to manufacture, most
nations with any pretensions to modernity have an
autosteamer industry
.