[Bombastic martial music plays, accompanying stock footage of Atlas 'Mechs firing and shots of Thomas Hogarth, always in full dress uniform, in a variety of situations: receiving promotions, staring off nobly into the distance, receiving decorations, pushing unit markers around a campaign map. After a full minute of credits, the word "The Armchair General" appear on the screen in an Olde Germanic font. It fades into Hogarth, dressed in a smoking jacket, sitting in a brown leather armchair in a wood-paneled study. Behind him is a framed portrait of himself in full Class A's, and a desk littered with maps, unit markers, and a set of ancient field glasses. Lying beside Hogarth's chair, either asleep or stuffed, is a Great Dane. Hogarth takes a drink from the rocks glass he's holding.]
Welcome, my friends, to The Armchair General, for the week of April 6th through the 12th, 3084. I am your host, Hauptmann-General Thomas Hogarth, Lyran Alliance Armed Forces, retired. It is, as always, my duty and my pleasure to present the current military actions from around the Inner Sphere and beyond, and explain it to you as only a professional soldier can.
The theme for this week seems to be insurgency. Recent advances by the Republic of the Sphere forces into Liao space have brought retribution in the form of Capellan resistance forces, and responsibility for the recent bomb set off in Chicago on Terra has been claimed by a Word of Blake-sympathetic force called "The Red Hand".
Now, when I was liberating Terra, there were none of these sorts of attacks. Then, the Blakists stood up and fought. But one man can only do so much, and after I left, insurgent forces popped back up. Mopping these units up will take time, and the Republic has opted to go a different route than simply stomping on their headquarters with a thousand tons of Lyran-built BattleMechs. Anti-insurgency and mole hunting operations are tricky, and often more trouble than they're worth.
I recall, back in '45 or '46, the FedCom high command was concerned about loyalties within my unit at the time, the Furillo BPM. Of course, this was typical Davion whinging and paranoia, but as we were giving that ill-fated alliance the old college try, we went along with it and brought in independent contractors to help root out the non-existent traitors. The unit they eventually decided on was Vass' Chindits, a unit with ties to the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns. I always suspected a bit of favoritism in that assignment, there.
At any rate, I met their executive officer at the Midwinter Soiree at the late Duchess Iris Steiner's estate. Yes, now I remember, this was in '45, because I had the most fantastic bottle of Hare Hill Syrah '38. Lovely young woman, from good breeding, albeit in the Suns, if that counts for anything. Married at the time, and a mercenary officer, so she had quite a mix of respectable and risque. Not the type of woman you bring home to mother, but I was quite fond of her nonetheless. What was her name?
At any rate, I never saw these Chindits do much work. They spent most of their time trying to work their way into my social circles. So clearly they new good taste when they saw it, but there was a lack of breeding that simply couldn't be overcome. From the way they tried to insinuate themselves into the Furillo society, you'd have thought that I myself was the chink the AFFC suspected in the armor. [Hogarth chuckles to himself and takes another drink.]
At any rate, they were eventually released by Caeser Steiner. Rumor had it that he paid their contract out of his own pocket, most likely to prevent besmirching the reputation of my unit in the official records. I heard he gifted them with a number of vehicles from Furillo's Lockheed plant, although it always seemed like bad form to reward a unit for their failure.
We're going to take a break, but when we return, we'll have a representative from the Commonwealth's largest provider of field rations. I'm going to figure out why we can't get back to having a rum ration included in those tasteless sacks of protein.
-Excerpt from "The Armchair General", April 12, 3084, Donegal Broadcast Company
