The book largely supports this; while there are a few instances where Lind makes a point of praising extremely minor commanders for saying, "fuck the plan," and having a disproportionate impact, overall it reads like Rumford's beautiful setpiece engagements being executed par excellence.
Well, there are two explanations for that in the context of Victoria being a budding totalitarian dictatorship that was steadily consolidating under Rumford's radical faction at the time he took charge.
One explanation is that Rumford had the charisma to keep most of his subcommands following the plan most of the time, or at least clearly consenting to Rumford's objectives
FOR the plan. This would actually make Victorian doctrine more capable of sticking to plans and holding to a stable course of action. Like a stereotypical 'barbarian horde,' it works better if the leader figure is capable of 'uniting the tribes' rather than having leadership dispersed among a bunch of bickering chieftains.
The other explanation is that Rumford, leader of the extremist Christian Marine faction, systematically wrote
OUT of his memoirs any Victorian commanders who didn't follow his plans and ideas, choosing to pretend that everything was a product of his own masterful genius. The version of history we read in Victoria's memoirs is very much the CMC-approved version of events. It's entirely possible that there were other commanders fighting for the Northern Confederation who adopted tactics different from Victoria's, or who dissented from some of Rumford's ideas, or who were personal rivals of Rumford's. But just as Stalin systematically did everything in his power to go all
The Commissar Vanishes on pictures previously taken of him with those he later "un-personed" and purged, Rumford may well have been trying to write all his defeated political enemies out of the history books.
...
In the latter case, it would actually explain why there's such a disconnect between what is told and what is shown in the text.
In reality, a generation of Victorian military leaders (many of whom were alt-righters with prior US military training) were actually rather effective at independent use of the initiative, because
they knew what they were doing. Even if they evolved a military subculture far inferior to the greater military out of whose corpse they sprouted, they had at some point drunk some nutritious thing, not just a steady diet of retroculture and 4GW Kool-Aid.
But many of those military leaders clashed with Rumford and so were erased from history after the CMC purges.
So Rumford accurately
tells us something consistent with the first-generation Victorian army field manuals: "initiative uber alley." But then he
shows something different, because what he shows us is heavily falsified and retconned, a version of events calculated to make Rumford look like a military super-genius and anyone else who ever argued with him look like literally nothing and nobody.
...
One of the advantages of retroculture for a totalitarian state is that without Internet, it's easier to make sure you've edited all the copies of any given picture or text. Or to take 2030s-vintage originals (very probably taken on digital cameras and such, even among retroculturists) and systematically edit people out of them, then destroy the originals as "forbidden technology" and force everyone to use the doctored printouts.
The river gives the first line of defenders some cushion room as far as weathering a breakthrough is concerned, so we can afford to conserve the strength of the BRO. Using the bridge as bait to lure more Viks into a killzone without the risks associated with using it as an IED by waiting for them to actually be on it. Also, the possibility of being able to instantly arm multiple new divisions is tantalizing, and worth the delay in naval fire support. I think we're all unanimous on the question of the journalists/observers.
The problem is that it's quite possible that the CMC will do something Victorian like plan an attack where most of their amphibious IFVs try to force a crossing ten or twenty miles upriver from Monroe in an attempt to draw off our reserves, while a good-sized force in small boats gathered from Toledo and the surrounding area lands them ashore close to the north side of the I-75 bridge, in an attempt to secure it before it can be blown.
Then they rationalize this as 'feinting' with their 'clumsy armor' while the
real heroes seize the bridge and let the bulk of the army across of course.
As long as the bridge stands, the Victorians have at least a slim chance of using their initiative to force a sudden change of situation on us. I'd want the Navy around to react to such a change of situation. Conversely, if we're sending the Navy away, I'd rather just blow up the bridge entirely and force the Victorians to find another way across.
On the other hand, I'm not too busted up about it if we don't even want to risk making the approach to the bridge a bait-and-switch. Also, isn't Yummy Loot identical to Plan Random?
Yeah but I thought of it first so
[Seriously yes,
@Random Member did come up with an identical plan I think, or at least identical except for the reporter vote that wasn't available when I crafted the plan ]
