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Welcome to Khemmi

Briogáidire-ghinearál Lillian MacHale was not an anxious woman. Any who had met her would see the sharpness and discipline of a career military woman, who has clawed and fought her way to the command of her Regiment. Even so, she found herself sleepless. It was official. They were being deployed. She'd written a letter, and had long-since had her will made, but even so, there was a knot in the womans stomach. Because she knew she wouldn't be on the front lines. While the politicians spouted their words of 'peacekeeping' and 'no Lethian lives lost', she knew that was a lie. They were sending Lethian boys and girls to stand in the middle of a foreign conflict, as a shield between civilians and the horrors of war. And while it was noble, to say there would be no deaths was a pipe-dream.

Deployment didn't take long. A few hours on a cargo plane from Camp Miadhair and they were on Gadorien soil. The first time Lethian soldiers had stepped on non-Ilanean soil for over a hundred years. The insignia of four regiments stood out to her; the crying raven-head of her own girls, some of whom she knew quite well and whose lives she had direct responsibility over, as well as the snake-and-pipe of the 8th, the knights helmet of the 1st Armoured and the rifle-and-tree of the 11th. All going into a foreign land to try and protect the lives of foreign people.

She didn't know the airforce insignia's as well, but the Lethian airforce was the first to arrive, and they were already quite well set-up. Ceannfort O'Kelleher was the man in-charge of the airwings, though O'Connor was running the whole show, not just for the Lethian forces on the ground, but the forces of the entire coalition. She didn't envy the man, thousands of lives on his shoulders and dozens of world nations watching him like a hawk. She just had to look out for her own troops; Njordr knows how he's doing.

She recieved a sharp salute from the young man guarding the command tent, a boy barely older than nineteen. At least he was somewhat safe back here. The tent was a flurry of activity as the deployment was prepared; she'd barely been here ten minutes and she knew that her troops would be moving into a hotzone; some small, sand-coated town called 'Saka'. Gods know what the situation was like on the ground, always hard to tell from the distance of a command tent. She'd been joining them there. Best to command from the front, as her Da would say. Or something like that.

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Briogáidire-ghinearál MacHale's thoughts were most certainly no longer on the bustle of the command tent, or how young the man guarding it had been. Having been rapidly deployed, the 19th found Saka a town in chaos. Wracked by artillery bombardment and with no official evacuations by the government of either side for the civilians, the 19th found themselves organising an ad-hoc evacuation of their own, creating corridors through the vicious fighting and rubble to the safezone that had been established by the 8th, south of the town and away from the worst of the fighting. The situation was nightmarish to say the least, and it took hefty willpower from the Lethian troops in the area to keep to the rules of engagement and avoid firing on either side.

While the evacuation was mostly successful, thanks in part to the rapid nature of the 19th's deployment, civilian and friendly casualties were an inevitability. While it was hoped that most sides of the conflict were not dumb enough to open fire on the Peacekeepers themselves, artillery did not discriminate between enemy combatant, civilian, or neutral party. Fortunately, however, the 19th were informed that they were, for now, to hold down the fort at the safe area, establishing FOB O'Gallagher to take in regional refugees and provide medical and humanitarian aid.

For their part, the 1st Armoured and the 11th were assigned to Shednu. If the fighting at Saka was any indication for how fierce this war would be, then the Battle of Shednu would likely require thousands more evacuations. For now, however, the peacekeepers of the 19th are content to guard the refugee zone south of Saka.