On a calm September morning in 1984, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics embarked on
the largest and most daring military operation in human history; the invasion of the continental
United States.
In the opening wave of the attack, tens of thousands of crack Soviet Airborne Forces
entered the country, their aircraft disguised as commercial charter flights.
These paratroopers seized critical airports, helped secure important beachheads, or were
scattered across much of the American heartland to sow confusion and disrupt enemy supply
lines.
Simultaneously, US Strategic Air Command was crippled by Cuban infiltrators who had illegally
entered the United States after a socialist revolution in Mexico.
These initial strikes paved the way for the main offensive.
Soviet equipped armies from Cuba, Nicaragua, Mexico and other Latin American states swept
across the Great Plains, while three Soviet Army Groups consisting of 60 divisions, crossed
the Bering Strait, cut critical pipelines in Alaska and moved across Canada to complete
a continent sized encirclement.
By the time the frontlines stabilized, American and allied forces had halted the Soviet advance
in the Rocky Mountains in the west and the Mississippi in the east.
For the first time since the War of 1812, a foreign power had occupied American soil,
and nearly a third of the country was forced to endure a hostile military occupation.
Internment camps sprung up across the occupied territories.
Collaborationist politicians worked alongside Soviet authorities and the KGB created an
atmosphere of terror and repression, arresting all those they considered a possible threat.
Yet in spite of it all, there were some who resisted.
Around the town of Calumet, Colorado, Soviet soldiers who ventured into the neighboring
mountains never returned.
Across the highways, supply convoys were ambushed, and on the burning wrecks of Soviet vehicles
was emblazoned a single word: “Wolverines”.
A partisan group comprised mainly of high school students, the Wolverines lacked any
sort of formal military training and instead relied on their experiences in recreational
hunting and their familiarity of the local area.
While their earliest attacks on Soviet occupation forces were clumsy and sporadic, in time the
group had gained enough experience to practice sophisticated hit and run tactics, multi-staged
ambushes and other forms of irregular warfare.
Captured Soviet equipment and munitions elevated the Wolverines from a minor nuisance, to a
developed insurgency capable of inflicting costly losses well behind the front lines.
These attacks made them heroes in the eyes of the occupied civilian population and the
Wolverines could depend on food, supplies and shelter from friendly townspeople - even
in the face of horrific Soviet reprisals.
While the group originally took the name of their high school mascot, in time it became
a rallying cry, while the Soviets and their allies increasingly saw the Wolverines as
the ferocious beasts that were their namesake.
Attacks on Soviet re-education centers only furthered their legend and the spirit of resistance
they stirred in the local populace threatened to re-ignite an entire theater of operations
that the Soviets had considered largely pacified.
At their height, the Wolverines were considered such a destabilizing influence that they were
known by name in the upper-leadership of both sides.
The United States attempting to reinforce the group with special forces, while the Soviets
deployed Spetznaz to hunt them down.
In the face of such odds, the persistence of the Wolverines was nothing short of miraculous,
but as the months wore on and the frontlines of the Third World War moved farther and farther
away, the group was pushed to its limits.
One by one its members were lost in action or betrayed by collaborators who knew their
identities.
When the Soviet Army began to employ the same tactics it pioneered during the fighting against
the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, it was too much for the Wolverines to survive.
Reduced to half their number, the Wolverines disbanded, but not before launching a final
diversionary attack on the local Soviet occupation headquarters that allowed at least some of
its members to escape.
By the time the Soviet invasion was repelled, the actions of the Wolverines had been largely
forgotten, overshadowed by greater victories elsewhere.
Today only a single monument commemorates their struggle: a rock on which they etched
the names of their fallen.
Jed & Matt Eckert, Robert Morris, Danny Bates, Aardvark Mondragon, Toni & Erica Mason.
Children who fought here alone and gave up their lives, so that the United States shall
not perish from the Earth.
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