Operation Harvest Moon
With the signing of the Treaty of Goldfield on 12.IX.1711 AN, commencing the final phase of the process which would bring Ransenar into the Benacian Union, the decision was made by the High Presidium of the Benacian Union to undertake a substantial reinforcement of the Grand Army of Ransenar.
The mobilisation of 253,784 troops of the Benacian Union Defence Force, would see eight divisions deployed to the 24th Army of the Eastern Banner Group of Benacia Command, in Ransenar proper, and four divisions to the 25th Army of the Southern Banner Group, covering East Caverden & Monty Crisco.
The scale of the deployment would necessitate the active involvement and support of Benacia Command in matters pertaining to transportation, logistics, and the active exercise of command and control over the force. The Commander-in-Chief, Zurvanudin Miran al-Osman, granted approval to the request for assistance by the Benacian Union on 19.IX.1711 AN. Directive 12 of 1711 authorised the Planning, Operations, and Logistics Directorates to render every support to Lors Bakker-Kalirion, Commander of the Southern Banner Group, as overall commander of the deployment.
Allied Preparations
An Allied Military-Political Liaison Team, formed from officers and non-commissioned officers of the General Inspectorate of Benacia Command, was activated on 13.IX.1711 AN, and were joined by tribunes from the political directorate of Benacia Command in departing from Chryse in an overland convoy bound for Goldfield. The seven Snatch Land Rovers, and two trucks carrying a support detail of sixteen commissariat personnel, were provided with motorcycle outriders by the 2nd Field Gendarmery Regiment and their own liaison team from the Transport and Logistics Corps of the GAR. The principle reason for this unhurried and convoluted method of travelling to the Ransenari capital was to assess the suitability of the road and rail infrastructure in the Kingdom to cope with the projected volumes of traffic that the proposed movements of BUDF reinforcements into the country would generate.
The AMPL arrived at the Ransenari base complex J-III after seven hours. The visitors were hosted in the officers mess of the cantonment where they were joined by Ahmst Bræþstranin Klaes Schultheiss, formerly the Commissioner of Information for the UGB, who had received an appointment as head of mission forty-eight hours prior, obliging him to catch a red-eye shuttle from Merensk to Goldfield, and immediately requisition a transport from the Benacian Legation in the city to take him southwards to meet his new command. Schultheiss and his subordinates, once they recognised his letter of appointment, were treated to an indifferent dinner by their Ransenari hosts, more than made up for by copious amounts of wine, and rounds of increasingly raucous toasts, made on an escalatory and reciprocal basis, which continued long into the night. The morning of the 14th, devoted to contextual briefings and planning sessions, was reportedly a purgatory for all concerned.
Conclusion
The operation was deemed to have concluded by 24.X.1715 AN with the integration of the military of Ransenar into the Benacian Union Defence Force as the Ransenari Grouping of Forces, and the expansion of the Ransenari Security Service to fulfil the requirements for internal security operations that would continue to need to be undertaken within the newly incorporated realm.
The repatriation of dissident Elwynnese nationals, although controversial, was efficiently conducted, with the policy of return being limited to those who had not received the boon of Ransenari nationality in the years after the end of the Second Elwynnese Civil War. Those returned were granted a general amnesty and settled in the cities of the Governorate of Absentien from whence the Amokolian populace had recently been expelled. The well-publicised exercise of clemency in this regard did much to assuage public opinion in Ransenar, where a certain level of residual dread, dating back to the Scouring, had long lingered.
