After a relatively short respite, our continent has experienced another tremendous surge of violence, this time due to our going on the offensive to attempt to cause a catastrophic failure of the enemy's defenses. From one end of the continent to the other, our great military surged out of their defensive works and rushed at the enemy upon their leaders' command, the latter being issued after being enticed by the enemy's recent attenuation from their failed offensive days previous. Even the Kleintrin Forest, a region which has been in a near-constant state of peace and tranquility despite so many troops manning the lines there, has erupted in feverish combat. While we have made substantial gains territorially and have achieved the psychological effect we had sought, neither were as great as we had hoped because the enemy skillfully and stubbornly resisted us, and the repeated assaults our forces have been commanded to conduct has caused very noticeable degradation to readiness and cohesion. The Bengarian military has been substantially reformed and modernized during the prolonged period of time their ally had frustrated us so severely with their overwhelming presence, and did not disintegrate as we had aspired to precipitate. The Wesitarian military on the Eastern Continent, though severely diminished in strength in the last several weeks, has rallied somehow and has admirably contested our advances on the Western Front. We are significantly further ahead of where we were all things considered, and thus I do not regret my decisions in general.

Mercifully for us, the Wesitarians and Bengarians were unable to resume their crippling bombardment of our inchoate home port for our 1st Fleet and the navy in general. We had inflicted heavy losses to their bomber and naval forces during their desperate attempt in the middle of last month, but such a feat also cost us dearly. Our navy remained in a very degraded state due to having to defend Kaleusthes against such a concentration of firepower, the base's static artillery defenses were reduced to 50% of their original strength at the very painful last day of the offensive, and we used a massive amount of ammunition ourselves. We had intended to attempt to cause another catastrophe at the turn of the month with a well-regenerated military and support from a moderately functional forward fleet base. Instead, Kaleusthes was still restoring defensive capability and hadn't even started erecting support facilities, our navy was still awaiting components and supplies to finish recovery, our panzers and MAC lacked the stockpiles we had intended for them, and generally the military was still figuratively short of breath. I pined for the days when we only had one major adversary to fight and that enemy was rapidly disintegrating before our fully professionalized armies.

The situation on the Central Front was in a way even worse than the Eastern Front. While the latter was stationary and rather serene, the former has expanded and contracted multiple times over the last dozen or so months. The Bengarians had erected an extremely formidable series of lines behind and in front of the Kotorei River and were proving quite capable of holding those lines, and the majority of us concluded that further offensives were probably doomed to failure without either outflanking on an adjacent front or a new series of fortifications of our own closer to where we currently stood. Thus, we gave up hope of achieving a breakthrough there in the near future and instead authorized the establishment of a new line of fortifications where our field armies currently stood, about 100 km north of the Raeltan Line. We also were quite fearful the Bengarians could successfully attack again and cause calamity if they were especially fortunate, and such a measure would obviously assist in defensive operations and thus weaken their chance of success. Our combat construction teams were asked to do so very much in such a short time, and of course they needed our industrial sector to supply them and thus our industry strained to keep up. The Wesitarians and Likurians truthfully are better at this than we are and always have been, but painfully acquired experience and expertise over the years seems to have substantially narrowed the gap. We were grateful to see the Bengarians were either unable or unwilling to attempt significant frustration and obstruction of our defensive endeavors, so our engineers labored in relative peace.

I toured Kaleusthes in the closing days of the previous month and spoke to my highly competent subordinate Larien, who was significantly less exhausted and strained since the cessation of the bombardment allowed  him to leave the bunkers and do such things as hug his family and relax above ground. The landscape was frightfully marred from the great shelling and bombing, and several large craters stood where the nuclear warheads struck on Crossing Day. He advised what I already knew: that we could not erect facilities until maybe the first week of April, and that the landscape was so transformed from the barrages that his teams would have to conduct widespread terraforming first. He also unhesitatingly confided he didn't believe he could remain commander of the base if he was routinely driven underground for a week or more at a time, and I responded neither I nor his family could go through this for very long either. As much as I dislike sending troops on dangerous missions, there is a very great level of detachment ordinarily, which allows me to be generally exuberant rather than melancholy. It is much different when my friend is effectively under siege, and even worse when that friend's child is my friend/mentee and similarly sick with worry. I assured him the enemy would not be such a threat after the damage we counter-inflicted and that their threat would rapidly decline after that, and quickly changed the subject.

Because the war on our land had been so chaotic and active for most of the month, little of our plans for this period that were crafted a month ago remained intact. Furthermore, those operations and other actions over the last 10 days were prepared for or done hurriedly and sometimes poorly. Everything we set out to do was accomplished in a short period of time and at a frenetic pace. Even our staff meetings were done in this way sometimes, the officers having either to postpone something important or interrupt their rest periods to accommodate such a basic and necessary officer function. Our military at all levels was becoming increasingly frazzled and overburdened, and I assume both Kantaria and Bengaria in general are eagerly awaiting the point at which both sides hunker down during the warmer weather and decline to seriously contest much. I am quite fearful this theoretical recuperative stage will never materialize and our predominately furred troops will be repeatedly taking to the field from now until the end of summer, but perhaps this year will indeed be different from the previous two.

That time had not arrived just yet. After analyzing the reports and weighing various factors and statistics, I found it practicable to mount a general offensive when we had planned weeks ago. The enemy was in a worse condition than us, and our factories combined with the stockpiles we had right now could sustain a generalized offensive for several days. The enemy was in a rather despondent mood, their navy was no longer in a superior condition, the lines they established hadn't been fully solidified, and our military generally was in high spirits despite the chronic fatigue. We would be pushing the hardest on the Western Front, though we would also mount substantial incursions on the opposite front, and in the Center we would be tying down the enemy with what available cannons we had and attempting to give the illusion we were going to try for Kotorei again. We in Supreme Command ultimately were dreaming of a scenario in which Bengaria would be forced to capitulate by this Winter Solstice, and such audacious and relentless drives were the only way to realize such goals. Our most optimistic predictions were the Bengarian military as a whole would psychologically and materially break down under the pressure and either surrender or terrifiedly flee on the outer fronts, allowing us to doubly outflank or dislodge the Kotorei River garrisons. If we were somewhat mitigatedly fortunate, this would happen to some degree in one of the fronts and cause yet another debacle with severe strategic repercussions, possibly facilitating the previous outcome later in the spring. More likely than not, the result of this would be milder but still worthwhile. We found it very unlikely the response would be so injurious to us we would look back upon the decision with regret.

My aggressiveness as a strategist is a surprise to some. It is difficult to imagine an emotional and empathetic prancer electing to attack at every possible opportunity, to be so fixated on the offense that even some marine commanders are uneasy. Early on, from the various forms of evidence and information, I had determined we were best suited to offensive maneuver warfare, and that such was critical to winning modern wars in general. I had long been utterly dissatisfied with the level of stagnation our Eastern Front had exhibited. One factor or another (usually a series of them) had made an earnest offensive in the Kleintrin Forest impractical, so we allowed the lines there to remain where they were and attempted to move them forward elsewhere. Besides, after the catastrophic victories we had won on the Eastern Front at the end of 2014, that front was hundreds of kilometers beyond the other two which gave us far more headaches, and we were unable to either outflank the Bengarians from there in the Central Front, or to sustain further progress in the Eastern Front while the Central Front lagged behind. The lines in that great forest at the end of last month were virtually identical to those of the March before. We had a full grand army heavily trained in sylvan warfare manned predominantly by species with natural sylvan affinity, and extensively equipped with vehicles designed precisely for sylvan warfare, and it has done virtually nothing besides burrow and train because we deemed it foolhardy to try while the rest of the continent was ablaze.

Due to this worsening displeasure with the situation and our general goal of engendering a sensation of dread and panic within the Bengarian military, after a somewhat contentious conference, I and a narrow majority believed we ought to go on the offensive here as well as the other two fronts despite our rather meager supply reserves and the enormously powerful fortifications they have constructed in the forest. While the Army of the Kleintrin Forest would run out of ammunition within 48 hours without resupply and would be confronting very heavily entrenched defenders, we do have advantages in biology and technology. The specialized semi-panzers and carriers, our division of specially trained paratroopers, and our massive numerical advantage in zooanthros which are of "tree-dwelling" species (though prancers who abhor dirt and dangerous labor will be terrible at sylvan warfare regardless of species; I never climbed a tree in my life and have no inclination to start), could overcome the forward and secondary lines, possibly even achieve a large-scale envelopment. However, such heavily wooded zones are subject to special restrictions due to environmental concerns (and the aforementioned species were especially adamant about such terms, naturally), which greatly mitigates our mobility advantages and precludes the use of any weapon larger than field mortars. The offensive will be agonizingly slow and bloody under any but the best of circumstances. However, the Bengarians have counted on this region being impenetrable for physical and psychological reasons, and if they lose substantial amounts of ground, they might start to panic in general across the continent. At worst, it forces them to contest another front and might throw them off balance somewhere.

It is difficult to delineate the start of the offensive because we purposely went on the offensive in a limited and erratic fashion during the first couple of days to confuse and further unbalance the enemy. The Eastern Front abruptly became a ferocious warzone on the evening of 28 March, then just as abruptly went silent after midnight. Intermittent shelling was conducted against the Kotorei Line at approximately the same time, which invariably incited return fire of varying intensities. On 30 March, our fleets set sail to the northeast merely to provoke the enemy equivalent with no simultaneous marine or regular ground offensives, the outcome being slightly unfavorable to us. In all likelihood, Taneru knew why we were doing this, but couldn't be sure of our primary objective or even whether we had one. Generally, our own population and military deduced correctly these were either feints or probing assaults rather than marveled at how inept we suddenly became. The soldiers in general wanted to be unleashed upon the enemy en masse to possibly cause a hastening of the war. They would soon get their wish, though a fair number did not survive of course.

31 March was the first day we actually began a general offensive, and that started as abruptly as the sporadic assaults in the preceding three days. On the Western Front, both grand armies and two panzer armies gallantly assailed the defending and entrenched foe, while the navy conducted bombardment on coastal positions at and near Kalobol, prompting the enemy naval forces from both nations to mobilize and challenge us, a challenge we halfheartedly took up and then departed early, sailing to Kaleusthes and hoping they would follow us. In the East, the 400k-strong Army of the Kleintrin Forest offensively mobilized for prolonged operations for the first time in its existence, the mostly-woodland countrypeople dutifully attacking their foe as they were trained. In the Center, a collection of mobile and static howitzers opened up on their equivalent adversary as well as targets of opportunity, provoking the Bengarian counterparts to return the gesture with equal ferocity. The next day, the action on all three fronts was dramatically increased. Marines were deployed to land on one of several beaches should battlefield conditions become suitable. In the Center, the 3rd Panzer Army was used both as artillery and in their traditional role, though they were not to earnestly attempt substantial breakthroughs unless the enemy speedily unraveled. In the East, 10k paratroopers were sent 20 km north of our lines and jumped directly into the forest, something which was generally thought to be impractical. The non-sapient creatures of the forest surely bolted in a feral panic from one end of the forest to the other as their more intelligent kind tried their utmost to exterminate each other with the limited range of weapons at their disposal.

Our nation seemed particularly fixated on the Eastern Front as their comrades emerged from a prolonged dormant state in earnest, images of raccoons and squirrels and other such races emerging from their fortifications and rushing up trees and towards positions being played to a disproportionate level. While an offensive being spearheaded by my kind and others is rather unusual, and soldiers in the 10s of thousands sniping at enemy forces from high tree branches being even more unusual and intriguing, our nation was captivated by the very grueling struggle there even more so than those factors should ordinarily cause. It seemed the general population was virtually as fed up with the stagnation as we strategists were, and wanted to see us actually accomplish progress there for a change. The proportion of media coverage here would only intensify as reserves and reinforcements from both sides poured in. Even with both sides' adherence to protocols, I am surprised far more of the forest didn't ignite in the days-long struggle which cost so many lives.

We were prevailing on each front, but not nearly to the degree we had hoped. The Wesitarian response to our advances was respectable and vigorous. Marshal Kepler deemed it inadvisable to send marines to where we had intended as we lacked a sufficient degree of supremacy, which meant there was no MAC contingent to assist the main efforts, which meant the enemy was able to slowly and skillfully withdraw. While our panzer units ordinarily would have made deeper and more rapid incursions under these circumstances, they were given very little time to replenish and do proper maintenance and thus our drives were blunted. For the remainder of the offensive, we made dispiritingly little progress on that front, particularly close to the coast. In the Center we had made substantial gains, some hilly outposts being recaptured yet again while our barrages caused an admirable degree of mayhem. A river crossing over the next month is still unlikely, but less so than it was last week. Meanwhile, as the enemy was fixated on the field howitzers and panzers, the construction crews strengthened the front almost unmolested.