Your suggested listening for this week's journal is below, a classic Civil War era song, "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

Eleventh November, Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Seventeen

Dearest Shelley,

Many years ago, during my time serving as a junior officer in the deserts of Utah, I spoke with an old grizzled trapper who warned me that the most dangerous animal is one that has been beaten, shot, or mauled to the threshold of death. We were that animal today.

What mangy columns, what tattered formations marched into Columbus after last week’s crushing defeat in the cornfields of Iowa. I cannot blame you if you imagined that by this time tomorrow, you would be serving coffee and finger cakes to General Dantonio and his officers. After Dantonio drove off Franklin’s Army of Pennsylvania, and with the hardships and depletions our own forces had suffered, it seemed inevitable that, if Dantonio and his Spartan Corps did not defeat us outright, our victory would taste just as bitter.

But it was not to be. I must credit Colonels Wilson and Schiano for devising the perfect stratagem to entrap, encircle, and utterly dismantle the Spartan Army. But all their best laid plans would have been useless were it not for the mettle of our frontline assault troops, as well as the gallantry of Sergeants Weber and Dobbins, who led furious charges into the disarrayed and dismayed ranks of our enemy. The battle was all but over by the middle lull. In previous battles with General Dantonio, I have often played the fool, and my forces have too often failed to execute their orders to the standards we set for ourselves. Today was nothing of the sort. For the lion’s share of the battle we dictated the pace and utterly had our way with the Spartans, who could only mount two paltry counteroffensives, neither of which came to much, and both far too late to effect the balance in either case.

I’m afraid we are now victims of our own success, as we have captured more enemies than we have the capacity to feed and care for. Some will be traded away in prisoner exchanges for those of our own who were taken, such as Corporal Jones, but the rest must be seen to, and for that there are no easy options. We may need the assistance of the populace of Columbus to see to the needs of these men, to ensure that they are treated with the mercy and charity due to Christian men. Let us not be Romans, let us not salt the fields of Carthage when they are already salted aplenty by Spartan tears.

I cannot say what this victory means just yet. Surely our continued survival depended on repulsing Dantonio’s attack, but beyond that the future is murky. Our losses in Iowa may yet be impossible to recover from, and uniting the entire continent under the Buckeye flag may be a fever dream now. Nonetheless, the destruction of Dantonio’s army means we are now well on our way to winning this war of Fourteen Armies, a war that soon will pass through Illinois, before taking its final turn north, toward the wastes of Michigan, where General Harbaugh awaits.

Yours forever,

General Urban Francis Meyer