Battle Within An Army Base

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Emermouse

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Okay, I’m writing YA post-apocalyptic fiction. Lately, I’ve been having this idea kicking around in my head basically of a Stalingrad street-by-street battle, but within the confines of an army base. If I were to use this idea, how close am I teetering between realistic and unrealistic? Because after all, you can get away with some unrealism, but there comes a point where there’s only so much suspension of belief can stand. So is this scenario semi-plausible or should I stage the fight somewhere else.

Though if I were to go with the army base scenario, could someone provide a generalized map for me? It doesn’t have to be anything real specific, but I know bases in general can serve as mini cities,
complete with housing and all the other day-to-day amenities needed for families: like schools, restaurants, recreation, etc. I just want to have some vague notion as to the layout of a place, like where the barracks would be in relation to everything else, how things are generally mapped out.
 

Bing Z

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Fort Bragg, NC is the largest military base in the world, accommodating 57,000 personnel (according to Wikipedia) & complete with streets, museums, hospitals, parks, and pretty much everything you will find in a decent-sized city. You can check it out on Google map.

The bigger question is why are they doing street-to-street battle in the base? If the base perimeter is breached, chances are the base will fall, and why don't they do a tactical retreat? Will the enemy nuke the base instead of sending in vulnerable soldiers? Is there nowhere to retreat to? Is this a surprise alien attack? Or, as in Red Dawn, surprise North Korean attack?
 

FletcherHavarti

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Every base is laid out differently. I spend a fair amount of time at McGuire (Air Force) and its neighboring army base, Fort Dix. There is a guarded perimeter, but once inside, it feels like you're in a small town. There are homes and families. I think a battle inside an army base would look more like an invasion of a town, with lots of civilian casualties or lots of prisoners. Many people on the base would be unarmed. It would be ugly.
 
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mrsmig

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I'm an Army brat and lived on numerous military posts most of my youth. My strongest memories are of Fort Campbell, KY, where we were stationed the longest (six years). Here's a map of the base. If you zoom in, you can see that the most populated part is in the east (bounded by US 41A). That's where most of the gates were located, and the majority of the housing, schools, rec centers, commissaries, post exchange and other residential amenities were just within that perimeter (our last quarters at FC were just off Choctaw Loop, in a housing area called Cole Park, which at the time was where the ranking officers lived).

Beyond the residential areas were the "military" parts of the base - HQ, offices, barracks, etc. At Ft. Campbell, the further west you went, the more you were in what we called "the reservation." The firing ranges, war-gaming areas, etc. were all out there - and, according to rumor, a secret nuclear facility. This facility, called Clarksville Base, was decommissioned right after my family moved to the area, but the area around it was still heavily guarded and very much off-limits at the time. Although I was quite familiar with the eastern edge of the post, I never saw its western perimeter.

In addition to the secret nuke facility, Fort Campbell had some other oddities - for example, my dad would sometimes take us kids to the reservation to show us a cave, or a beaver dam or some other nature site he'd discovered while on maneuvers (that area was quite a wilderness at the time, and judging by all the green on the map I linked to, it still is). There was also a herd of American Bison out on the reservation, and a big unused stone quarry near Cole Park (also off limits, but kids used to slip out there to skinny-dip). It was an interesting place to grow up, and had I not been such a "good girl" I might have gone exploring more once I got my driver's license. But I knew if I got into trouble it would be reflected on my dad's record. Family behavior factored into a soldier's fitness report back then, and trouble at home could certainly affect opportunities for promotion. (It may be less of an issue now, but it's certainly something to research, particularly since you're writing YA.)
 
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lonestarlibrarian

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When my dad was Navy, and my grandfather was Air Force, we always lived off-base, and most of my memories are of being inside buildings, rather than of the layout and such. However, when as an adult I visited Sheppard AFB a few times to meet up with friends, I was surprised at how much like a good university campus the place felt like. And, like a good university campus, if you didn't know where you were going, or what certain buildings were for, it was easy to get lost or turned around. So unless you have good intelligence or insiders to point you in the right direction, there's a good chance outsiders will be fighting blind, and one building's meaningfulness vs another building's meaningfulness will be indistinguishable.

A relative of mine was kayaking down a river that flowed past his house. I don't know if he went down a branch, or what, but he ended up being escorted out... because the waterway he was on went (through? past?) a nearby base, and they were doing some sort of war games/training on the river at the time, and he had no clue. I don't remember if they were using live ammunition at the time or not. If I had to make an educated guess as to where he ended up, I'd pick NAS Patuxent River. But it's an example of how, in the case of landlocked bases, the ones I've seen have been encircled by a good perimeter fence... but for more coastal bases, they're less easily contained, even by accidental intruders... but at the same time, it also doesn't necessarily hem the insiders from escaping if they're trying to flee danger.
 
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