Now that you know the basic facts of the war and of the main players, I can get on with my story of it’s history. For the first half-year of the war, the public remained generally unaware of the war happening just around the symbolic corner. Many good ponies were lost defending civilians who didn’t even know what the Royal Militia was doing for them.
Because of the decreased budget as a result of war costs, the princesses were forced to discontinue many of the civilian well-fare programs in place at that time. As a result, the civvies became restless and some even began rioting after some time. The militia was forced to deal with civilian rioting and a widespread war at the same time. It became a hell of sorts.
Many soldiers were forced to pull double shifts. All of us were tired, and it showed on the battlefield. The next year showed a close doubling of personnel loss. The sad thing was that the many mares widowed didn’t even know how their husband died. They just knew that he was KIA, and any attempts to get more information were met with a stone wall.
Suspicion of the princesses and the royal guards became common, seemingly overnight. The guard soon became unable to even do their job, as civilians didn’t trust us enough to let us help them. Our first war, and we were losing miserably. Some of us began to speculate if this was the apocalypse, foretold by high alicorn αίνιγμα.
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Morale plummeted, and for a time, it did seem like this was the end of ponykind. Civilians were beginning to catch on, as a result of several sightings. Panic spread with the rumors, and civilians began barricading themselves into their homes. More towns were lost, all occupants slaughtered by the strange creatures. The princesses began a program to capture the monstrosities to study them and find their weaknesses.
Several of the creatures were captured and brought to the labs in Canterlot. The scientists studied them, but they found no game-changing facts. The only thing they gained was something that we already knew, that the creatures were approximately four to five hooves tall, walked on two legs, had a hunched profile, and had short claws at the ends of their hands. The creatures were also supposedly sentient and had a similar internal system to ponies. None of these facts could really help us in the field of battle.
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The following eight months saw a personnel drop from 21,345 to 13,567. We lost all hope of ever coming out of this war intact. The princesses began calling for desperate measures. None of us foresaw just how desperate those measures would be.