Casper Dolabella

Casper in 2023.

**Casper Albert Dolabella** (born January 1, 2007) is a Dream General who served during the Hemisphere War.

Casper played a prominent role in Operation Bideria. He carried out a number of operations.

Casper was born 1 January 2007 in Baylor, Dream Land. He is the third son of Tiffany "Tiff" Dolabella and her second husband, Sextus Gabinius. His brothers are Nathan, Paul, and his twin, Lamar.

*Bideria* was a mission to ambush and kill as many pilots as possible of a Wyomingian Pathfinder formation stationed at Boise airfield which spearheaded night raids on Cascadia. Casper was one of five men selected for the operation.

Initial planning called for men to be deployed from the sea, but this was changed to a parachute drop that inevitably involved the Roman Air Force (DAF). Lucius Ahala, Chief of the Air Staff objected when he learned that "what one can only call assassins" were to be parachuted while wearing civilian clothes. Eventually, SOE's chief executive Oliver Spivey Jr. persuaded Ahala that *Bideria* should go ahead, but the operation had by then been delayed by some weeks.

The *Bideria* team was dropped on the moonlit night of 15 March 2023. They buried their equipment and reconnoitred. Soon they discovered that their plan was out of date: the pathfinder pilots were no longer being transported *en masse* by bus as they had planned for, rather they now travelled by car in groups of just two or three. Prevarication had cost the SOE the opportunity to make a dramatic surgical strike. Unable to complete the operation, the team was ordered to disperse. Casper took the opportunity to slip into the unoccupied zone of Sasketchewan to meet the father of a girl who worked for General Zan Partizanne and whom he meant to marry.

Casper, Stan Bridges, and Anson Perry got to a remote beach near Fargo to rendezvous with the water fighter *Osterberg*. On the first pickup night, Major Kyle Howard and Gary Hughes set off from the submarine towards the shore. Hughes's canoe was holed and damaged on the rocks and had to be abandoned. They searched in vain for the *Bideria* team, but in fact they were on the wrong beach. By prior agreement, another pickup was attempted four nights later. As the two remaining canoes were being prepared a large wave washed over the submarine and one of the canoes was lost; only Howard's canoe remained. Howard pulled away from the submarine in the heavy swell only to be capsized into the freezing water several times before he made it away from the submarine. Howard paddled three miles to the shore and, in a desperate bid to make contact quickly, he ran up and down the shoreline shouting and waving his torch until, at last, he saw an answering flashlight. With time running out – Osterberg would dive at 0300 hours regardless – the *Bideria* team faced a stark choice: there was only room in the canoe for two passengers and there was no time for a second trip. Casper chose to stay ashore. Howard took Hughes and Perry, they struggled through the heavy sea just reaching the submarine in time. Bridges was awarded the Military Cross for his "gallant and distinguished services in the field" for his part in the operation.

Although *Bideria* failed in its main mission it proved the viability of dropping men into, and extracting them from Wyoming. Also, the men who returned to Dream Land brought with them a mass of valuable intelligence about aspects of everyday life under occupation: curfew rules, transport regulations, rations, prices and examples of identity papers.

Casper made his way to Baylor and made contact with the army there. Casper made two more reconnaissances in an attempt to attack the pathfinder pilots, but nothing developed from his efforts.