but the most inexplicable of all is when people started remembering deaths that hadnt happened. soldiers would freeze in place, weapons pointed at each other, suddenly both recalling being killed or killing. sometimes both at once. support personnel would flee an area able to give no rational explanation for the urge, followed by a bomb or mortar strike blowing the place apart without warning. we eventually figured out, after the coalition volunteer forces destroyed the time machine, that the people who had died in multiple abandoned timelines were the ones who began to be aware of the temporal manipulations.
to this day some still think the cvf were simply people opposed to war, but the open secret is: recruits came from both sides and the core of it was made of special forces and the hopelessly sacrificed- men, women, and everyone else who had died in a majority of the presidents resets. one of the most feared units of the cvf was formerly a mess outfit. rear-line cooks who had been outflanked and annihilated dozens of times. thirty is the most we can verify. they became battlefield reapers who could find their targets in any conditions. once they had slaughtered members of the presidents personal guard in enough timelines, those soldiers started trickling into the cvf, too.
almost none of that core group remains. some took their own lives, but most just left, never to be seen again. in the new world, the only crime punishable by death is time travel, and some say that these missing heroes simply could not stop.