Lieutenant Makoto Minikupa oversaw his men's defensive preparations from an already fortified building. There was no hope of escape, final letters had been written and the regimental flag burnt. Captain Taro appeared silently behind him causing the young lieutenant to jump several feet into the air.
"Is everything ready?" asked Taro.
"Mines have been laid, guns hidden and the last booby traps are going in now," replied Minikupa. "I've issued a hand grenade to each soldier for use when the time comes."
"Well done, nice work with the regimental flag burning by the way. I've never seen a flag so thoroughly burnt. I'm not sure it was necessary to include the stores hut and the CO's quarters but it was impressive nonetheless."
"Sorry, the wind changed at the last moment. Is the CO very upset?"
"Yes but more about his lack of eyebrows than his quarters. Apparently it isn't quite the look he was hoping for when he meets his ancestors."
"Does he want to borrow my eyebrow pencil?"
"Why have you got an eyebrow pencil?"
"This isn't my first regimental flag burning."
After a brief sojourn into Korea I dragged us back to more familiar territory by demanding to play scenario WO 16 - Wildcat Strike. Here a large force of Americans (army, not marines which is odd considering the location) are attempting to drive out a smaller force of Japanese from a very small island so that the Americans can use it as a support base for their conquest of a slightly larger island a little way across the ocean. I am commanding the Japanese trying to stave off the inevitable for one more day.
The victory conditions are a little complex. To win the Americans have to have more troops in buildings west of a road at the top of the playing area than the Japanese. Seems easy enough but the Japanese gain a victory point each turn if they have a good order, unhidden MMC in a building on board 67. They gain another victory point each turn that the Americans do not have a MMC in a building on board 10z. These points are then subtracted from the American total at the end to produce a revised score. The Americans also have to stop the Japanese from amassing 25 CVP which is an automatic Japanese victory. If the Japanese do manage to amass that many CVP they should start planning the victory parade through the streets of Washington DC.
To hold off the ravening American tide I have three officers including a 10-0 commanding nine squads, three elite and six first line. I also have four crews to man the support weapons, two medium machine guns, a 47mm AT gun and a 20mm AA gun. A trio of light machine guns and one 50mm mortar round out the support. In addition to that I have 24 factors of minefields and four fortified building locations which can be swapped for tunnels (which I foolishly didn't do). I also had level B booby trap capability.
The Americans commanded by Dave Wilson are certainly tooled up to do the job. On board he had eight first line squads guided by a pair of unimpressive leaders. They had two mmgs, a bazooka and a 60mm mortar. However his real striking force was in his turn one reinforcements consisting of another six squads, a pair of leaders including an 8-1, two elite half squads to carry respectively a flamethrower and a DC plus a pair of Sherman tanks and an M8 self propelled gun.
I agonised over whether to set up a forward defence or not. Ultimately I settled for a small forward force of three squad equivalents plus the mortar and the 47mm gun. The gun was far on the right looking for a side shot if the American tanks went that way. If they didn't then the crew was well placed to sneak into a building and hopefully snatch a VP after Dave thought he had cleared me out. The mortar went on the hill on the other flank. I didn't expect it to last long but hoped it might hit a unit or two moving through the jungle. For the rest I HIPed a squad forward in the brush (not bamboo), set up a half squad in a rear building of board 67 and garrisoned another building with a full squad. The remainder of my force was back on board 10z with troops with lmgs guarding the flanks and the 20mm in the large building to the rear. I fortified that location neglecting the fact that you need a full squad in a fortified building to keep the enemy out. Basically my strategy was to delay rather than to stope and hopefully run Dave out of time. The minefields I scattered across my front in four lots of six choosing locations where I hoped Dave would run into them.
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| Here is my set up awaiting Dave's pleasure |
So Dave chose the left and the centre rather than the right to launch his attack reducing my 47mm to impotence before a shot was fired. My HIP squad forward was a mistake as it essentially sacrificed an entire squad from the get go. It did indeed break an American squad sauntering through open ground but then laid itself open to a hurricane of fire which I for one thought was a little over the top. Halfsquad scouts had swept away the dummies holding the front line and Dave seemed poised to sweep through the village to victory. On the left Dave recklessly moved a stack of three squads and a leader onto a minefield hex which brought them to an abrupt halt. He would rally these in his next turn but they would all pin trying to leave the hex which delayed them another turn.
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| End of American turn 1. |
The delay to these squads was very necessary because other parts of my defence had failed. The mortar got off one harmless shot before being vapourised by a nearby Sherman. My HIP squad, it's moment of glory gone went down under the weight of American armoured firepower and American squads were pushing into the village. Any coherent Japanese forward defence had failed. Now it would just be a case of how effectively the remnants could scramble to delay the Americans a little longer.
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| End of Japanese turn 1. For the most part cringing under concealment counters and hoping for the best |
Dave spent the second turn consolidating his hold on board 67 and blowing away my two remaining units holding onto buildings in the village. On the left a halfsquad was broken and fled for the cover of some trees. On the right a combination of American firepower and good rolls obliterated the full squad which I foolishly thought was protected by a building and concealment counter. In the right rear a group of sweat lathered Americans hauled a mortar slowly forward. It wouldn't take long before he would abandon the useless piece of scrap iron and bring the infantry forward to support the rest of his crew.
Things looked bleak to me and I wondered if turn 2 was too early for a concession. Firepower had achieved virtually nothing and the one moment of glory with the minefield was all I would get as Dave carefully avoided all the rest. I wasn't done with extracting VPs from board 67 however. Over on the right my 47mm gun crew bereft of armoured targets abandoned its dubiously useful weapon and hurled themselves into a building in time to snatch another VP. Elsewhere I rearranged the deckchairs on the Titanic and hoped that the dicebot would suddenly take a violent dislike to Dave.
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| One crew clings on to board 67. |
The third turn was somewhat mixed for yours truly. On the one hand a combination of American firepower and low rolls exterminated my plucky gun crew without having to resort to anything as plebian as close combat. In the centre he pushed his luck with his open topped M8 and some uncharacteristically accurate Japanese fire stunned the thing for a turn. His vanguard in the centre was similarly repulsed with loss. Normal service resumed on the left as I foolishly attempted to use a medium machine gun for the purpose for which it was designed thus breaking the shoddily constructed piece of crap. Dave, who showed a disturbingly pyromaniacal bent throughout brought up his flamethrower team no doubt hoping to seize the Japanese marshmallow stores. Incidentally check out the broken Japanese halfsquad on the far left, believe it or not those guys would survive almost to the end.
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| Well that's board 67 gone |
The next turn I trashed the useless mmg but managed to break an American squad that had predatory designs on a board 10z building. Everybody else slunk away from the Americans, particularly those carrying the flamethrower. Dave questioned my courage and manhood but I had already realised that the Japanese sole hope of survival was to be somewhere the Americans couldn't hurt them too much. Over the next couple of turns I also started to inch my troops rearward so that they could hop across the road and occupy the victory area. I was somewhat successful in this inasmuch as a few battlescarred survivors did indeed manage to stagger across the road pursued by American bullets and curses.
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| Americans moving forward |
Dave obviously decided now was the time to strike and he advanced across a broad front. Over on the right he ran into a HIP squad with a lmg which broke one squad but cheerfully moved others up to take its place. I wasn't disappointed, I was reasonably confident of my defences on the right and was happy to see a few US squads occupied some distance from the victory road. On the left my defences were more notional than real and Dave swiftly moved to crush what little existed. I was lucky, of the first line squad I had on the left a second line halfsquad limped away to not so much fight as die another day. Before it did so however it killed the flamethrower halfsquad and residual broke an 8-0 which attempted to collect this valuable piece of equipment. On the right I fled rearwards with a most un Japanese haste. On the far left my long suffering halfsquad which had been pinballing from one piece of rally terrain to another since the second turn actually self rallied. Being unable to get back to the victory area without being slaughtered I opted for leaving it in place. If Dave ignored it I might be able to sneak back into a board 67 building. If not it would occupy the attention of some troops who should be looking elsewhere. I also created a tank hunter hero and sent it towards his M8 but said vehicle reduced it to a red smear on the ground before it could achieve anything.
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| My halfsquad has self rallied! Victory is assured |
Dave was now muscling up towards the victory road and in anticipation of some reckless American infantry moves his armour dumped smoke all over the road and the sole halfsquad still barring passage. This effectively blocked the LOS of my 20mm AA gun which I still had not revealed. As for the guys on the right they fought their own little war. I had a squad in a fortified location and for a time they defied American firepower and attempts to move forward.
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| The final push is about to come |
With only a turn and a half to go Dave made his move. Firstly he decided to deal with my poor little half squad on the left who had actually done nothing all game except break, rout and eventually self rally. Dave moved a squad and 8-1 leader against them and suffered the embarrassment of seeing them both break whereupon in a spectacular case of overkill a Sherman diverted itself from supporting the final attack to overrun the thing. That finally killed it. On the right defensive fire had managed to send an American halfsquad berserk but since it couldn't get into the fortified building it was reduced to shaking its fist at the walls.
But it was in the centre that the action was happening. Dave got a significant stack of troops across the road and into a building I no longer had the manpower to defend but it was a different story when he pushed his flamethrower troops forward. These guys (plus another squad) wound up adjacent to my still hidden 20mm who had been cursing the smoke. Presented with a target not shrouded in choking clouds the crew picked up their personal weapons and once again broke the lot. That flamethrower was more of an albatross around Dave's neck than an asset. I think it got off one shot all game.
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| The flamethrower fails Dave again |
With the final turn upon us Dave decided to eschew attacking such troops as I had left. Instead he sent his last remaining stack on a long looping run around to the left avoiding such firepower as remained to me and snuggled into a victory building at the last. I cursed and wept as I felt that I had lost the game. Actually I had felt that for most of the game but to my astonishment when we added up his victory points and then subtracted those for my units west of the road and those I had gained earlier in the game he came up one short. I had won by the slimmest of margins.
I sat back gasping in disbelief. The truth was that I had felt absolutely beaten in this game since around turn two. So much so that my eventual victory was somewhat anticlimactic, like putting lipstick on a corpse (personal note, make sure somebody puts lipstick on my corpse). Many thanks to Dave for the game, for tolerating my increasingly hysterical shrieking and swearing (another personal note, close the window before playing this game, the neighbour's children have a greatly expanded vocabulary). Dave has now fled to New Zealand to rebuild his personal morale before returning to face me. Incidentally you may notice I mentioned nothing about booby traps. On the rare occasions Dave took a pin check eleven was about five more than he rolled.
Lieutenant Minikupa stumbled out of the smoke and saw a red eyed Captain Taro approaching him.
"Not my fault," said Minikupa hastily, "that's the American smoke mortars."
"Did you booby trap the CO's quarters?"
"What was left of them. Does he still want to borrow my eyeliner pencil?"
"No, he wants you to help him find his ear."
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