Colonel Croesus: Turn 9
The scene in 70s war movie Colonel Croesus where 1st Squad get ambushed by the flak halftrack made a big impression on Master Timothy Stone Esquire. Me and my friends re-enacted it countless times in a local pedestrian underpass. Invariably there would be multiple Private O'Rourkes. All of us wanted to be the selfless BAR gunner who tries to distract/suppress the German death spitter while his comrades retreat.
(Colonel Croesus is an open-to-all game of Combat Mission: Fortress Italy in which Allied forces are orchestrated by commenters while German units are computer controlled. Each daily turn covers one minute of WeGo action. For a scenario outline and accounts of earlier turns, click here)
The Comment Commanders' O'Rourke proves just as plucky as his celluloid inspiration.
And suffers precisely the same fate.
The reversing Crabmeat 1 establishes LoS to the far end of the row 3 tunnel a few seconds too late to save the prone automatic rifleman and his pals.
By the time the Sherman is in a position to contribute, the fearsome Flakvierling has fallen silent and the motorised centaur it's mounted upon has realigned, perhaps with a quick getaway in mind. A brace of 75mm shells from the flail tank (the first, AP, the second, HE) scotch that scheme.
While Crosbie's crab is busy immolating centaurs in the north, Nemchik's is hard at work flushing out machinegunners in the south. Rounding the ff20 corner in LEAD, Crabmeat 2, spots the MG 42 man whose leaden squirts holed two 2nd Squad soldiers near Belinda in Turn 6.
The tank's bow Browning swivels swiftly but not as swiftly as the Thompson of Sergeant King, one of many GIs pushed into ZINC this turn.
The situation at T+60. ZINC appears to be enemy-free. 95% of the chamber is in-LoS and the shack has been investigated. Crabmeat 2 has limited LoS into SILVER.
One of the survivors from Croesus' HQ is patching up casualties near Belinda. Other seriously wounded friendlies await attention at jj13 (5) and z3 (8).
Having somehow managed to make a meal of a simple reverse order, the Achilles is a few map squares west of where it should be.
The halftrack wreck and attendant smoke column mean Crabmeat 1 can see relatively little of the northern quay.
