GOOD MORNING VIETNAM

It's a long story but I've been playing a few games using the internet, Email and WhatsApp to communicate and last week was my turn to create a scenario and host the game and as I've just done a round up for the two guy's who played, I thought I might post it here as well.

Basically I stole the idea from the film BAT 21 which I watched years ago, I enjoyed the film then and found a poor copy on YouTube and re-watched it for idea's. It's set in Vietnam in the 60's and early 70's, a country and war of which I have very little knowledge, a bit like zombies and disapproved of at the time, but I was young and thought we could change the world for the better and look how that turned out.

I have a wiki link to the actual operation to rescue this man and it's absolutely amazing what was done to effect his rescue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Bat_21_Bravo

Anyway the main thing was we all enjoyed sending each other links to music videos, the music is something we all had in common and it was great to hear some of it again.

The view from a Huey looking down on a small hamlet or village, surrounded by trees and vegetation and you can just hear the Stones singing Paint it Black as the choppers arrive. I did think to put a video link but while I think the music is outstanding I'm not sure about the footage, I'll leave that to you.

This post will just be the information I sent to Sgt Owen Snapcase and Cowie Long Oi and the next one will be how the game played out. When I sold them the pitch for the game I wanted to avoid all the pre-conceived ideas wargamers bring to the table. You both know what your objectives are, you know where the enemy is, you know who's on who's side etc etc.

I've found the original sales pitch and so added it here.

Vietnam Background
OK listen up men, this is the background story. It’s not as tense as the recent hostage situation we’ve experienced and it’s not as entertaining as the future Throppet confrontation we are about to experience, but it’s the best I can do to bring you down to some serious wargaming roots.

Four teams, two Charlie, and no surfboards, two US, also no surfboards, you are individually one of these teams so could be on the same side but not allied or could be antagonistic. You’re operating in a large expanse of fairly virgin jungle and so might never meet up, but then again you might. This is Vietnam in the 70’s, the drugs are good but the music’s better, watch where you step because it could be on a mine a punji stick or your CO’s pet snake.

Briefings done and will be sent shortly, whoever says "don’t call me shortly" will get 10 points deducted and a black mark. I still haven’t done anything to round up my previous game so don’t expect to have a clue how this one scans either, all I’m hoping to do is create problems and tension, there’s no point’s for being sent home in a body bag or being buried in an unmarked grave for the wild animals to dig you up and crunch on your old bones.

Extra points will be awarded for videos linked to good music or napalming innocent forests. Although anyone caught shooting unarmed and defenseless women will suffer 3 nights on a bed of punji sticks followed by something really nasty.

I’m planning on three actions a gaming day, morning, afternoon and night, mostly I don’t expect much to happen, what dangers lurk unseen in primal forest? Once something happens I shall ask what you would like to do, until then it will just be following your overall orders/requests, so I’m hoping it’s not too boring.

I’d like to involve you both where I can, even if you are not involved in the actual conflict or situation if that’s OK with you both. So for example if Doug runs into a water Buffalo then Martin might be the Buffalo, although with it being Vietnam the Buffalo is probably not called Martin but Chew En Li or something similar.

Wish Celia Happy birthday from me and how about putting Ride of the Valkyries on for Tuesday/ Wednesday, I can kick off as soon as you get back based on the info I’ll send.

So all they knew was that there were 2 potential US operations and 2 Vietnamese ones, neither knew if they were both on the same side or opposite sides in the conflict and initially one of them had no idea what his objectives were.

The Recon Team 

This was the info sent to the Mad Lord Snapcase.

Specky Brown leading the 4 man team of Recons out of the jungle after a 7 day patrol. He was Pointman for the team but his second speciality was demolition, he liked blowing things up. Life was so much simpler with a pound or two of plastic, you knew where you were, unlike being the point man in the jungles and marshes of Vietnam in the 60’s. OK the music was good but the job was wearing his nerves thinner than a sliver of bamboo from a Punji stick.

Second man in the patrol was Owen Snapcase who had been a sheep farmer in Australia, a job he hoped to live long enough to return to, he still had a couple of months before this tour of duty ran out so he didn’t dwell too much on that future.

He was the lead NCO for the team and that responsibility weighed heavily, even though the situations they usually found themselves in tended to lead to team decisions. However, he was the one who had to write the letters home.

He automatically watched the left of the path, scanning the trees high and low for any signs of movement. He maintained his distance from Specky, knowing that if the VC were good at their job they would let Specky pass, then open fire on himself and Mike Jones the next man down the line. Of course if they didn’t know their business he would see Specky cut down in a hail of bullets but that would enable the team to react in the proscribed manner. Either bringing the wrath of their God down on the enemy, or run like the Devil was after them.

Mike Jones was the Pigman, he toted an M60 GPMG on which he lavished lots of care and attention because it generally fell to him to bring down the wrath of his own special and unforgiving God on the enemy.

Conversion for them was swift and certain.

He was the counter weight to Snapcase, checking and rechecking the right hand side of the trail, especially high to the front. He knew Specky had all his senses attuned to the area down the trail, knowing that the two men behind were covering his flanks and rear.

James Green was the last man, he toted the radio and covered the back trail, his head and body in constant motion as he swiveled from side to side like some contorted dancer. Currently he was carrying his SLR casually as he reported over the radio that they were coming into the fire base and to make sure everyone was awake to that. The team didn’t want any trigger happy GI thinking they were bandits at this stage of the patrol.

The Team - Left to right

Specky Brown - Specialities Pointman and Demolition duty. Armed with an SLR assault rifle, bayonet, throwing knife, 2 frag’s, 2lb’s of plastic and 2 Claymore Mines.

James ‘Jimmy’ Green – Specialities RTO and Medic. Armed with SLR assault rifle, bayonet, 2 Frags, 2 Stun grenades and 2 Claymore Mines. Plus his Radio.

Mike Jones – Specialities Pigman and Medic. Armed with an M60 GPMG, 9mm Browning Automatic, fighting knife and 2 Claymore Mines.

Owen Snapcase – Specialities Intelligence and Point. Armed with an Owen SMG, .22 pistol with suppressor, Fighting Knife, 2 Frags and 2 Claymores.

You will realize by now these guys are part of the small Australian contingent fighting in Vietnam, how Mike Jones acquired his M60 is a long story.

The chaps are all 20mm and very old.

The Opening

SNAPCASE – the CO wants to see you now. These were the first words the team heard on entering the relative safety of the fire base. “This is not going to be good” thought Snapcase.

“OK lad”, - Snapcase hated it when the CO called him lad, “we have a bit of a problem”. “We do – do we” Snapcase responded, “Well - yes we do, we’ve gone and lost a Lieutenant Colonel, about 60 miles NW of here” “Would that be in Laos” “Yep about 10k over the border” was the laconic reply “Your team is the only good one I have right now, go and get re-supplied, the choppers will take off in 30 min and you need to be onboard.” “Once you’ve got things rolling get back here pronto because fortunately for you we have a man who’s was in that area 6 months ago so he might be able to give you some useful information” “Off you go lad, chop chop” I'm not sure what a Yorkshireman was doing in Vietnam but hell who cares.

The Briefing

One of our Electronic Counter Measures planes was on a routine flight when something hit it at 30,000 feet, we still don’t know what but it seems likely they had too many incoming SAM’s to deal with. Unfortunately one of our leading ECM experts was trialing some equipment on the plane, a Lieutenant Colonel Donald Harrington. He is one of our top men in the field and it’s vital he doesn’t fall into Charlie’s hands. 

A satellite passed over, 20 minutes after the plane went down and it’s picked up a signal from only one rescue beacon, the one that was assigned to the L.C. so we’re pretty sure he got out of the plane and was fit enough to activate the beacon on parachuting down but we have no idea what condition he is in, or what his intentions are. As we’re not picking up any other beacons it’s quite likely he’s the only survivor.

They’ve already sent a Bird Dog to have a look see, but his initial report is that the area is heavily forested and the intel is that there’s no way to get a chopper to land close to the Harrington, either to pick him up or drop you off, the obvious LZ’s are all likely to be hot. Snapcase thought about the Bird Dog, a small single engined plane flown by brave men who tried to make contact with downed pilots to direct them to pickup spots to be rescued by choppers.

"Ok let me hand you over to Captain Warez".

"Right listen up Snapcase, you are in luck because of the Soft Cushion initiative", Snapcase gave his best blank, noncommittal look, the one that was usually interpreted as “What the hell are you talking about – moron.” 

"Some clever bit of thinking at HQ decided that we could cover vast tracts of the country by having a number of chopper landing sites carved out of the jungle". "These were created roughly 30k from each other and so we can drop a chopper into one of these sites and you should be within 30k max from your target, this gives an easy landing hence the Soft Cushion". Snapcases look changed from the “What the hell are you talking about – moron” to the even stonier “Are you as mad as you sound – moron”. 

Warez continued “unfortunately the one that is closest to Lt Col Harrington wasn’t created and so we have a ring of landing sites around his position but not where he actually is, so you will have a 30K hike to get to him".

You do realize Sir that the best speed we can hope to do through thick jungle is 2k per hour and we will get killed moving at that speed. To stay alive we need to move at 1K and that’s going to take 3 days to get to the L.C. 10 hours is all any one can travel in a day even when we’re really pushing things, after all there’s only 12 hours of daylight.

Warez, continued as if he’d not heard, “Now the clearings were created 18 months ago and the project was halted so they may be a little overgrown by now". Snapcase didn’t waste his time with the 3rd level of incredulity, it would be completely wasted.

"So think of the area as a clock face, the L.C. is in the centre and there are landing places at 2, 4, 6, 8,10 and 12 o’clock, 12 is north and 8, 10 and 12 are in Laos". "We’ve no reason to think that any of them are better than any other although we believe an off shoot from the Ho Chi Min trail runs between 10 and 12 o’clock". "There are a few villages in the area but we don’t have them plotted and we believe that there will probably be trails between these villages, but nothing shows up from the air". "Oh and the only other thing is that there might be a strong VC presence in the area but we don’t know if it’s concentrated in a specific location or scattered throughout the area, it’s only a rumour you understand and we don’t really know how strong it might be".

The Game Information.

This is the map of the area. Ignore the scale on the side, that is Hexagons and 1 hex = 2k. I didn't realize at this point that hex's don't work for the level of accuracy we were going to have to deal with.

If you are on a trail you can move at 4K per hour but make some noise (not a lot) and leave some tracks, you can move at 2K and make virtually no noise and leave virtually no tracks.

Moving through virgin jungle halve the above moves with the same results.

The satellite orbits over the area twice a day 04:00 and 16:00 hours and will pick up Harrington’s transponder beacon signal and this is transmitted to your base and the Bird Dogs base immediately, however you are out of radio range of your base. The Bird Dog can transmit this information to you when he is in the air and you can communicate with him at the same time but not when he’s on the ground.

Harrington has a hand held radio its range is between 5 and 11 Kilometres, it is not constant and depends on various factors but basically a D6 each time he tries to use it. The battery has a limited life of 12 transmissions, plus or minus 3, the battery indicator will tell him near to the time when it will run out. He can talk to the Bird Dog when he is in the air and in range, and will also be able to talk to you when you are in range.

Charlie is unlikely to have sophisticated radio tracking equipment but will almost certainly be able to use his radios as a poor radio direction finder and hear your open air transmissions, if he is in range. Note your radio is more powerful than Harrington’s 8 to 16 Kilometres.

You need to select 3 of the landing places as your drop off point, numbering them as 1 to 3 in order of preference in case one or more of them are hot, these need to be in a row. Eg 12, 2, 4 so if 12 is hot you go to 2, then 4 if they are all hot you will need to assault the last one to get down. You will have a Jolly Green Giant to fly you in and a Huey riding shotgun. Due to the amount of time since these sites were cleared it’s highly unlikely you can land but you will be able to abseil down, this will be a problem if the LZ is hot.

You need to have a pre-arranged pick up point and time, you can change this if you can contact the Bird Dog and you will have a pre-arranged code to change the time. The other option will be to transmit to the satellite as it passes overhead but it will be a one way communication and you won’t get confirmation.

Before you leave you can create a number of messages for the satellite so 01 could be “changing rendezvous point to No 12”

Just create a number i.e. 1,2,3 etc and allocate your message to each number. For example - Drop food at current position, send Bird Dog immediately. That sort of thing, just remember there is no 2 way conversation and you can only use a prearranged message.

Each man can carry 7 days of food and water, but Harrington has no food or water. You each carry 4 reloads of ammunition for the M60 and you can substitute 1 reload of ammo for 1 man days of food and water.

There will be water available in the form of streams but this is likely to give you a gippy tum at best, so should be avoided although depending on how long you are getting to Harrington he will be drinking it from day 1, he might get hungry and go searching for food, but he’s not going to find much so may be weak when you get to him depending on how long you take.

I’m going to assume the Claymores are re-settable and you would normally use them to defend your position overnight then pick them up in the morning. They are detonated by either a trip wire, standing on them or remotely with an electronic signal, better than watching TV.

I’m assuming simple GPS is in operation for the US military, I don’t think it was but this should make things possible for you.
You have a GPS receiver but Harrington doesn’t, you will only know where he is when the Bird Dog identifies him. The Bird Dog also has GPS. So you should know where Harrington is when the Bird Dog tells you but you can’t direct Harrington to a GPS position. He does have a hand held compass so you could try and move him in the right general direction, just don’t expect too much accuracy from this and he is more likely to run into trouble if he’s on the move, remember he’s a boffin not a field man.

Your objective is to bring your 4 man team out alive, the US Military objective is that you bring Harrington out alive, or if that’s not possible he must not fall into the enemy’s hands, you are expendable to the military.

I’m sure I’ve probably not thought this through well enough but any questions go ahead Sergeant, because you’re leaving in 30 minutes.

Good Luck

So team Snapcase have a positive objective, I had a couple of other things in mind to add to his troubles if it was looking too easy.

Viet Cong

This was the info sent to Doug (no longer EM4)

You are Cowie Long Oi an officer in the North Vietnamese Liberation Army, you have been sent south from North Vietnam and your mission is to ensure that the local V.C. commander in the Ba Dang area is performing his duties to the highest standards. Once you are satisfied that everything is in order you will return north along the Ho Chi Min trail taking with you any Imperialist prisoners that he has in captivity. They will be displayed in Hanoi on national and international television and you will receive a commendation from your Commanding Officer and maybe a promotion as well.

You have completed a 500 kilometre trek from the north and this is the camp you’ve arrived at. You are not in a happy mood, you should be fighting the Imperialist Americans in the east instead of skulking down the Ho Chi Min trail through Laos to this back water area and even worse on your arrival the local commander was drunk, there were no men on guard duty, and food supplies were very low.

You have been here 1 week and the intelligence you have gained is not encouraging. The Ba Dang cell of the local VC takes its supplies from 3 villages, Aguioc about 22k north east of your camp, Buiong which is the largest village and only 2k to the N and Cang which is 50k ESE.

The area is sparsely inhabited they haven’t had any American activity for over a year apart from the occasional spy plane passing over head and so the local VC seem to have settled for a quiet life and are happy to extort food and other supplies mainly from Buiong and Aguioc, Cang is too far away for them to bother with although there is a local VC Organizer in place there.

There are three immediate problems that you are aware of, there are other VC cells poaching on your area, sending patrols and extorting supplies from the villages that should be supplying you exclusively, the other linked problem is no one knows where these cells are based. The 3rd and most pressing one is that there is virtually no food in the base.

They know that there are isolated families and maybe also small villages or hamlets of a few buildings scattered around the area but because the VC don’t need them to survive no one has scouted the area adequately to give you any better information on their location. The locals are quite happy not to have your ‘protection’ indeed the local VC are more gangsters than revolutionaries. 

There are tracks between the three villages and your men can move fairly quickly on these tracks, about 4k per hour, they make some noise and leave some tracks, they can travel slower at 2K per hour and are much quieter and leave very little trail. Should they decide to move through what is virtually virgin jungle these distances are halved. The VC are quite fit and will travel for 10 hours a day but that makes it a 3 day round trip to the furthest village.

The Ho Chi Min trail comes down through Laos and on to Cambodia, there is an offshoot trail to the north west of your camp, this is the way you came in and the way you will return, you saw no evidence of enemy activity on your way down but you have been told that the Americans made some small clearings in the jungle about 18 months ago, big enough to land a helicopter but that’s all. Due to the speed of jungle growth you are informed that it’s very unlikely a chopper could land now and the previous commander has no one watching them and hasn’t done for the last 9 months.

By good fortune you know of 4 of these sites - A is 26K SSW, B is 8K WNW C is 22K NE and D is 36K E of you. There are no exact locations and if you decide to send a scouting party to one or more of these sites they will have to find them as they will only know roughly where they are.

The Ho Chi Min trail runs roughly NE to SW just off the NE edge of this map, your track to it runs from your base between the discovered overgrown Landing Zones B and C.

Just a tip the VC used noise to signal enemy troop movements. They would trail the Americans and either fire a round every now and then or they would use 2 bamboo sticks knocked together, apparently the sound travels quite a long way. We’ll say 6K for an explosion, 4K for gunfire and 2K for the bamboo, that’s probably miles out but will do for the game.

The situation on prisoners is even less encouraging, there is one Imperialist pilot in captivity, he is very sick and has been badly treated, your assessment is that he would die if made to march the 500k back to N Vietnam. So after coming all this way it’s quite likely you will go back empty handed and there is always the possibility that the Americans will hear of this prisoner and send a snatch squad over the border to free him and bring down retribution on you.

You have a 12 man squad of NVA troops that are under your direct command they are well trained, disciplined and armed, there are 24 VC who are none of those things. Within an hour of your arrival you put the local commander under arrest, threatening to shoot him out of hand, this has put the fear of God (Buddha maybe) into them and they are anxious to impress you.

These are your Regular North Vietnamese Army, they are good quality troops, certainly the equal of regular US troops in the jungle. In addition to them, there is you, a medical officer and 2 specialist Radio Operator’s who are able to use the main radio in your base camp. The main radio has unlimited range but might have intermittent problems due to hills, trees etc in communicating with your local troops, it is too heavy to take out of the hut it’s located in and does have limited Radio Direction Finding capabilities, you just align the antenna until the receiving signal is strongest and that gives you a direction, it doesn’t help with distance though. The backpacked radio’s with the squads are of dubious quality with a range of 8 to 16kilometers, again depending on obstacles and could also be used to get a rough idea of where a radio signal is coming from but with much less accuracy than the main radio.

  
Note the ones with no names are for figures I don’t have and will sub someone in there.

These are your local VC and are of more dubious quality than the Regulars.

Each squad has a radio and a LMG but you can split them up however you wish. As with my previous game NCOs help getting troops to do what you want them to, in this case all NCOs will help with this because I’m guessing you might want to cover more ground and have more independent commands.

All your NCOs have a compass and a watch, all your NVLA have a watch but the VC don’t. It’s very unlikely your NVLA will desert but you can’t say the same for the VC, one or two of them might have had enough of this war and want out.

The jungle is a dangerous place with quite a lot of wild animals, most of which will avoid you but there might be some that won’t, same with people although maybe not so many of them. I read of a couple of instances where tigers carried off men, not a pleasant thought but one I wanted to incorporate into the game, it didn't happen though. :(

You have spent the last 5 days building up food supplies and have 240 man days food on hand, that only equates to 6 days worth and none for your captive. A man can carry 6 days of food, so when you send your patrols out they will only be out for a max of 6 days unless you rendezvous with more food. To maintain the status quo of food supplies you will need to allocate 3 soldiers to organize the transfer of food from the villages, they will act as guards to keep the necessary number of villagers hard at work carrying your supplies. Alternatively you could allocate 8 soldiers to do this and leave the villagers alone. The villagers are not happy working for you.

I’m not going to count rations but I just want to ensure you have men doing mundane daily tasks around the camp.

This is your camp, 3 huts and a large tent, the huts and tent can each sleep 12 men, you have 40men including you, plus the American prisoner and now the ex commandant of the base who will have to be accommodated and guarded. The 3 huts surround a small open area but there is so much growth around the place that you are very confident it can not be spotted with the normal aerial photographs and only a low flying chopper or maybe a spotter plane might see it.

It’s now the morning of the 7th day since your arrival, what would you like to do? Nothing is a perfectly valid option.

OK I'll leave it at that point and come back with how the game played out. There's a lot of detail in the post and I've left it in there because I'm hoping for some thoughts on the ideas I've either come up with or will come up with in the next post.

When I was putting this together I realized that the VC searching for the Rescue Squad was going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack and so I decided that I would have an event chart so that things would happen for both players even if they didn't meet on the map. I would then use the events and try to weave them into my story, strangely this worked remarkably well.

Initially I had lots of problems with the mechanics of the game, map movement, scale, ineptitude on my part and for the first few days I thought it was a dud and wasn't really happy with it. However once I sorted this out  and the movement and action started flowing I really enjoyed it and think I might try and do another Vietnam game in the future, hence my comment above, anyone who can suggest different ways to do things will be more than welcome.

By the way I have a new fellow signing up to follow the erratic blog, If you are the Whiteface I hope you are it's really nice to see you here, It's a while since I looked at your blog but I did search for quite a while to see if you were anywhere else in the ether. Please look at my opening post for my original thank you.

Well if you're still here, well done and thanks.

Take care