NUTS - Poke Poke - Game 4

“Hiya Sergeant Ryan” – Bloody hell - he’s finally got my name. Yes the Captain again he’s obviously got some other mad hair brained scheme for me and the lads.

“You did well with that search and destroy mission and I guess your men will be a little in need of a rest”. Wow, we are off to Paris, wonder where my clean uniform is, showers, beer – no I’ll have wine – no I wont, let’s have whiskey, all this went through my head in seconds.

“Well I thought maybe you would like to take over from Abrahams” – hold on a minute Abrahams is in the front line trenches I said (in my head) “yes” the Captain went on “we are pulling his squad out for a bit of R and R and need someone to take his place. There does seem to be some indication of German activity along your front, but don’t worry it will probably come to nothing”.

GREAT!!!!

The boys weren’t best pleased when I broke the news, their language was a little less restrained than mine had been.

Well here we are in the trenches, not very deep trenches because if you go too deep you have dug a well and water seeps in, making it even less comfortable, it’s starting to get dark, the guys are in position. Dokes 5 and Mears 3 are in the forward OP, in the left trench is the BAR McKlusky 5 and Smith 4, in the centre trench is Me, (Sgt Ryan) 4 and Wilson (my wing man) 6, over on the right in the woods is Cpl Bolton 4 and Cornwall 4. Further over on our right is C squad, they know what they are doing and so I am not going to interfere there.

There are 4 PEF’s on the table, 3 of them directly opposite my position and the other one which is insight of C squad, is resolved as just being wind in the trees, lets hope mine are the same.

All 3 PEF’s move forward but one is faster than the others, Dokes and Mears take the in sight test, Dokes fails to notice it (probably asleep but no one wants to ask him when the action is over) but Mears is more awake and sees a Half Track bearing down on them. He did good and ducked down, waking Dokes, the boy is learning. Next move they both decide to stay quiet, that MG pointing out of the Half Track looks nasty, maybe it will go away. No it continues to roll forward and that’s when Dokes woke up to the fact that it was coming straight at him, he looks at the wheel span, and then the width of the trench, bugger it is going to fall right on top of us he hisses to Mears, we gotta go. They both run and amazingly the half track gunner fails to see them in the dark, the driver also fails to see the trench and the front wheels go down in to it.

Dokes joins me in the centre trench and Mears goes into the wood with Cpl Bolton, the truck has a couple of goes to reverse out of the trench but is stuck fast – good – in sight of my trench – bad. The follow up PEF turns out to be a full squad of infantry.

We blaze away at them and they blaze away at us, men go down, Dokes is stunned by a close miss, BAR man McKlusky also stunned, I duck back from the volume of fire and so there is only Wilson left firing back at them, nobody hurt yet but things are not looking good from the centre and left of our position. Over on the right Bolton and his 2 men in the woods are still in action.

Next move we fail to activate on the left and centre, only Bolton does but the Germans advance with determination on the woods leaving their MG team and a few men to keep our heads down. Bullets are flying all over the place, Bolton goes down OOF, Mears takes one in the head OD, only Cornwall left in the wood. Smith over on the left takes one and goes down OOF. McKlusky, Dokes and me are ducked back from the weight of fire, - only Wilson is still fighting back in the centre, Oh Oh we’re in trouble.

Cornwall is firing effectively from the wood but the next turn he and our centre (me) fail to activate. McKlusky incensed that Smith has been hit, finally gets into action, he jumps up, beats the enemy MG team in the insight test and guns them both down, the bad news is the rest of the Germans charge. Everyone on our side is getting a little panicky, but no one runs, and Wilson even fires as they come in but misses, although this makes one of the Germans think hard and he halts while thinking.

Fierce hand to hand fighting ensues, we are very lucky and generally win against the odds, but Cornwall does down OOF. The Germans are now down to 30% and pull back.

With the fighting going on I was so excited I forgot about the remaining PEF. This now became 2 PEF’s and moved forwards and resolved as 1 and a ½ squads of the meanest, ugliest looking Germans you ever saw.

We are now down to 4 men fit to fight (there is some dispute about me being fit for anything) facing 15 Germans.

We all blazed away but they were in the open and we were in trenches, when the smoke cleared after 1 round of firing, McKlusky was down OD, Wilson Dokes and me were still in the game, but 2 of the Germans were OD, 5 OOF and 3 cowering behind the half track. Next turn 2 of them went down and the rest headed for the hills, we let them go.

Over on the right it had been quiet, but now a German LMG team turned up, I think they were lost, they blundered into C squad and got cut down.

We got the wounded back to the field station, and the rest of the night passed quietly, in the morning we counted the cost.

Germans 7 dead 11 wounded and now prisoners and 10 retreated. Plus 1 captured Half Track, the Captain’s driving round in it now.

We lost

Ken McKlusky - RIP - BAR gunner extrodinaire. That's French for the best. He will be missed.

Ernest Mears – RIP – looks like I was right – he didn’t make the grade.

Cpl Ray Boulton – light wound and back for next mission.

Pvt Clint Smith – BAR loader, ok but drops a rep 4 to 3 and back for mission 7.

Pvt Raymond Cornwall – OK back for next mission and Rep now 5 from 4.

Survived unharmed

Sgt John Ryan rep 4

Pvt 1st Class Eric Dokes rep 5

Pvt Richard Wilson rep 6

I would like to point out that I don’t use Star Qualities or any of the other advantages for my leader – me. So I stand as good a chance of taking one for Old Uncle Sam as anyone else.

If you are still here - thanks for reading and I greatly appreciate any thoughts and comments you make.
Cheers