The Great Escape – The Movie

Looking down from the hill overlooking the camp Snappers opined “We can’t let this go” Dougers agreed with him and the only dissenting voice was Vaggers. “Look you two; we’ve only just freed you from the clutches of the German Army, who’s left to rescue you if we all get captured this time.

He looked despairingly at Bunty and received a blank stare back.

These are my responsibility said Snappers, this is my land and they are my people, he’s never really got over the concept of medieval fealty.

Look they’re even interning the Clergy and the Sisters from Mother Teresa’s Nunnery or whatever they call it.

I didn’t like to point out that these were Catholics and he’d been at war with the Catholics ever since Good Queen Beth’s time.

OK, lets do it, how do you want to play it out I asked. He looked vaguely disconcerted and then responded, the same as always. Oh no, not the knock, knock who’s there I asked. Well is there any other way.

I suppose not, I guess you want me to be the knocker I asked resignedly. Of course old chap – you do it so well he grinned.

Knock, knock I smiled at the grim looking SS guard on the outer barrier.

What the hell do you want Gerda replied.

Err – I have another batch of prisoners for you I responded.

You’re not Jim or Fred she said, they’ve been driving the trucks with the Internees.

Err – no, I tried all of my charm but met a stony reserve.

Looking over her shoulder I could see the 2nd gate and wondered how the hell we were going to get in if she wouldn’t let us through.

Bugger off - she suddenly said when the dice roll finally went her way. We’d spent quite a while with me trying my charm against her brains but as they say brains will do as brains will do, although I’ve no idea what that means. We both realised what I was trying to do wouldn’t work.

Well I did all a man can do when spurned by a woman. - I shot her.

Yes I know it wasn’t such a gentlemanly act, I had a double barrelled shotgun and she had a bolt action rifle, but equality is overrated, never go into a fight unless the odds are on your side.

Go Go Go I shouted to Bunty who had been sat quietly in the driver’s seat of the truck. She’d been listening to her man trying to charm another woman and failing completely. She shoved her foot to the floor and the big truck leapt forward. Crashing into the big wooden barrier it pushed it out of the way like a piece of matchwood.

Gerda was down on the ground bleeding like a stuck pig, although I’ve never seen a pig stuck so not really sure what that looks like.

Don’t imagine it’s very pleasant though.

Even from where I was standing I could see the whites of the Italian Guards eyes as Bunty drove the truck straight at the gate. He raised his rifle but a little too late as there was a resounding crash and the truck burst through.

He jumped to one side and didn’t get crushed as the truck careered into the compound.

It flicked to the right and started to roll, Ingrid and Luca the guards jumped out of the way as did the Rev Green, he was surprisingly lithe for a man of his size and years, but the Nuns were caught unawares.

Sister Monica was killed in the blink of an eye and Sister Matilda was thrown 10 ft into the air before landing with a crunch and she was out of any fight there might be.

Reactions varied throughout the camp. Major Kamilla Altman of the SS was stunned but Amelia Frost thought that now was a good time to indicate her disapproval at being rounded up and interned in the camp. Her walking stick twitched and she really would have liked to bring it down on Kamilla’s head, but quickly realised that she was probably too old to start a cat fight, as she’d heard them called, and it might not have the desired effect, so she stayed her hand.

Ingrid of the SS and Luca both devout Catholics, although Ingrid can’t admit to it, rushed forward and tried to help the Nuns, as Kamilla a devout self server runs forward with her gun in hand to check the truck. She sees the limp body of Bunty Hampster-Crust in the driver’s seat and relaxes a little.

Most of the guards are stunned by this turn of events, although not as stunned as the occupants of the truck.

Bunty the driver is out of the fight as is Mad Patsie who was sat in the back. Snappers, Dougers and Spankers are still conscious even if a little banged about. They gradually collect them selves and make their way to the back of the truck.

Bunty me love screamed Vaggers as he ran forward to help his beloved woman. He should have been paying more attention to what was happening elsewhere, but love is blind and Fiore the guard saw him coming and fired off a single shot from his bolt action rifle.

Fiore is a bit of a good shot and even though Vaggers was running fast enough to break the 100yards school record, it wasn’t fast enough to outpace Fiore’s bullet and he was hit, - hard - and went down and wouldn’t get back up in this fight.

Snappers, Dougers and Spankers slowly climbed out of the back of the upturned truck. Snappers and Dougers being pragmatic men saw that they were surrounded with gun toting German and Italian troops and threw their hands up in the air.

Spankers though, failed her brains test. She’s going to do something silly. She should have run but instead drew her pistol and opened fire on the nearest guard who happened to be Luca the Italian. He was so surprised by this that even though he had his rifle at the ready Spankers was too quick for him. He was even more surprised when she hit him between the eyes and he fell dead. It was no consolation that she’s not a very good shot (she has other attributes) and it was just a lucky random 6 on the dice. Dead is dead as they say in the morgue.

That’s when the brown stuff really hit the fan and everyone started shouting, running and in some cases even shooting.

Retribution for Spankers ill considered action was swift but inaccurate. Giuseppe off to our left opened fire on her, missing by a whisker as well as everyone else in that crowded area. Of course Snappers and Dougers had already hit the deck, these old pro’s move quickly when they need to and that probably saved them.

I use a random activation, weighted to the best characters and the next to activate were Spankers and Snappers.

Snappers, who strangely has a very Anglocentric view on life, knows that a true English Gentleman doesn’t surrender one minute and then pull a gun on his adversary the next, it’s just not cricket, so he just stayed on the ground.

Spankers took a more considered view of her predicament and with the words that Arnie would make famous years later she shouted “I’ll be back” and ran through the gate and as far down the road as her legs could carry her. Until recently she’d been a pretty handy 100m sprinter and indeed one of Snappers prized possessions is a photograph of her in the Berlin Harriers running kit. The flying boots that she’s taken to wearing lately hardly slowed her at all and she was covering a lot of ground very quickly.

A few bullets whizzed past her, but the guards were winded having to run to get into position to fire and nothing came anywhere near her.

Well the two old Duffers, I mean hero’s are incarcerated again, this time in a place a little more secure than a cellar in Greater Snoring.

No one has escaped from the Cooler – yet. Of course they are the first English occupants of the place so that’s not such a daunting fact as it might seem. Given a teaspoon and a bit of wood they will soon have a tunnel underway.

The small hospital is full to over flowing, patients are laying on the floor because there aren’t enough beds and of course there is no nursing staff either. Sister Matilda who has the skills might have helped out if Bunty hadn’t run her over and was a little miffed that she was sharing the floor with the erstwhile Bunty and the other intrepid rescuers Mad Patsie and Vaggers.

Vaggers might have enjoyed his sojourn in the hospital with three young women if the floor wasn’t so hard and the wound in his leg didn’t hurt so much. There was the added disadvantage that there was no medication or pain relief available either, however :-

It was better than the alternative, as the Reverend Green surveys the 3 new graves and wonders who is occupying the fourth one that was already there this morning.

Well as plans go, trying to charm your way into an Internment Camp wasn’t such a good idea and driving the truck through the barrier didn’t work as well this time as it did with the shop window in Greater Snoring.

You live and learn.

Years ago someone called something like Affrik posted a number of games using the Pulp Alley rules and in one of these he has some Agents enter a Secret Facility using forged documents. Each encounter was a combat between the good guys to see if they could persuade the bad guy’s that their documents were genuine, or it might have been the reverse, it was a long time ago. Anyway I’ve always wanted to use the idea of breaking into a camp of some sort with the same idea. It obviously didn’t work here but now I have something to break into I’ll try and find his game report and see what his criteria were and probably have another go.

Thanks for reading – if you did.

Cheers