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World War II: Mission 4, Holding the Bridge

War Master (Owen): Yes, a great War Master Indeed.

Lambert’s Losers
Lt. Dick Dan (Ben): Our fearless squad leader, Distinguished Service Cross.
Private (E-2) Destry Lambert (Evil Mike): Our commando medic.
Private (E-2) Charlie Winters (Mike): Not sure what he does, Distinguished Service Cross.
Private (E-3) Hector Goldman (Steve): Armored Vehicle Crewman, bronze metal.

We’d had a long hiatus from our Savage World War II game. I think we were all ready to see just how well we could hold the bridge against the German onslaught. Some of us were less than prepared. I brought an old character sheet and Ben’s character was still written on a small yellow piece of paper. Oh well. (Later, I did find my latest character sheet tucked away in my Weird War II book.)

Since it’s been awhile, I’ll recap our mission. Hold the bridge until reinforcements arrive. If we can’t hold the bridge, we’re to destroy it.

Lt. Dan and Goldman check the buildings on the German side of the bridge. The buildings are clear. Winters and Lambert do a dramatic task to set the demolition charges under the bridge. On the first round they get a club and Winters needs a 7 (after all of the penalties) for a success. Lambert’s help gives him a +1 and together Winters ends up with exactly a 7! …using his d4 demolition skill. One success down and four more to go. Things didn’t go well after that. On the fourth round they still need three successes to get the charges set. They managed a single success for the round. Now they needed two on the last round. Winters critically fails his demolition roll…BOOM! The damage is rolled. Lowest damage ever—only 6 points. This Shakes Winters and Lambert. That could have gone much worse. Thankfully they are lousy at demolition.

A German truck followed by a Panzer IV appear at the edge of town and are heading towards the bridge. Lt. Dan and Goldman open fire. About that same time a French women with a baby carriage is also heading along the banks of the canal towards the bridge. She loses her grip on the carriage and it rolls into the water. “Epargner mon bébé !” she cries. (Translation: Save my baby!)

Winters rolls another critically failure while trying to climb around under the bridge. He falls into the canal. He can’t swim.

Lt. Dan fires the bazooka at the German truck and rolls 8 points of damage. I point out that he’s rolling the wrong dice for the damage. He rolls the correct dice and gets 13 points of damage—still not enough to stop the truck. (Loser.)

The French woman jumps in the canal to save her baby. She doesn’t appear to know how to swim. Lambert skillfully does a somersault dive off of the canal bank into the water. He plans on saving the baby and the women. Winters splashes to the canal’s steep bank. (At least he didn’t drown.)

As the truck turns down a side street near Goldman, he throw a potato masher into the open window of the truck. Goldman doesn’t have a throwing skill and its medium range and it’s a difficult shot. A -6 penalty. Goldman rolls an eleven and makes it! The explosion kills the driver and the truck hits the building Lt. Dan is in. The Panzer IV shoots at Lt. Dan’s position in the building and misses. The shot goes wide and hits the building across the street where Goldman is. The building partially collapses, but Goldman is unharmed. Lt. Dan jumps out of a second story window onto the truck and rolls a critical failure! He takes 18 points of damage. Lt. Dan soaks it all. (That’s our leader!)

Write-up note: My notes from my iPad says “Winters doors a German.” I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, so I’m going with “Winters shoots a German.”

Winters shoots a German. He was one of two German officers that were heading along the canal banks apparently searching for the French woman. Lambert is able to grab the baby.

Now the battle with the Germans is in full swing. Goldman is having a continual firefight with Germans who are continually outflanking him, but he is holding his own. Lambert now has the baby and the French woman and is heading for the Allied side of the canal to get them to safety. Winters has scrambled out of the canal and moves towards the action to help Lt. Dan and Goldman. (Write-up note: it occurs to me that for this entire time Lt. Dan and Goldman have been holding off a truck full of German soldiers and a Panzer. Yeah, that’s the stuff we’re made of.)

Lt. Dan drives the truck out of sight of the panzer. A German throws a potato masher through the window of the truck. Lt. Dan takes a wound but soaks it. The truck takes a wound (its door is blown off and the steering is affected. The truck can’t turn left.) Another German notices the truck but not Lt. Dan. He assumes a German is driving the truck and jumps in beside Lt. Dan. Lt. Dan draws his pistol and shoots the German besides him. This is the beginning off a short, up-close gun battle between the two. It ends badly for the German.

We sight more Germans entering the town—a tiger tank and halftrack. The allies are coming towards the town from the other direction, but we can see they are woefully outgunned by the Panzer and Tiger tanks. Lt Dan calls for us to blow the bridge. Unfortunately the bazooka is laying in the road. Only Goldman has a chance to grab it, but he’s doing a fighting retreat against a squad of Germans. . Lambert, the baby, and the French woman all make it out of the canal and head for cover.

As I said earlier, the gun battle in the truck ends badly for the German. Lt. Dan Kills him then throws the truck into reverse to get the back to the bazooka.

The panzer destroys the oncoming Allied Sherman tank.

Goldman runs across the street and grabs the bazooka.

Lambert and girl run towards the Americans.

Winters and Goldman jump into the truck.

Another German Tiger tank shows up.

Lt. Dan backs the truck out from behind the building and heads towards the bridge…in reverse. Somehow Goldman and Lt. Dan switch positions in the truck. Goldman’s now driving and Lt. Dan has the bazooka in the back of the truck. Winters grabs the bazooka from Lt. Dan and shoots the panzer IV for no effect.

Us escaping backwards in the truck trying to cross the bridge and escape the advancing Germans.

Us escaping backwards in the truck trying to cross the bridge and escape the advancing Germans.

Goldman crashes the truck (intentionally) on the Allied end of the bridge and bails out. Knowing the Panzer will shoot the truck next, the smart move would be to jump into the canal. Goldman has a phobia of water so he instead jumps to the nearby shore—well within the burst radius of the panzers shot. Winters and Lt. Dan are still in the truck.

The panzers shot misses the truck and hits the bridge! The bridge collapses. The truck falls into the canal. Winters and Lt. Dan jump free.

A perfect ending for us! The bridge is destroyed. We’re all safe. And by the looks of it, we followed our orders perfectly.

Lt. Dan gets the Distinguished Service Cross for acts of heroism. Goldman and Winters get nominated for metals, but only Winters gets one—the Distinguished Service Cross! Unfortunately Goldman’s goldbricking past still haunts him when it comes to medals and such.

Write-up note: I know the guys (especially Mike B.) will read this and catch that the account for Winters is a little off towards the end. That’s because my notes conflicted about just where he was during the end of the battle. So I went with something I made up.

Oh, and image you just read this as an entry in the journal of Pvt. Goldman. I forgot to write it that way, but I’m sure you have a good imagination.

Pvt. Goldman, E-3

World War II: Mission 4, The Taking of the Bridge

War Master (Owen): Fair minded and makes beautiful sounds when he speaks. (Yes, I still need Bennies.)

Lambert’s Losers
Lt. Dick Dan (Ben): Our courageous (stupid?) squad leader.
Private (E-1) Destry Lambert (Evil Mike): Our commando medic.
Private (E-1) Charlie Winters (Mike): Still not sure what he does.
Private (E-2) Hector Goldman (Steve): Award Winning Armored Vehicle Crewman.

Journal Entry June 4th 1944 (still)

This has been a pretty busy morning for us. I’m not sure why they need the 16 million other guys.

Our next goal was to take over a nearby bridge and hold it until reinforcements relieved us.  The bridge was in some nameless French town. We stealthily advanced upon the town. That’s when the German machinegun opened up on us hitting Lambert and Winters. Fortunately neither was wounded. I laid down suppression fire in the area around the machinegun and Lambert rushed the building in true commando style.

During Lambert’s assault on the two German’s manning the machinegun, Evil Mike needed to roll a 6 on a d6 to hit one of the defenders. Mike was rolling FIVE d6’s. He missed—not a single 6. So he through in a Benny and rolled again. He missed again—no 6’s. Evil Mike spends a second Benny and rerolled. He missed a third time! Not a single 6 was rolled after rolling FIFTEEN d6s! Now Lambert is stuck in a room with two angry Germans.

I did manage to kill one of the two Germans with Lambert right away. It was close though. I tried twice more to kill the remaining German but my gun (dice) went cold. I eventually killed the last German. I have no idea what Lambert was doing while I was trying to save his life.

In the meantime, Lt. Dan and Winters where cleaning out the buildings on the other side of the street. Winters took a couple of wounds during the action and decided to join Lt. Dan. With the Machinegun nest cleared out, I laid down suppression fire so Lambert could make it to the building where Lt. Dan and Winters were holed up. Lambert patched up Winters.

The fighting through the rest of the buildings went pretty smoothly for us. In no time at all we were ready to assault the bridge.

Lambert and I took one side of the bridge’s defenses, while Lt. Dan and Winters took the other side. Our plan (Lambert and me) was for Lambert to assault the bridge while I covered him. Unfortunately we didn’t count on the superior reflexes of the Germans (nor the incredible Agility rolled by the GM.) I watched as the Germans cut down Lambert like so much Swiss cheese. Enraged, I charged the bridge with my combat knife. Fortunately Lt. Dan and Winters had easily handled their side of the bridge and were able to come to my aid. My assault with my knife failed miserably. Also fortunately the German solider I attacked was so surprised he missed me with his attack. Lt. Dan killed him. I’m able to kill the remaining German and bridge is ours.

Now we must hold it. What could go wrong?

Private Goldman

World War II: Mission 1, A Gun Not Too Far After All

War Master (Owen): A deadly opponent in any arena.

Lambert’s Losers
Lt. Dick Dan (Ben): Our fearless squad leader.
Private (E-1) Destry Lambert (Evil Mike): Our medic.
Private (E-1) Charlie Winters (Mike): Not sure what he does.
Private (E-1) Hector Goldman (Steve): Armored Vehicle Crewman.

Journal Entry June 4th 1944

One quick note about my squad mates, specifically our medic, Lambert. Although the kid’s a smart as a whip, he seems to miss the most obvious observations. (Game terms: 14 skills, but no Notice skill.) I think he’ll be ok though, as long as he doesn’t step on a German mine like our last medic.

There was a rumor going round that on June 5th something big was planned. So it was no surprised that our unit found ourselves covertly assaulting a beach in the dead of night on June 4th. Our primary mission was to destroy a coastal gun emplacement, but we also had two secondary missions: locate some mobile artillery and call in an air strike, and locate and hold a nearby bridge. We must be the best of the best.

Our landing went well, except for the part where our rudder got caught on a floating mine. Lt. Dan did a fine job of risking his life to get us free. Next we snuck by the German sentries on the beach and climbed the cliffs to reach the area where the gun emplacement was said to be. For once intel was right.

We easily found the bunker that housed the gun. After some tense moments at the entrance, we silently entered. Grenades were freely tossed back and forth between us and the German guards. Since those failed to killed the guards, we resorted to the old fashion way: bayonets and bullets.

I managed to save one of the guy’s lives with a dead-on spray of bullets from my Thompson. After that is was routine kill and cleanup. We destroyed the gun and got the heck out of there.

After saving what’s-his-name’s life in the bunker, Lt. Dan put me in for a Bronze Star and a promotion. Seems I’m an E-2 now and out rank the other guys. I’m never going to live this down. (Game note: The only way I could get a promotion was to roll a 20 on a d20—which I did. I’m that good.)

We have a 5am deadline to find the mobile artillery. Fortunately we’ll have the help of the French Resistance. Hopefully there will be some beautiful French babes like you see in the movies that will be made of the war later. We can find them (both the resistance and the babes, I hope) in the village of Vierville-Sur-Mer. (Did the Muppets name all the French villages? Just asking.)

We have until 10am to find and hold the bridge. We’re to destroy it if we can’t hold it.

Sounds like another beautiful day in the army.

Pvt. Goldman