We had to rerun parts of it three separate times, once because I had messed up on record keeping/unit placement, and twice because, well, we got massacred. Looking back on it, I made a some big mistakes in using the "Active Military/Bluehelmet" template for the railroad police, and I probably shouldn't have given them Kevlar. I may have also been overly-enthusiastic on the number of "surprises" I popped on my players.]
Caleb
Our work started just before midnight, hitching up our wagon and loading it down while Kate and Jimmy rode ahead to scout for unexpected danger or any sign of a setup. No trouble on the road. We were gone an hour later and arrived at the meeting point south of Towne's Hollow at around four o' clock.
Kate
I did what I could in what time I had, setting up three sniper positions on each side of the gorge. Most of them were on the military crest, at 400 to 450 yards away from the rails and blockhouses.
We didn't find as much cover as we would have liked. Of course there ain't no such thing as enough cover when one is being shot at, but a foxhole at least would have made me happy. In this rocky terrain we would have needed pickaxes and a few more hours for that, so what we got was less "fox hole" and more "ostrich scrape". We dug as much into the ground as we could and made use of boulders and pebble-filled sandbags for cover. It would stop rifle fire (assuming they could even hit us at this range), but wouldn't help much against explosives or heavy machine guns.
Jimmy
Doug and Henry were at the trailhead with their wagons. Some of their folks were slow to arrive, so while we waited I lead the kids in a few verses of some old Baptist standards: Victory in Jesus and Marching to Zion. The marauders didn't much like it (Presbyterians, I guess), so we started singing Great Judgment Morning instead. They really didn't like that, so not Presbyterians either.
First surprise of the day: one of Doug's lieutenants was missing… Doug says he fell and broke his leg. They brought four more zombies to make up for it: armed with two cheapie revolvers, a breach-loading shotgun, and a muzzle loading musket. That meant we'd have to rework our order of battle somewhat, but it didn't hamper things too badly.
We thought they'd like our new concoctions, those soup-can grenade launchers. They didn't seem all that impressed; one of my shotgunners told me not to blow up myself, the train or him with my bottle rocket. That hurt my feelings a little, but if I had known why he was so contemptuous of our handiwork I might have walked out of the gorge right then and there.
We were all in position and had planted the charges when the train came through at about nine o'clock. Our second surprise of the morning was a flatbed car loaded down with sandbags and being pushed by the locomotive. Landmine protection. Should have suspected they would have had something like that.
A longer train meant that the charges would be going off just a bit than I would have wanted. A miscalculation on my part (it is surprisingly hard to guess speed and distance for a moving train) meant that they went off even closer still. It was pretty funny watching the lead car turn into a pillar of sand, slag, and splinters. It was disconcerting watching the rear car getting engulfed by the blast and physically lifted off the tracks. We were still wanting to be gentle at this point, knowing good and well that sending the cargo up in flames could have very killed everyone in the gorge.
In addition to the cratering charges, I thought it would be a good idea to get some concealment between ourselves and those Kenyan machine gunners. I had two more satchels packed with something I had leaned about from MacGyver (lava soap, rat poison and tile cleaner) and we also set some tires on fire, shrouding us all in a nice, think, inky… highly toxic smoke screen. Here's hoping the Kenyans didn't have thermal imaging equipment.
Steve
They had other things to worry about. Two were lounging around near the rear exit and Kate's snipers started the show by dropping them. I ordered my squad to advance cautiously at first, but we threw caution to the wind when we heard the chatter of their FN MAG firing at Jimmy's teams.
Third surprise of the morning: the Hendersons had said the blockhouses were very poorly designed, with no vision ports anywhere except on the front. We didn't learn otherwise 'til two of the blocks were pulled away and carbine barrels took their places. I yelled for everyone to drop and pop smoke. Two of my men were too slow: one went down, seriously wounded, and one, lightly wounded, went running in the opposite direction. I was tempted to shoot that coward but I didn't want to waste ammo (he came back later and helped with wounded).
We advanced under a cloud of smoke, still moving fast so we could silence those guns and link up with whatever was left of Jimmy. Four Kenyans had gone out to retrieve their fallen comrades and we slammed right into them. I opened up with the M2 carbine, AKs and M16s blasted at each other through the smoke, someone threw a grenade, someone lost an arm trying to throw it back. In the end we fought with hatchets, machetes, bayonets and rifle butts. Moving on to the blockhouse…
Jimmy once told me never to use your enemy's door when you can make a new one, so we plugged the door and both firing ports with satchel charges and did just that. The bombs went off, we swarmed the breaches and they kept fighting. One of my men had his head blown off, another was wounded, we once again had to settle it in melee.
Two men dead, one more probably soon to die, one psychiatric casualty… all Gone In 66 Seconds. That leaves two of us intact… now for the hard part.
Maria
We do better on my side of gorge. Hear explosions, start walking. Hear gunfire, start running. Get shot at, drop, fire smoke grenades, start running again. I get shot but is no problem, Kevlar is a beautiful thing.
Our Kenyans not so brave, prefer to hide in blockhouses. We have to be little smarter in getting them out.
Hendersons had told us to avoid front and side of blockhouses, had been concerned about possible landmines. But something I remembered from history—Fort Eben-Emael, land on roof and attack from above— I doubted they would mine their own roof, so I shimmied up top, crawled to front and tossed two satchel charges into machine-gun nest. I jump back off roof just before it goes airborne. Satchel charge is like big firecracker: singe fingers at worst if set off in hand, blow off arm if set off in fist.
We blow door off hinges and charge in to mop up survivors. Only seven of twelve still alive but they fight like demons, even with bunker falling down around them, and we have to kill two more before they surrender. We have two of our own wounded and only take 60 seconds to seize blockhouse. Plenty of force left over to assist whatever is left of Jimmy.
Kate
Jimmy was doing okay. Those machine gunners must have been firing blind, because it looked to us like the tracers went nowhere near them. Must have wanted to unnerve the attackers without the risk of hitting the train.
It was we who were in trouble. The Russians had Kevlar body armour, and it must have been the good kind because they shrugged off most of what we threw at them. I tried to make limb shots but the other "marksmen" could barely handle torso hits, so trying to take down the train guards felt a lot like bludgeoning them to death.
[GM: Kate had so much trouble with the railroad troops, and my brother was so insistent that no body armour in the world would stop multiple full-sized rifle rounds, that I decided to make any "pained" damage from the same turn cumulative: pained+pained=wounded, wounded+pained+pained=combat ineffective. I may or may not do this again in future battles.]
We focused our fire on machine-gunners and squad and fireteam leaders. They returned fire (blindly, I think) with AK74s and GP25s, but the ranges were on the very fringe of what those weapons could do. More worrying was the PKM and RPK74 fire from rooftop cupolas on the two troop cars. Worst of all?
Fourth surprise: armored turret on the locomotive sporting a ZPU1anti-aircraft gun. It stitched the sides of the gorge with high-explosive rounds, disintegrating a boulder that one of my snipers was hiding behind and then disintegrating her.
Having a standard machinegun open up on your position is bad enough, but anti-air machineguns tend to have better optics, better mounting and higher rates of fire. There was nothing for me to do against that kind of firepower but curl up into as small a shape as possible and hope that Jimmy could do something about it.
Jimmy
"Bloop."
"Boom!"
Oh, that's why the Henderson Men were unimpressed by our grenade launchers. Because they have M79's. Well, at least it took care of that gun on the locomotive.
We had expected the Russians to detrain and advance on Kate's snipers when they came under fire, at which point we would cut them down in the open. They were not obliging us, so Plan B was for us to fire on the troop trains and try to take some heat off of her people.
I didn't much like leaving my foxhole (soil was better for digging at the bottom of the gorge, so we didn't have to settle for skirmisher's trenches like Kate did) but there was nothing to fire at from the front of the train and it was over 100 meters to the first troop car, out of range for most of my fireteam. I told them to make a beeline for the train and assault the first troop car: one on each side and two on the roof.
There was an explosion up ahead in the second train car and I learned that they had at least one more Bloop Gun. What was all this that had been said about not hurting the train and its volatile cargo too badly? Right.
Kate
In all fairness, I think they were more worried about the train hurting them. The grenade exploded outside the car, the Russians dusted themselves off and were soon laying down murderous fire on three Henderson Men in the back. Before long it was just one Henderson Man and then there were none.
Bullets and grenades were still pinging around our hillside, but at least we had some freedom of action now that the big guns were silenced. I popped up and laid down fire on the second car, my comrade did the same with his old self-loading Nazi gun. There didn't seem to be much fire on the other ridge, and I later learned that the team over there was down to just one kid with a rusty old Mauser. It was some time around here that they finally did start detraining and advancing up the mountain, realizing that we were better long-range shots than they.
Jimmy
Oh, NOW they decide to rush the snipers. Back to Plan A I suppose.
I had ordered one of my men, the blooper, to hold back and secure the locomotive, which had caught on fire after the blast. The conductors had surrendered and were immediately dragooned into firefighting efforts. So it was me and the Winchester '94 on the roof and two men on either side with their "Lutys". They were about ten paces from the doors and hosed down the enemy as they tried running for cover. I fired on one of the Russians who had reoccupied the machinegun cupola and sent him sprawling. Even the blooper got off a few shots, firing buckshot from his grenade launcher instead of his shotgun.
We kept this up for several seconds. The Russians were so desperate to get at the snipers that it didn't seem like they even noticed us. Well, it didn't seem that way right up until one of them turned around and fired a grenade into the troop car on which I was standing, blowing it to smithereens and sending me flying through the air.
Steve
I slung the M2 Carbine over my shoulder and relieved the Kenyans of their FN MAG. I know Jimmy swears by that ancient little gun, but I feel ridiculous carrying a rifle with poorer range and knockdown power than my revolver.
Looking down on the gorge, I could see a column of men trying to make their way up the rigdes, being taken under fire from the front and back. So at least some of Jimmy and Kate's people were still alive, and seemed to be doing well. Maria's team had already opened up the Blue-Helmets with one of their own guns, so we did likewise and within a few seconds the battle was over.
Caleb
Join the support branch they said, get your chance to drive fast cars, operate heavy machinery and shoot big guns.
So why was I back here with the lowest of Henderson's zombies, shotgun in hand and mule under butt? I know someone has to guard our rides but why does it have to be me? I ain't even the best rider.
Oh well. I was in that clump of trees for about a minute when I saw the two red flares go up (meaning "bring pack animals and come for pickup", yellow or white means "leave pack animals and come for reinforcement", green or nothing means "cut your losses and get out").
I think they should of launched the yellow flare earlier. The battlefield was covered in bodies, theirs and ours. Jimmy had a broken arm and Kate had a gash in her neck. Most worryingly of all, I noticed two vigorous plumes of smoke starting to rise from the train, the same train who's cargo we had been told to try our very best not to shoot or set on fire.
I hope we never rob another train again.
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