The Comment Commanders’ confidence in the abilities of their artillery spotter and off-map 25-pounder battery is a tad scary. With the finish line of this eight month-long co-op Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord marathon a mere two turns/minutes away, and victory seemingly assured, they choose to launch four rounds of British-made 88mm HE into the midst of a dinky German hamlet alive with Allied vehicles and men!
The first of the QF quartet to make landfall does so a mere twelve yards away from Sherwood ‘B’. Fortunately, apart from some mild concussion, lacerations from flying glass, and temporary deafness, the four Tommies in 15,4,3 escape unscathed.
Round no.2 (ringed in the second image) lands roughly twenty paces NW of its bullseye – the innocuous abandoned Kubelwagen.
Tuck’s penultimate contribution is on a similar line and also short.
At T+57 I stab ‘pause’, freezing the last of the 25-pounder rounds as it plummets towards the still-cursing Sherwood ‘B’.
Unfrozen, it completes its flight, smithereening close enough to one of the hapless Brits to pluck the unlit Woodbine from his lips and rip his tin hat clean off. Otherwise, no harm is done.
If Corporal Fletcher’s driver had been delayed by that smouldering hunk of Eichhörnchenhaus in the road at 15,3,5, or got distracted by the bizarre sight of a homeless squirrel doing a Nazi salute as the halftrack transited 15,4,5, Turn 34 could easily have turned into one of Bounce the Bogen’s bloodiest. Because the crowded M5A1 speeds through the danger zone before Tuck’s crater makers start arriving, Sergeant Olander’s and Corporal Oaks team arrive at the deserted Bahnhof in fine fettle.
As all of the German units engaged this sixty were intent on escape, and SunderLad and Colonel_K now have eyes on most areas of the village and are unable to play Russian roulette with their artillery, in theory next Monday’s turn should be painless for the triumphant Allies.
