Skirmish Campaign: Mountain Recon

At last! The 91st Recon Squadron is sent back in to action, this time in mainland Italy. The main mission is to locate Allied forces  in the Ponte della Morte valley. It is late fall/early winter 1943 and the mountain valley that lies "somewhere north of Salerno" is often clogged with fog off of the many streams. This coupled with the chaos of war has left a jumbled mess of both Allied and Axis lines. The 91st entered the valley over the mountains, coming into the map at the top right corner. The hex selection dice chose that the first sub mission should be 6-5 (6 right and 5 up), graciously removing and slog over unknown territory without prior reconnaissance. The mission generation dice ruled that a small German recon patrol was headed over the mountains and must be turned back or destroyed. 

November 1, 1943 

Upon arriving in the mountains above Ponte della Morte and begining to plan my infiltration, I was alerted by a runner from General Brasspants that a German patrol was headed our way to scout the mountain trail we had just came over. Calling my second in command Sgt. Cox over to me, I told him to assemble a scouting party to ambush them as they traveled.

Cox chose Corporal Wood, our BAR man, Private Phillips, an ace with a rifle grenade, and Private's Martinez and Harding. Martinez had been located in Sicily by our British allies and returned to the unit. He was itching for revenge against the Nazis. 

Sgt Cox and his patrol set up in the woods overlooking a stream. Taking cover in the rocks and trees they watched as four German Mountain troops carefully followed the stream in single file. 

Suddenly the German point man gave a cry. He had sprained his ankle on the stream bed but his cry startled Cpl Wood who opened up his Browning Automatic. The rifleman with a bum ankle speed limped forward firing his rifle as the scouting force was caught by surprise. Martinez and Harding jumped forward firing rifles to no avail as they scrambled for better shooting positions. The German machine-gunner fired at the movement, wasting his belt.

 The German squad leader aimed his sniper rifle at Cpl Wood but was unable to get a clear shot. Wood fired first, shaking the sniper and one of his riflemen but emptying his magazine in the process. Pvt Phillips made a break for a better shooting position as Sgt Cox rushed the fence with his trusty Thompson. Hobbling Heinrich shouldered his rifle and fired at Cox, who slumped over the fence and lay still.

 The German Gebirgsjager squad started to retreat in an orderly fashion. The cowardly sniper and squad leader made a break while the mg34 covered him.

 Phillips, angered by Sgt Cox being hit, lobbed a rifle grenade into the Germans. When the smoke cleared, the clumsy point-man lay blown to bits, the machine-gunner sat stunned, and the remaining rifleman attempted to get up, even though badly wounded. Martinez felled him for good with a rifle shot.

 As the surviving machine-gunner fled, the men surrounded the Sergeant, he was still breathing. the rifle round had smashed the top of his helmet, shaking him up badly but leaving him physically unscathed. 

I played through the battle using the Fistful of Lead rules for combat and activation. Solo mechanics were a combination of Herkybird's WW2 Skirmish rules , and various Five Men/Five Core supplements. I forgot to remove a joker from my card deck. It had been used in a previous non campaign game as a random event die and functioned as an ace in the card order. When it was drawn, I rolled a random event from the Five Core random event supplement. The poor German had an accident  which set off the entire firefight. I had not planned on using random events in battle but after this serendipitous experience I think I will continue to leave aces in my deck to trigger random events.