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Once Upon a Time on the Western Front


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52 minutes ago, Warts 'n' all said:

In fact he has a little french poupee who works in the local Bureau de poste, and she collects them from under a rock in a nearby field. The poor deluded girl thinks that Paulina Fassbinder is his maiden aunt.

Ahhhh, that adds a new level!

Book me for Episode VII and VIII „The Last Sergeant“ and  „Return of the Last Sergeant“.😀

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1 hour ago, StieliAlpha said:

Ahhh, I see you have the story line very well thought through.

Will we see a panel with Hirsch and the firing squad at the end? Or will he receive the Ritterkreuz nevertheless?🤔

Spoiler. He dies on the eastern front sent there by Paula’s lover - a high ranking party official.   Oh sorry did I say that out loud?

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Bud,

  He could, of course, have a trusted member of his unit hand-carry those letters when going back to the home country on leave and thereby avoid the censors altogether.  Or, hand-carry them himself.  This was not uncommon. 

  But, couldn't he just skype in the downtime?  :o

  Great stuff indeed.  Enjoying every bit of it.  

Heinrich505 

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1 hour ago, Heinrich505 said:

Bud,

  He could, of course, have a trusted member of his unit hand-carry those letters when going back to the home country on leave and thereby avoid the censors altogether.  Or, hand-carry them himself.  This was not uncommon. 

  But, couldn't he just skype in the downtime?  :o

  Great stuff indeed.  Enjoying every bit of it.  

Heinrich505 

I emphasized something that happened quite often. Thank you.

 

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8 hours ago, sburke said:

Spoiler. He dies on the eastern front sent there by Paula’s lover - a high ranking party official.   Oh sorry did I say that out loud?

Oh, no! I had him down as going AWOL at the end of the Battle of Normandy. Having to save his little poupee from the resistance, and them riding off into the distance on a BMW that they find in a shot up convoy.

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  • 1 month later...

It’s time to resume this little project and bring it to conclusion. This likely would have been continued not long after my last post were it not for a small disaster with backups of my source files before I wiped my computer for an OS upgrade. I lost all the turns, and since my opponent chose the map and could not remember which one he used, it was a serious challenge to resume.

Quite a bit of painstaking work went into picking this up again. I went through every map I have for CMBN and could not find the one used for this battle. Let me tell you that going through the 800+ map files is a lot of work. Days of work. It struck me then that he might have used a scenario instead of a QB map, and modified it. After more endless hours, I found it. 

Then the work began of modifying the map, and of reconstructing the situation as it was when I stopped this story. Which brings me to today. 

The past few days I’ve been working on the comic, and have several panels completed. Before posting them I thought I’d bring people up to speed on what’s going on here. 

Those of you who recall the characters from my first CAAR, The Battle of La Ferme Dupont, may remember some of the characters that survived that little fracas. This story takes place some weeks later, taking cue from the last page of the aforementioned CAAR, and tells the tale of Sergeant Hirsch in the later days of the Falaise pocket retreat.
 

Hirsch is a lieutenant now, and his platoon was assigned the task of fording a river and then flanking defenders of a bridge held by US paratroopers. The bridge is vital for the German withdrawal before the noose is tied shut around Falaise. You can see the general info in this map:

xA5ACprOpdAl0ogJITPjBesLIFiUjs5mId_fGoBK

 

The platoon has successfully crossed the ford and cleared Hill 141 of US infantry, including a mortar team that has been harassing the main German attack at the bridge. Hirsch has to move through an apple orchard and then reach the hamlet and has very limited time do do so.

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Some of you may wonder why the bridge is so important, and why the main force there is held up by a handful of paratroops. The German force in this small battle is a company, minus Hirsch’s platoon. All heavy weapons were lost or abandoned several days ago. This battle is part of the desperate scramble to escape capture by the allies and they have only small arms to force the crossing. Eventually they no doubt will, as the US only has a reinforced platoon preventing the crossing but it will take time and a lot of casualties. Hirsch’s mission is vital to help the whole force escape. 

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