MOS was 71331

Hey, do I have to repeat that old Patton quote about the goal is to get the other guy to die for his country? To paraphrase Winston, "that sort of sympathy by my officers for the enemy is something up with which I shall not put."

If you want a limited surprise game, you and your opponent need only to agree to buy some known units with the rest of your budget available for whatever else each of you separately chooses. There's no reason CM should have code to enforce your agreement.

Given the casualty levels I've read in CM AARs, I think you'll be lucky to have more than one or two members of an original company still alive after eight or ten games. Having the majority of a squad survive a ten game 'campaign' is as unlikely as winning a lottery.

I recall there was a German WWII vet tour bus in the 60s turned back at the Dutch border because it was festooned with signs saying "We're back!"

If you're interested in a movie which discusses those very issues -- although Sean Connery's Scot accent can sometimes make the discussion hard to follow -- see "The Hill." The story's set in a British military prison in North Africa to which ex-Sgt Major Sean Connery is confined after being court martialled for refusing to lead his men into a hopeless battle.

"The product must include capability for a Marine to play an Artificial Intelligence or another Marine." I'd expect Letterman's and Leno's writers could have some fun with THAT requirement.

Jonah Goldberg's column in National Review magazine had a comment on Paris city planning that always cracks me up: "The French planted trees on both sides of the streets so the Germans could always march in the shade." Mr Goldberg has a low opinion of French 20th century -- particularly WWII -- prowess.

I made a similar request in another thread. Having spent much time in the Pacific -- 12 years on Kwajalein and 13 months in Korea -- I'd really like to see CM3 set in that theater. Unfortunately, landing operations would be hard to run in CM, but CM should work for small unit actions on, say, Guadalcanal. Even better, from my preferences, would be small unit actions during the Korean war. You'd be using American and Russian WWII equipment in a Korean setting.

SSnake: Remember what Willy, or maybe it was Joe, said about tanks in a WWII cartoon: "A moving foxhole attracts the eye." [There was a lot of useful info in Bill Mauldin's old Willy and Joe cartoons.]

"Grognard" is French for "Grunt" -- which is American slang for a foot soldier. The 1968 commandant of the Airborne School at Fort Benning always spat on the ground whenever he said "Grunt." We jumpers were taught to disdain leg infantry.

If those screen shots were taken during a game, the game designers are allowing totally unrealistic unit densities. In some battle shots, the AFVs were closer together than you could park them in a motor pool! And their airborne drops had the 'chutes touching one another. (At first I thought I was looking at some sci-fi game with large white mushrooms devouring a town.) The graphics look good -- but wrong. I'd wait to see a demo before I'd order this one.

"The Caine Mutiny" is a great book and a great movie. The movie cast is dying off. Humphrey Bogart (Queeg) was the first to go, only a couple of years after the movie came out. (Interestingly he was the only one who actually had served on a destroyer, but in WWI rather than WWII.) Then the guy who played Ens Kieth and died very young. Fred McMurray (Lt Keefer) died a few years ago, as did Lee Marvin (Meatball?). I think Van Johnson who played Lt Maryk, the Caine XO, and Jose Ferrer who played the defense counsel at the trial may be the last major actors in the movie who are still alive. Anyway read the book and rent the vidoetape, they're both great.

Removing double posting. Sorry. [This message has been edited by MOS was 71331 (edited 09-30-99).]

While I certainly favor the Eastern front for version 2, I'd prefer North Africa over Italy for v3. Then I'd like a switch to the Pacific, say Guadalcanal or the Philippines for v4. [i suppose research on Japanese equipment might argue against this sequence. If that's a problem, how about switching to Korea? The commies used mostly WW2 russian gear, and US, Brit, and French units would be very similar to WW2.] Actually, though, as scenarios become available for CMs one and two, there may be little benefit from v3 and beyond. I WANT THIS GAME!

I was a USAF dependent for twenty-odd years, so we moved about every few years. The places I remember were Oklahoma City, OK (Tinker AFB), Washington, DC (Andrews AFB), London, England (Bushy Park AFB), and Colorado Springs, CO (Ent AFB). I went through high school in the Springs and then attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, PA. Carnegie Tech had an Army ROTC program leading to a commission in either the Signal Corps or the Corps of Engineers, which was my choice. [Hence my handle: 1331 is a Combat Engineer Troop Leader. The 7 prefix signifies airborne qualified -- 5 jumps from an airplane in fright, or should I have said "flight?" My two years on active duty took me to Fort Belvoir, VA, for Engineer school, Fort Benning, GA, for Airborne school, the 2d Engr Bn of the 2d Inf Div where I was a platoon leader, a property book officer, and an assistant ops officer, and finally back to Fort Belvoir for my last six months in the procurement directorate. When I left the army in 1968 I went to work for Univac as a computer programmer on the Safeguard ABM program under contract to Bell Labs in Whippany, NJ. After 18 months there I was assigned to the test site on the Kwajalein Atoll. Of the next thirty years, I spent twelve there. Kwajalein was a German colony in the latter 19th century, and it was involved in both world wars. The small German fleet under Graf Spee which fought at Koronel and the Falkland Islands sailed from Kwaj at the beginning of WWI. The Japanese took all the German colonies in the Pacific during WWI, so in Jan 1944, we took the Kwajalein Atoll from the Japanese with the marines landing on Roi-Namur and the army's 7th Inf Div landing on Kwajalein Island. After the war, Kwaj supported the A and H bomb tests in the Pacific. The German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was one of the target ships at Bikini Atoll. After the test, the ship was towed to the Kwajalein lagoon, and it capsized during a storm. For many years it was a favorite wreck for the scuba club, but the army (which runs the missile range) placed it off limits after two bell employees drowned while exploring it. I remember many club members in the early 70s having souvenir crockery and cutlery with swastika markings taken from the Eugen. I alternated tours on Kwaj with defense software development in Denver and now in Colorado Springs. My wife and kids went to Kwaj with me in 1989 and they hated it out there. I doubt I'll ever go back. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

I started on board war games in high school in the early 60s with AH's original Gettysburg (free movement on hex-free map) and Tactics II, quickly followed by D-Day. I was at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) from 62 to 66 with Larry Pinsky where I playtested Midway and Battle of the Bulge (which Larry designed). Larry had a huge War in the East prototype -- four map sheets and a thousand or so counters. It was division scale with one or two week turns. I remember breaking the Russian line in the south and bagging around thirty divisions in the first couple of turns and later getting a few divisions into Moscow in early Winter '41 which got pushed out quickly when the Siberian reinforcements reached the front. I was buying every war game AH published through the 60s and 70s. When I found out about Strategy and Tactics magazine -- a game in every bi-monthly issue, I subscribed right away. When S&T offered lifetime subscriptions for $100, I think I was one of the first to send in a check. [As I recall, the "lifetime" ended when S&T's founders had financial problems and sold out to TSR, the group that started "Dungeons and Dragons."] I've still got hundreds of board war games in a closet. I daren't risk setting one up with a five-year-old daughter who would gladly push counters around and take away any which caught her interest. One S&T game I really liked was "Borodino," on the 1812 battle. I have the CC series of computer war games. "A Bridge Too Far" seems fairly good, but CC3 was a disappointment.

Four more movies worth looking at: 1. "Reach for the Sky" with Kenneth More playing Douglas Bader, an RAF pilot who lost both legs in a flying accident in the 30s yet commanded a Hurricane squadron in the Battle of Britain and later was shot down over France to be a PW in Germany. (More had many years in the 50s as the top drawing male movie star in the UK, but he's little known in the US.) 2. "The One that Got Away" with Hardy Kruger playing Luftwaffe Bf109 pilot Franz von Werra, the only German PW to escape and get back to Germany. He jumped off a train in Canada, stole a small boat, and crossed the St Lawrence in the winter of 1940/1941. He is shot down at the beginning of the movie and the movie ends after he makes it to the US, so there's no flying action. Text on the screen tells you that he returned to Germany and died when his F-model 109 dove into the Channel. 3. "The HMS Amythest Incident" with Richard Todd playing the skipper of the corvette. The ship was in the Yangtzee River during the commie takeover when it was badly damaged by CCA arty on the river bank. After a Brit rescue attempt with bigger ships fails, the ship runs for it at night and gets away. 4. "The Pursuit of the Graf Spee" with Peter Finch playing Langsdorf (CO of the Graf Spee) and Anthony Quayle playing Harwood (CO of the one CA [HMS Exeter], two CL [HMS Ajax and HMS Achilles] group which engaged the GS. You'll recognize a number of other Brit actors: Patrick MacNee (John Steed of the Avengers) and Bernard Lee (M in the James Bond movies). I lived near London from 1956 to 1958 when my USAF father was assigned there, and I saw a lot of Brit films. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

Your statement "An assaulting squad down below will have a nice advantage if it can manage to get into the building" is exactly opposite to the Army doctrine I remember from my training in the '60s. The recommended method for capturing a building was to enter it as high as possible rather than on the ground floor. The most vivid explanation for this technique was illustrated in the training film "Combat in Built-Up Areas." Three or four of our soldiers were shown in a stairwell moving up, and there was quite a humorous scramble to get out of the stairwell after one of the men tossed a grenade up and it came tumbling back down the stairs. If you're attacking down, gravity works for you. It's against you when you're trying to go up. As I mentioned, though, my training was 30 years ago. Army doctrine may be different now. Still, you're working on a WWII game, and the training film I saw was made around that time. Anyway, good luck getting CM out the door -- and into my hands. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)