Heinrich505

sttp, Thanks. Glad you liked them. Heinrich505

Pete, Just checked the whole map. It is stunning. Heinrich505

sttp, Per your request. Two are only sharpened a little using Corel Paintshop. You can tell them from the other two, as I adjusted the white balance to project a colder, more wintery sort of appearance. It is so still this dusk evening that the smoke from the burning US vehicles is rising straight up. It is a really beautiful map, especially blanketed with the snow. Thanks again Pete. Heinrich505

Pete, Beautiful job. Thanks so much for putting it together. I'll have to look at the rest of the map as well. Heinrich505

I put together a QB the other day. Not knowing which map to pick, I randomly (well, not really...it was the first one on the QB map list) picked the map "A December Morning" sight unseen and set the battle at dusk in the snow for a meeting engagement, playing German vs. US (AI). Unit selection was set at automatic. I started up the battle and was immediately struck by how amazing the map looked, at dusk and covered with snow. Pretty much like a beautiful post card or photograph. Well, now there are burning AFVs all around, but the map is still great. I went into the editor to view the map in daylight with only a light dusting of snow. It is so well done. Daylight nicely shows off this map, but at dusk, with burning vehicles throwing shadows on the snow and flurries coming down, the map becomes breathtaking. As I've no idea who made it (someone on the CMFB team), I just wanted to post this to thank them on a stellar job. Heinrich505

Rinaldi, Thank-you sir for the kind comments. Always appreciated. Heinrich505

Treachery in the Hürtgen Forest. "Hey Sarge, I think they are surrendering?" "Oh NO They are NOT!!!" Heinrich505

A snap shot by a panzerfaust gunner gives Sgt. Neubert and his crew a close shave. The 'faust misses by maybe a foot and a half. The gunner is out of the picture to the right. There is always one smart guy, and his hands are up; his comrades got pasted moments before with a 75mm HE shell. The shrapnel missed him. The war goes on. Heinrich505

You are most welcome sir. Glad you liked it. Heinrich505

Sergeant Ganani is just barely holding on. Both the LT and the Top Sergeant are down. The LT ordered him to take over before he passed out. The enemy fire was too intense and he had to cut and run from the foxholes where his bleeding friends were lying. He ran…somewhere towards the left flank, partially gripped by panic. Then he ducked down for cover. It seemed like every enemy bullet was seeking him out. He is out of breath. He feels like his head will explode – there is gunfire everywhere, total chaos. He hears the screams of the enemy and those of his fellow soldiers. It is one big terrifying horror movie, and now he gets to be the director. The squeak and squeal of tank treads are everywhere. They are not US tanks – the only tank they had in this corner of the damned haunted forest got knocked out early. He sees it about 20 meters away. They are on their own. Off to his left he hears that idiot Charlie, blathering on about something. Holy Crap! Now he remembers that Charlie is the loader for a bazooka team – they must have relocated to this area before the Krauts attacked and everything went to Hell. New York Mike Lanford is the bazooka gunner. Concentrate, he tells himself. There are German tanks everywhere and he’s only got Mike and Charlie to cover this side of the command post. He has to calm down and get a grip. “Mike!” he calls in a half-yell, half whisper. “Look alive, New York, tanks on the way!” Mike Lanford is from New York; well, Brooklyn to be exact. New York is over on Manhattan, where all the beyootiful people live. He is trying to shut Charlie, his loader, up. Charlie is not good for much of anything except loading a bazooka. He is one of the most annoying human beings Mike has ever met, and even worse still, the cur is from Fort Lee, New Jersey. As he thinks back on this, Mike spits into the frozen snow in front of him, an unconscious reflex. New Jersey…Ugh! He still can’t believe that he got stuck with Charlie on account of a frigging dice game. He threw damn box cars, lost the throw, and part of the deal was that he would be assigned Charlie as his loader. The guy has been his damn albatross ever since. Charlie idolizes Mike, for some odd reason. And, his one redeeming feature, in Mike’s world, is that the guy knows bazooka rounds, and can set the wires and load the bazooka like lightning. He just can’t keep talking, especially when he is nervous…and he is REALLY nervous right now. “Mike, whatarewegonna do?” His voice is a high pitched whine, cracking with fear. “Shaddap, you Moron. You’ll bring the Krauts right on us.” “But Mike…” “Shut da fok up, you dolt,” Mike hisses, kicking snow in Charlie’s face. “Hey, Mike, you know I hate it when you throw snow on me,” retorts Charlie. Mike sighs. Then he hears Ganani. He gives Charlie one of his murderous looks and Charlie shuts up. Ganani is half calling, half whispering. Yeah, tanks. He KNOWS that!!! They are all German. Tell me something I don’t know, he mutters under his breath. Yes, here we go again. New York out to save the freaking world. Typical, Mike thinks to himself. A German panzer is now working its way through their minefield. Several tanks got mired in it, but this one must have lucked its way through. Mike can hear the Sergeant again, now yelling that a tank is bearing down on them. Yeah, no kidding. Stupid engineers – can’t even do a proper minefield, he thinks. Charlie starts slapping Mike’s leg, squeaking about tanks. “Does everybody gotta be an idiot in this war?” he questions out loud. “Charlie, LOAD!” he roars. This flips a switch in Charlie’s brain, and instantly he is all business, slipping the rocket into the bazooka tube, fixing the connections, all with frozen fingers. Mike is impressed, but he won’t tell Charlie this. Mike feels the double tap on his shoulder. He refuses to let Charlie smack him on the helmet as a signal that the weapon is loaded. It is demeaning, and, Charlie doesn’t know his own strength. One time Charlie playfully hit him in the head and Mike saw stars. He never let Charlie do that again. Mike lines up on the enemy tank. It is, what, maybe 60 – 70 meters away? Easy shot on the range, he thinks. Damn, he hates meters. It should be yards, not meters, he mutters to himself. The Krauts use meters. Frigging blockheads. Civilized people use yards. Charlie quickly reminds him that he’s probably only going to get one shot at this. The enemy tank is now turning to face them, and Charlie squeaks that the tankers can probably see them right now. Mike bites down hard on his lip to keep his concentration and fights the urge to drop the bazooka and punch Charlie. He lines up his sights, corrects for a slight elevation, and then smoothly pulls the trigger. The bazooka roars as the rocket rips from the tube. Mike silently wishes that Charlie might have accidentally strayed directly behind the bazooka as it fires – yeah, that would be interesting; he smiles to himself. The rocket is on the way. “LOAD,” Mike yells, and apparently Charlie was careful enough to avoid the back-blast of the bazooka, as there is no wild screaming behind him. He feels a second rocket being smoothly and professionally loaded into the weapon. He is well aware that the rocket exhaust fumes have now given away his position, making Charlie and him prime targets for the Krauts. The rocket runs true. The tank is moving slowly and the rocket intercepts the front armor of the steel beast. The driver of the tank sees the large puff of white smoke from the forest edge ahead. Instantly he knows what it is. He has no time to yell a warning. He will never see the rocket heading right for his tank station. He only has time to turn his head and look at his friend in the machine gun seat. He sees his fear reflected in his comrade’s expression. Mike sees the tremendous explosion. Charlie screams out “A HIT!!!” Here it comes, Mike says to himself, as he steels himself for the inevitable. Instantly Charlie is giving him a bear hug. “Get the fug offa me, you Moron!” he yells. “There are more tanks out there.” Instantly Charlie disengages and stares fearfully in the direction of the burning tank. Sgt. Ganani feels a wave of relief at the flames coming from the German tank. At the same time, he now sees another tank, bigger and with a smoother silhouette, partly shielded by the farm building. WTF! When are they going to run out of frigging tanks? he wonders. “New York,” he yells, “Another one just to the right." Mike hears the Sergeant but he can’t see anything there, because the tank he just blew up is smoking so badly that it is obscuring vision around the building. “Charlie, Shut it! We ain’t oudda dis yet,” he cautions. “Mike, we got anything to eat? I’m starving…” Mike drops his head to the snow and sighs the sigh of the damned. The war goes on. Heinrich505

Slim, Man, ever since I saw that movie, waaaay back when, I've had a particular hatred of Martians. I second the motion. Bring on the Space Lobsters of Doom!!! Oh, and no, I didn't see it when it first came out in 1953... Heinrich505

Max has survived the attack this day. He used up his belts of MG ammo and had to use his rifle. He realizes that he now has the dubious distinction of being No. 1 gunner for the heavy MG. He cups his hands to call to his comrades that he will get help, but they have to hold on. There are still Russians nearby, but they are pulling back. The Stuka has broken their back and on-call artillery has held them at bay. The siege at Cholm continues. Heinrich505

The tank crewmen hear the high-pitched scream of a siren. It can mean only one thing. Air attack. By the time they consciously realize their impending doom, it is too late for them to do anything but stare at each other in horror. Their lives are snuffed out seconds later. Smoke wafts lazily from yet another grave in this snowy Hell named Cholm. Nearby infantry flee in terror from the explosion. The tank from the previous post had only 3 minutes to live after that turn. They were torn apart by a Stuka attack. Heinrich505

A snowy death. The tank crew never heard the screams. A color version for comparison. Heinrich505

Kohl, Thanks. Always appreciated. Heinrich505

Slim, Yikes. No wonder they named a tank after him. Heinrich505

Max is panting heavily, condensation rising from his open mouth. He has ducked down behind the rubble of a nearby building on the edge of a shellhole. He is looking across the frozen roadway, looking at the bodies of his friends. Some of them are still bleeding, and steam rises from their bodies in the frigid Hell of this cursed country. Cholm! If Hell is truly a frozen wasteland of horror, then its earthly name is Cholm. His position was in a rock-solid frozen crater from a Stuka bomb, about 40 meters outside the walls of the GPU Prison that others are defending from the constant Soviet assaults. Der Alte volunteered his MG team for this spot because he felt they had a better chance for survival outside the walls. He was wrong. Max doesn’t feel the cold, even though it is cutting through his thin uniform. His eyes are on his comrades, partially camouflaged with supply parachutes cut to form shawls for concealment. Thirty meters away. Der Alte, Fritz, Scrounger…all lying there, helpless in the bitter cold. They were cut down from canister shot from one of the damn Russian tanks that have plagued them every day of this encirclement. Max was No. 3 man for their heavy machine gun. When the Russian shot ripped through his comrades, training and survival kicked in and he raced for cover across the street. He looks down in amazement at the MG 34 and belt of ammunition in his gloved hands – he has no recollection of ever grabbing the machine gun. All he remembers is the screams of his friends. He is filled with fury. A sudden burst of machine gun fire over his shoulder causes him momentary distraction. It is fire from a German MG behind his position. He was unaware there were other sections behind their position. Now he hears the slap of frozen leather boots against hard roadway. The Russians! They come!!! Survival kicks in once again. Sergei is panting as never before. He has never felt terror like this, ever. His unit was just thrown into battle this day, after a long road trip in trucks. All he can see is the back of his only friend from their small village. Illya was always a better runner than he. Sergei wants to yell to Illya to slow down, but he is sucking in frozen air so fast that he can’t call out. All he can do is run, gouts of condensed breath wreathing his face and head and trailing behind him. The Sergeant told them to rush the roadway to the prison wall right after the tank shot up the Facisti machine gun nest. He said it was safe. Sergei didn’t believe him but he didn’t dare question it. Now they run like frozen scared rabbits, towards what seems like certain death. He ruefully thinks to himself that to be Russian is to be a fatalist. Max drops to a prone position, his white camouflage smock blending into the icy snow. He slaps the end of the ammo belt into place, slams the cover shut, and pulls the cocking lever, hoping that it isn’t frozen in place. It racks roughly. The steel is still pretty hot from their previous gunfire. The belt is locked into place. He lines up on the first Russian and he feels the comforting buck of the weapon into his shoulder as he pulls the trigger. He wasn’t sure the damn thing would fire, but it does. Hot brass rains from the ejector port and immediately melts into the snow to his right. He cannot hear the hiss as the casings melt into the snow – the MG is too loud. The rounds run true – the first Russian is cut down by a stream of hot lead. Max sees the gouts of blood misting around the enemy soldier as his bullets rip through the man’s body. The man is dead and doesn’t know it. He runs a few more steps before his body shuts down and then the man collapses. He makes no sound. The fall of the dead man is muffled by the bed of icy cold snow that he falls upon. Sergei hears the rip of nearby machine gun fire and sees Illya stagger and keep running. He thinks for one brief moment that the enemy gunfire missed his friend. His eyes are filled with horror as he sees the bloody mist erupt around his friend. Illya collapses without a sound. He is gone. All this takes a moment to register in Sergei’s oxygen-starved brain. He has kept running like an automaton, frozen feet in frozen leather boots slapping loudly on the frozen roadway. He is running right into the same ambush that claimed Illya. Terror grips him even tighter, and with great effort he slows, his boots skidding on the icy road, and then he cuts right, away from the threat and the bloody rags that used to be his friend. There is a trench nearby. He can make it. Max sees the second Russian skid and slow, then cut away from him. He is numb with the cold and his arms suddenly feel like frozen logs. For a moment his humanity struggles with his emotions. Should he shoot down the second Russian? How many are coming down the road? Does he need to shoot this man in the back? Should he save his ammo? There is a cry and a moan from across the street. His friends!!! He is chilled – they live! One of them, probably Fritz, lets out a cry “Sani!!” He is crying out for the medics, the Sanitäter. Yes, it is Fritz. Max recognizes his accent. In that instant his heart hardens. He will kill them all, every last one, to avenge his friends. There will be no mercy this day. He grips the machine gun tightly, steam rising from the hot barrel. He can feel the heat on his frozen face, rising from the steel, and it feels good. Death is coming. Max opens fire again. He has to hurry. The Russian is fast receding from his view. In a moment his enemy will gain cover and then probably come after him. That mustn’t happen, he tells himself. He has to kill them all and then maybe he can save his friends. The Russian’s coat starts to blend into the grey landscape. Sergei has only one thought. The trench! He can make it. It is only 15 meters, maybe 10. He struggles through the snow as it gets deeper away from the roadway. His lungs are screaming for air. He thinks it is amazing that he still has his rifle in his hands. He has seen others throw their weapons to run faster, but he is afraid that if he is found without his rifle, the sergeant will have him shot. He will make it. He has to make it. It feels like he is running in slow motion now, exhaustion is taking its toll. The snow is fighting him but he won’t let it win. He can’t fell any part of his body except his lungs - they feel like they are about to explode. Hot lead rips all around him but it matters not. The trench! He is almost there. He WILL make it! Max walks the gunfire stream right into the Russian, just like he has been trained to do. He sees a bloody mist envelop an enemy soldier, for the second time in what, seconds? Sergei is confused. His lungs? Did they really explode? His vision is clouded by bloody mist. What is happening? His brain is not processing what his body is experiencing. He senses he is falling. He can’t run any more. Is he…dying? Oh, God! Now he is on his back, staring at the grey overcast sky. He is filled with horror and dread. What about his family? He remembers the party membership forms that he and Illya didn’t get a chance to fill out. They were rushed into battle too quickly. His blurry thoughts focus for a moment - They don’t bury soldiers who aren’t party members. Oh, Dear God, they don’t even let the family know what happens to soldiers who aren’t party members. His family, his mother, she’ll never know what happened to her only son. Sergei tries to cry out, some form of vocal anguish to express his last thoughts of terror and sadness, and to try to summon help. He cannot. All he can do is close his eyes one last time… Max searches for more targets. The second Russian died just as silently as the first, he thinks to himself. The cold is seeping into his body now, numbing his mind. He has to remain vigilant. There will be more Russians coming. He has to kill them so he can get medical help for his comrades. What a God-forsaken place this hellhole is, he thinks. If he ever gets out of this place alive, he will never utter the name Cholm again. The war goes on… Heinrich505

Hapless, This was great and very much appreciated. Thanks to you and AjarmanG for allowing us to play along as observers, so to speak. It is always fun to watch DARs, especially ones that are well done and presented like this, and I always learn something on the way. Heinrich505

Hapless, Holy CRAP!!! That was crazy. Maybe he should have taken a left instead of a right! And yes, you are right about Stravinsky!

ForeverAMonk, Very nice storytelling. It brings life to the pixeltruppen and makes their struggles seem more real. Heinrich505

Hapless, That is a nice idea, playing out a "what if" after agreeing on the result from the ceasefire, especially for your audience. Well done. Heinrich505

Hapless, Give it a little more time before choosing 1 or 2. He's got a lot of troops somewhere, possibly massing for a punch towards Cobru. I'd give him a few more turns to see if he reveals any sort of movement. Then decide to hold or attack. Heinrich505

The Lobsters of Doom game is really gonna shine when they come out with it. Can't wait.

Macisle, No worries on giving away unit types. It won't have any effect on my desperate attempts to hold the line together, haha. Also, no problems with screen shots. I always like seeing them. I like your point distribution for the different victory locations. I think it might work. Can you color code the victory sections differently on the map, sort of like the set-up zones would have different colors? Or are they all that neon florescent green? Sent you a PM. Heinrich505

You got it. The clock for time in the compass shows 9:50 AM. The game clock shows that I've played 1 hour and 10 minutes into the game and counting down. On the far right flank, my MG teams and the two HQ units stayed on point after the smoke and ripped the advancing Soviets pretty well. I didn't get any intel as to their make-up. However, the Russians managed to rally before I pulled back, and they forced my guys to back off. I had already retreated the survivors of the ATG position, and I moved them back right into the shells of an artillery barrage. One guy made it out. The MG teams were slowly moving back, so they escaped any artillery for now, but they found themselves flanked by the SU-76 rush, and all they could do was turn and fire at the rear of the SU-76s, which really messed them up. They were backing around and trying to find cover. This meant that whatever survivors existed from the Soviet infantry on the far right, they were able to get into the buildings and they will probably mess up my surviving MGs pretty good. I have been able to resupply three Shreck teams from the ammo dump. They are covering the center, more or less. Their morale is pretty bad though. It appears that I probably have my AT guns set up to cover the left flank right about where you did yours as well. The non-set-up one is the one bottom center that is closest to one of the two SU-76s that are playfully cavorting behind my doggone lines, hidden by the infantry icon and the truck icon with an MG close by. Hope this helps. Heinrich505