Leytenant Balentinov's farewell

Comrades,

I am writing this letter by the slim light allowed in through the slats on the side of this packed train car. I have not been given any “official” word, but I believe that I am headed east and, by the near numbing cold, toward the Siberian work camps.

Before my fingers can no longer write, I must tell about the horrors that befell me and my men as we pressed the attack against the fascists.

Everything seemed to be going so well. We had experienced troops and our deception efforts allowed us to assemble what we thought would be overwhelming force against a lightly held German outpost.

We had a platoon of engineers flanking the Germans while scouts, supported by heavy machine guns, light tanks and a heavy tank prepared to breakthrough with a brutal frontal assault.

But all of our plans came to nothing.

The Fascist invaders would not emerge from their hiding places and our brave soldiers died in droves as they rushed forward.

Soviet dead lay littered on the bridge, in the forest, in the open fields beyond the river. At separate points in the game, we grabbed our objectives, a section of forest overlooking the bridge and a river ford, and the church. But every time we rushed forward, the bark of German guns cut us down.

The last-ditch efforts of the brave engineers to clear out the Germans failed in a withering hail of machine gun fire.

As the last Soviet survivors limped off the field, a German Panther heavy tank rolled on, looking to finish off the last remnants. The only real victory for Stalin came then, as the IS-2 blew it up with its first shot.

So while the battle was a failure on all fronts, the Great Patriotic War will continue. Sadly, it seems it will continue without me.

And now, the cold has grown too bitter. I can no longer hold my contraband writing kit.

Farewell,
Leytenant Balentinov

This game was played using Peter Pig's excellent Poor Bloody Infantry II from the Rules for the Common Man line. Figures are a mixture from Old Glory, Battlefront and Essex. We play the rules as written, with the only exception being that we base our troops on the wide Flames of War bases.