M A N D A T O R Y I N T R O D U C T O R Y
Hello everyone, the blog is back. This entry will feature a a rather unknown Freeware game called "Armoured Brigade" which is about a WWIII erupting somewhere in the year of 1987. I won't hide that I made this one to overall promote the game and my little scenario that I made it in. I will try to bring the blog more into the... production and the new entries will be rolling out once a week now. Just like in the beginning.
September 1987, The Tragedy.
Personal diary of Soldier A. Losnedahl, Norwegian Armed Forces, retrived five weeks after the tragedy:
"So it had come to this when we aren't fighting for the preservation of our country, our great NATO alliance but for the lives of ourselves, for the unending struggle for survival in the World that has been turned upside down, burnt and destroyed by people like ourselves. Nobody in the higher ups had realized what this war would had really cost us. Soviet columns rolling through the Fulda Gap at the start of '87, joint Warsaw Pact invasion of Scandinavia and the hell that is going on in the South Korea with the massed gas artillery shelling that signalled that beginning of the end in Asia. In the beginning of the invasion we were rather optimistic, especially after the quick American reaction to the Soviet hammer that had stopped them dead in their vehicles around the Franco-German border. The various NATO units that included ours that had received additional orders and a number of new battlegroups were to be formed, delegated to the recapturing of the West German lands after the massed Soviet airborne assaults behind our lines had failed to make any gains. With the Soviet deep raids into the NATO territories repelled and their forces being slowly be steady pushed back from their fortresses we all thought this is going to be end of our struggle. Damn, how wrong or rather right we were, it was going to be the end. As our mechanised company was reaching the East German border alongside a crack American tank batalion suddenly it all started. Bright flashes of light, the ground was shaking and the fire was burning the earth. Because of our advancements the Soviet Union had no other option but to retaliate with nuclear weapons, something the Americans were poised to do until the breaking of the Soviet forces at the border. The whole area is barren, red and naked, devoided of life. Communications between all other units had been cut off and we are unable to reestablish them. All air support is dead but the remnants of our unit had managed to run to safety somewhere far away, we hoped...".
"We had reached the outskirts of Regensburg, according to our maps. The terrain is just.. the same everywhere. I don't even want to think where the missiles could have hit in Europe. We had rallied some troops. There's almost a company-worth of foot infantry under the command of LT Magnusson who had probably came with the MP garrison in Germany. I don't know, he seems sketchy and nobody recognizes anyone of his troops. There's a company of mechanised troops in the APCs, a survivor Leopard tank platoon from the Fulda Gap counter-offensive and a bunch of guys who worked with the support forces behind the front and now are tasked with handling the static guns. I don't know if there is anyone more of us in here except the scouting elements. I was rushed to the mechanised company under the command of LT Landvik by the order of CPT Erickson who is in command of our ragged battlegroup. We were going in to take control of a town up front".
"We were to go in hot as soon as our HQ vehicle got on the road and declared it was safe to proceed on with securing the objective areas. The scary sound of wind gushing through the wasteland was acting on everyones nerves. We weren't sure if we would live through the next day. Thanks to our still remaining organisation level as a military unit we managed to speed things up. Tanks were to be the first to move up on the road to the town then the APCs with soldiers were to deploy near the town. Search and Destroy through the town, capture it and then set up a base for us all. ".
"We were in motion. The remaining mortar guns of our unit lobbed HE shells into the town attempting to wreck down the morale and the manpower of the defenders. Plan was also to scatter mines on the back road towards it so it would be easier to hold it during the night after. Intially we apparently made gains but I haven't noticed them much, it was so different for what we were used to fight like. The defenders themslves were Yugoslavian. Their country joined the war on the USSR side after the incident that happened with the stray NATO bomber. I could hear reports on the radio about our scouts being ambushed in the woods by light tanks, the tanks bursting through the town were caught into ineffective machine gun fire. Many enemy contact reports, none serious. Their forces were swept away by HE-FRAG fires from our tanks and by our mortars. Infantry hiding in houses were blown into the ground along with them. I saw from the inside of our new fire postion at the warehouse how they just simply tried to ram our tanks with armoured cars. In the end we managed to overrun the defenders of the town and take control of it with rather minimal losses considering the situation. This was a small victory for the survival of us, of our unit and a chance for a better life in the post-apocalyptic World.".
CONTENT USED :
Armoured Brigade Freeware real-time tactical wargame by Juha Kellokoski, version 0811.
