"Royals Marines in Afghanistan, Fight #8" Topic

All,

It's now 2030 on 17 July 2002, fourteen days since the last fight, and the Royal Marines have caught a break in their search for their "Black Friday" assailants of 24 May 2002. Having discovered the death of the her husband, the Merchant's wife stumbled into one of 27 Commando's patrol bases. Distraught and incoherent at times, she spilled her guts to the Royal Marines; her motivation was the fact the Taliban had killed her beloved husband, and no one present had a mind to disavow her of that notion. But she provided information not only on who the leader was, but where he was currently located, and what he was doing, which just happened to be a meeting with his senior Lieutenants to hash out plans to strike hard against the Royal Marines of 27 Commando prior to their redeployment home.

The entire platoon was dispatched, with two Sections taking up blocking positions to isolate the objective, while our Section was the assault force. But isolating the objective would prove quite problematic: the meeting of the Taliban commanders was happening in an urban area, a house on the outskirts of Kabul. The mission needs to take place right away; SIGINT and other HUMINT reporting has indicated the meeting will end at 2130 and the leaders will split up and return to their home bases. The reason for only a single platoon assigned to the task is partially one of transport; there is not enough lift available. Royal Marine Chinooks could carry more men, but are ill suited for the mission; for such a precise insertion the Royal Marines will be using three MH-60s from JSOTF (Joint Special Operations Task Force) at Bagram, of which only six are available for the mission.

So the two Sections taking up blocking positions will have a very difficult time blocking blocking to the west, where the target compound abuts the rest the city proper; necessarily the blocking Sections will be more concerned with keeping Taliban in Kabul from rushing to, reinforcing, the target compound, and less focus will be put on blocking escape from the target compound, where there are simply too many routes to cover. But the Platoon is ready; broken into sticks, they mount the helicopters and begin winging south to Kabul.

On an admin note, this will be the last fight for this campaign, "Royals in Parwan." I've figured out that eight is about how many fights I can do before my interest turns to something else, so this is it for now. But I'm not leaving them forever; I plan on doing further blocks of eight games, following these guys to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, Back to Basra in maybe 2005 or 2006, Afghanistan in probably 2008 or 2009, over to Libya in 2011, maybe to Syria after that. We'll see; in any case, stand by for a helluva fight!

Overview, north is up. The target compound is spread across the bottom left side of the board; in there is where the Taliban leaders will be meeting. The RMs will look to kill or capture everyone located here, but the top commander, the man that planned and led the Black Friday ambush, is the prize. The Marines must keep him from exiting the left (west) edge of the board, where he can simply disappear into the sprawl of Kabul.

I am running a die-driven clock to determine when the Taliban leader will begin his run for the board edge, and I am using a blind method to figure out which building he will start his run from.

Two Blackhawks zoom low over the city, spot their LZs, then flare. Ropes are pushed out, and the Royal Marines fast rope to the deck…

Their cargoes disgorged, the helos dip their noses and egress to the east. Sherlock's stick is at bottom left, Knocker's at top center, moving towards the target building.

The target is finally flushed…

With the Target at far left, Geeves (bottom center right) and Knocker (bottom right) both move up. Knocker yells, "don't shoot him, get him alive!" To see what happened, please check the blog at:
link

So that was the last fight of their first deployment. Here's a rollup of the eight fights:

Taliban: 49 KIA, 3 captured
Royal Marines: 3 KIA, 4 WIA and medically discharged/retired, 1 WIA and retained for service but not fit for combat duty, and four other WIA that were able to stay with the unit.

More to come!

V/R,
Jack

An exciting fight---what a frustrating ending for the Marines! Looking forward to their antics in Iraq.

Mike

Mike,

Thanks a bunch man, I appreciate it! I was starting to wonder if anyone was reading these things…

I'm going to give this a little break before I start OIF, but they'll be doing Iraq in back-to back deployments. First they'll face Saddam's regulars, then they'll face Sadr's boys down in Basra. Hell, they might be in Basra both times I guess, just different foes.

I need to do some reading, I'm not overly familiar with British involvement in OIF, just that they were part of the coalition.

V/R,
Jack

JJ,
I've been reading them, and enjoying them immensely. I don't comment a lot, but I can tell you I was really disappointed that they didn't catch the target before he could escape.

Very nice looking game. Thanks for the detailed report. What rules are you using ?

Ahh, there are others! Thanks guys, it really does make a difference. To know there are folks out there reading and enjoying them helps me when my morale is sagging and I'm thinking about how much time it takes to write-up and post. On one of the earlier fights I actually lost most of the photos and had to go back upstairs and recreate them from my notes. Not fun, but worth it if guy's are reading them.

Brian – I was kind of bummed he got away too, but now I'm okay with it as it gives the RMs a nemesis to deal with when they get back to Afghanistan. That stuff about Knocker firing a nearby burst to try and scare the target into hitting the dirt; that's not in the rules, I just made it up (a benefit of solo gaming). I really didn't want him to get away, but at that point I realized there was not way Geeves was going to get there to physically stop him, just too many damn walls…

UK – The rules are Ivan Sorensen's "Five Men at Kursk," modified a little to give them a more modern feel. I forget where exactly, but I actually put my mods into one of the earlier batreps.

EDIT: Just looked it up, it's fight #4.
link

V/R,
Jack

Definitely a cool moment to have a possible recurring nemesis.

If they get to return, I propose he's become a local warlord :)

Absolutely.

As a matter of fact, he already was, we just weren't aware of it.

V/R,
Jack