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HeinzHarald -> Bootcamp 4 - a hill too far, for some (9/30/2015 5:20:55 PM)
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It was my first time as commander of the Bootcamp 4 mission. It ended up being a great victory, but it’s the mistakes that I remember.
The enemy did manage to take me by surprise a couple of times, but I kept my troops close enough to support each other so the losses weren’t that bad. Eight SP lost in total. No, the fatal flaw wasn’t caused by the enemy at all, it was all mine.
As we were closing in on a second large pile of wrecks hindering our progress I noticed there were eight of them. We needed to get down to five wrecks for all my troops to pass by with relative ease. So I made an off the cuff decision to not clear any wrecks at all. Instead I gave my hurt but brave paratroopers the order to disembark and continue on foot. The distance left seemed doable, and I had plenty of tanks to deal with any heavy or long range threats on the way.
This is where I made my mistakes.
Mistake #1: making my decision I did not take into account the upcoming elevation changes.
Mistake #2: I never checked how badly my land rovers and their paratroopers were hurt, not realizing until too late that some units were so hurt they wouldn’t have needed to disembark in the first place.
Mistake #3: I never realized that I probably had enough time to embark my paratroopers after passing the wrecks.
But of course my paratroopers never complained, never mentioned my mistakes. Severely fatigued they continued on foot the final two klicks towards safety. After climbing the first hill they had the end goal in sight. At that point they could probably almost smell the coffee and Beef Stew Surprise waiting for them when they got back. But in the end they just didn’t have enough energy left to climb that last hill. It was a hill too far, even for my great paratroopers.
At that point I had no choice left. I had to leave them there to fend for themselves as all my other units had left before the paratroopers even tried to climb that hill. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what happened.
Now you’ll have to excuse me, I’m going back out there to get my boys home.
[image]local://upfiles/47280/4F2EAC9E0CC24E988C3AADECCA349035.jpg[/image]
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