June must be wargame season! I drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles in order to spend the weekend with a good friend whose family was out of town. So, along with another friend, we played three games in two days and watched The Longest Day on DVD. We called our mini-convention Bachelor Wars 2024. My game was a 54mm Boxer Rebellion game from the Colonial Campaigns Boxer Rebellion scenario book by Mark Fastoso called Skirmish on the Rails. In the scenario, Admiral Seymour's relief force is stalled by broken rails in the track ahead. The Royal Marines must provide an escort to the repair party while the rest of the Royal Navy force stays behind to guard the train. Meanwhile the countryside is alive with Boxers who want to wipe out the repair party and possibly damage the train. We used The Sword and the Flame rules. The Boxers presented quite a threat, but the Boxer player was unable to roll to close to combat several times and so the Europeans were successful in their mission. With a different set of rules, it might have been a very different outcome!
Always a pleasure to see your games and the quality of figures ans scenery, Nick. I'm impresse you drove so far for a game weekend. The movie "the longest day" has marked my youth. My Airfix toy soldiers have worked hard to those fights al over again, when playing with them as a kid.
ReplyDeleteMy father was 7 when the Germans invaded Belgium, my mother 5 years. They talked a lot about it. For my father talked about it as a big adventure. For my mother, it was more the fear, the shortages of food, the V bombs, the sirens almost each night. In 1944, while going after bread to the next town, being close to a German column geting unter fire from allied fighter. In 1940 her home town was the scene of a battle : https://www.everand.com/article/714102683/The-Disastrous-Battle-For-Asse-18-May-1940-Enemies-On-All-Sides She often told one of the neibours was courious and came out of his house, wounded by a bullet in the leg. Always thankfull the Americans came to help the Brittish to liberate us.
Dirk, I find it amazing that the film was made only 18 years after the event and that many of the actors served in the military during the war. That gives the film a certain authenticity, even if every bit of uniform and equipment is not 100% accurate. For your parents, and all Belgians, it must have been a terrifying time. Thank God America has never been occupied by a foreign power - unless you count the British ;)
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