Bucha, Ukraine - 27 Feb 2022 - 15mm

The battle of @rasmus ‘ NVA (320th PAVN Division) against my Marines of Lima Co, 3/4th MArines (Camp Carroll, 3rd MarDiv, I Corps) continues …

*System: Valor & Victory (home-written “Vietnam Edition”).

*Setting: December 1967, near the  DMZ between North and South Vietnam, along tributary of the Quang Tri River, toward the Laotian border.

Here we see the aftermath of that opening firestorm in the south.  Note that Marine losses are not simply removed, but replaced with Casualty counters.  These casualties must be evacuated by Navy Corpsmen (medics), of by their comrades if they make the required roll (all men have first aid kits, field dressings, morphine syringes, etc.).

This may have looked like a suicide charge by the NVA, or simple matter/antimatter annihilation of forces.  It isn’t.  Remember these are squads and fireteams, an eliminated unit means it is “combat ineffective,” each 4-man fireteams is probably 1 killed, 1 seriously wounded, 2 lightly wounded or panicked, etc.  But whether or not to divide or combine squads, who fires, who moves, who uses grenades or satchel charges, how to apply casualty points, when to pin, when to bite the bullet and take the losses, where to apply your officer bonuses, there are many tough tactical decisions being made in this furious and incredibly violent opening to our Vietnam Valor & Victory game.

In all, may have overextended my left wing a little with Collins’ platoon, an opportunity Rasmus seized upon and hit very, very hard. He’s actually winning right now, badly, in victory points.

Turn 2.  Now that I’m on the table with spotters and radios, I call back to battalion for my mortar strikes.  They’re very disappointing.  One drifts completely off the target and actually almost lands on civilians and my own wounded.  The other two land on the DShK position (I can’t see his mortar pit) but do very poor damage due to some bad die rolls. Actually no one is hurt, Rasmus is able to cover the inflicted casualty points with some pins.  So the gun is silenced for now, but will be back up in a minute.

In the south, Captain Waterman tries to get control of the chaos.

Civilians are running into his company area.  Civilians, by the way, move almost like zombies in The Walking Dead.  Neither side controls them.  At the start of every movement phase, they roll to see if they move.  If they do, they move 2 hexes in a random d6 direction.  So these civilians are rushing towards us for some reason (perhaps some of them have collaborated with the US MACV or Saigon government, and fear reprisal at the hands of the NVA).

Gunfire from two fireteams (supplemented by some 40mm frags from the M79 “Blooper”) kills off that RPG team lurking in those hooches to the north.  This clears the southern slope of that hill for movement, including more an assault on Lt. Trai’s position.  He’s eliminated, but whenever an NVA position is successfully assaulted by US unit (and not immediately counter-assaulted), an NVA POW counter is created.  I also bag a prisoner to the west, as Waterman’s Marines mop up NVA survivors of the bloodbath assault on Collins’ platoon.  Meanwhile, Navy Corpsmen are rushing in to start securing and evacuating casualties from Collins’ platoon.

In all, it’s a classic Vietnam scene here.  Casualty triage and dustoff, Vietnamese civilians in the way, NVA prisoners being secured, checked for intelligence, and evacuated to the rear.

The problem is, this all takes time.  My whole Turn 2 is going to be pretty much just sorting out this mess, when I would rather be rushing forward and taking all those objective hexes suddenly left open.  Rasmus is using this time to shuffle his remaining NVA officers, squads, and support weapons, ensuring that this battle is actually far from over.

Turn 3, and I finally have the southern slope of this village hill secured and cleaned up.  Two POW groups evacuated.  Most casualties secured for dustoff.  I’ve given up on that approach from the east(that DShK is too threatening and these is very little cover across those open rice paddies), Lts. Pierce and Bergman are moving their platoons down the river to join with Waterman’s platoon for an new combined push over that hill to enter the village from the south.

Meanwhile, Capt. Waterman himself has taken some men to the high ground and secured the first objective hex.

Disaster strikes!  Again, I left that left wing a little too exposed, and Rasmus seizes the chance.  Lt. Phan Khoi, the lieutenant who has more or less halted my eastern attack with the DShK and 60mm mortar, now blitzes south down the road, assaulting some of my exposed Marines where corpsmen are still trying to clear up casualties.  I do next to nothing in opportunity fire, and none of the other Marine units can actually see what’s happening.

This is bad.  As the NVA attack comes in, it naturally succeeds, although one NVA squad is destroyed in the process.  But the Navy Corpsman and the Marine fireteam in the hex are now casualties, and because this assault succeeded,  the NVA occupies the hex. This means these two casualties just inflicted (plus the one already in the hex the corpsman was treating) are in NVA hands.  This will count as 6 victory points each for the NVA, not three.

2^ndLt. Pierce gets the order and he rushes down the rest of that river bank, thank hooks up with his platoon for an immediate counterassault into Phan Khoi’s hex.  This assault succeeds, although almost any assault (especially one in woods or buildings) will cost casualty points I can already not afford.

Now one thing I honestly forgot here is that this assault was supposed to produce another POW counter I could evacuate, perhaps getting 3 victory points back.  But to be frank, I think I’ve lost so many points already that this game might be a hopeless cause anyway.

See if I can save this in Part 3!