Roadside II
A1 FTL
Deployed south, had my rifleman (Joe) scout a bit further to the south. As soon as he reported contacts, I had him move back to our compound, while I was myself hiding in rocks, glassing the south side, trying to put accurate markers on those two fireteams I could see. At this point we also had contacts from the northwest. Sadly, Arma being Arma, I was caught with my binocs out and couldn't run to that nice rock two meters away from me. NoASR-friggin_sniper-AI shot me in da face instantly.
Chance of showers
Few pictures say it all. Excellent use of cover, outstanding situational awareness.
No Pardon
TH1 Pilot
At this point I had a strange dream. For some reason I was a pilot (!) in a weird chopper with two main rotors. Time was strangely skipping and somebody had thought it'd be a funny prank to coat the windshields with shiny boot polish. Then time skipped again and this time, while I could see, the only thing I could see was that we could never land under so much fire.
On a serious note, when the only insertion possible is via chinooks (and generally helicopters), you don't want to stuff the AO with AA, especially radar-guided. Makes no sense. Also, stop invading friggin Utes.
Bolshevik Raid
Bravo Squad Lead
Bravo was intially tasked with moving to an assault position on the northwestern side of the airfield while Alpha was to move to a nearby position, on the northeastern side, to establish a base of fire. I had chosen a quite long route to our objective, to take advantage of the concealment from the forest and some defilade we could use to regroup should things go wrong.
Suffice to say, I had put my squad exactly where we perform best: amid angry trees. Well, surprisingly enough, we did well. Very well. I mean, I couldn't say exactly how the FTLs and other grunts felt about it, but we kept a decent momentum, while still taking time to regroup after each engagement. m0ntag, the medic, was a busy man, though.
FTLs were very reactive to movement orders and contact reports, and all I had to do was run around in the middle of my squad, popping smoke here to cover that one fireteam pulling back, yell some stuff about keeping intervals, quickly patch that dude up, and do it all over again. While still trying to keep the squad grouped and ready to move.
I was very proud of us when we made it to the airfield wall with zero (0) casualties. None. In spite of some very close contacts and not so close ones.
We all got inside the airfield perimeter, and for quite a while, my squad was left without clear orders, except basically to try and shoot baddies
through Alpha (note to the CO: when you decide to use a suad as support-by-fire for another, make sure to have a clear idea of the terrain
and of possible lines of fire. It was technically impossible for us to fire at anything at this point, with Alpha about a hunderd meters in front of us, in trees, with the enemies 200 meters in front of them). So basically Alpha was once again left to fight alone and we were sightseeing in the back.
I didn't want my squad to get bored to death, because, you know, boredom kills, so I had them move around, try and clear a few contacts that would occasionally ping some rounds our way from the north and the west, while waiting for the situation to unfuck itself. Sadly, when the order came to move, it was still to move 100 meters behind Alpha, letting us deal with a few contacts here and there, but letting us no space to bring the whole squad's firepower to bear. Oh, yeah, at that point it was revealed that we had no extract anymore anyway. Cool beans.
And what was gonna happen happened: Alpha died. Like every single one of them except for four dudes, that were injured. I volunteered a fireteam to go rescue them, but CO took the right decision. Screw that, we are pulling back and crossing the airfield.
Fluffeh wrote:A brief aside here - I have a strong love in my heart for bounding fireteams covering each other as they advance, but it probably wasn't a good idea to have B1/B2 cross the airfield halfway and then stop to provide cover for B3's advance. It was almost entirely wide open, with no cover and little concealment available. While we'd been pretty effective at clearing that side of the airfield in advance, I shudder to think of what would've happened if there had been a stronger enemy presence remaining at that end.
Well, I'd stand by that decision. Fact is, there were not that many enemies that we could see on the other side. We had ACOGs, meaning that at medium range we'd be able to return quite accurate fire if we were to take fire in the middle of the airstrip.
The only reason I wanted the FTs to stop in the middle is that I was afraid of what would happen if somebody was wounded during the crossing. If a halt was already planned, I think we would have been better at establishing a base of fire and a medical station.
Plus, we were taking fire from unknown positions to the west and neede to move away fast to avoid getting bogged down.
Fluffeh wrote:However, Bravo managed to make it across the airfield intact
See what I'm talking about? One needs to mention, though, that this statement is not exactly true. B3, which was the last fireteam to supposedly cross, never made it.
I get it though. When time came for them to cross, two of them were wounded, and I issued the order to let the wounded where they were and cross immediately. Myself and the medic would take care of them and cross later. Sadly, I don't recall one instance ever in an FA session when that order has been given and followed. Admittedly, that's a tough one.
So after a minute or two, I decided that if they didn't want to cross, well, I would. So I let them die.
Another note regarding that open ground crossing: One of my FTLs suggested to smoke the terrain before moving. That's my bad, I should have given that order earlier. To me it's one of the obvious things to do in such a case.
Then ensued a long chase where everybody in B1 would keep getting shot, and I would keep trying to regroup my squad, chasing after B2, who from what I heard was in turn chasing after a bloodthirsty Fer.
We never quite regrouped, I scavenged a rocket and missed the hind, witnessed it going down and was killed shortly after while searching for explosives.
It was a nice mission, if you forget about the slight logistic complications: I'd suggest not starting from the complete opposite side of the map. It's just a waste of time. Maybe the helos are not even necessary after all, as they become completely useless after insertion anyway.