My campaign as a player

[Olefin]

The fourth day we were there an alarm rang out as a small column of Soviet vehicles was spotted heading for town from the north. We had our vehicles well hidden and let them come all the way into town, three trucks and one UAZ-469.

We waited till they stopped their engines and then hit them and hit them hard, killing all 25 men in the patrol. We found orders on them indicating they were from the 129th Motorized Rifle Division based in Olesno with orders to capture or kill any 5th Division soldiers they found. That was way too close for comfort.

We sent a squad north to scout the town out and then returned saying they had close to a 100 men there, but no armored vehicles. We put together a strike force of three LAV-75 tanks, three LAV-25 and four HMMWV, along with the trucks and jeep the Russians had just provided us, with a total of 60 men and headed out to attack the Russians.

We had taken a bunch of uniforms in the supplies we grabbed, so we split into two waves, one being 25 guys dressed in Soviet uniforms, the other being the tanks and APC’s. Their security sucked and our guys were never even fired on until they pulled up and opened fire on the Soviet guard positions, knocking out or capturing all three heavy machine gun posts right off the bat. Our tanks and APC’s charged in afterward to finish the fight, which was pretty quick when a bunch of civilians joined in the fun on our side.

We found papers in their HQ which gave their dispositions and found out they had garrisons in five other towns with Kluczbork being the next closest. It also said to watch out for some group named Wojsko Ludowa and for the Wojsko Slaskie, i.e. the Silesian Army. That was good news to hear we may have some allies. We also found three guys from the 4-12, all in bad shape, that they were holding prisoner.

We were lucky and only had four wounded. The villagers, who were clearly happy to see us, were all too glad to tell us all about the Russians, who had been forcing them to make methanol and ethanol for their vehicles. We found a trailer tanker that had 3000 liters of methanol in it that we used to gas up the Russian trucks and jeep. I set up lookout posts on the roads to Kluczbork and Opole.

Our scouts reported in after a half hour that a column of six trucks and two jeeps were coming from the direction of Kluczbork. I radioed for our two M1’s to come join us and got our guys ready. When the Russians hit our kill zone we hit them hard, lacing the trucks with machine gun fire.

We had ten guys from Olesno along with us who wanted a crack at the Soviets as well. It didn’t last long. We bagged another 70 Russians (including the garrison commander) and took ten guys prisoner who informed us (after some not too gentle persuasion) that they had been responding to a radio call for help from Olesno and that an OMG was coming as well from Opole.

Our tanks arrived along with another eighty men so I felt we could handle whatever they sent. We moved south and dug in to the woods south of Olesno and camouflaged our tank firing positions. Piotr and Narsimha reported in, six BMP’s, two T-80 tanks, two SAU-122 SPG, ten trucks, four jeeps with the tanks in the lead. The M1’s were going to take the tanks and the SPG, the LAV-75’s the BMP’s and the 25’s the trucks.

[Olefin]

(My GM later referred to this as the Battle of Olesno)

We waited till they were at point blank range, and then opened fire as a unit. Both T-80’s died immediately as did three of the six BMP’s. We shifted fire and took out both SPG before they knew what hit them as the other three BMP’s died. Within two minutes it became a game of hunting the survivors. We had an RPG round hit the tree right next to us but that was the only close call we had.

A few Russians tried to run but they didn’t get far. We managed to take five prisoners; all wounded, and counted three hundred and five KIA’s. That was one Russian armored group we didn’t have to worry about any more.

At last we felt we had really taken revenge for our friends who had died just a few days ago. We quickly policed the battlefield and grabbed ammunition and weapons. In the short battle we had taken a total of five dead and nine wounded (including one PC), with three of the dead being the civilians from Olesno who came with us.

We decided that we should take advantage and do the most damage we could while we were here. I figured we would use the Russian uniform and vehicle trick again to attack what was left of the garrison at Kluczbork, especially as our prisoners said they had picked up almost forty guys from the 5th there.

Our prisoners told us where there machine guns, RPG’s and POW’s were so we had a plan on how to hit them. I had the BMP we had brought up to Olesno and sent it with them for the attack and four of the PC’s went along for the attack. The ruse worked again but the Russians fought hard. Our guys lost the Russian jeep to a grenade and had three men KIA and four wounded including one PC seriously but we defeated them and got all forty of the POW’s out.

A few civilians joined against the Soviets but not many. When it was over, they gave arms and ammo to them, loaded up the POW’s and headed back to Olesno.

We sent another patrol north towards Prazka with two PC's and they got back as the guys did from Kluczbork saying the town was a heap of ruins with dead civilians and dead Russians, mostly wearing 9th Tank Division uniforms, along with a destroyed T-80 tank and a BMP. It looked like a detachment of the 21st Motorized tried to shoot their way thru town and didn’t make it. They also found three more 5th Division guys hiding out in one of the few remaining habitable buildings.

Obviously there was more than just the 129th Motorized Rifle Division to worry about.

We had won this battle but there were still a lot of Russians out there and we were all by ourselves. We left a detachment of ten men in Olesno to help train the townspeople and a radio we captured from the Russians and went back to our base camp.

(Our GM played the seperated parties because twice we tried to meet after the big battle and only some of us could show up - so those who showed up had their own adventures - thus the two different sorties after Olesno)

[Olefin]

Well now that I can post again I will start this up again where I left off

When we got back to base we went thru our booty and started to integrate our new guys into the unit, five of whom turned out to be artillerymen and four cavalry. Two of our wounded died, the rest healed up and we armed them from the rifles, pistols and RPG’s we had picked up.

We also managed to salvage three AT-5 missiles to arm our captured BMP plus 180 rounds for her gun along with six rounds for the cannon from the SPG’s.Our fuel situation improved somewhat as between Olesno, Kluczbork and what we siphoned out of the vehicles we ambushed in the battle we had a total of 4500 liters of methanol to add to our stocks as well as five more medium stills we liberated from the Russians giving us eight, enough to make 270 liters a day.

Over the next few days we intercepted radio chatter from the 129th MRD, saying first that their commander had been killed in the battle, then other units telling a zampolit to go to hell when he ordered them to retake Olesno and Kluczbork. Three days after the battle we picked up another message that the zampolit was dead and that the forces in Opole and Pokoj were pulling out and heading for Wroclaw.

We also heard that the Russians had attacked all along the line and that there were a lot of them between us and Germany. We also knew we couldn’t stay here forever. The village was welcoming to the Cav but the amount of food it was taking to feed us all was beginning to strain their resources.

The Berets wanted to try getting to Krakow with whatever it was they were carrying. We told them not yet; I wanted things to cool down more. (GM played them and rolled to see if our arguments were persuasive but with a cumulative penalty starting to add to the roll the longer we waited). We heard the Berets talking among themselves about something called RESET but that was all we knew.

Seven days after the battle a truck from Olesno brought in another 28 guys that had shown up there from the 5th, along with their vehicles (two HMMWV and a LAV-25), and a patrol from Lubliniec brought in a half dead American who was raving about dead Polish paratroopers coming back from the dead and killing his buddies and a fortune in gold and some religious painting in a cave in Czestochowa. He told us what he had found but when we asked him to go back with us he had a complete nervous breakdown. Luckily we got the story out of him and where he found it before that happened.

Piotr told us it must be the Black Madonna and that we had to get it. The major in charge of the Berets got all interested too, saying that we had to get it before the Soviets did.

I wasn’t going to risk the whole command for this so we put together a group (the PC’s) plus a combat engineer (I was not going spelunking without one) and two squads, one being a squad of five Berets. We would take the BMP along with two jeeps and two Russian trucks as I didn’t want to draw attention with the M1’s. We would run on alcohol for the trip as I didn’t want to run down our stock of gas if we could avoid it. We had the Cav escort us as far as Lubliniec and then we were on our own.

[Olefin]

Will call this Olefin's Black Madonna post

Our GM informed me and three other PC’s that with our time in service we would have been at the battle of Czestochowa and thus gave us information from that battle in the Module including the information about the minefield that we would have encountered during the battle).

We approached Czestochowa, avoiding the minefield and bringing our vehicles to a halt as we got to the ruins, finding a safe place to hide them and leaving a squad with them to defend them, with one PC as well. We then proceeded thru the ruins, having to avoid rubble at one point and an unexploded shell. We got to the foot of the hill the monastery was on and took a trail, then went to the cave he had described.

When we got there we broke out the three flashlights we had and also made some torches in case the batteries went out. We left three Berets on guard and went into the cave with the rest. The place was a maze and we lost one of the flashlights crossing this underground river. Piotr had a crossbow bolt come out of nowhere and nail his vest. Our engineer spotted two traps and disarmed them.

We finally got to the room the Madonna was in, with the dead paras and two dead GI’s just standing there and this maniac rose up, shouting like a banshee and bringing up an AK! One of the Berets went down hard, but Narsimha and I, who had our pistols out and ready, dropped him with several shots to the chest. We ran over and he was still alive (he had on a vest) so we wrestled the AK out of his hands and knocked him out cold. Piotr was kneeling by the Madonna as we tied up the nut we had found.

We found a trap on the Madonna so I had our guys gather up anything of value, including the nut that was in the room, and take it out thru an exit we found at the back of the altar, while we tried to disarm the trap. We also took down the two GI’s and the Beret who had died and put them in one of the crypts with the monks, after we stripped their gear. We succeeded in disarming the trap and wrapped the Madonna up and got outside.

We gathered up everyone and got back to the vehicles (after we had to kill a pack of wild dogs who we stumbled across) and found out they had been in a firefight with 20 marauders from the 9th Tank Division, with two guys dead and one wounded and one Russian jeep shot up and useless. We stripped it of what we could get, grabbed what was useful from the marauders that we could carry and started for home.

[Olefin]

We had only gone a few klicks when our scouts came back and told us they had seen a roadblock ahead at the crossroads to Lubliniec or going south. It was pretty big, at least two tanks and two BMP’s.

We changed direction and headed north to go thru Klobuck but I sent Narshimha and Piotr ahead to scout the town. There had been a battle recently in the town and about twenty Soviets with a BMP-A was in the middle of the town, busily setting up defenses. We didn’t want to risk what we had just found, so we diverted around the town and headed towards Krzepice, hoping to go around to Olesno.

On the way thru the woods we took some fire and returned it with both the 30mm and two pintle mounted machine guns. Whoever was firing on us took off before they could really zero in on us. We got close to Krzepice and we saw smoke hanging over the town and heard the crackle of gunfire. I ordered the truck with the Madonna and our wounded to hang back and went in with the BMP-C, one jeep and the other truck.

We got into town and saw a bunch of townspeople lined up and a man haranguing them in Polish about helping Americans from the top of a BTR. There were two jeeps there and a couple of trucks. A sergeant came over and asked Piotr for our papers (we were wearing Soviet uniforms) and who we were.
I nodded at Piotr and he said “here are our papers” in Polish, as we opened up with the 30mm point blank at the BTR. Piotr shot the sergeant then shot the two guys manning a MG with an entire magazine from his AK. The two trucks went up from an RPG and the townspeople grabbed the closest Soviets and took them down under a pile of legs and arms.

Turned out they were a detachment from the Soviet 21st Motorized Rifle Division that just showed up in town and found five Americans there. They had shot them and then a bunch of townspeople. There weren’t any Soviets surviving when we were done.

The townspeople told us to leave and that they didn’t want any more trouble with Americans. We let them keep the weapons the Soviets had and we left, heading overland to get to the road to Olesno.

[Olefin]

Thirteen

When we arrived back at Olesno we found our guys had also been in a firefight with the Soviets. Two Soviet jeeps were still burning to the north of town and the townspeople were burying the bodies. We arrived at Dobrodzien and took our guys to get treated including the madman we had captured.

The doctor who treated us recognized him after he had been cleaned up as Major Florian Filipowicz, the younger brother of the Markgraf of Silesia. He hadn’t been heard of since the battle of Czestochowa. We had heard of the Markgraf from others in town. We showed the doctor what we had found and he told us that the Madonna needed to go to a true Polish government, not the Markgraf or the government in Krakow. We decided to hold onto it ourselves for the time being. The Berets told us they were leaving soon, with or without us but they agreed to wait till we got back from bringing the Markgraf his brother.

We went thru what we had found with the Madonna and realized that while much of it was junk, there were also some things of great value as well including silver candlesticks, silver and gold coins, a silver tea service, and silver and gold jewelry as well as a true treasure trove - a large bag containing nearly 100 D batteries for our flashlights as well as a set of IR goggles and multiple batteries for it.

It was time for us to move soon - the question was where?

[Olefin]

Updating the story of my original campaign as a player

Fourteen

We headed out to Psykowice, going light and only taking the player characters, the Major and two locals who could translate for us, traveling in a LAV-25 and a HMMWV, both alcohol fueled (we didn’t want anyone to know we had real fuel). We arrived there and made contact with the troops there who were loyal to the Baron. After finding who we were carrying, they arranged for safe passage south to Raciborz and fuel for the trip, and provided us an escort of five horsemen.

It took almost two days to get there as we had to detour around the irradiated ruins of Zabrze and Gilwice.

When we arrived there finally we were disarmed and told to wait for the Markgraf with his brother. His brother kept going on and on about how he had failed and the Madonna was lost forever. We were finally taken to the Markgraf who was totally happy to see his brother again but not too happy when we told our story of the Madonna being destroyed by the explosives his brother had set. Still he insisted that we stay and have dinner with him. He told us how he was building a new Poland and that he needed men like us to be part of it. We told him we were honored but that we were going to try to get home instead. We did say if that failed that we would definitely consider joining him in his effort.

When we told him of our ambush of the 129th Motorized Rifle Division he was especially pleased. He had been fighting them for weeks and after our battles with them suddenly they left heading west. He had been able to expand his area of control to Opole because of our victory.

We left the next day to go back to our base, with passes that allowed free travel thru his area, fully refueled vehicles and a reward for bringing his brother back to him – ammunition, grenades, and even some medical supplies.

Eventually we got back to Psykowice and stopped there before we went on. While there we discovered that some 40 5th Division survivors were there, being kept under guard. We tried to go see them, but the guards wouldn’t let us, even with the passes.

We headed back to our camp the next day. It was time to get ready to move on as our people were eating too much of the town’s food to be able to stay there much longer. We were going to Krakow to see if we could make contact with the DIA agents that the Green Berets said would be there. But first we had to make a stop along the way. There was no way I was going to leave our men stranded in Silesia.

By the time we got back we found that the Green Berets had not waited for us and had left for Krakow earlier that day, with the exception of three men they left behind. They said they couldnt wait any longer for us. They left us a small box of obviously hand copied notes, along with a schematic, and said that if something happened to them, that those had to be delivered to the DIA in Krakow.

We took our leave of the Cavalry unit, telling the Captain that if we made it out we would make sure people knew where they were. Some of the men who we had gathered since July 18th stayed with her as well, preferring the safety of being the town's militia, to the risk of going home. During our stay there we had done as much preventative maintenance, taking time to get our vehicles as ready for the trip as possible.

We headed east at first and then turned south at Tarnowskie Gory, arriving at the ruins of Bytom. We then headed west and made camp east of Pyskowice and prepared to do something about those forty men before we headed for Krakow to see if we could catch up with the Berets and find out what was so important about what they were carrying.