Setting the scene US forces had been alerted to to a threat close to the Cambodian border where a village was believed to be a hotbed of VC activity. The early morning chirping of the birds was broken by the sound of the Huey's bringing in two teams of Special Forces. Game report The Hueys hovered over some patches of jungle as the LRRP teams searched for clearings in the jungle. The two teams were dropped north and south of the village . As the northerly team landed they were hit by an ambush from a single company of NVA which took out the LAW team before disappearing back into the jungle. The team south of the village had come across groups of concerned villagers, and found no enemy or sign of them. The northern LRRP team moved off pursuing the NVA to find nothing at all. They got strung out due to the difficulties of moving in the jungle. Again the southern team struggled. The NVA remained hidden in the depths of the village while the LRRP only managed to find some sacks of rice. The radios of the LRRP troops must have been malfunctioning in the heat and humidity as they couldn't get any support from the Huey gunships they kept requesting. However the NVA were having the same problem as they couldn't get any artillery down on the bunched US troops. An NVA battalion to the south of the village launched a surprise assault, using the large number of civilians and the awkward terrain as cover, preventing the Lrrp's using heavy weapons or artillery. As the LRRPs had mostly been moving at normal speed they failed to stop the NVA getting first fire on them. ( The LRRP's should really have set their own ambush ). The opening rounds from the NVA RPG team failed to injure any of the LRRP troops, but long bursts from the RPD's of two other NVA companies raised the KIA total to three figures. Return fire killed one NVA figure. Final result was that the US forces had found a considerable NVA force but had failed to make any real impact on the NVA control of the area and took heavy casualties before being recovered. Post game analysis suggested that the problems with moving in the jungle are very real and that rapid or normal movement by the US forces didn't pay off . The US eilte forces proved that they are worth the cost as they had no problems with morale failures giving them pinned results. The bad die rolls were consistently with the US forces as they kept getting stuck unable to move as well as not getting the gunships they called for. They were lucky that the NVA also failed to get their artillery support as that could easily have caused a major disaster for the LRRP's. Back to Frontline Vol. 3 Iss. 1 Table of Contents Back to Frontline List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Rolf Hedges This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com