Campaign two · 30 January – 19 February 1944

Italy 1944

Whoever is left, whoever arrived, sails for Anzio. A year at Naples heals the wounded, rests the tired, fills the empty seats and issues five new M4A1s: the men carry, the tanks do not. The campaign runs from 30 January to 19 February 1944 on the Cisterna sheet, attached to the 3rd Division’s front, in rain and low cloud.

It opens on the 30th with the attack up the Conca road to take the Isola Bella crossroads: a Pak 40 and a pair of StuGs in the farm buildings, riflemen in the ditches, and a Panther group that comes on partway through, the platoon’s first sight of one. Three times in the fortnight after, the platoon retakes an outpost of the line along the Canale Mussolini and the Fosso di Cisterna lost in the night. On 16 February the counteroffensive comes: the platoon and a rifle company hold the crossroads line while Panthers and Panzer IVs with infantry come on in waves. It is the game’s first hold mission, won by still being there when the time runs out, and the two days after it are the same fight in the ditches.

The enemy of 1944 is the Panther, whose front your gun cannot hole at any range; the StuG III, low and hard to see; the 75 mm Pak 40, in every farm; and the Panzer IV again.

The platoon’s tanks are Avenger, Anzio Annie, Ajax, Alamo and Arkansas, with Achilles and Apache as spares. Or start fresh: green men in new tanks, nobody carried from Tunisia, and find out whether it was the men or the tanks keeping you alive.

• M4A1 Sherman