#2: AAR of a "strange" scenario I had hosted: Two drug baron teams fighting it out with a third (unknown to both) in the middle, this is the AAR of one of the force commanders (if you read closely, you will recognize some names...
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Letter to Victor Valdez (RED Commander’s AAR)
Dear honoured Senor Valdez,
if you want to pass on this report to Matteo Olmero, that FDA (or FBI or whatever) guy being
an advisor to the Official Colombian Troops last night, please feel free to do so.
Me, your trusted and devoted Lieutenant Radolfo Pi, Commander-in-Chief of your Plantation
Security and Defense Battalion, at this time, I am sitting on board a plane to an unknown
destination with my notebook computer on my knees writing this report to you.
But, one after another, I first have to present you a bitter PILL (short for Pi’s Indelible
Lessons Learned) that you have to swallow whole. Admittedly, until last night, you, Senor
Victor Valdez, were one of the bigger fish in the Colombian Coca business (“drugs” is such
an ugly and derogative word!), but I fear that this is over now. Be assured please, that I utmost
hope that you will come back to your feet soon, and – even more – that your long arm does
not reach to the place I am heading for.
So, what are the lessons I had to learn last night?
First, preventive, strategic pre-battle reconnaissance is crucial and has to be correct! If it fails,
as was the case, everything is doomed to go wrong.
Second, my enemy’s enemy is my friend! Too bad, your direct order made it impossible to
follow that rule.
Third, don’t plan sophisticatedly if you don’t have the time and men to communicate – and
best rehearse - this plan! Sadly, my brave men had virtually no chance to act according to my
plan.
Fourth, no plan survives first contact with the enemy! Ok, that’s an old one, but true
nevertheless, only that we did not identify our real enemy all the time.
But, to narrate things chronologically, I will start with the instructions I received from you last
week: You informed me that, besides the notorious threat by the Colombian Army trying to
spray all coca plantations with agent orange, this time the danger would come from a different
direction. You said, this time we had to expect an attack by our neighbour, the less honoured
Senor Casillas, roughly from Northeast. You gave us, your three lieutenants Radolfo Pi, Honk
Stoffo, and Jaime Sterreti, one of your three Battalions, in addition to the already present
Plantation Security. After a short discussion, we chose the Battalion with the highest lethality
value, doing without tanks, APCs, helos, but having lots of infantry and even a few ATGMs
with thermal sights.
After no one else seemed to have the time, I stepped forward during the second half of the
preparation week, and volunteered to come up with a plan to fulfil our mission. Our mission,
as stated by you, was to defend the plantation and coca laboratories against Sr. Casillas’
villains, and even to defeat him as a punishment for rising his hand against us. This mission
was the utmost guideline for my plan. As we knew from your briefing that Casillas would
have not more than two battalions, I reckoned that we could dare to not defend statically, but
– we had to defeat him – play a much more active part. You know that our plantation, situated
in Valdez Valley, has many spots of vegetation to its East, whereas the labs, lying south of the
plantation, have quite open terrain on their East side, and south of the whole valley again,
terrain grew thicker again.
So my plan was the following: Build up a strong ‘anvil’ in the centre to protect the labs – our
most valuable goods – and to dam up the enemy East of the labs. To ensure that Casillas
would jam onto this anvil, I ordered a flexible defense starting far ahead in the North, steering
the enemy in South-western direction –into the open arms (in double sense) of our main
defense effort. If this would work, we would smash the bound enemy with a fierce counter
attack from North, conducted by our strong reserve. In addition to all this, I planned to apply a
mobile surveillance force south of the valley, just to prevent being circumvented down there.
I still think that this plan, provided the given info were correct and complete, would – or at
least: could – have worked. But it didn’t. Why didn’t it? There were four decisive buts,
leading fifthly to a decisive defeat. How did it come to this?
First of my mistakes was to trust the information you gave us, BUT this information was
neither fully correct nor fully complete. Ok, I should have known that informants always are
somewhat unreliable and sometimes even lie, but I thought, this time, you would have ensured
that no important topics are missing. Decisive, however, in this aspect was that you required
us not only to defend, but even to defeat Casillas’ troops.
My second mistake was to make up a plan for a well-educated, well-prepared battalion, BUT
neither me nor my men were. Decisive, however, was here that my plan required my subcommanders
to have some time to read and understand its idea and do some detail planning
for their own units to be able to fulfil this plan.
Third mistake was that we let it happen that both of my subs retreated personally, BUT we
would have needed prepared sub- lieutenants. Decisive was that Jaime had some problems
with the Computer Mafia, burning his PC equipment, and Honk only narrowly did escape an
attempt to hang him, having a sore neck being unavailable therefore ;-)
Fourth mistake was that we had some last minute changes being applied to my subs, BUT I
decided to stick to my original plan. Decisive was now, that both replacements we were able
to recruit had virtually no time to get into the plan before battle, so everything had to go awry
automatically.
Let me present, at this place, my sincerest thanks to both of my then-new sub-commanders,
Lieutenant Kendo Echancar and Lieutenant Charro Rost. Both of them did a great job, as far
as they could, regarding the non-existing preparation they had.
What did happen after those two stepped in, replacing the two deserters? As I said already,
most of the things very destined to fail from the beginning:
First, my subs didn't have any time for pre-planning, so they couldn't place a single one of the
entrenchments they were entitled to. I don't want to mention that - after a terrible crash of
Matteo Olmero's global satellite system causing a one hour delay already - he felt obliged to
urge them into the game not willing to give them any more time for preparation -
understandable under the circumstances.
Then Charro's troops, originally forming two forces - mobile Defense North plus Reserve -
were crammed up together and thus applied together. I never learned through the whole game
whether he really used them as two different forces with different tasks. Maybe you could ask
him for me. Furthermore, of course, he had no time and room to reach his positions in time
that laid three kms East of the valley. He tried his best to get there, and I think he did a good
job anyway.
Kendo, on the other hand, had his two forces divided into Defense South plus Surveillance
Far South. He did well by sending out the surveillance units right away and then placing his
defense units, making up a quick sort of plan I assume. while he was still fiddling with the
people there, however, his surveillance force ran into some Colombian Army (GREEN)
ambush right after start of the game. Darn! Not only Casillas, but the Officials, too!
I decided to ignore them so far and concentrated on our preparation for the main defense.
When the Colombian Officials, however, attacked our camp from South-West after dropping
some sniper teams from a chopper, I allowed all my men free fire on the Colombian Army.
During the next minutes, we soon found out that those bastards of the GREEN troops seemed
to fire on anything and anyone moving in front of their guns, so we had to reorganise a little. I
ordered Charro (remember: Defense North and Reserve) not to dare too far East with his
defense force and keep the reserve at the alarm. Kendo was to attack the Colombian GREENs
with his mobile force coming from South. So far so good.
Thinking everything was running smooth so far, I had to have a brief - hmm, retirement - with
my lady, having promised her long ago. This lasted little more than an hour ;-))
After I returned to regain command, my subs had to report that, in the meantime, all recce was
gone, and Charro had thrown his reserve together with his main defense force fighting
cleverly in the North, slowing the advance of Casillas' attacking villains. At least that was
correct: they came from North-East!
Kendo, on the other hand, was fighting with more and more GREEN Colombians trying to
drown the camp and laboratories from South-East. Did those bastards cooperate? Impossible!
Whatever we think from one another, how great ever the hatred between you and Sr. Casillas,
none of you both would ever cooperate with the Official Colombian Army! So this simply had
to be a very unlucky coincidence.
Then I did another mistake. My plantation security being positioned on the heavily reinforced
watchtowers was pounded by BLUE and GREEN mortars - although to no avail - and
panicked! They tried to move themselves from one tower to another - and got killed. Bad
idea! With lots of camp security gone it was more or less easy for GREEN to sneak into the
camp and blow your laboratories with two heavy bombs.
In the meantime, Charro and Kendo were doing a good job in slowing and attriting the
attacking BLUE Casillas' men. Those, however, slipped through a gap between both defense
positions and entered the plantation from North or North-East, I don't know exactly, but they
did it.
GREEN, smelling a good opportunity, called in his agent orange choppers then and sprayed
most of the plantation with their despised herbicide, thus destroying our work of the whole
last year...
But what could we do? Cooperate with Casillas' men to drive off the Colombian Army and
fight ourselves again later on? Never! This was out of the question all the time. It never even
came to my mind; and then, you had ordered me to defeat him, not only to defend the
plantation. Maybe I should have ignored that order and make friends with our neighbours, but
I didn't. Maybe next time.
To come to an end now, I feel obliged to inform you that I took my salary for this and the next
ten years from the plantation's safe. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get onto this plane
so quick and I would have had no chance to go somewhere in the world where you can not
reach me.
Thanks so far, Sr. Valdez, I stay
Your faithful servant,
Ex-Lieutenant Radolfo Pi.
Credits/Performers (in alphabetic order):
Kendo Echancar - Kenneth Chan
Matteo Olmero - Matt "Rattler" Ohlmer
Radolfo Pi - Ralf Pichocki
Charro Rost - Gary Rost
Jaime Sterreti - James Sterret
Honk Stoffo - Henk "Stoffel" Stoffers
Victor Valdez - N.P.C.
