The team continues to probe the area surrounding Radom, trying to develop a better profile of the ZOMO and Soviet forces there. Magda, Miko, Leks, Minka, Ellis, and Pettimore deploy, taking the UAZ-469. They leave Red, Zenobia, and Arkadi in Ponikla to continue infrastructure work and to serve as the core of a defense force.

The patrol heads southeast, picking up the highway at the abandoned town where they once fought some rather unusual dogs and subsequently acquired a large amount of agricultural equipment. Miko notices signs of recent travel through the area. The team dismounts to take a closer look. Magda and Minka put their heads together and determine that it’s probably a few people on horseback, a few pack mules, and an indeterminate number of people on foot. The footprints and animal dung are fresh – this group passed through within the last couple of hours.

The team’s initial assumption is that it’s another ZOMO patrol. They decide to follow cautiously, with Miko and Magda periodically swapping out on point and ranging ahead to check the road. The unidentified group is following the highway east toward Radom. As the team tracks them, the picture becomes clearer: six horses, three mules, and about twelve to twenty people on foot. The team begins to suspect [correctly] that they’ve found one of those POW convoys that their White Eagle contact mentioned.

With the superior mobility that the UAZ affords, the team has to be careful to not catch up to their quarry in an unplanned manner. They decide to loop around north of the road and try to find a point where they can set up for stealthy observation.

Magda is out on point, leading the UAZ through a small woods, when she hears muffled shouting. She sinks into cover on the north bank of a small creek. A few moments later, a man in tattered American woodland camouflage BDUs bursts out of the woods on the far bank. As he splashes into the creek, a burst of AKM fire cuts the leaves above his head and he dives for cover!

Two Soviet soldiers emerge from the woods, shouting at their quarry in broken and heavily-accented English. The rest of the team moves up quickly. They’re trying to be stealthy but someone [probably Miko] makes a bit too much noise in their haste. The Russians begin to react but the team is faster. Leks cuts down one with a burst from his MG3; the other falls to Ellis’ G3 and Magda’s Tantal.

The escapee scrambles out of the line of fire, taking cover in the woods. As the gunfire ends, Ellis calls out, “Hey! What unit?”

“U.S. Army Concert Band!” is the response.

“Oh, you poor bastard,” Pettimore sighs.

The team convinces their new acquaintance that they’re not going to shoot him [immediately] and brings him in for a chat. Ellis takes charge of the interview. The escapee introduces himself as Spec/4 Henry Bell. He’s a signals intelligence linguist (and formerly, in happier times, trombonist), a survivor of the U.S. 5th Infantry Division’s last stand who was captured after the encirclement at Kalisz. His brief account of the battle matches the intel Ellis has gathered – and Pettimore’s own memories.

Bell explains that he’s one of sixteen POWs from Kalisz who are being taken to the camp in Radom. The column had six guards – “four, now,” he observes, watching Miko loot and hide the bodies. His captors didn’t know he speaks fluent Russian, so he was able to gather a fair amount of information, though not much of is useful intelligence.

Suddenly, a signal flare rises above the treetops to the south.

The team doesn’t want to precipitate a massacre, but they’re unified in their desire to free these prisoners before reinforcements arrive from Radom. Magda leads off again, finding a route that arcs to the north and puts the team on the road just in time to lay a hasty ambush. The gunfight is quick and almost anticlimactic: four more guards down, no injuries among the team or the prisoners. One of the guards does launch a second signal flare, though.

The senior NCO among the prisoners, Staff Sergeant Andre Scott, comes forward. Ellis gives him a quick interview as well while the rest of the team pulls security, checks over the prisoners for injuries, and rounds up the horses and mules. The POWs are all basically healthy, though several are missing digits or hands, heavily scarred, or, in one case, wearing an eyepatch. They’re ragged and on short rations, but they report that they weren’t mistreated once this group of guards took charge of them. SSG Scott explains that the Soviets separated the officers and senior NCOs, interrogated them, and sent them on to Lublin.

Further conversation will have to wait. The team doesn’t want to stick around for what they expect will be a large and well-equipped QRF. Between the UAZ and doubling up riders on the horses, they have enough transport to get out of the immediate area. They head for an abandoned farm that Magda identified on the way in. About half an hour after they vacate the ambush site, Miko, who’s on rear guard, hears multiple engines and at least one set of treads from the direction of the highway. There’s no immediate pursuit, though.

After a brief rest, a more thorough medical assessment, and some polite but probing questions, the team decides to bring the POWs back to Ponikla, at least for the short term. They arrive back at town late in the afternoon. The expanded group assembles in the hostel’s common room and awkwardly begins to socialize while Magda ducks into the kitchen to check on dinner.

Ellis pulls Scott aside and asks what his intentions are. Is Scott still fighting the war? Scott… isn’t sure. “I left New York fifteen years ago,” he says, “and going back there didn’t much matter until it suddenly wasn’t possible any more. Now it’s on my mind a lot.”

Ellis probes a little more. Ponikla isn’t home, but it could be. It’s stable, the community’s agricultural capacity could probably support a few more mouths, and there’s a chance of getting more infrastructure back online and maybe even a regional defense coalition.

Scott scratches his stubble. “You got a point. Let’s circle up the troops and you can make your pitch to them.”

The team members present their respective cases for throwing in with Ponikla. Some are more effective than others. Magda pulls the five female POWs into the kitchen and makes the point that Ponikla is a place where it’s safe to be a woman – something that isn’t guaranteed in many places these days. Miko bumbles his way through a speech about Ponikla, unlike his hometown of Warsaw, being not-irradiated. Ellis is his usual silver-tongued self, expanding on his previous comments to Scott.

In the end, eleven of the POWs decide to throw in their lot with Ponikla and the PCs. The other five regretfully part ways with their fellow soldiers, but they’re set on trying to get back to friendly lines – and, from there, home. They’ll rest up a couple of days, then make for the Baltic coast. The team wishes them well and gives them the equipment captured from their former guards [thus neatly resolving the accounting for that].

---

This session felt somewhat rushed and disjointed to me because I had to make some hasty plot adjustments when I realized I’d mis-read my own map. The players seemed happy with it, though, and the PCs are counting the successful hit on the POW column as a win (as they should).

The recruiting scene at the end was fun to run. I had a list of the POWs and their MOSes. Each player got to make their character’s pitch, then roll Persuasion. Each success was one NPC recruited.

One of the things I wanted to do with this session was open up the opportunity for players to pick up secondary/alternate PCs by “adopting” a POW. I provided a limited amount of detail on all of the POWs, and some of it may get retconned if necessary to fit what a given player needs or wants, but right now, the recruiting pool is:

• Staff Sergeant Andre Scott (m) – MOS 67U helicopter repairer
• Spec/4 Henry Bell (m) – MOS 98G signals intercept linguist
• MOS 13B cannon crewmember (m)
• MOS 13M multiple launch rocket system crewmember (f)
• MOS 11B infantry (f)
• MOS 95B military police (m)
• MOS 45B small arms repairer (m)
• MOS 71M chaplain assistant (m)
• MOS 12C bridge crewmember (f)
• parachute rigger (British Royal Air Force, f)
• plumber (British Army, m)

(All are E-4 or below except SSG Scott. The five who left were an infantry sergeant, two more artillerists, another helicopter maintainer, and an Abrams mechanic. We wish them safe travels…)