War With A Mate - Episode 32: Fixed Bayonets

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Tactical cunning is in the air, and Andy has been breathing in an unhealthy level of it, call a doctor, quick! Upon their return from the War With A Mate company retreat, the guys are tackling the twilight portions of Operation Stage 2. Combat comes to a tense halt, with truck movement on the horizon. Another Māori centric history segment vows to showcase some of the most intimidating folks in the desert, and James tries to tackle the desert heat with more lateral-thinking Common Ground.

and there it is that's the clap that always starts it and no i'm not talking about gonorrhea I'm talking about beautiful audio cues Andy, how the devil are you? I'm good, how are you? I'm well, I'm well I'm just, I think, downright emotionally and physically exhausted After our little excursion Yeah, and you've got no sleep in the day since

I haven't, I haven't We've taken a little trip ourselves Our own little long-range desert group expedition From the wilds of Budapest Yes, yes Budapest, I believe, is the pronunciation As we learned from the folks over in Budapest We had a little trip

We went off We took some time, some R&R Get away from the game a little bit And, I mean, we missed it We did miss it Yeah We, oh Oh, you sound hesitant

Nah, I'm not going to lie I didn't think about it much Really? It was on my mind constantly Oh, okay Especially at the zoo well yeah that's that brought it forward we went to the zoo in budapest didn't see the camels we didn't see the camels completely fucked it they had camels and we chose not to see them to be

fair it was 36 degree heat and we'd spent i think five six hours wandering around the zoo yeah in budapest and it was brilliant we went through all sorts of interesting adventures we saw we met the crab that killed amelia rareheart yes he was a big guy he was he had like an eldritch look to him yes he did look monstrous he did it was it was a hell of a time a good learning experience learned a lot a friend who we were with really educated us he's a big zoo guy so he really did the educating was the amelia thing yeah so it turns out when amelia crashed in this island it was an island wasn't it that she crashed yeah it's over in the pacific i think And there's this wild breed of crab, and they look like monsters.

They look like actual aliens. Coconut crabs. Is that what they are? Yeah. And they, apparently, the going theory is that they found and injured Amelia Earhart and devoured her. Horrible. What a horrible way to go.

This is War With A Mate. This is the podcast where we play the campaign for North Africa. Really long board game. It's very complicated. It's very wacky. and no one's finished it before but we're going to be the first guys to do that and we're dedicated to it and we're so dedicated that even on holiday i thought about it it was hard getting there as well we had a real nightmare real journey so we were going to get the train to a different city

and it's very funny getting travel information while trying not to dox yourself well to be fair the route itself doesn't really matter because we've already done it now but we we yeah we we're gonna hop on a long train journey to get to an airport and then we realized quite quickly that um that was going to be a problem because the trains were cancelled up until 2 p.m um a pretty tragic thing someone actually died on the tracks so we um we realized if we wait for the trains to come back on we're gonna miss the flight so we moped around in the airport for about half an hour just not really sure if we're gonna go on holiday or not sorry the train station um and in the end we decided right we're gonna we're gonna take a coach journey

it's gonna be longer it's gonna be sweatier but we're gonna do it so i booked us last minute coach i walked us to the wrong coach station so we then had to run across town to catch the coach by the skin of our teeth only to sit down on the coach and i was sat next to our pal and it was about half hour in and i went well at least we're finally on the way there and then the bus driver announced the motorway is closed on the way to the city it will be another hour or so tacked onto your journey so we we make our way to the the city and they um they tell us because of the lateness we have cancelled the journey from central city to the bus to the airport and we then had to get an uber to the airport with a stranger as well yeah there was a stranger who

was also in the same plight as us and we we offered hop in the taxi with us some solidarity and sufferance but we got there in time with about half an hour to spare when we got through customs and we we hopped on the plane we had a lovely week lovely week in budapest we made it back here yes and i've not slept much at all i think i've collectively had over the last six days about 14 hours sleep yeah that's bad man it is it is but i'm ticking away my i would hate to have a look at my uh my performance at work the last two days i bet that's uh questionable but no what i have put work into though andy is what happened today during the game and more importantly you put in some real work you put in some real moves i mean players gonna play players gonna

play we are we are in the twilight of op stage two yes we finished the land and land movement and combat so we've got some trucking to do and that's it then it'll be op stage two ticked off so the the land movement as you mentioned it came to a a dramatic conclusion at fort magdalena today yeah because we were poised for the showdown of the century it was going to be a big one it was going to be a a big conflict between my mileti division and the first black shirts and that was against your division who was present the seventh armored division the infantry accompaniment yes you had a few infantry battalions alongside and you'd last play session you'd taken fort magdalena and you'd taken the airfield there killed all of my sgsu's butchered them and i was poised to take

it back so when i showed up i was expecting a real big battle however my barrage failed to hit anybody which is costly because i used a lot of ammunition on that i used i think it was 40 ammunition points overall and that was for a pointless barrage yeah completely unfortunate failed to pin anyone so i retreated before assault you did you you smarmy git you got away you managed to pull away and the thing is you didn't move very far you moved one hex to the east of fort magdalena so we are now in a a sort of diamond shape around fort magdalena to which you fucking told me welcoming you in you know you were taunting me you were stood next to me looking over the board and you went the airfield's right there why don't you just come

and take it and i was like oh you know bloody damn well why because i pincered your seventh armored division yeah they would have had a real bad time and it was to try and make sure that those pesky battalions of infantry weren't going to get involved in this conflict however i decided the smart move would be to hold off and stay on the west side of fort magdalena and allow the standoff to wait and breathe a little bit because i've already marched my guys to near exhaustion to get them there and if i was to push even further i'm not only going to have them further exhausted but i'd also then be tackling your men at their full strength i'd be tackling both sides of your reinforcements yes which would make for a bit of a messy conflict and if you push cohesion that's

rough because cohesion cohesion effect is pretty big it is it massively sways the outcome of combat and if you get to a certain cohesion level minus 17 then your units become dysfunctional and you can no longer detach trucks in certain combat situations you immediately surrender and it makes for all sorts of complications if you don't get that pasta points they go uh minus 26 which i think is just if someone shows up they get they immediately surrender yeah which i didn't want to happen i didn't want it to get that bad so i would have loved to just take your elite block shirts off because there's no water and they push themselves too hard well resource-wise they're actually doing all right um the the real issue of course is on arrival their trucks were assessed

and their oh no maybe i'm thinking of a different group who was it that had the 50 50 of light trucks broke down for somebody uh they were the ones who went further that was the fourth deep in yes my fourth black shirts they pushed far east yeah and they have lost 50 of their light trucks that was the worst roll i could get it was double sixes full house and it is damning for them their resources are hamstrung however the guys who you were up against they had tanks they had trucks and they lost very few in fact the black shirts the first black shirts lost nothing in breakdown no trucks no tanks whereas the mileti division did lose a handful of trucks but no tanks so overall it was a very successful push and i've got a very strong position there

still and your retreat was i'll be honest a stroke of genius because it's now made the the showdown at fort magdalena a real standoff oh yeah so it's it's gonna drag out i think this could last maybe another two upstages potentially i mean pretty easily uh i don't think anyone wants to really blow their full load on what could be a suicide mission for one side or the other me with the cohesion restrictions and you with being outmatched i think by the looks of it it looks like you're outgunned it does have the potential to like vortex pull everything in if we do make contact and keep it it does other divisions are like flying in and it just escalates i am concerned we may have created the fulcrum of this whole scenario where everything is going to revolve

around the the standoff at fort magdalena i think it i think it will but it's quite funny that now the sgsu's are gone there's an airfield but no sgsu's on it so it's tactical value is basically gone yes there's a lot of aircraft oh is there are they not destroyed when i no the aircraft yes the aircraft are there they just one of us would have to get an sgsu there to start to start actually piloting them off so yeah there's a lot of aircraft there's my essentially my primary fighter base is in fort magdalena so if you're able to sweep in there with an sgsu you can drop some pretty scary air missions. I can just start ferrying them

back to my own airfields probably Well I suppose that's probably the more sensible thing, you just transport them back and then I've lost my planes. But it takes sending an SJSU a long way they have no defensive capability at all anyone who looks at them, they're dead

And right now I've got two divisions which are thousands of men, hundreds of tanks, so if you were to try and march them past there, I'm quite happy to dip them a few hexes to the right and snuff out your guys. So we've got to be real careful how we play this one.

But it's made for an interesting standoff. I'm very both frustrated and very pleased about what you've done. It really was, I think, the first point where we've had a very clear tactical decision that isn't just go here, kill this. It's been

quite decisive and quite calculated. So I commend you for that. Well done. You get whatever medals we give away on this podcast, you get one. so there you go there's your there's your medal thank you medal of dishonor and then just to the north there was another conflict that i was hoping to finally get my revenge with against the cold stream guards yeah third cold stream guards yeah and i i didn't get that today unfortunately because i fired off a barrage it was a small barrage to be fair to try and pin them i was ecstatic when i

found out that your coldstream guards are just one battalion yep fair fair strength six two points but when i tried to barrage them they managed to get away i could have pinned them and then trapped them went for them but instead they managed to make a tactical retreat pulled away and have moved fairly far east yeah because they didn't move loss in any of my stuff during they were on full ca cpa yes so basically they've pushed to the limit of their cpa now because i was like well they're not going to get engaged and get uh decohesion or anything no not without me going wild because uh you can only move a unit again in the same op stage if they end their movement within two hexes of an enemy unit yeah which is what happened at fort magdalena i could

have moved them again this op stage gone again yeah and re-engaged but again because of the restrictions on cpa i was reluctant to drain them of their energy to fight something that i think i would have won you would but it would have been costly in terms of both ammunition and cohesion levels i mean not worth it you would have won if i'd stayed if you'd pushed in would have been maybe questionable well it would depend on your bombardments and how much ammo you had because i would have just kept peeling away well i've already used 40 on a barrage yeah and as you know from the capacity of trucks a heavy truck can carry one heavy truck carries eight ammunition that's five five heavy trucks and most units don't have more than 10 heavy trucks assigned

10s on the way on the top end for me i've got some that have 25 medium but then that's 25 by force that's only 100 ammo yeah and that's if they've all got ammo which they definitely don't most of them carry other stuff like water or stores so all in all i think we we made some clever decisions you made a very smart and kind of cunning move and i think i made the reserved sensible choice to keep them there and not take the bait i think you're trying to play up to my ego i think you tried to debate me with fort magdalena but i'd rather have those planes in my possession in four upstages with you dead

than have them right now and you peel off and manage to kill half of my blackshirts. I can't allow that, Andy. I simply can't. Do you only have the two divisions of blackshirts? No, I've got four. Oh, I wasn't sure if you'd get all four or if they were like the second would be off in Europe

somewhere. No, the other two are in Tripoli at the moment. Oh, are they trying to get here? They're en route. They're en route. They are on the march. In fact, in, I think not the next upstage but the one after they will be on the map okay so they're probably two turns from the front would you say uh well i've got a decent stretch of road and then track from that port so if i keep them on the straight and narrow and maybe even motorize them oh yeah you could motorize it just means dedicating trucks to that which i'm kind of reluctant to do so if i do that

i think i could probably get them there in three op stages or four four stages okay because i think they've got one more there next one after that they're actually on the map and then two op stages to get to the front line i think is doable right yeah so you're on a bit of a timer because as you've picked up on you've never encountered them in combat but you you seem to have picked up they are scary guys yeah they are your elite and you said that five close assault some of them so yes one of them has five close assaults and that determines the the close combat rating so close assault is multiplied by the toe points that are available that make up the unit and usually close assault is one or maybe two if you're lucky these guys have five close assault so you're looking at

you know five toe points that's 25 close assault that is a terrifying force in this game it's insane i think the highest close assault i've seen in the books is five i'm not sure anyone else actually beats that no none of my infantry do um tanks and stuff i think maybe but in terms of infantry i think they're as good as a sort of guess yeah so i'm i'm very i'm very excited to get them over to the east but i'm also conscious that when that happens i've kind of i've spent it at that point that they're out there and i need to really commit them carefully because what i've noticed is you seem to have a lot more smaller groups of men you have a lot of battalions that broken off yeah well most of my front are detached infantry from the 7th armoured yes so because the

7th armoured at the start is just the vehicles yes it's entire artillery and infantry are spread across that front line which makes for an interesting dynamic of do you reunite them or do you keep them as separate groups and mobile to a certain extent yeah yeah and then pepper them round as well what you've done in this instance it actually put me off because I knew that my in this instance it would have been the Mileti division would have been caught on their their flank and you would have went for them and they would have realistically committed to attacking the division so they wouldn't have been fighting back very hard against your guys yeah which would have ended badly yeah it would have probably led to quite heavy losses in the Mileti division an

overall win because your division would be gone but it wouldn't be without its its reasonable cost I think I'm going to be attaching I'm going to bring some of it back together because it was good there being no infantry because I could beeline them to the front using the 15 CPA not 8 or 10

as like the limit of the lowest thing in the unit but because of the combined arms rules having tanks rumbling around without attached infantry it's a very risky move unless it's a lot of tanks

then because of the combined arms rules it means you would have a huge penalty to their effectiveness what i will also do this week is make sure that when i pop up the post on our instagram which is just war with a mate every week we'll update it with the the episode name and a little picture of the map but this one i'll make sure it's a relevant one i will post the picture of that showdown at fort magdalena so people can visualize it a bit better yeah to see the standoff that you've created as well as a smattering of other units that are nearby so it gives a bit of an idea as what can be moved you know here and there and it's also i think just good practice because we are as we're playing this we're thinking about how we're going to set this up in the main game

how we're going to communicate these sort of um illustrations so i think trips and drabs of that it's just good practice yeah no definitely um i guess we're sort of getting close to we've wrapped up, other than some of the trucks and like where they go we've sort of wrapped up Upstage 2 in terms of combat stuff, we've done the air and land stuff now. We have, yeah, it's all done

So I guess looking to Upstage 3 do you reckon you'll be taking initiative? You got any sort of goals that you want to get done next Upstage as it were? So when you say taking initiative

do you mean that in the philosophical sense or do you mean in the actual game mechanic of will i take the initiative i guess both so in terms of the game mechanic um no way am i telling you uh that's not gonna happen i'm gonna spring it on you last minute yeah as always to try and catch you off okay especially after the cheeky tricks you've been pulling this time around however when it comes to taking initiative in the philosophical sense the tactical sense yes i do now have i think a definitive play to end this turn okay i think i know what i want the end of this turn to look like i think i know what i want to try and accomplish and the positions i want things to be in when we move into the next stop stage what i'm looking forward to not in the sense of excited but what

i'm seeing ahead of me is store distribution because distributing stores is vitally important to make sure your units aren't falling apart at the seams and starving to death and i have the fourth black shirts pushed quite far east yes i need to get them food so that is important it also means potentially sacrificing my own trucks or giving them a gambit of make sure they capture yours to then obtain your resources hoping that you have stores in some of your trucks and that would disrupt your supply lines as well so i've got i've got plans that revolve around disruption of supply lines because i think playing around with that is something we haven't done yet we haven't went for supply lines so no not really uh i sort of unsuccessfully tried the long range

to sort of snipe at some of your truck convoys but i don't think either of us have gone for well you hit the road you bombed the road which is not a direct attack on anything but will have a cumulative effect on supply lines for the rest of the game basically yeah and i think that was my first sort of foray into that arena and i'm gonna try and keep up that sort of thing with air support i think that's an important thing to do with air support it's go for supply routes because when it comes to pinning you can pin en masse which we found out without rules mishap but when it comes to their real formidability i think it will come down to disruption of supply lines i think i'd rather do some some strafing some bombing that really targets your supplies

yeah because if i can cut the legs out from under you before your men are even there and they can't eat or drink or shoot then that is much more valuable i think than pinning a few of them down when i may or may not attack them yeah so i'm i'm excited to play around with that what about yourself in terms of initiative i think i've been pretty aggressive so far i would say first op stage yeah i think this op stage you've been a bit more reserved i sort of flew in on fort magdalena you did but i think you've you've then pulled back quite quickly so i think it was very much a one and done and you were yeah i don't did you expect to have such a resistance come for you afterwards uh kind of yeah yeah um i think yeah i might be i don't know kind of on

the fence about doing or not if it's going to be a mistake but i might pull back a bit and set up a front and align and reinforce that and get it set up maybe around Mersa Matruh or where the train sort of fits for it because then you can ferry men

back and forward like it's nobody's business yeah so maybe try and chew you up there a bit and then go on an offensive that's a risky move though because I'm pretty sure Mersa Matruh is one of the winning conditions if I have that and Siwa but to Brook

is it Tobruk the town or Benghazi the one that's right next to all your guys at the minute that is pretty sure that's Tobruk I think Benghazi's a little bit further over to the west Tobruk's one of my win conditions because with it being a Graziani's

offensive it's I don't think I'm expected to take as much terrain yes I think you need to have you're essentially holding a line yeah and if I break that line and hold that line instead I win yeah whereas if you push slightly to the west you've you've won yeah so i'm interested to see how that actually pans out and if we have anything close to historical accuracy by the end of this

yeah well i that'll be a an interesting one i think at the towards the end of the offensive to do a like what what happened in the game first what actually happened um yeah i think maybe we should have a look at that week in history maybe when we finished up the first turn see if we can gauge how close we were yeah because i might try and bait you into a sort of overextended rommel there's something quite funny by the way about you telling me explicitly that you're going to try and bait me with something i think that's uh it's just a funny sentiment but i guess that's the thing is we saw with enigma and a lot of this stuff it's like a lot of the time they knew what the other person was doing but it's can i get the guys there to counter it yeah like i could tell

you in theory what i'm going to do now i guess the question would be one can i do anything to stop it and two is even telling the truth is the information accurate yeah do i have a reliable narrator or is there somebody who's competing against me because i'm also very much looking forward to next turn because that's when all the there's no more limits from the scenario yes everything drops off everything's available um so i'll get to use the commonwealth shipping for bombardments and stuff. Which I'll be interested to see. I need to double-check the map

and see what kind of places are exposed for that kind of bombing. I think it's mostly my port cities, the likes of Tobruk, Benghazi, that are right on the cusp of the coast. Well, basically, they have a bombardment range of two hexes. Yes.

So basically, and they can go, I think, 100. I remember being something silly, yeah. Basically anything within two hexes of the sea. They can get. theoretically they can get i think it's a it's a bold move but um i'm interested to see how you use it because i can't really do a whole lot against them yeah it is just a case of taking it as it comes and also it is bombardment so it could give losses but it'll be primarily pinning pinning and reduction of capacities and that sort of thing for ports yeah

but i'm excited for it i'm looking forward to where it'll go i think we've got a real chance for some wackadoodle business yeah should we yeah do you have anything else about this session no i think it was quite compact in what we did i was really expecting a massive showdown instead we played it off quite calm and collected you yeah you baited me a little bit i didn't take the bait happy about that so i think the real kicker will be upstage three i think upstage three is going to see some blood in the sand yeah but if that's yeah a lot if that's if that's it for that i guess we have a little listen to that that little beautiful chirping bird in my ear do you hear it andy i do oh no that wasn't it no is that not oh no oh there it is yeah it's it's the

telegram sound that's it it's it's it's news it's news coming in and um the first thing i'm quite excited to share it's it's one of two parts um which we'll we'll delve into next week as well but those who were here last week which should realistically be all of you this shouldn't be where you start you'll be confused you need to find out all the characters in the first season what we did last week was have a bit of a breakdown me primarily because some smart alec decided they would send a silly comic over with no context and confuse me and congratulations you got your wish i hope you're happy i bet you're giggling away in your seat because of what happened last week i had a bit of a breakdown there's all i could think about on holiday

ruined my holiday so thanks for that buddy jeff bezos if that's your real name probably isn't if it is then again you know very efficient delivery service but i think you might be evil um we we had a few responses about this heathcliff comic which is on the instagram by the way i posted it there if anyone wants to look at this nonsense um about the beef buddies some people have sent in some theories there's there's one which is simply too in depth for us to get into today since we had other stuff to talk about but we will next week i promise i love it this week however we do have someone else's theory and it comes from dan dan says i would not look for too much meaning in heathcliff comics they're meant to be more abstract but do follow certain patterns

if you read enough of them that's sort of the issue i've never seen one before then for instance there are many that show the two meat store owners or other people commenting on how the children love and then random heathcliff thing that he has heathcliff loves meat in general and will promote the type of meat he is wanting heathcliff himself never talks ah i see he's all a sort of third silent protagonist i like that he's strong strong stoic type such as a meat tank ham blimp or ham helmet ham helmet sounds good as for it sounds a bit sexual actually uh as for why they sent this particular comic to you maybe it was just the most recent one they saw and thought of you two as buddies oh i mean that's nice it's not fresh weird you know what that's actually turned my

mandarin on a little bit maybe where the beef buddies are yeah maybe children love the b i don't think i don't think many children listen to this i don't imagine i don't imagine it's got anything for a kid to enjoy we're talking about a board game they never can and should play and we talk about non-sequitur comics well keep up the good work glad to hear you now have a better grasp of the game to play it faster i believe you can get it done in under 10 years dan well that last bit, Dan, is a bit unrealistic, isn't it? Let's face it. It's madness. It's very nice

that you think that of us, but I think you might be overestimating us. It's a nice goal. It is. It's a nice goal. It's a nice message, and I'm glad that you've given me a little bit of reassurance, and also a little bit of a warmth in my heart, because now I see us as the Beef Buddies, Andy. Maybe that's

what's going on here. Maybe we're the Beef Buddies. I'm fine with that. We don't have a name for our little we were the mates but maybe we were the beef buddies we were the mates, yeah, now we're the beef buddies well as I said a long time ago, one of us is war one is with the mates

and it changes based on day of the week, but thank you for that Dan I'll bear that in mind and I will probably be thinking a lot about what a ham blimp would look like bet it's sweaty bet it's horrible bet it's tasty though

Andy, you must have another piece of mail there because our inbox is full up again yeah i do from richard ahoy james and andy i've discovered your podcast through the worst idea of all time and now that i've caught up i thought i'd wire you an email gram uh i've been really enjoying listening to you both and i have a question whenever it's christmas in the game are you going to combine great game night with putting up a tree and decorations and having a full christmas dinner whatever the time of year it will be and i suppose uh for the following weeks new year game night

you could stay up playing and or drinking until midnight. With best wishes I'm hoping you can stay subtle, humble and brave for the long campaign ahead Richard. It's a fun idea It is, I like the idea of doing a bit of a themed one for the Christmas segment of the game. It would also

because I didn't put Christmas decorations up at Christmas at mine because I can never be bothered and I don't always have a full Christmas dinner the random day we're doing that that particular play session would be the most christmasy day of the year and the thing is as well because it takes us a little bit of time to get through any particular week it would be

like a two or three week long christmas in the middle of sort of march or something ridiculous and um well we did do a christmas dinner this year i did make one here during dungeons and dragons we made a christmas dinner it was questionable in its quality served on plastic not plastic paper plates yeah but i think that maybe give me a bit of a taster i'd be happy to do that again make another subpar christmas dinner maybe swap out some of the ingredients and uh yeah we maybe we do that we just sit down for christmas dinner while we play and make it a jolly old session i think the bloodshed might taint that slightly maybe we have a truce that episode yeah that's what i assume every year in the world wars was a big football game yeah well

that's just once i believe just once and it sort of highlights the futility of that war and as for the the new year's bit uh stay up playing and drink until midnight um sounds like a very fun idea but the the real crux is that we usually play this on a weekday which is a work night yeah so if we're gonna do that that is really gonna gonna get me and bother at work because i'm gonna show up smelling of booze new year's day jolly and when i try to explain it to people at work and they ask what i've done an excuse and i say but i was playing a board game so i drank all night because it's it's new year's eve in the board game i it's definitely a disciplinary waiting to happen i'm now observing both the holidays as they actually happen and also when

they randomly occur in a game i'm playing and again it will go on for potentially like two three weeks in a row so i'm gonna have to binge drink it's christmas month it's christmas month for two months straight at work i will be showing up midweek pissed as a far back to back yeah they're gonna be so that's gonna be a rough time so there's definitely aspects of that i think we'll take on board richard um the the heavy drinking i might have to stave off on but uh maybe maybe a little tipple maybe a little um a little sherry or eggnog during the session i never had eggnog maybe i'll do that maybe when we get to the christmas part which will be in the full game because we won't be able to get eggnog because it won't be seasonal that's true we'll have to

buy it to be fair we won't do it in the scenario we won't reach christmas we only get six weeks in the scenario from late september so we don't actually touch christmas in the scenario so it might actually roll around to christmas again by the time that we get to christmas no it will if we can align that perfectly imagine that let's not fuck around with the pacing of the game already that's a good point well to answer your question richard i think you'll probably have a lot of christmas episodes come forward so if that's your thing um and also very glad you found out about us from the the worst idea of all time they are fantastic podcasts yes i think possibly my favorite podcast of all time and they gave us a little little shout out which is beautiful

so yeah um thank you very much for that richard uh thank you all for your emails there's a ton in there you guys have really blew that thing up again so thanks um there's another heathcliff one we'll get to next week i love it um you know who you are it's very very good and everybody else we as always endeavor to get to all of them we promise to get all of them just give us a little bit of time we've got our hands full we've got our hands full and this concludes the mail segment thank you for the telegrams so as always you know what's coming you know it's coming it's coming right now we need to give you a little intro for this we've got a common ground intro we need to get a little intro for andy's history segment because you've very much taken the reins on this

oh yeah my god am i excited i'm i'm excited please please andy please tell me it's the maoris again it's the maru's part two yes let's hear about them and we start with a quote of course yes let's hear it so the quote for this week's fix bayonets is that it that's the quote and it it does its job and explains what's happening sorry that's it that actually is it oh wow so last time the uh germans had landed on crete on the 20th of may and being uh the mario got involved in a bit of their fighting with the house and their trip to the airport and back yeah poor boogers didn't know what hit them no i think it's probably the uh the second worst trip to an airport i've heard of in the last week

yeah so the mario heavily involved in the defense throughout this whole time uh but i'm going to focusing on one particular battle which is on the 27th of may okay so keep in mind through all of this they've been in constant contact with the enemy for almost a week at this point so is this directly following what happened last this is on crete yeah but seven days later okay yeah but this whole time they've been fighting they've been engaged there's been bombers overhead no sleep or anything but they're fighting a withdrawal across the island south where they're planning to be evacuated okay yeah because at this point that they can't hold crete and they're they know it um so a force of uh aussies and new zealanders including the maori 28th are tasked with defending

a road called the 42nd street which had an embankment along it so it made a good defensive position so these guys are holding it and early on the morning of the 27th lieutenant colonel george ditmer who's the commander of the maru battalion went and talked to the other commanders involved and they decided or i guess he kind of told them if the germans get too close we're going to engage and charge them so here's a little snippet from the 28th maoris battalion diary okay oh 900 hours aerial blitz begins all type of planes being in evidence half 10 after being opened fire upon by the enemy at close quarters companies a b and c fixed bayonets and charged with full vocal accompaniment which is all vocal accompaniment yes so that's a very nice way of

saying they stuck knives on the end of their guns and then they went fucking loud and just started screaming out i imagine some sort of maori battle cry yeah well that's from their battalion diary which is very understated i'll give you some snippets of a more in-depth of what happened in this battle okay so the germans uh it's their mountain division who are a fairly elite unit yeah and paratroopers who are elites are advancing on this position uh under the cover of machine guns and mortars pushing towards a supply dump they get too close the 28th maori did a hacker and charge surrounded and supported by a machine gun battalion and here's some quotes from a soldier's personal diaries about what happened just before the charge at the 42nd street began

one soldier, Private Hema Hemera Apuri of C Company, on his own initiative, rose from his position on the western edge of the road wielding a Bren gun magazine in one hand, like a ceremonial patio club

of his ancestral forebearers, and began to perform the Hakka Mass. The thing is, I've seen the Hakka performed, and it's it's already it's it's impressive it's intimidating in i've seen it in like ceremonial events like uh i think it's like graduations and stuff i've seen yeah or like retirements

or stuff yeah and it's scary then and it's like a it's a safe place yeah but it's like i would feel intimidated being there and if that's in war and someone's wielding their gun like a club yeah i'd be fucking mortified i'd know i'd be dead it's coming uh so here's a quote uh from a letter written by fred baker who was attached to the 28th maori yeah jerry tried to hold us back with everything he had we had no support and fire except bren and tommy guns fired from the hip as we came we walked all the way jumped into his first positions bayoneted or tommy gunned them then we walked to his next line my fellows behaved as if they were on parade and after we got to his second line he started to crack and run we got to about the fourth line before we met any further

opposition we soon silenced that oh the fired from the hip as well it just really speaks to the kind of march that's going forward it's not a precise one it's an effective one yeah but also the i was picturing a wild charge he's describing it as them walking as if on parade just this inevitable advance towards the enemy so during this he described it was during this advance that i got my wang in the right arm that was during the first 300 yards i would say i bled like a stuck pig and as i went on till it petered out i didn't feel too hot by the time i got back to the rap regiment age post aid post for attention still it was worth it on our front dead for dead the odds were in our favor by 30 to 1 that's how have they ended up with that because

there's a few hundred of them isn't there yeah well i'll get to the losses of this later on oh dear uh and this is him describing the enemy on that day uh also the i'm bleeding like a stuck pig contrasted with a wang on the right arm it's very like but also the fact that this is a journal of someone they're fine they survive i'm bleeding like a stuck pig yeah and i'm now writing a diary about that event well this is describing why you may be survived they were certainly unnerved on the day i am referring to their shooting was frightful i should have been shot to pieces as i was about 10 yards in front of my crowd and the chap who got me was no more than 20 yards in front at me. He was behind a tree.

This all happened at a big olive grove, and fired two bursts at me with his submachine gun, and that is all he could do. I know if my life depended on it, I would have done much better. For my... I like how he's just talking down to this guy.

He's just talking shit. Well, if I was going to die, I would have fucking fought. I would have done much better, for my boys got him oh that is brilliant i love that these guys are so nonchalant about all of it yeah they've just done some of the scariest shit you can do in a war and they're just like yeah yeah i would have i would have done better if i were them speaking of nonchalant it's not one of them but it's he's part of the two seventh australian who are with them one of them's reported to have stood

up on the trench and gone i can't see properly boys and just started walking towards the enemy firing his gun well that's a bit like you mentioned this ages ago this i can't remember which um which segment it was but you're talking about when you get like lost in the desert it might have been the long range desert group yeah where you sort of wander over a dune and then all of a sudden you're completely disoriented yeah and you wander off except this is in the middle of gunfire i don't know where i'm going i guess i'll just go over here and kill everyone well it It had the timbre of a joke, but it preceded a charge at an enemy gun line. Do you know where I am, guys?

So here's some more quotes from another guy about this battle. Suddenly something blew up in front and heavy machine gun fire opened on us. There was a yell on our right and we went forward with C Company shouting, Charge! 19th Battalion men at first hung back bunched behind olive trees. aye, even just before after our overrun heavy machine gun mounting, there was close

quarter fightings with some Germans who stood their ground, Hemi bayoneted one, a weird scream I got a couple of yards in wild west style, Matthew's got a number with his Tommy gun and then sprayed a bunch of shamming

dead in a shallow depression it's just, he bayoneted one, weird scream i killed some people wild west style what the fuck does that even mean i don't know stand there ready to like draw his pistol i'm picturing that like i'm picturing the guns at high noon but it's a tommy gun that he just brandishes and then pulls up to the hip and just mows someone in half at this point in his letter he sort of describes losing track of what's going on a bit and it has this incredible

quote. I have no idea how the bunch of enemy came to be on the ground in front of us. We were running wild and it was confusing. But they were there. So, the Germans are advancing on this road, completely unexpected bayonet charge

by the Maori. Yeah, there's no reason to expect to be bayonet charged in World War II. The charge results in the Germans retreating over a kilometer and a half the pursuit stopped and the anzacs decided to return only after air attacks from the germans at the end of it over 280 germans were killed three prisoners taken in response 10 australians were killed and 28 wounded the maori battalion suffered 14 casualties four dead ten injured one of them of course was 30 to one is one of them stuck like a pig yes

with a shot a little wang in the arm yeah this this charge halted the advance of the germans who were pushing sort of uniformly across the island and instead of going back to charge head on the germans tried to outflank these guys so they could basically have them in like like a horseshoe kind of and just yeah gun them down in a kill box because they didn't want to deal with but that did give the allied forces time to continue and as

they tried to like loop round the Maori were able they were ordered to drop back and they avoided like being enclosed uh imagine your frustration as German high command when you're putting this all together you're like right let's box them in and it's like not only have they done this not only

have they bayonet charged us and killed a bunch of us they fucking got away with it as well oh yeah but this is ultimately the crete is a losing effort despite the bravery of the maori and the australians here um so on the 30th of may uh 10 days after the initial landing and due to shipping losses it's determined it's not possible to evacuate everyone okay so in order to maintain uh fairness each battalion was allotted a certain number of men who would have to remain and defend the beaches to allow the others to get away god that's brutal yeah so the 28th battalion are allocated 230 men to embark while six officers and 140 men would have to stay behind they had more volunteers than their allotment

so some guys were like i know you volunteered but you get on the ship these these guys yeah they they are out for blood yeah also during this time there's another there's another battle in a pass where you know the lay force commandos have you heard of them at all i don't think so no uh they're another like elite commando group uh that's formed during world war ii they've got some of their own rules and the thing as well but oh cool very elite at one point one of their captains comes and like comes to the maoris personally it's like can we have two companies to help us hold this pass we heard about what you guys have been up to but yeah so from their time on the island the battalion suffered 243 casualties uh 74 men

killed and 100 wounded while a favor 64 are captured um and ditmer who organized the charge receives the distinguished service order and letters and mentions and dispatches but they uh they fight the battle of crete they make it on their ships and now they're heading for north africa oh we'll see what they get up to uh oh dear next time wow what a group of guys what a formidable group of guys and the fact that they are heading to the the mainland now they're heading to the the front line the big map i'm excited to see what they get up to there because hopefully it'll give an idea as to what they compare to in the game and how i can avoid them oh yeah what i need to bear in mind is don't get too close to them and also don't try and box them in because

they'll just escape and i'll be dead just a quick story as a thing about these guys for when they do get to north africa because i might not include it next time at a certain point they get assigned to build a road and they build it way faster than they're expected to so uh some english officers go down to like oh how are they building this road so and they just go there's nothing we can learn from this this should by all rights be complete chaos we don't know how it's working but the road's getting built you don't have picturing have you ever played any of the lego games yeah you know when the characters build stuff in the lego games and it just the blocks click together i'm just picturing that they're like this is fucking inhuman i don't understand

these guys are doing everything they are very much renaissance men they can they can bayonet they can tommy gun they can build yeah these guys can do anything i have a theory that tommy the bayonets charger working because they're so unexpected it's got to be it's got to be like no surely they're not charging the machine oh no they're here well they must be hit like the germans with like analysis paralysis where it's like what do i do to solve this yeah i'm gonna shoot at them but they're all running at me and at some point they're gonna get to me well you know i mentioned they thought they were doing war crimes the germans last time yeah yeah that's because they couldn't conceive of that many people dying in melee combat during what they were like

they must be killing prisoners there's no way that these guys are actually pulling this off but come to think of it if you're shooting usually if you're in like a gunfight the way i understand it a bit you sort of peel back a little bit you try and get some cover and there's a bit of you know give and take yeah but if they're just fucking running at you it's like right i've got until my magazine runs out i need to kill everybody otherwise it's done and i'm gonna get stabbed and i guess also the thing of like he was certainly unnerved that day i could have done that it's like also these are big guys they're like maoris like charging you well yeah i mean the the guys i've seen now and like doing like the the hacker like the maori um sort of uh it's like

retirement stuff i think i've seen yeah like police officers and stuff i think it is and those guys are they're built as well like really stacked so when it's like the old luck rugby team with bayonets charging yeah and these guys are at war yeah so they're also probably going to be beefy guys so when they're running at you god it doesn't matter if they've got a bayonet or not i'm gonna be in fucking danger the fact they've got a blade on the end of their guns make it so much worse also just the image of a like a tommy gun with a bayonet on the end yeah it's just an interesting image well i think the fixed bayonet order is a general prepare for close quarters combat it's not necessarily i don't think riflemen would have bayonet attachments but otherwise it's

just like we'll get your dagger handily yeah which is also scary a guy just pulls a fucking dagger from his side and he just runs at you whatever it is it's bad news but that's why i thought fixed bayonets was a very suitable quote for these fellas it certainly is and it i think that's also uh the the the coda of a lot of german lives in crete by the sounds of it yeah they did not know what was coming oh and they do not let up when they get to north africa i'd be disappointed if they did these guys need to keep on going at the pace they are because this is fucking solid gold those guys those maori guys god i'm glad this is just a pretend game and not an actual war i got frustrated with this i can't imagine getting frustrated with that i would just

fucking die. I certainly can't imagine yeah, let's charge, boys. I might be doing that sometime soon, but it'll be much less impressive. I'm not getting any actual medals. Dispatchers won't be mentioning me. But what I am going to have to mention, Andy, is my

disappointment with you today, with that cunning move you pulled. There's only one way to bridge that little gap. What do you think it is? Some common ground? It's some common ground. And now for something nicer. A little oasis in the war it's time for some common ground i'm trying the intro for common ground i'm recording

maybe common ground for the uninitiated whoever you might be surely you're not again this shouldn't be the first episode why are you here why did you start at 32 That's bizarre. If you did, welcome. Well, welcome, but also, if you're at this point, pause now, go back to episode one, listen to everything, and then get back here,

and you'll understand the concept of everything. You don't have to do that. You have to do that. Don't listen to Andy. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's just being polite. Common Ground is a segment in which we have to try and find somewhere we can bridge the gap

between friend and foe. We need to become pals again. We need to become the beef buddies. So what have you got? so my common ground this week my suggestion is we should do away with bottled water completely and we should replace them with iv drips um okay so let me paint you a picture andy okay yeah because you're a thirsty boy you're wandering around you're desperate or stupid enough to buy bottled water from the shop instead what you see oh it's a bag with a little um sort of wheeled

stick on it and all you need to do you go into the shop one iv bag please you stick it in your arm so we're giving ourselves injections no it's not an injection it's an iv drip that's not an injection it's a constant stream of fluid you stick it in and these iv drips by the way it's not just water it's got all the salts and minerals everything you need to hydrate you put them in and now you don't even need the stick that's just for show if you want to look sort of you know decrepit you to wheel it around yeah if you want to look sort of um of ill health you can wheel it around that way otherwise you just stick it in your backpack you know the thing you've got in backpacks where you can put your headphones through yeah yeah it's like that where you can put like your ipod

you know the iv has to be above the entry point does it yes right no of course yeah the bubbling also i've had an experience with bottled water that in your thing would kill me oh my god i yeah i guess we need to do a very quick side tangent on that so when we were in budapest andy decided to buy a bottle of water to be fair bottle water in budapest is actually what spurred on this idea i was thinking about hydrating so when we were away andy bought a bottle of water and we sat down at the tables outside our hotel room it was scorching heat sort of 35 36 degrees celsius by the way for any international listeners which for us way from britain that that burns us bad we were lathering in sun cream constantly real hot weather so he

sits down across from me we both just pop to the local shop got some bottles of water try and hydrate and i crack open mine take a swig and he cracks open his that is the worst sound when you're just desperate to chug a bottle of water it's sparkling water now the the thing is i really enjoy sparkling water i on the holiday i couldn't really drink because like andy mentioned it's you can't chug it you can't chug it you can't down that drink and hydrate you have to take sips so you crack that open and it fizzes and it's it's a bottle with a a green lid and um you take a drink of that and you're like oh this is this is sparkling water this is bad luckily i bought another bottle of water and you looked over at mine and mine had a blue lid and we determined

it's it's sort of the inverse because over in the uk it tends to be the case of green lids um it's sparkling water and it didn't seem to be the case there because then you put together right well in that case this must be still water so you pull out and i've uh despite how exhausted i was and and hung over and burning that really fucking tickled me and i was in stitches watching you with this disappointment of this trying to use this holmesian level of deduction only to be stung once again by the cold chill of sparkling water and it was just the look on your face the complete defeat it was fucking gold yeah so if you make that mistake with the ivs you're gonna get a bubble in the bloodstream so well that's it

we'll do away with sparkling water for the ivs you can you can buy bottled sparkling water all bottled water is sparkling water the iv bags what we'll do is in the backpack because i i yes i've clearly neglected to think about gravity um so you'll need to get a stick that almost pokes out your backpack you know like the tour guides where they've got a like a flag yeah that comes out it's a big pouch full of water yes yeah uh with all of the essential things you need to hydrate so then that way you've just got that stuck in yourself and you know there's moments you have through the day and we've had conversations about this in the past you just forget to hydrate sometimes it's very easy to do you know we're busy you know individuals on the go uh beef buddies on

the go and then you realize you know get into bed at night and you're like ah i've drank no liquids today it's easy done everyone does it or at least some people do usually the absent-minded and this negates that completely because because if you feel a little bit thirsty you're like oh well if you're gonna buy bottled water you're already kind of falling for a scam let's face it okay unless you're in a country where you can't drink tap water it is a scam and as you can crank that faucet and get some ice-cooled nice cooled water then it is a trick it is a trick you've fallen for okay you're gonna fall for that trick instead look at this ivy bag jab yourself with this take a wang in the arm like you're the the 28th maori and get on with it then that way you're hydrated

for the day wander around the office a little bit sit down at the office do your work you know type away at the keyboard and then oh i feel refreshed i feel good how is this a bad idea well one i think you need a nurse to place an iv well that's the thing it would become so common place everyone would know how to which if anything is also teaching people are good at stuff everyone does there's not like regular fuck-ups it would be teaching people a primary skill that through habituation and osmosis they would just learn to do it's like you know you know how to open a can of pop don't you you pull the tab be like that it's just find the vein stick it in yeah but when i pull the can of pop and i like fiddle with it a bit and the like thing falls into the drink

that's not injecting random shit into my muscles or whatever well then don't do that don't fiddle with it it's going in your body take some responsibility okay slight pivot okay you can go get like an operationer they'll put a thing in so you just and then it's just a connector a connector yeah oh i see what you mean like like when someone's in hospital for a while they'll attach the thing so they're constantly having to find the vein yeah yes no i know what you mean no that that could work yeah maybe people go for that electively i mean this is just very distressing about you because you you don't want to drink your liquids but you do want drink your foods right are you bringing huel into this i'm just saying consume things in the like

the medium they're meant to be oh yeah because you're not allowed to break away from the the the big capitalist monster are you oh drinking things oh let's follow the machine oh that's what we are we're all robots and we'll follow the machine you can't drink your food you can't ivy bag your water come on man grow up okay i was so ecstatic on the way back from a holiday when we were stuck at the airport for six hours on the way back we had to wait there for six hours for our train to get back to our home and no one was open because we were there from midnight till 6 a.m yeah i went on a little walk and all the shops closed at 12 and opened at six yeah we were in the the golden zone of not

having anything available there were no coffee shops there were no cafes no restaurants no bars no pubs and there was where we were sat it was a sort of bus terminal at the airport and they had a vending machine and a coffee machine the coffee machine was broken and they had a vending machine that vended a handful of different uh drinks and sort of snacks but it was kind of crap so after a little while it was for a good five hours we've been sat there a friend different holding area a friend of what jurassic park one and two i think of course you got through both of them i just doom scrolled through various social media and tiktok youtube you read a good book or two yep you really burned through some interesting material fifth element by terry pratchett you

should read it if you're listening fifth element fifth elephant oh i like the fifth element the film it's not like that yeah i imagine not um i imagine miljovovich is not a main character in this she's just a small role cameo um we we ended up going to the train station and separate to the bus terminal went to the train station to wait for our train and we should have went there so much earlier because i sat down there glanced to my left and what do i see what do i see the first time i've ever seen anything like this it's a huel vending machine i don't mean a vending machine with huel i mean a huel branded vending machine it is it's the beautiful oasis i was waiting for it was fucking solid gold and they did it was every every flavor you could get you could get

the salted caramel the vanilla the chocolate the strawberry the cookies and cream and then you could get the high protein versions the black additions of all those flavors they also had the soft drinks like a mineral drink an energy drink of these huel drinks it was fucking astounding now the issue was i was really ill because i'd been up for about 36 hours or something fucking ridiculous because i decided what would i do before our last day when we go away and try and get home i'll go to the nightclub in budapest i'll go to i think it's instant fogas is its name and you know what had a great time it was jolly but i've kind of regretted it when i'm sat there with no sleep no food but then i see huel and i would have i would have sampled every damn thing in that machine

but i i just couldn't i had one i had one i had the the high protein black edition vanilla huel and it was fucking beautiful i still have the bottle i've kept it as a memoir you can fill that with water and bypass your IV thing no it needs to be an IV thing we need to find the common ground handy that's the whole point you can't get rid of bottled water

for this you can make it available at vending machines for losers but bottled water is bad you must agree with that yeah that doesn't mean the fix is bottled water is bad

because of the disposable bottles. You just have disposable pouches. They can be recycled. They're medical equipment. They're not medical equipment. I'm sorry. They sell them at Sainsbury's now in this situation, so they're not medical equipment.

That's not how that works. Oh, I can't recycle this empty paracetamol box. It's medical equipment. Of course you can. No, that's a box. Right? It didn't have... Okay.

This is just a bag full of water. Just drink it Bottled water's not fucking medical equipment You can recycle that Because you don't inject it You're not injecting the bag The needles you have to put away safely Where are you getting the needles?

They come with the bag Back to step one They come with the bag You take it off at the end And you pop that in like a bin Like a medical waste bin Which there'll be lots of now There'll be like ashtrays

And the bag can just be recycled otherwise otherwise you're making a point that all medical needles are bad because they are just waste and therefore we should get away with uh you know just not having medical needles for things we don't need them for yeah we need them we need this people need to be hydrated and people aren't hydrated enough okay i'll agree with you on that do you know what the statistics are of how many people are hydrated i think you don't well you've caught me you've caught me in a lie um i was i was not going to make up a figure i was probably going to admit to that but um ultimately this is going to be a this is the for the betterment of mankind being able to be hydrated is so important

and i learned that on holiday in 36 degree heat as a very pale man from britain i thought we all did fine hydrating we did we did well but i realized how arduous it was it was a real task As opposed to Getting a cotton swab And an antiseptic wipe Clearing the area Yeah but then you're done for the day Also what happens when

What happens to heroin addicts happens And you're having to like rehydrate Through your toes Because you've collapsed all of your veins Well if that happens Just drink some bottled water Which is gone Some sparkling water is still around

don't do it all the time I'm not saying this is every day you just want it to be more available I'm saying if someone is silly enough to buy bottled water do this instead if you're going to buy bottled water stick yourself with this needle

you'll be better hydrated and it's definite, you will definitely be hydrated if you're desperate enough to buy bottled water take the IV drip if you feel you're properly hydrated and you're not going to buy bottled water, then you don't need the IV drip.

Okay. How does that sound? That sounds fine. That sounds better? Sounds as close as we're going to get. Wow, that might be the roughest common ground so far. It's over such a fundamental issue that you just misunderstood. I'm going to have to put a poll up for this one, I think.

I'm going to have to get other people's thoughts because I'm worried that I might just be the only genius in a mad world. or just a mad person in a normal world I'm the only one I'm the only dreamer Andy I mean that's the solid thing

well that's the burden that we take Andy each week at War with a Mate we have that and I suppose we also do have a quite important announcement which we were saving to the end we took a long hard think on holiday, we took some time and reflected on

what it was like to have some spare time the cadence of releasing the podcast and how sort of difficult it is the time it consumes and we decided

overall it's probably best if we just keep doing it we just do it all the fucking time we're gonna do it every week so we'll be here next week we'll be here every

every consecutive week and we'll always be here because we're gonna be doing this for probably about 40 fucking years for the rest of our lives it's gonna be forever there's no way we can

really stop doing this I don't think this will ever end until one of us is fucking dead so until then stay hydrated but from us the beef buddies all we have to say is if you're in the deserts of your mind

apply sun cream and make sure to tap that IV drip in your arm and Andy, take us away there it is all of you, goodnight and we'll see you next time, if you want to reach out info at warwithamate is the email address .co.uk

.co.uk, yeah specifically that's important info at warwithamate.co.uk Instagram is warwithamate and our website is warwithamate.co.uk also you can reach us on there and other than that sleep tight don't let the bed bugs bite

and thanks for listening yeah I suppose so We'll see you next time.