War With A Mate - Episode 58: The Grapes of Ghent

Episode Date: January 10, 2026

These Truck Days just fly by nowadays - a symptom of poor supply lines if you ask me. Today, the guys close out Op Stage Two of Turn Three, staring down the barrel of the halfway point of the Scenario. A mailbag segment that takes us into a corner of history far from the North African Campaign pairs lovely with the bold push of the 7th Armoured Division in today’s History Segment and all topped off with Andy’s Common Ground; decisively one of the Common Ground sections he’s done.

come one come all to war with a mate with me james me andy we are here we are not live it's not a podcast work um it's pre-recorded and we are going to edit it we're going to upload it and you'll be listening to it at a later date this is not happening right now this is happening in the past it's good to clear that up yeah i just don't want any confusion i don't want people to start like heckling at us and thinking we can hear and you know trying to change the course of things that's what the emails are for yeah you're allowed to heckle at plays but you can't heckle hear in fact i would encourage you next time you're at a play or the theater if you heckle they can't hear you so there will be material change they will respond to you if you heckle

loud enough and long enough try and get the actors to laugh during an important scene it's like the the guards outside buckingham palace if you make them laugh it's sort of a an achievement it's a it's a personal accomplishment for tea with the queen you get invited somewhere you do go into an interior this guy made those uh humorless people laugh he must be a hoot yeah exactly you'll get it's sort of like a what's the comedy awards the razzies they're the bad oscars i don't think comedy has like an oscars thing there must be there's some mark twain prize there's got to be some sort of award like the the pulitzer of comedy that's giving comedy i mean i'm a fart of comedy but that's giving it far too much credit oh the punnitzer

now that's good that's gold that's the razzies of comedy i am the razzies of comedy and i'm also here because we've played more of the campaign for north africa we do this every week yeah and a bit of a short one today it's one of our shorter ones it's a truck day as well um truck days are flying by at the moment though yeah they're always quick when we do them they are moving as fast as our trucks do across road tiles which is very quick and it doesn't really cost much but i guess to recap what we've done today we picked up with the last little morsels of movement which was my 62nd marcia division trying to take out those truck bandits chasing them and at taylor's oldest time they were chasing the fusiliers they tried to barrage them they missed

with the single barrage point that they put into this, and once again, your guys fucked off into the distance. Scooted away. But what they've scooted away into is to be within two hexes of my guns, and also they are not too far from another division that have been boxing in your other truck bandits. Maybe I'll take the guns and use them. I don't think you'll be able to do that,

because they are going to shoot at you when you get close. We'll see. No, there's not ambiguity. We'll figure that out. Right, okay. We'll figure that out. There's definitive rules to determine what happens in that situation.

There's a combat that ensues, and I'm going to throw out a prediction here. You retreat before combat. You will. That's what you always do. And if you don't, you're just going to die. Maybe I'll do something else. I don't really know what else you could do.

Yeah, think at last. What else would you do? Maybe react. That's what retreat before assault is. No, it's a separate thing. It's a reaction to my thing. I'm going to lump it in one move. well everything's a reaction that's just causality yeah exactly doesn't mean everything's the same

well that yeah this game's very causality heavy it breaks it a bit i don't think so simultaneous movement there's very very little simultaneous movement in this game if any it's meant to be though that's what i mean it's meant to be sequentially yeah but you know that's that's how time works that was my point no that was my point okay i said that at the same time as you causally no i don't like this we um this premise of yours you can't reject time you can try all you want i could speaking of rejecting time i am rejecting at this time um of uh of dry january i reject it oh that's bad i'd i'd you know what we're a weekend you and i've both decided to partake in dry january yep and i'm having this this nice alcohol-free

corona here with you and i i just i wonder what could have been could i've been on a slight buzz i could have this has worked out fine for me because i'm currently on antibiotics and couldn't drink anyway oh yeah i forgot about that that works perfectly i'm getting my medicine in in january hang on is this why you wanted to do dry january with me because you're taking medicine yeah well the the slight buzz i get is from playing the campaign for north africa that's all of the injection of uh depressant i need to my body don't do drugs kids play the campaign for north africa yeah it's much less damaging to the central nervous system i don't know yeah the long-term effects of the campaign for north africa on the central nervous system

haven't been studied to a very in-depth degree we'll get the uh another award ceremony we'll get an ignoble prize for studying the uh the effects of the game on the nervous system i don't know that we're qualified to study the effects of anything on anything that's why it'll be an ignoble prize is this an actual yeah it's like it's not for bad science i don't think it's for pointless science almost. There was a guy who cracked his right hand every day

but never cracked his left to see if you know when you crack your... Oh, to see if it causes arthritis or something. Yeah, it didn't. I think he got one for that because it's... Yeah. He's went through a real ordeal to get to that knowledge point. Yes. Which we

didn't really need. We should get an award. Well, we've got time. well we actually do have an award let's win the bafta we have an award right here andy from your work yeah have we mentioned this before that we've won an award i don't know this is an award-winning podcast everyone you see i won an award when i when i started my my current job there was a uh sort of pseudo award ceremony when we we finished all of our training big uh intake group and we all finished it and there was an award ceremony where people voted on categories um sort of the usual like uh biggest caffeine fiend uh office joker that sort of thing and

one of them was most interesting hobby and i've been known from time to time to rabbit on about playing the campaign for north africa when people ask what i'm doing on the evening i'll tell them i am playing a long board game they'll ask what's that and i'll go on and they sort of go oh that that sounds interesting so is it like um is it like risk and it's like sort of yeah just say yes and i i try and get into the nitty-gritty and then i realize they don't want to hear it that's what the podcast is for this is where we talk about that people in the real world don't need to know about it but nonetheless i i was nominated and won the award for most interesting hobby so it's not really an award for the podcast it is i got a little plastic trophy it's here

on the mantelpiece next to the board. So that is attributed to me playing the board game. That is for the podcast. The podcast is award-winning and no one can say shit about it. Fine, I guess. I'm not going to fight you that hard on this. And if anyone does say shit about

it, I will delete the email and Andy won't see it. So, don't even try. And if you send it to the Instagram, I man that. So Andy will never see it. Send in a web form. Do not send a web form. I don't have access to those. I don't have a way to stop that getting to Andy

do not feed Andy information he will abuse it as you can tell we're going off on a tangent because it's truck day we don't have a whole lot to talk about yeah we didn't do much we had that combat and then we had a little jig round of the trucks

I remembered that you've taken one of my convoys again so I'm down to realistically two convoys that can do things wait what really? yes i've got convoy 3 and convoy 15 so to broken body you're just gonna run out of stuff no um because they have because of the access shipping yeah the shipping brings all their stuff in it's more case of how am i going to get the stuff from there to everyone else

what i've done is i've created you know supply dump one you've been there been there i've bombed it with ships i've bombed it with airplanes you're intimately familiar with supply i've done everything i um allowed to do of it the long range desert group raided it everyone's been there you've you've manipulated it in every single way you can yeah and because of that i needed to restock it you dropped your men in recently which thirded the ammo supplies because every time you dip into my supply dumps it reduces the ammo that i can use to a third and then when i go back in it it thirds it again essentially so that now means it's it's a very low threshold actually no i

wouldn't need a third of the second time i don't think i needed a third of the second time because it was technically mine i don't know how we're gonna handle oh it was thirded for you and now it's thirded for me again yeah it's a third and then every time it swaps hands it thirds basically fair enough even though i didn't do anything with it okay yeah no that that checks out um so because of that i needed to resupply that so i've given myself a little bit more ammo some more stores and that is basically all i can do with my current supply chain i've got trucks on the way the black shirts that are coming from tripoli have a lot of attached trucks which i'm now going to have to use for a plan because what i did have a revelation of unfortunately during this session

was that my airdrop plan that i mentioned last time is not viable because the planes i have can't fly transport missions for troops they can only travel with supplies or they can power drop men and i don't have men i can power drop that i can find anyway no that seems to be a fairly late game so that means at present it's gonna have to be boots on the ground some land stuff so because of that when i get my black shirts to the front line i'm gonna do a bit of a rejig with my trucks, and some people are getting motorized. Because they're fully motorized, right?

They're fully motorized. I have a lot of trucks. I can motorize more people and still have trucks for my new convoys. Oh, really? How many trucks have come in? I've got all the ones that they're in, and then I've got another just shy of a hundred.

Attached to them, but... Attached as first line. So if I broke those off and, say, half of them become convoys, and then half of them become... That's a lot of trucks. Yes. So that means I can turn some...

Motorize them quite a bit. I can get a division or so motorized. Maybe I'll break off some of the trucks that are motorizing the blackshirts. One of the blackshirt divisions I've got coming are worse than the other. So I'm going to break off the one that's worse. I'm going to keep the one that's good.

And with that, I've then got some quick guys. so the fast boys are going to become vitally important because now i can't i can't airdrop can't transport mission which is what i was hoping for uh another thing which i mentioned to you today is i'm going to finally get fort madalena back up and running yeah so you're going to get your sgs use that yes that's what i need to do because the airfield is intact it's reduced capacity by one's come in from tripoli right they do but what i'm going to do is backfill So I'm going to move some of the SGSUs from airfields I currently have where the planes aren't going to be as useful as the myriad of fighters that I've got. I'm going to move them away from some of the bombers because my supply line doesn't really...

Oh, that's my third convoy, by the way, the one that's supplying the planes up in Map B because they can go to Tobruk and then the airfields. so i'm going to move some of the sgs use from there from the very costly ammo wise bombers to the fighters to the fighters and then have some fighters that can do some damage i'd like to have that back at fort madelena i've been missing fort madelena it was a godsend early game for my air force and i want that back fair enough so that's my you can have some turns with no no air flight no no I've still got some I'm going to cycle

them around so I'm going to move SGSUs out of bombers I'm not going to use whether it's a case of they're not refitted or they don't have ammo or they're just not my prime bombers and continue with my other bombers because I've got a lot that have been sat there for a while because of the weather

I've had time to refit them without having any real activity thankfully what we did find out at the end of this is we've moved into upstage three of turn three. This is the halfway point. When we finish this we're into half two.

Start of turn four is halfway. So when that happens, it will be you once again, this next upstage, upstage three, taking initiative as you've declared. You'll be going first. And you've also rolled the weather. Hot. It is hot weather, which is

bad for water consumption. Not something I'm pleased about. I would prefer to not have that to deal with because not only is that going to tank some of my water supplies now but at the start of the next turn i've got the pasta point to worry about yes and stores if you haven't filled them up yet stores are looking all right i just need to get people to where the stores are right a lot of my truck phase next turn that sorry next upstage this coming upstage upstage three of turn three is going to be store heavy i'm going to be distributing stores to the men

that need it quite a few of them already have the stores that they need because they have been sitting pretty in settlements in major cities and they haven't had to use them so it's just stores in major cities yeah but they've had massive stockpiles to take them from i see what you mean so they've not had a sort of personal cash like burning the city not their first line trucks yes yeah so they've been taken from bardia from to brook and now they are going to have to happened to their personal supply so i've got to turn to backfill that okay but i'm hoping to do that the end of the op stage instead there are some people fort madalena centric where they just don't have stores on them so i need to get stores to them oh that bottom cluster of three divisions

don't have stores they don't have stores they've got that little supply dump yeah which doesn't have any stores it does now because last op stage i filled it up with convoy 15 oh right okay so i've given them some stores okay it's not going to be enough for all of them three divisions yeah they're not going to have enough to get like one fine i guess i can have one fine or i can have all three of them at half yeah with the stuff they have left over i just need to decide which is best and i think realistically it's going to be a defensive play for them for now unless you march up to them they don't have anything to worry about so all of them being on half rations would be fine yeah they just can't attack but if you're using them for defense yeah they can't they can't

enter a zone of control but they can involve themselves in combat if you were to be the aggressor yeah which is all i need for now so they can half ration it i just need to decide if i want any of them to go whole hog and move into map d and go on the offensive that's what i've been weighing up so that's been that's been today's session you moved your convoy which is the usual line left to right my convoys are easy i've got them set up i've got two big convoys that's all doing well they're fairly even but two of the bigger ones are doing alexandria mercer matru and back and i've got a third one that's sort of darting around mercer matru and supplying everyone there and i don't like that i don't like that you've got such a nice nourished supply line

despite my attempts to ruin that with my bombing runs and of course because it's hot weather i can bomb and i will be bombing of course i'm gonna do what i can to fuck up the supply line because it's just that wall that you've got pushing against mine is it's not ideal for me and you don't have a supply dump nearby no at the minute no so you need regular truck transport in order for that wall to stay up to date kind of it's close it's close enough to mercimatru that if i wasn't using them aggressively they could drop back and get back to where they are but mercimatru is not a major city though is it uh no it's uh just a settlement yeah have you been filling that up with supplies yeah every turn oh wow fair enough because they go from mercimatru

to alexandria which is unlimited alexandria and mercimatru every turn i'm doing two convoys basically in a circle so what i'm hearing is mercimetry is a good place for me to stop off it's stocked up like it's full pretty much all the time are you are you making sure to check that it's full in village capacity uh yes i've just got the capacity on the sheet okay cool because i made that mistake where i was looking at the wrong thing for a settlement yeah and i was filling it up like it's a major city thankfully i didn't use it for anything um because i've neglected that area massively i think they're like a thousand for each or something pretty over a thousand for each one even the village one isn't it yes yeah i've been

if it wasn't supplied it could last a turn or two by itself that's pretty impressive maybe stores but other than that it would be fine yeah i think most of my true at the minute a lot of my plans revolve around skipping most of my true and going straight for alexandria yeah which is a bold play but i've got a few ways to do that and it mostly involves trucks nah you say that i mean it is no i have a superior force that can take it but that doesn't mean it's not well defended well that means relative it's not well defended everything's relative andy is it well defended against 10 divisions

because i got 10 divisions it would hold out for a bit no bullshit you are not holding off against 10 divisions i guess one i can't get 10 divisions in the hexes around it no so that's sort of yeah i'm being a bit facetious with that but i could put them there if i wanted to if i wanted to lose the game i could do that do you um i don't want to but i fear i might i don't think any of us are going to win this i think this is going to be a stalemate yeah i think it's going to be a point thing how disappointing will that be it's not great at the minute we're poised for another i think between 20 and 25 weeks of play another half year to get this wrapped up something like that unless we pick it up massively

unless we knuckle down put some welly into it we probably won't ah that's the spirit we've got some longer sessions planned potentially but we might get like an offstage done in a day we do we've got big plans we've got to have big plans this is a big project we need to we need to embellish it as much as we can we need to fuel this flame we need to stoke the fires of passion you feel impassioned andy do you feel enraged no i'm pretty low energy it's these medicines you're taking yeah it was one of those days where i was like i didn't wish this was a different day i did come in and i was like andy's sleepy this is at least it's a truck day it's fairly low effort yeah but that's part of the fun that we don't get

to not do this we haven't had a single week since we started this where we haven't done this no that's that's wild that we've we've pulled this off every time we've been a couple buffer episodes still it's it's been very most weeks you and far between i think either way it's still been bookended by technically the following week. Yeah, because we've made it up. It's been like the Monday of one week and then the Friday of the week after. So we always get it in there.

And that's sad. It's good. Consistency. It's the accountability tool. It really is. Because we get people emailing in. We get people asking about it. And maybe we should have a little look at that now. Yeah, let's see what we're hearing.

We've covered off the game stuff. Not much to talk about on Truck Day. Yeah, that's what we did. we did Truck Day, and if anyone has anything that they'd like to hear about Truck Day, that was it. There's nothing further. We've divulged it all. However, you've divulged some things,

haven't you, folks? We have some choice emails, and the first of which is from, let's have a little look here, it's from Skep. Skep has emailed us, Andy. What's Skep got to say? Skep has said, good morning, mate. Well,

it's not morning here, so. as you pointed out at the start it's not live so yeah but that that still feels i don't know maybe we have to skip this one that doesn't feel very very tentative to our needs read the email all right twist my arm good morning mates um i like that as well i like the little the collective term of mates yeah it's nice it feels friendly and warm i'm wrapping up the most recent episode of the podcast 54 in which andy finishes his report on operation compass you asked for more examples of military a major military upsets and one immediately came to mind the battle of red cliffs which took place in the winter of 208 to 209 ad during the three kingdoms period of china

this is a fairly well-known example as it is a pivotal moment in the somewhat fictionalized chinese literary classic romance of the three kingdoms it has also been portrayed in film and video games so if i'm not the only person to suggest this one you're welcome to skip this email so as not to repeat content this isn't the one that was mentioned there was it we did have another email there was one for a warehouse in china during world war ii this is yeah not this is somewhat earlier 208 ad slightly prior at the time the han dynasty was in decline and a warlord named i'm gonna have a look at the pronunciation after yes pronunciation looks like cow cow but the c makes a ts sound so Cao Cao was consolidating power in northern china he wasn't an incompetent

commander though his tactical cunning through his tactical cunning goodness me he was fresh off of his own underdog victory which had eliminated his largest rival in the north Cao Cao then set his sights south. The sounds in this, the Cao Cao and sights south, this feels like a tongue twister that I've been sent. Advancing into central China and chasing away a token defense led by Liu Bei. Yes, there we go. Some of this may have been personal for Cao Cao,

as Liu Bei was a conspirator in an assassination attempt against him years prior. bit of rivalry then i'd take that personally i would if someone tried to assassinate me i would see them as a personal foe vastly outnumbered and now with little in the way of territory leo bay appealed to soon chuen i really appreciate that you put the pronunciations in here by the way that is a godsend because this would read just poorly otherwise yeah i mean i'm bad at pronouncing european sounding things that share a root language of latin so yeah this is a godsend thank you though some had urged sun chuan to simply submit to tsao tsao he agreed to ally with liube to defend the southlands against the impending invasion this would have seen been seen as

something akin to madness as tsao tsao was boasting 800 000 troops most agreed this was likely a little fib and best estimates places actual numbers at around 250 000 that's quite the fib that's a still that's a huge army for it's 2 000 years ago uh but combined the forces of lube and sun chuen didn't exceed 50 000 so they were still at numbered five to one at best I mean, 5 to 1 at best is a horrible situation to go into in any conflict. Yeah, it's not a ratio you want. However, we have seen instances of this going, you know, the other way. Cao Cao had organized a large fleet of captured ships to transport his soldiers across the Yangtze River.

However, most of his northern army was infantry and cavalry who were not experienced in naval combat, and his ships had to be chained together for stability as a means to prevent seasickness. That's grim. On the other hand, the southern forces excelled at naval warfare and they knew how to even the odds. Under guise of defection, one of Sun Quan's generals filled some ships with gunpowder, set them aflame and launched them at Cao Cao's fleet. The resulting blaze easily burned through Cao Cao's linked ships. the men were able to escape the inferno and avoid the river's icy waters and then had to contend

with the forces of limbo and so i'm getting the pronunciation so bad soon when as they launched a combined land assault on the panicking soldiers that is a horrible situation yeah that is really not where you want to be on a ship tied to a burning ship just fireballs coming towards you across the sea i'd take the seasickness see yeah at least then you can break off being chained to your ships as they burn is the worst way to go at water do you want to drown or do you want to burn we talked about this last time i think wasn't it we talk about the fate of water or was that in the other recording maybe the other one where we were talking about um drowning and people say it's not bad honestly well it is yes oh i know that was something else that we recorded that wasn't

actually it was actually this yeah we'll get to that at some point it sounds how quickly order retreat but even this wasn't easy the road home had turned wet with heavy rain and many that were attempting to flee from the allied attack ended up trampled or drowned in the mud those that avoided this fate still had to contend with the disease brought about by the southern climate and lack of supplies so severe that horses were used for food. It's theorised that more soldiers were lost during this retreat than the battle itself.

This loss crippled Chao Tsao's offensive capability for some time, freeing Lu Boy and Sun Quan to establish rival power bases and delay the reunification of China for 70 years.

That is a huge ripple effect. That's a big monumental battle. especially when the odds were stacked in that direction it makes sense for it to set something back that far when you've put all your eggs in that basket and then it's just gone you also you just lost a quarter of a million men that's like an 18 year cycle to replace them and especially in in that era i mean what's the global population in 209 ad i don't know but also like if you look at the top 10 wars by like casualties i mean like five of them are in china yeah it's like just like

civil wars and they're all i saw a meme not too long ago and it's sort of like talking about like the the travesties of european wars and the casualties and then there's a a conflict in china and it'll be like there's something disagreement or there's something transgression and it's like millions of deaths associated with it yeah it's like this is not something that's commonly taught in schools at least in europe in the uk and then you find out about it and it's like cool so all of these conflicts that we've been made aware of in fairly recent history the casualties are dwarfed in some instances by a handful of engagements in in china and asia yeah i mean this here 250 000 maybe 800 000 depending on how intense the fib was also this is our battle

in the three kingdoms which i think is like a hundred i vaguely remember from playing a total war a little bit it's like a hundred year span where they're all fighting over like who's going to unify china and this is one battle yeah this is one naval conflict for the most part but then talking about the disease that spreads afterwards disease that starts spreading and killing people in the masses that doesn't happen in a few days that's the sort of thing that's spreading in weeks or months so that goes to show there that that retreat you're looking at like long spans of time surely low cohesion on that march yeah if you put that in north african campaign terms yeah you guys are surrendering on site but skep finishes sorry for the length of this one

not at all do not apologize scott very interesting stuff but you can see why it makes a compelling story and to this day it's considered one of the largest naval battles ever by participant count anyway james i hope you're not letting your newfound existential crisis get you down and take comfort in knowing there is always someone who is dedicated more of their life to more trivial matters all the best scott well scott i appreciate the goodwill thankfully i am past the existential dread that befell me a few weeks ago, because I've got a newfound sense of purpose in the game ever since things heated up, and I realized that, in essence, I could win the game very quickly in the full scenario. However, it does not go to say that there's not going to be

trying times along the way, but I feel ready for that now. With the new year has come a new strength of character and soul and me ready to try and swing a win over andy through whatever means necessary okay i mean i poisoned you which is why you now have antibiotics yep and you know when i start spiking the antibiotics that's going to be a perfect way to create some not subterfuge but um i guess uh illness i'd say that's subterfuge as well if you poison me i don't know the fact i've told you i'm going to poison you is it subterfuge at that point or is it just poisoning a friend

just poisoning a friend that's what we should call this podcast poison with a friend instead of war with a mate yeah but thank you for that skip that is good we did ask for these mismatched conflicts and that's a scary one because i've been enjoying them and this has been a good one that's a crazy

crazy mismatch when i got into this i didn't know much about the north african campaign and another area of history i have no idea about realistically is not just china back then but china at any point really i do not know much of china's history no so all of these conflicts that have been brought up that are china centric or just asia centric i i know very little about asian history so getting a little glimpse into that is another fun slice of history to be invested in i've never really played many games around Chinese history or

any Asian history. I've not gotten to any of the total war games that I focused on. I don't really play many total war games at all, to be honest. But I think it's an era of history that's just bathed in blood. Yeah. It's a rich vein for... Oh god, yeah.

...to find out about. Massive cultural lines that I just haven't tapped into, so maybe when we wrap this up, we'll find an Asian-centric game. Also, for most of its history, like we would go through the dark ages and China was building like million person cities

when London was like 20,000 people. Yeah, we were just constantly going wracked with plagues or fires. Very close together as well. That whole fire and plague thing, it seems like this story is testament that that just happens. You get a big fire, you have a plague,

you reset the board. And then 70 years later, things are back to normal. But what's next on the docket? I've got an email from Afin. They've sent in about another topic. We like words. Oh, words I like. Words I know a few more

of than battles in China. Hello again, Andy and James. Hearing other people saying about re-listening to old episodes reminded me of various reoccurring discussions which you had. One was about people's favourite words and one about y'all.

The one, I have one which combines these two. my favourite word, by which I mean a word I'm trying to use more, is thou and it's conjugates thee, thy, thine it removes the ambiguity of it

referring to an individual or a group and it is just as useful as y'all but solves the problem in the other way the other way to deal with this is to speak as if one is always in the house of commons

referring to other people as my honourable friend but this seems to irritate people much quicker I am and shall endeavour to remain your most subtle, humble and brave of servants, Aethon thanks for that, Aethon

yeah, I think that I do like bringing some ye olde-speak back, especially when it's like, specific and suits a purpose that's like, re-emerged and the best part about that is just slipping it into normal conversation yeah because that is a term that you can drop into any sort of modern conversation and you're just swapping out a directive a pronoun yeah so all

you need to do is throw that in there and yeah it'll raise some eyebrows but if it catches on in your circle then people will know what you're talking about hard one to do with strangers i don't think i could do that at work i think i might get into some complicated conversations yeah it's sort the same way i've not really used y'all in my like day-to-day because people will be like why you why are you talking like that i guess i don't often address groups in conversation i'm not often speaking to collectives no that's very rare so i think for me i don't get to use y'all a whole lot i gotta use it on this but even then i neglect it i think the only time i tend to say y'all is during the segment and then i remember how much i love it and then i forget to use it so you know

we really appreciate y'all sending in emails there we go, perfect y'all and then thee, thine, thou and the use of my honourable friend is one that I can definitely start dropping into conversation within my social circles I want to start insulting people like

MPs do what by not? where they have to be like my honourable friend has obfuscated the truth the truth to a limited cognitive, like they have to couch it and all this stuff because you can't just be like you're an idiot i thought it meant you were going to insult people the way that mps do by not delegating resources to their local

constituency like they promised to that's a different kind of insult that's less fun and zippy yeah that one comes down to the common man that one doesn't really happen just in the commons but to move away from that pseudo-political point thank you aith and everyone else who sent in some messages we've got some messages around the festive period um looks like that that was actually um received on christmas day oh that one came through on christmas so thank you for spending festive cheer some of your christmas day whether celebrated or not it's still a good use of what i imagine is probably a day off if you're working or studying whatever you're doing we appreciate that we were in the deserts of your mind at such an occasion and you decided to send

us over a little bit of wordplay festive or not we can use that one so we've got plenty more in the bag more that we'll tap into in future and if you want to contribute yourself fire it on over to our email address which is info war with a mate.co.uk our instagram is just war with a mate and our website is war with a mate.co.uk we have a web form on there which you can send things over to we instagram we instagram the update or we update the instagram every week that's a tongue twister it's all of those pronunciations there which most of which i butchered really tied my tongue up i'm just not good at for somebody says they're like words i'm not good at pronunciating ones that pronunciate fucking hell fucking hell this is bad this is bad you know i can't even say

that i've had too much to drink it's the pros on the zero percenters i'm too sober i need a little bit of liquid luck it's a harry potter reference i don't get liquid look i don't understand how it works in the harry potter books the deus ex machina yeah i guess that that is a lot of harry potter we'll not get to that rabbit hole though that's um that one at least is like yeah the plot armor is a potion yeah at least it sort of has a narrative form to it yeah i'm fine with that stuff if it's justified it's not justified oh okay i refute that anyway let's move on into the past andy how about that and we'll do so beckoned on in with the history segment intro the men of the long-range desert patrols were quite a sight on their return to cairo from a

month's trip the contrast between the east and west of the nile is very marked in the east at this point i gave little thought to my past but i'd always be interested in the sea I am more or less in the position of a campus in command of a ship which is on the point of sinking because errors are present We are absolutely not qualified to share views on history There it is It's been long overdue Yeah

So who are we looking at? Is it by any chance the 7th Armoured Division? It is The story continues Let's hear it What are they doing now? Are they up to modern day at this point? These guys have seen everything

keep finding stuff i'm being like this is gonna end and this isn't the last one i'm enjoying it so more power to them so riding in a staghound armored car major general venery and a small party made their way past cheering belgian citizens to be officially received by the burgo master crowds gathered in the place to celebrate their freedom that's general verney describing entry into ghent on september 6th what year are we in now uh 1944 okay so we are we're coming towards the the latter end the latter end yeah i'm gonna just stay quiet you continue and so yeah france has been liberated and up next we've got holland in particular they need to take antwerp brussels and ghent and the boys from the seventh are heading to ghent they set off on the

31st of august uh the first set of problems they run into are caused by rivers the first one they get to all bridges but two have been destroyed these unlucky gentlemen yeah this leads to an immense traffic jam with units taking 10 hours to travel 18 miles that's that's quite a detour yeah it's like when we were leaving download oh we went to download festival we got stuck forever about that amount of time to cover that distance actually looking back to that i know how they feel yeah except we were trying to get home and we've been camping for four days not we haven't been at war for half a decade so they do manage to cross that river and up next they run into the river psalm which has only one bridge remaining which promptly collapses so they have to

create these things called a bailey bridge which is one of the like underrated world war ii inventions even used today it's like a way of it's a modular bridge where you can put all of the parts in a trucks and drive them around build a bridge without a crane and just go from one side to the other you don't need to be on both sides and like they still use these bridges today like they used them last year when there was flooding in argentina to build temporary bridges so that this is an invention that's still being used montgomery in fact is a big fan he says the bailey bridge has made an immense contribution towards ending world war ii as far as my own operations are concerned with the eighth army in italy and with the 21st group in northwest europe i could never have

maintained the speed and tempo of forward movement without large supplies of these bridges like it's just a weird to think an invention of a bridge changed the nature of the war yeah i mean uh there's a similar um like innovative design of a bridge in an episode of thomas the tank where they uh they create a walking bridge oh so they should have done that in this i think it's a it's a bridge that actually has legs and walks so i don't know if that happens in this part of history that'll be after world war three i'll actually show you a picture you'll spot these when you walk around by the way really you will spot these bridges right round england oh they're that common yeah oh like i can think of a few i'm gonna you keep that i'm gonna have

a quick look you have a picture up now uh yeah actually i'll get one up we can yeah this uh yeah we'll edit around this or we'll just i'll keep on talking how's everyone's day been yeah me too um i but yeah you're right i i do um realize that andy breezed over my gentleman pun because they're in ghent and i said gentleman i i know i just you didn't address it all right here's the picture he's with like diamond shaped struts on the side oh yes sometimes they like put the panels on the side yes i have been over quite a few of those yeah i've seen loads of those around more rural train stations yes that's where i've seen a bunch of those yeah so a bit of a detour there on the bailey ridge but i thought it was an interesting little god the seventh have seen

everything yeah um so they use the their fancy bridges to um cross the river and they start to run into more resistance from germans here but they're pushing hard and fast seventh we've got their groove back here they go so far and fast that they're out of uh they lose radio contact with their army hq unit they're too far ahead and then eventually they push past the edges of the maps they'd been given kind of like well we can't even do that but oh sorry you said kind of like yeah i was trying to make a comparison and i realized we can't do that in the game i don't have a comparison to make on the way they capture a v1 launch site which is one of the four nazi v projects this one's like an early cruise missile oh wow so

yeah capture some sort of experimental weaponry there just give you a sense of like the pace they're trying to keep here at the town of st paul a french city near the border the eight hussars and the uh fifth queen's infantry flush the enemy out of the city except a single uh free anti-tank units who as soon as the seventh queen's infantry arrive who are like following them they just hand over to them and the others just keep moving again they're like really moving fast so on the 4th of september they're getting towards gen at this point they're moving night and day and they're burning through 70 000 gallons of petrol a day oh that's bad for the ozone oh yeah which is 70 trucks 70 fuel trucks worth oh wow just to keep them moving oh that's that's a lot

yeah so because of this they go back to a uh desert war tactic uh and in the tradition of the combi force uh they designate part of them to be the gent force uh intended to go ahead and capture the city oh led of course by the 11 facades oh the truck bandits themselves so they set off bright and early that morning crossing the border of belgium at like 6 30 in the morning they've got the cromwells which are the fast tanks and they're able to keep up with the trucks and lorry so the entire force is like thundering like the tanks are rolling the trucks are rolling they're like shaking the ground as they like drive through belgium and as the day progresses their vehicles get covered in um flowers fruits and various alcohols given to them by grateful

belgians so you've got quite a nice image like flower covered tanks i'm imagining like a like a nice juicy melon being eaten like just some really sugary fruit yeah it got to the point they stopped stopping in towns because crowds would form around them and they couldn't get the tanks moving again. The last thing you want to do is have to drive through crowds. One soldier

got a very specific injury. He was injured by a bunch of grapes thrown by a grateful local. How are you injured by grapes? I don't know, but from the list of injuries, that's pretty low down. How? Just imagine

getting through all that conflict and you you don't take many injuries and then grapes get you from a friendly no less yeah so they travel 50 miles in that day through war-torn europe which is really going some yeah um and then so the following day they end up about eight miles from at this point and this is a great little episode here um they're in a town called nazareth by the way okay nazareth belgium uh which i'm also going to use as a chance to uh clear up someone emailed in the con i mentioned last time isn't the card from the film festival oh different spelling it's just a different french town that's also pronounced oh right so it's not con because the film festival is c-a-n-n-e-s it's c-a-e-n oh so yes well they've not made that very easy

for us no it's almost like they didn't think about us yeah but at this time they wrote there's a german um there's a german uh emplacement here so in the morning of uh this is the fifth of september a german general general daza approaches lieutenant colonel hollyman of the fifth royal tank regiment this german general's in charge of a thousand men garrisoned equipped with machine guns he wants to surrender but you with all of his men but you will only surrender to an officer of equivalent rank because the allies don't have a general on hand lieutenant colonel hollyman pretends to be a general in an attempt to get them to surrender to him a plan that was apparently working until one of his men referred to him as colonel oh no also this screams trap to me

like if someone said oh i'll only speak to a general i'd be like you're trying to assassinate a general here you're trying to take them captive i wouldn't be falling for that and also having the plan scuppered by someone giving you the the wrong fake name it's like no that's that's not gonna that's not gonna fly i love that you went for it though it's a real cojones i mean why not in that situation they're trying to surrender they're being finicky about it so at this point brigadier mackinson comes forwards and tries to persuade the general that his rank is close enough to general that the general should surrender to him but general days is having none of it and announces his orders are to continue fighting onwards what and goes back to his men

what a what a weird exchange yeah i just thought that was a great i'd love to see the sketch or something of that what a chip on his shoulder this guy must have yeah i kind of have a theory if you're the side losing the war your generals have to surrender three or four like ranks lower yeah you don't get the luxury of picking if you're on the losing side your generals are like the british generals were way back like overseeing it you don't have generals on the front if things ago in yeah you're a lot closer to their center than you are to there so there shouldn't be any demands made here yeah uh so because of this they clash with the german rear guard they do take the city by that evening having their tanks parked in front of the town hall but it does take three

days to clear the surrounding area which is just three days of avoidable fighting if this guy hadn't been so proud god imagine being one of the germans garrisoned there so angry and he comes back and it's like so have we surrendered sir and he's like well no there was no general on hand so we can't surrender like you couldn't agree to terms like no i'm only surrendering to a general at that point i'd be like we shoot him and go surrender yeah i'm surprised there's no defecting at that stage because they've they've been killed by this man's hubris so over the next three days yeah they clear the city of the surrounding uh enemy resistance and also the rest of the division catches up with the

Ghent force. At this point they're now stood in the path of the German 15th Army, which even this late into the war contains 15 divisions, even though they're understrength. So the engineers are sort of unsung heroes of this whole thing, and have been building bridges,

clearing minefields and roads. They get to it once more, overlooked by the 11th Hussars, of course, and blow up every bridge on the river lies, so that the Germans are diverted and don't come through that area and they did that presumably using the grapes that they were given the highly destructive grapes yeah so they had the region over the polish armor division on the 11th and

head east to dig out pockets of german resistance in terrain that's just bad for tanks it's like holland it's uh and belgium it's like dikes and just flat fields just very open that's then also cover it's just a horrible mixture there's mines everywhere it's freezing cold it's just horrible the division's so understrength at this point artillery men and anti-tank gunners are picking up rifles to bolster the lines oh no you don't want to be reinforcing your men like that they've suffered 2801 casualties between d-day and october 1st and it's not all doom and gloom though because at one point they find a supply depot stocked with bacon cheese and butter which no one has seen for ages they've been eating like corned beef so this is a big morale boost apparently

they'd like buy all of it and i must say that bacon sandwich after four years now that that will go down a treat yeah so they're fighting through this horrible terrain they use crocodile tanks to clear out which are one of hobart's funnies oh hobart if you also remember is the guy who originally trained the western desert force yes five years ago uh these crocodile tanks uh have their main gun replaced by a flamethrower oh they can shoot almost 150 meters oh my god we were talking not too long ago about how flamethrowers are just the most diabolical weapon to use in warfare yeah so they're clearing it with these crocodile tags and also flail tanks which basically have like a big bobbin on the front and just flail almost like a combine

harvester to set mines and stuff off yes i remember you mentioning these ones which i'd hate to be a driver of one of them that's a scary job what's your job to trigger explosives i'm in a box that moves across minefields uh but they do eventually clear the area taking 900 prisoners but losing 22 tanks and 100 men oh but this does lead to them get 10 days off to enjoy those bacon sandwiches yeah enjoy the bacon sandwiches have a trip around belgium handful of grapes to hand um so on the 10th they're moved yet again along this river area um icy roads it's waterlogged and just frozen ground peppered with grenades and mines this sounds pretty horrible um at this point the queen's rifle grade has another engagement in

which it takes 30 losses and it has only one officer left oh that's going to be bad when someone tries to surrender to them oh yeah and manpower is a real issue which is exacerbated by the python and the lilop rules the python rule says it changes at various points throughout the campaign but if you serve for over five years you can return home and then only take home postings oh wow so you get like a you don't come back to europe the lil op rule means that if you're eligible for python you can go back and then uh volunteer to return but you get an extended leave so either way because they've been serving since the start five they're gonna lose they lose a huge bunch about 100 men return from their already dwindling numbers but they do get to uh their

100 men go back and join the 50th division which is a training division in britain and the 50th in turn send them two fresh battalions so they get their backup to strength here so it's a they're settling in for a brutally cold winter to give you an example it's so cold the tanks have to run every two hours to prevent them freezing they have to wipe the oil off their machine guns because the oil will like the lubricant oil will freeze surely that's got a lower freezing point than water as well i've yeah i didn't look it up i reckon so it's rough uh they're mixing boiling water and run into their uh vehicles uh to stop to act as like makeshift antifreeze so we're up to the end of december now the division sets up a christmas concert hey um some of the men get to go brussels

for christmas oh that's some people do that now yeah there's a brief disruption on christmas day where a german raid destroys several vehicles but otherwise uh they get to enjoy the day listening to the king's speech looking into 1945 uh and the march to berlin which we'll pick up next time that's quite a tense christmas yes i mean they've got some um some nice provisions to tie them over and lovely festival and hey this will be a big year for them big year for the world big year for the world i think the last few have been big ones as well but this is a a real turning point in a lot of ways a good a good way for that year to go but not without its loss but yeah these guys have just incredible like division struggled around normandy and d-day but

i'm they're in bad tank terrain and also from what i'm picking up here these guys are best when you say go fast go like far like strike like do be where you're not expected to be so like fighting like lane to lane in Normandy just didn't suit them. No, it seems to be a case of overextend and be the tip of the spear. Yeah. Do some real damage. That's where they excel.

Be the shock and awe, in a sense. Yeah. Seems to be really where they are doing their best work. And their best work is scary work. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean they've been everywhere. Yeah, they've covered everything. I mean, now it's

like icy conditions they've went from beating desert of the sun beat beating son of the desert yeah to a bad winter in italy to a bad winter in northern europe does it go to the arctic circle next just to complete the full rotation equator to pull that should be the slogan oh wow there's and i i take it there's there's more hijinks to happen next time as well uh yes it will probably be the last one i've written most of it i think but uh i've said that before yeah you say that there'll be another 10 episodes to come for the seven i said that and got distracted by bailey bridges and this episode with general dazer because it made me laugh so much that's insane the the arrogance the arrogance of him the like the

balls of the guy pretending to be a general like it's just two people really at the height of their game just being silly having a mind war and then from the march back and go no we're not surrendering guys so what do you mean we're not surrendering what did they refuse surrender no no no i refuse surrender the guy who also let colonel slip must have been like the rest of them must be like fucking dave well that guy by proxy killed all of the germans involved in that conflict as well as some of the allied forces that would have died as well that's a heavy heavy burden to carry on your conscience but i'm i couldn't find more detail i'm gonna look for this i'd love to find some extracts from

if you get anything from the Colonel Holliman that would be great, or General Day, like yeah. Yeah, if anyone has any anecdotes about that that they can dig up, then please send those in, because if there's anything I like

more than learning about this part of history it's learning about the whimsical parts of this part of history Yeah, the weird human moments in the big picture stuff Yeah, because when it boils down to it these are just people and people will react in the moment yeah with whatever option they see fit and sometimes that's i will only surrender to important people and so i'm going well i can be

the important person bit of fibbing never hurt anyone well it's actually historically hurt a lot of people shouldn't do that you shouldn't fib but in war all is all just trying to secure the surrender of nazis yeah i guess in that case you're actually allowed to do some white lies some white lies i'm a general i also like that like sort of too good to be true moment it's like i'll only surrender to a general and then someone's like i'm a general oh really oh this is all working out uh if it's too good to be true nazis probably is uh well history is not black and white people will blur the lines and we do the same here andy

we blur the lines between friend and foe but today we we don't have too much conflict going on we're building the steady storm up to the conclusion of turn three and thereby the halfway point so we don't need too strong of one but we do nonetheless need a 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 Yeah And I've got one Perfect Lay it on me Andy, what is it this time? Well I bought a new kettle this week oh you have i have and it got me thinking i think we've unfairly limited the kettle okay to being it shouldn't be a kitchen appliance exclusively okay see i thought you were going to

say you've limited to the kettle because you've bought a very small kettle that's part of what got me thinking because your your old kettle was a a very steadfast kettle it was it was big it was bulky it was tainted with raw chicken because of the time you tried to boil chicken in it yeah No, that wasn't that kettle Oh, was it not? No, I got rid of that kettle That's for the best So, what else are you wanting to use the kettle for?

I think they should be in other rooms I think they should be like In your office Or if you like Spend a lot of time in the living room Have the kettle there Okay, to what end? It's more convenient

Because it's not like other appliances Where like it has to be in the kitchen for it to make sense you could just have a kettle on your desk and it would be much more convenient i'm thinking spread kettles throughout yeah there's something about it's sort of an unspoken rule where a lot of dangerous things are in the kitchen you've got um you know a lot of gas appliances you've got knives you've got a lot of sharp and dangerous things should we be putting more dangerous things in other rooms now the reason i'm asking that andy is because it was not that dangerous i'm calling into question really

your um your mindset on this and your ability to speak on this issue because you not too long ago um you brought an extension cable into your bathroom to do hoovering yeah and that's a very wet room i wasn't running the shower yeah it's not wet all the time it well it's it's still got an air of dampness about it because there's water around so you're already playing fast and loose with the rules of electricity now adding boiling water to the mix it does make me worry about you There's nothing about the kitchen that makes the kettle safer. There's an air of caution about that room. You're more careful in the kitchen than any other room.

Am I wrong? No, but not of the kettle. Well, you should be. It's full of boiling water. Whenever you're using it, it's full of boiling water. So when you say it's more convenient, so you're in your office. Yeah.

You've got your kettle there. Yeah. What are you doing when you've boiled it? what do you mean so you've also got coffee in there coffee this is to make hot drinks yes yeah so so what you're using it for isn't changing you're still making hot drinks with it no i'm just more convenient i just don't think it should be limited to the kitchen the same way other things are so then you but then you're not just bringing the kettle through are you you're bringing through mugs you bring through spoons the mugs there already i guess you're taking the

mug there that you're bringing spoons through the spoons there already the spoon shouldn't be there already you can leave the spoon in the instant coffee i guess you can but you shouldn't there's a lot of you shouldn't for no reasons here not for no reason right so right you leave a spoon in boiling water it gets hot all right i know it's a minor thing but it does you've not described anything that's not a problem inherent to kettles anywhere yeah i know and that that loops back to my core point that kettles and boiling water are in general a risk so you've got your you've now got a mug which yes is there already i guess but then you've got a spoon you've got coffee instant coffee yeah in an actual container i take it yeah now you've got to bear in mind you have your coffee

black but a lot of people have milk in their coffee and this isn't for them not everything's for everyone so but if you're into a tea that doesn't require milk so you got tea bags or coffee in this room yeah you could have either and when you say it not just limited to that i take it you're not just going to have a kettle in the kitchen and the office you're going to have these in other rooms well i think because of the way mine's place is set out i'd have kitchen and office slash bedroom but in a future place i could have one in the living room so you want three kettles potentially what is this do it what what time are you saving here realistically can we can we quantify this because you're doing whatever you're doing you're on your

computer or you're reading a book or whatever and you just flick it on and you keep going and then it clicks and then you pour it and you just you don't have to you're saving so little time that i i think this is such a non-issue that you've addressed that this isn't you've talked about boring holes into the earth you've talked about building confusing stone monuments this is nothing you've not brought a controversial take you've you've brought nothing to the table here we usually would disagree with it so because there's so many bad things about this that because it's such a small convenience that you're providing yourself with a measured risk of yes i understand it's not a huge risk but the small risk attached to this is definitely factors above the

small convenience you have light switches and light in every room yes because you need to see in every room what time's that saving you have one room with light in it and go there if you need to see things don't get cute with me you can't take light from another room you can't walk into the kitchen and bring your light into a different room that's not how light works and don't act like you're stupid you know that's not how light works don't you andy don't it's pretty comparable it's right it's not it's a convenience what's a convenience having lights in each room that's not a convenience andy no it's not that's not a convenience a hundred years from now people will be like look at rooms without lights in them the same way they'll look at rooms without

kettles in them you're like what are you doing you're struggling to stay above water here you're moving so far away from an originally inane point to being an actually stupid person and i'm so worried about your intelligence right now i think these antibiotics you're on are like some sort of brain fog-inducing substance. I've been a little foggy. Are you on quaaludes? So you... I'm a desk kettle.

Right. Andy, you need to understand, I'm not confused about where this is going, or what we're calling it. Okay. I just don't see the problem you're fixing. You're fixing a problem that's walking 15 steps two and 15 steps from the kitchen you you know that don't you i do know that but

when you said i'll be honest man i'm disappointed when you said that we're under utilizing the kettle i didn't think you meant i'm gonna buy a second kettle and put it in my bedroom i thought something else was gonna happen today okay even the even the celebrity on the the sofa is raising his eyebrows and he's got no right to do so. His career is on a knife edge and he disagrees with you. I'm perplexed. He's a guy with bad

judgment disagreeing with me. Yeah, but I'm a guy with good judgment and I disagree with you. We're united on all fronts. I have to shut this down. Okay, I'm going to get a desk out. You can't, right.

You can't. You can't. I'm going to. I'm not. No. Why? This hasn't... So I can brew teas and coffees at my desk. So your common ground is that you want to have a second kettle in your bedroom. I just think kettles aren't kitchen-specific.

Are we out of ideas? Is that what this has come to? No, I've got some others. Well, this was going to be better. Do you remember what your last common ground was? it was universal sizing for clothing yeah i've been a lot of brain power on that one that was i'm not gonna i'm not gonna downplay it andy that was incredible that was an astounding thing that i genuinely think is not just a good idea for us to whimsically wax about i think it's genuinely a world-changing idea and an incredible business venture okay this is a waste of money

that's going to end with you having third degree burns i'll give you an example of who i'm like i have a few names but i'd love to hear yours isaac newton invented calculus and gravity he also was an alchemist who tried to turn stuff into gold you're not going to be a hundred percent how dare you you just everyone's got their blind spots you just compared yourself to isaac newton because you want a second kettle The analogy holds The analogy does not hold That's not an analogy, it's a lie

Everyone's got blind spots Yours appears to be common sense and self-awareness They're massive blind spots If vehicles had those blind spots they wouldn't be able to sell them to the public so you're not agreeing with this

I agree with the fact this will save you a few seconds free the kettle that's all I can agree with in this I guess I'll have to take it everything else about this is a waste of your

money I'll be honest with you Andy this was a waste of my time if anyone's listening up to this point now I'm really sorry i'd like to apologize to the fans um this is not what we promised you when we started this podcast we promised um to be honest we didn't really promise a whole lot um this is this is already giving more than we we promised and um by some accounts i guess we're taking away from your day

um to stop this from going any further i'm gonna i'm gonna end this episode that's fair um if you do want to get in touch with us whether it's to talk about the game or just to tell andy this is not okay um and don't anyone send support for this this i don't want to i don't want to do that i don't want to be opening the mailbag next week and finding that there's reams of emails that are agreeing that we should have kettles in other rooms if anyone wants to decry this idea please do i think andy needs to be put in his place um it's info at war with a mate.co.uk that's the email the website is war with a mate.co.uk and the instagram is just war with a mate and some ideas are best left in the deserts of your minds and that's where i hope you all have a lovely evening

in amongst okay thanks for listening stay so humble and brave good night everyone and i'm sorry We'll be right back.