I've already expressed myself about this campaign and my various reasons for hating it. There are special reasons for hating this mission, though.

The premise is ridiculous - not that ELAS weren't capable of atrocities, but this particular setup makes no sense at all. There's no explanation why the "terrorists" would have all these hostages, ready to blow them up at the first shot; it wouldn't have served as a deterrent to attack by the Greek army of 1946, who would just have said, "Tough shittos," and attacked anyway. And ELAS wouldn't have wasted valuable explosives in that way; if they wanted to massacre the population of a village they'd simply have shot them - as they not infrequently did.

But the real reason for this mission, of course, is to show you that These Are Bad Guys and so it's OK to kill them. The mission would have worked just as well if the partisans had been ready to blow up an important bridge or something, but it wouldn't have been as useful for demonizing them.

And then the ending blows even the few shreds of credibility the scenario had; and unnecessarily so, because it would have been very easy to do it in a less grotesque way.

However, if you set aside the premise and the background and just consider it as a tactical exercise, it's an interesting mission; it's got some exciting moments, and it takes careful planning and execution to bring it off.

MISSION: The Communist guerrillas, aka "terrorists", have taken over a small mountain village and locked the entire population in the church, which they have rigged up with explosives. An old-fashioned plunge-handle exploder is situated in a shed across from the church, and at the first sign of trouble they will rush to set it off. You have to prevent them and secure the town.

There is also a small contingent camped outside of town - we are not told why - and you have to prevent them from escaping. This is, in other words, a search-and-kill mission, with the crap about the villagers in the church thrown in to make it sound more humanitarian.

CONDITIONS: Nighttime. Clear, good visibility.

THE OPPOSITION: About twenty assorted thugs in somebody's idea of Greek guerrilla threads. Lightly armed for the most part but still capable of putting up a good fight. Most are indoors when the mission starts, and don't appear until the shooting begins.

Three men in a strange little camp outside of town. One sniper in the church tower, and he's a real problem. A few machine-gun posts, none in a position to worry about.

PERSONNEL: For this one you need at least two really fast, straight shooters. McGatt is excellent. One of them is very likely to get hit, so a man with a high endurance rating, like Whintson or Wooley, has a better chance of surviving. The last man has a simpler job but does need to be able to shoot straight, with reasonably good reflexes. My own favorite team for this job includes Whitson, McGatt, and Bootskin.

EQUIPMENT: This time you can go very light. The first three men get an MP-40 or a Sten apiece - not the Thompson, its 20-round clip has to be changed too often - and the fourth carries a Bren. The MP men need a pretty good supply of ammo, but the Bren gunner only needs a little; he's only got to shoot three guys.

Additionally, you'll need a few grenades, either Mills or the big gray German bombs - not potato mashers.

You can take a rifle along if you like; there are two or three points where it might be handy. But you don't really need it.

Finally, and this is very important, knives. Each man, except for the Bren gunner, must carry a knife. You'll see why.

AT THE START: Standing around by the damn jeep again, next to a dirt road and a narrow little stream, a ridiculously long way from the target area.

PROCEDURE: First take everybody except the Bren gunner and have them get out their knives. You don't really have to do this right now but you might as well get it done.

Now take charge of the Bren gunner and have him go jump into the creek and run along it for almost the full length of the map. You'll have to control him manually; there are a couple of places where he has to stay down in the streambed or risk setting off the alarm, and you can't depend on the AIs to do that. For most of the distance he can stay upright, so he can run faster, but while passing the town itself he ought to crouch down just for extra safety.

When he passes the little camp, with its fire - nice effect there - keep an eye on the right bank, and when you see a place where the banks are more sloping, where he can get out, have him climb up out of the stream and immediately lie flat. Crawl him away from the stream and a short distance farther along toward the end of the map, and then give him a Guard command aiming eastward.

Go back to the men waiting by the jeep and select your own character. Follow the route taken by the Bren gunner, but stop just after passing the village. Just beyond the edge of the village, before you approach the camp, there is a place on the left where the rock slopes down so you can climb out. Don't; just crouch down facing the left bank. Pull up the map and assign a Wait command.

You may have noticed that there is a man standing out in the open a little way to your right. He hasn't seen you and he won't come investigate. But that's why you're holding the knife: to keep your character's AI from starting a gunfight while you're still moving the other men up. This is one of the few reliable ways to keep the AIs out of trouble: give them a weapon that they can't actually do anything with.

Back to the jeep, and soldier #2. Into the creek, along the streambed - oh, you are going to get so heartily sick of that creek before this is over - and down almost but not quite to where your own character is lurking. There's another of those sloping spots on the left bank, roughly in line with the little street that runs between the church and the shack where the exploder is located. Crouch #2 down there and give him Wait.

By now in all likelihood you'll have seen a man walking around between the village and the stream, or up by the church wall. He's no threat in his own right, being practically unarmed - all he's got is a knife, and he never tries to use it - but his presence tends to make the AIs jittery, so that's another reason #2 should have his own knife in his hand, rather than a gun, when he gets there.

Now go collect your remaining man and bring him down to the village by the same route. Stop him at the last sloping spot on the bank before you get to where #2 is crouching.

You have now got three men hunkered down in the creek near the village, each at a spot where the bank is sloped enough to let him climb out. At this point you should save the game. If anything goes wrong and you have to re-run it - and this is very possible - do you really want to go through that tedious business of running the men down the creek again?

Check and see where the wandering guy is. If you can't see him, wait till he shows up. He doesn't walk a regular patrol, he seems to be just drifting around.

When you can see him, when he's fairly nearby, take control of #3 and run up the bank and stab him. This may take a little doing; he'll run aimless about in various directions and you may have to chase him down. Get him as fast as you can and then haul ass in the direction of the church.

(Now and then it happens that the rifleman in the church tower spots your man and shoots him, or shoots at him - it makes no difference really, at the first shot the whole thing is blown. This doesn't happen often, fortunately. If it happens to you, all you can do is just start again. So save before #3 makes his move.)

#3 will run to the wall of the churchyard and crouch down, out of sight of the tower sniper and everybody else. Give him a Wait and then select #2 and delete his Wait command.

Using third-person view, check the sentry standing by the front of the church. From time to time he turns and goes inside briefly. When he does, have #2 climb the bank at a run and immediately lie flat. Crawl him straight toward the nearest building - the one across from the church, with the small evergreen tree growing beside it. Crawl #2 up to the wall, using the tree for additional cover, and give him Wait again.

Back to #3. Have him run around the end of the churchyard wall and then lie down and crawl out into the area to the southeast of the church, beside the churchyard. Move him sidewise a little at a time, using first-person to check his field of view. Get him where he can see almost the entire area between the church and the row of buildings opposite - especially, of course, the shed where the exploder box is located - but not quite far enough to the right that he can see the sentry. He should be close enough to the church to be out of the sniper's line of fire, but no closer. Give him Guard on a point just in front of the shed with the exploder but don't let him have a gun yet.

Select #2 again. Hang on, we're almost there. Watch for that sentry by the church. When he goes inside again, side-crawl #2 quickly to the left until he's got a view of the entire area along the church wall and up the street - out just barely enough that he can see the shed with the exploder.

Pull up the map now. Remove all Wait commands. Give #2 a Use Inventory command and select the MP-40 or Sten. Give him Guard on the area up alongside the church, where that guard was standing.

While the map is open, switch to #3 and give him a Use Inventory for his automatic weapon too. He's already in position and under Guard so you shouldn't have to do anything else.

Still without closing the map, go to your Bren gunner, delete his Guard command, and assign a new one on the area of the camp - the campfire makes a good Guard point.

Finally, select yourself and issue yourself a gun, making sure the Wait command is off. Take a deep breath. The shit is about to fly.

Hit the map key and, if you're not in first person, get there fast. If you're lucky the shooting won't have started yet - much depends on how long it takes that son of a bitch to come back out of the church - but you've got next to no time.

Run up the bank just far enough to see that little bastard standing out in the open, off to your right. Give him a quick burst, just enough to kill him; you've got three men to kill within seconds and there won't be time to reload, so burst discipline will be necessary.

As soon as he's dead, turn very fast to the left. See that last building at the end of the street, across from the church? A door is about to open, and a man will be silhouetted for a moment in the light. Kill him with a short burst and swing back about ninety degrees to your right. There's a slightly bigger building set back behind the others. A man is going to run out from behind it, on the right side. As soon as he does, take him down with the rest of the clip.

Now very quickly get back down into the stream bed, before the shooter in the church tower gets you, and run back up to the spot where #2 made his play. Climb the bank and head toward the scene of the action and add your own fire support if needed. Chances are the shooting will have stopped by the time you get there, but it will flare up again another time or two as stray individuals show up and try their luck.

As soon as things seem reasonably quiet, run across the street and into the space next to the exploder shed, and shoot that bastard in the church tower. You may have to back up a bit, and it's not easy to get him; he doesn't let much of himself show.

Once you've terminated him, your next move is to enter the churchyard. Go through the open gate by the church and bring one of your men in to cover your back - leave him by the gate - and go on around the church and into the yard.

There's a man hanging around there; he's unarmed except for a knife, but the game expects you to shoot him just the same. After you've done for him, go to third person and look over the wall. On the other side, to the southwest of the church - near where #3 was hiding a little while ago - will be an armed man. Loft a grenade or two over the wall and blow him up.

There may be some shooting up by the gate at about this point; now and then a last desperate type will try to come in after you. Your guys should be able to handle it.

At this point you might as well bring in your Bren gunner. He's already finished his job - you should have gotten a completion message on stopping the escape - so bring him back across the creek, let him pause to pick up an MP-40 off one of his recent victims (handier than the Bren) and then run him back into the village.

All that remains are a few mopping-up operations. Down at the west end of the main drag there's a sandbag barrier and a machine gun, pointing harmlessly off to the west. More important, there's a guy lurking in the shadows out beyond the MG emplacement. Go around the village, either on the north or south - south works better - and find a position where you can see the lurker, and delurk him with a burst of fire. Then move in and shoot the machine gunner, who has only a pistol but still should be treated with caution.

Off to the west, across an open field of rocks, is another MG position - whoever set up the MGs definitely didn't know what he was doing - with another fool manning it. If you brought a sniper rifle you can pick him off now, but it's easy enough to run up behind him and get him with the MP.

Keep going west, along the road; you have to go that way to get the jeep anyway. Farther along, just around the bend from the jeep in fact, is one more MG post with one more dimbulb manning it. Shoot him and at this point you should get a completion message.

Drive the jeep into the town. There is almost no loot worth taking, but if somebody will go out to the north side of town, there is a body lying there clutching something new: a Soviet-made PPSh submachine gun. I recommend taking it; it's a nice weapon with some real advantages.

And now for the part of the mission that makes nonsense of the whole thing: you all get into your jeep and drive away.

What about the people locked in the church? The ones we're supposed to be rescuing?

Well, what about them?

Yep, we just drive off and leave the poor bastards locked in there. We don't even disable the explosives.

There's no excuse for this, you know. This is just simply shitty mission design. Why not handle it the same as the "rescue the prisoners" bit at the end of the first H&D campaign? Just fade out as soon as we get the last of the bad guys? Or do something like that last Ardennes mission: cut to a shot of the Greek government forces arriving to free the hostages?

But I don't want to complain too much about this mission. Because the next one is so much worse.