Black Friday

Black Friday
Game	Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
Chapter Details
Date	September 22nd, 1944
Time	1100
Location	Southwest of Veghel, Holland
Objective(s)	Secure Veghel
Game Progression
Previous Mission	We Happy Fewer
Next Mission	The Right Man

Black Friday is 14th chapter on Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway.

Introduction

Gifted or not, no soldier can stop the rain.

Objectives

Secure Veghel

• Secure the Town Plaza
• Destroy the 88
• Clear the Municipal Building
• Destroy the Panzer IVs: 2
• Destroy the Panzers and 88s

Checkpoints

• The Town Plaza
• The Chapel District
• The Municipal District
• Backyards of Veghel
• Panzergrenadiers
• Pushing Back

Transcript

The squads are stuck in traffic in their jeeps in the pouring rain.

Hartsock: How's your hand?

Paddock: Now, that's funny coming from you.

Friar smacks Paddock on the back of the head.

Paddock: Ow! What the hell was that for?

Friar: Doesn't feel like very long ago, does it?

Hartsock: I don't really notice it much, to be honest. Seems a mite selfish to get all worked up over losing a finger.

Friar: Where'd you put your wedding band?

Hartsock: I keep it around my neck. Erma'd send me back here on my hands and knees if I lost the damn thing.

Zanovich: I want five minutes with General Taylor to voice how little I like driving in columns like this!

Baker: Zano...what?

Zanovich: Might as well be on parade, we're so easy to pick off!

Holden: We're stuck in traffic. In a war.

Zanovich: I'm just saying, five minutes, and we don't get stalled out everything something gets broken!

Shots ring out and the squad debarks. Hartsock comes to talk to Baker.

Hartsock: Rendezvous at Checkpoint Eighteen. I think it's a café. Meet me there. Don't be late.

After fighting, another cutscene.

A Panzer tank rolls, crushing a stone wall.

Baker: Fall out! Move! Suppress that tank! As Jasper is preparing his bazooka to take it out, the Panzer is destroyed by Dickenson's tank. Baker approaches the friendly tank.

Baker: You need a hand?

Dickenson: We got separated from XXX Corps about an hour ago. Bloody Krauts aren't making it easy to find them. Think you could give us a hand gettin' up the road?

Player takes control of the tank and clears out Germans.

Dickenson: Thanks for the help, chap. I'll put in a good word for the Yanks.

Inside the café, Hartsock checks the food.

Hartsock: Most of it's stale.

Friar: Stale's good enough to eat.

Baker enters

Hartsock: Oh. Matt. I need to...uh, say something to you, about...

Baker: We should do this in private.

Hartsock: The men need to know what's going on.

Friar: What's going on?

Hartsock: Matt, you gotta admit what happened in the hospital was... You were dry-firing at a wall!

Baker: I wasn't exactly-

Hartsock: You were.

Campbell: So you're like...crazy, or bonkers or something?

Baker: No...I'm fine. It was one thing, Red!

Hartsock: Matt! I found you stumbling around a hospital!

Baker: I was looking for Franky!

Hartsock: Maybe, if you were in control of your men instead of always trying to be their best friend, they wouldn't need finding!

Outside, Corrion looks at the two arguing from outside of the café. German Mortar fire can be heard nearby. Suddenly, a shell hits the café, filling the building with smoke and flames.

McCreary: Mortars!

Corrion jumps in through the broken window and finds Baker on the floor.

Corrion: Baker! Oh, fuck...Baker, your face! We're getting you out of here!

Baker lays on the floor outside after being saved by Corrion

Baker: Red...Where's Red?

Corrion: Don't talk!

Elsewhere, Paddock and Roselli take an unmoving Friar out of the building as Corrion heads back in.

Paddock: Put him down! Put him down here!

Roselli: Is he ok?

Paddock: Just put him down! Look at me, Friar! Come on man, you're tougher than this! Look at me!

Corrion drags out Hatsock. He too, isn't moving.

Courtland: How bad-

Corrion: He...He ain't breathing. Give me room. Red...Red, I know you can hear me, Red. I-I need you to breath for me.

Corrion attempts Cardiopulmonary resuscitation

Corrion: Red, you can breath. You just gotta try!

Courtland: Corrion-

Corrion: He's not dead. Don't fucking say it! Breath, goddamm it. Red, you gotta breath!

Courtland: Sam, we can't do anything more. We gotta move!

Corrion: No!

Corrion starts beating Hartsock's chest harder

Corrion: Come on, Come on. Come on, Joe. I said "Come on," Red!

Corrion hits Hartsock hard in the chest in final hopes of getting his Sergeant to breath. Hartsock begins to breath, albeit weakly. Hartsock may have survived, but Paddock and Roselli don't appear to have had as much success with Friar.

Paddock: We need to load up...and get him back to an Aid station. We're too banged up to do anything but hurt ourselves worse.

Roselli: Put Friar in the back of that-

Paddock: I got him.

Roselli: Sorry.

Paddock drags his deceased friend to the truck. Zanovich assists Baker with his walking.

Zanovich: How capable are you right now?

Baker: Enough.

Baker thinks to himself, sitting down.

Baker: I've demanded over and over, "take me and not them," but no one's listening. Franky was just a kid.

Ghost-Franky: I told you to stop calling me that.

Baker: And Red? I don't even know if he's gonna make it. Goddamn it. You can't have him.

Ghost-Hartsock: Another demand you can't possibly back up.

Baker: You...can't...have...him.

Characters

• Major General Maxwell Taylor (Mentioned)
• Staff Sergeant Matt Baker (Playable)
• Staff Sergeant Joe "Red" Hartsock (WIA)
• Tank Commander Dickenson
• Corporal Jacob Campbell (WIA)
• Corporal Sam Corrion
• Corporal Franklin Paddock
• Corporal Tom Zanovich
• Technician 5th Grade Nathan Holden
• Private First Class Timothy Connor (does not have scripted dialogue)
• Private First Class Jack Courtland
• Private First Class Gary Jasper (does not have scripted dialogue)
• Private First Class Dale McCreary
• Private First Class James "Jimmy" Roselli
• Private First Class Dean "Friar" Winchell (KIA)
• Private Franky "Beans" LaRoche (Mentioned,Voice Only)

Weapons

American Weapons

• Colt M1911 "Death Pistol"
• M1A1 Carbine
• B.A.R. M1918

German Weapons and Vehicles

• Kar 98k
• MP 40
• MG 42
• Panzer IV

Teams

Bazooka Team:

• Pfc.Jasper
• Pfc.Connor
• Pfc.Courtland

Base of Fire Team:

• Cpl.Zanovich
• T/5.Holden
• Pfc.McCreary

Tank:

• Tank Commander Dickenson
  • Sherman Firefly Tank

Recon Report

September 22nd, 1944

A column of ambulances head down a street in Veghel, carrying wounded to a nearby field hospital.

By the sixth day, the invasion was coming to a standstill. The 101st suffered countless counter-attacks on their positions all along their corridor, slowing down XXX Corps' support column considerably, and forcing the tank regiments to fall back to assist the paratroopers. Strengthened by the armor support and the reinforcement drop earlier in the day, the 502nd was finally able to defeat the Germans in Best, destroying fifteen flak 36/37 88mm guns and capturing close to 1,000 German soldiers in the attack.

Men of the 501st walk around the wreckage left in the wake of the German counter-attack on Veghel.

The 501st faced a brutal counter-attack by the German Kampfgruppe 'Walther' on their position at Veghel. The attack came in the form of heavily armored tanks and mechanized infantry, an enemy that paratroopers are ill-equipped to fight. Without any armor support from XXX Corps, who had left the preceding morning, the men of the 501st, with help from the 502nd and 506th PIRs, managed to hold off the attack.

Before the counter-attack on Veghel, XXX Corps' tanks moved to Schindel, expecting the attack to happen there.

Beforehand, the higher brass decided to head off a perceived German attack on the nearby town of Schjidel, and moved all of the armored forces guarding Veghel out west to take care of this threat, oblivious to the true attack mounting from the east. this left the men of the 501st without any armor support when the attack came later that day. In order to defend the town, all of the armor sent to Schjindel had to be pulled back to Veghel, costing valuable time for which the paratroopers would have to hold out alone.

Market Square

The large manor in the market square in downtown Veghel served as a waypoint for passing soldiers.

The soldiers in the 501st had their work cut out for them in holding Veghel. Though they were able to take it on the first day of the invasion, holding it proved costly. The 501st were constantly attacked by German forces since they first took the town, repeatedly losing ground and regaining it the next day. With the help of XXX Corps' tanks, the situation stabilized a bit on the third and fourth days, but that would only hold until the Germans brought their armor to bear.

This cathedral, frozen in a state of construction throughout the war, still stands in Veghel today.

However difficult it was to hold, the town was key to defense of the 101st's area. It lies as a cross point where the road from Best and St. Odenrode meets the road north from the Son/Eindhoven area. It was a vertable chokepoint for the British logistics columns. The Allies had the same point in mind in their capture of Carentan in the Normandy Campaign. Hold the crossroads, and you put a major block in the enemy's support.

81st AA/AT Bn

The German Panther medium tank was one of the casualties caused by the light field guns of the 81st.

The 81st Anti-Air/Anti-Tank Battalion of the 101st Airborne provided the first, and only, line of defense against armored threats assailing the men of the light infantry division. Armed with only the M9 Bazooka and British RQQF 6-Pounder light field artillery cannons, even the men of the 81st were terribley ill-equipped to fight off the heavy armor of the German Army's Panzer forces. But, that didn't keep them from standing and fighting against the might and fury of German tanks. When other Airborne would wisely run for cover, the guns of the 81st would roar and the rockets would scream as they pounded ordnance into incoming tanks until the tanks were no longer incoming.

This commander's Panther tank was quickly immobilized by a direct bazooka round to the left tread.

During the battle for Veghel on Black Friday, one heroic soldier manned a 6-PDR. By himself and managed to defeat two Panther tanks, widely considered to be the deadliest tanks on the Battlefield. Due to the difficult of firing one of the crew-served weapons solo, the soldier's right leg was broken by the recoiling breech of the gun during the first shot. Regradless, the soldier was able to keep firing the weapon, scoring one kill and forcing the other tank into retreat.

Trivia

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