“Operation Unthinkable”

“For a real man, the hardest part is the first forty years of childhood.” – it’s the lesson my grandfather taught me, a man who told me stories from his youth, mostly World War II, when he thought my grandmother couldn’t hear. It was hard for her not to hear, the conspiratorial whispering performed by my grandfather was well heard throughout the neighborhood – he’d been half deaf since he was amazed to discover that a PzIV blown up with an improvised grenade was so decibellious that the seals fell out. He told of taking three Germans prisoner with a fierce rifle. He told of life as a partisan. He told of the hijacking of the train with the amber chamber, how they drove it down to a siding in the forest, but he doesn’t remember exactly where. These stories awakened in me a puppy love of bravado, a fascination with history, and resulted in me repeating a history class when I wrote on my final exam that Grandpa had single-handedly conquered Berlin and forced the unconditional surrender of the German Reich after playing poker against Hitler. How does this relate to the event we are organising?
Huge!
A historical background straight out of a ’60s movie, shoot-outs, bravura bayonet charges, heroic last stands, contempt for death, rubbish jokes and embarrassed looks from our wives! This is what you will encounter at the first edition of “Unthinkable”!

On 8 May 1945, the greatest and bloodiest war in European history came to an end with the surrender of Berlin. The war would have continued with a different distribution of sides. Churchill, unsure of the Soviets’ intentions, ordered a plan to strike the Western Allies against their untrustworthy Communist allies.

While the “Operation Unthinkable” was admittedly abandoned, we decided it is the perfect canvass for a friendly Bolt Action tournament – the Allied planners may have found the plan unworkable, but they didn’t have such bold and skilled commanders as the Sunday Bolt Action players!

And, by the way, Unthinkable sounds like something my Old Grandpa would certainly play first fiddle in, doesn’t it?