GameLab · Le Havre to the front, December 1944

Replacement

Seven is a survey robot from 2087. Something went wrong with the trip home, and now the Army has him: a helmet, a serial number and a seat in a boxcar built for forty men or eight horses. The train leaves Le Havre this morning. It goes east, through the ruins and the snow, toward the guns.

Gathering the replacements…

0 files

Dispatch

File report

Graphics Headphones help. It gets loud in the middle.

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How to ride

Private Seven, on treads

Drive	W A S D or the arrows · left stick · drag on the left of the screen
Look	Drag the mouse · right stick · drag on the right · wheel or pinch to zoom
Board, step down, talk	E · A button · the E button (walk up to one of the men in the boxcar to talk to him)
Leave the station now	G, or the Depart button, when Seven is aboard
Cameras	C cycles Seven, the boxcar door, Chase, the footplate and Trackside while riding
Speed up the ride	Hold F · right trigger · hold the » button (not while the train is under attack)
Hop	Space (on the ground)
Sound, full screen	M for sound · L for full screen

The ride follows the replacement trains that carried new men from the Channel ports to the line in the winter of 1944, the way Jim Sharp tells it in Diary of a Combat Infantryman: the 40-and-8 boxcars, the stove, the cold, the wrecks beside the track, the planes.

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Givet railhead · November 1944

Roll call

In November 1944 the American armies in Europe lost 62,400 men to battle casualties and 56,300 more to non-battle casualties, a great many of them to trench foot. Most of the gaps were filled by replacements who had come up the line the way these men did. (Ruppenthal, Logistical Support of the Armies, vol. II, ch. XI.)

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