This is the easiest mission in H&D. It's ridiculously easy; and yet it's kind of fun in its way.

MISSION: Get to the escape point, together with whatever team members are in the area. That's it. Nothing to blow up, no required casualty count. Just get the hell out of there.

CONDITIONS: Daytime. Cloudy but plenty of light.

THE OPPOSITION: Damned if I know, and there's no reason you should have to find out either. The area is lousy with bad guys, obviously, and there are several structures that probably hold more. The only ones that need concern you are (1) two-man patrols walking along the dirt roads and (2) guard posts at the intersections. There is also some kind of search party combing the woods in one area but if you follow these directions you'll never meet up with them.

PERSONNEL: You. Or your character. One guy. That's all you need to complete the mission. Any more just slows things down and creates extra work.

True, the briefing says that your mission is to get your forces together, but as we've already seen, the briefings are largely bullshit. All that's required is that you get to the exit point with all your men - or all the ones who are still alive - and if you're the only one who went in, you'll get mission completion.

You might say this is contrary to the spirit of the mission. But where is it written you can't change the spirit to suit yourself? It's not as if you're chickening out; one man, alone and surrounded by that many armed enemies, is hardly playing it safe.

My own scenario is that the leader has landed in this area alone, that he finds the other guys' chutes and realizes they've moved on to the rendezvous and that he needs to get out of there and join them.

Anyway, the solution is the same whether you're alone or have a full four-man team. If you bring three other guys you're still going to be the only one doing any shooting; all they have to do is just get to the same point and then wait while you take care of business. Why bother?

If you want to bring in more guys, though, have fun. You should be able to figure out how to do it.

EQUIPMENT: One sniper rifle. Two clips - ten rounds - of ammo. If that's not enough then more won't make any difference.

AT THE START: You've landed in the woods near a dirt road. Nobody can see you. You're facing the wrong way.

PROCEDURE: The key concept is: avoid contact. The various walkthroughs feature all sorts of bushwhacking and sniping, altogether unnecessary. This is a sneak job. Remember, you're not here to kill Germans or anybody else. You're miles and miles off your target area; your job is to get together with your team and move on and blow up the damn dam. Any soldier in that situation who did anything but get his ass out of there, as quietly and quickly as possible, should be busted to permanent latrine orderly.

The first thing you do is turn around. The road is behind you, at the top of that rise of ground. Pull up the map and orient yourself. Now crouch down and move up the slope toward the road, but not far enough to be visible from it. As you get to the top lie down. You should be in third-person wide-angle view. Get where you can see the road in third-person view without your own head showing above the bank.

Now be very very still and wait. In a short time two soldiers will come down the narrow dirt road, from your right. If you stay where you are they will not see you; they don't wander off into the woods looking for trouble, though it may look a couple of times as if they're going to. Watch them in third-person wide-angle as they move from right to left across your view. Don't get in too much of a hurry; let them disappear beyond that rock beside the road.

At this point you have to act fast. You are in the ideal place to cross the road, because the bend to your right keeps anybody from seeing you until they're around the curve; but there will be another patrol along in seconds. That's the only tricky part, the timing; you can't move out too soon or the first patrol will see you, but you can't wait too late or the next ones will get you. Up, then, and up all the way, too, crouching doesn't do you any real good and you can run faster full upright.

Run like a son of a bitch across that road and up through the scattered trees in the direction of that big white rock. When you reach the rock turn a little to the left and aim yourself due east. Keep going. Make sure you DO head east - use the compass, use the map - and keep to a pretty straight line. If you wander very far to the left you'll be visible from the road and I'm pretty sure there are some bad guys in the woods off to your right.

When you reach the base of the big rock outcrop you can relax; you're safe here. Keep going, though; turn left at the base of the rock and follow it on around, and then the next rock like it, skirting your way around the little pool of unconvincing-looking water. You'll see one of your boys' chutes here; better get going, he's with the others waiting for you to catch up. Curious sort of chute: if you run across it it makes a clunking sound like a board floor. Experimental design no doubt.

Continue to follow the bases of the rock formations. Don't be tempted to investigate what's over the hill to your left, and above all don't go climbing up into those platform things; there's nothing you can accomplish from there and you make yourself much more visible.

When you reach the easternmost end of the easternmost rock formation, look east and you'll see another dirt road. Stay off it for now.

Instead turn and move up the little hill to your left, in a crouch, with your rifle ready. You will see a big boulder and some screwy-looking frame structures. (I have no idea what they are but I've seen them in the mountains in the real-world Germany, along with platforms like that.)

Lie down and crawl toward that big boulder. Not all the way to it, just in that direction. Stop when you reach the point where the ground falls away to the east. Now start moving sidewise, keeping low. You should just be able to see the road. As you move sidewise you will also have to adjust yourself forward a little in order to be able to see over the rise of ground. Also you may have to use third-person briefly to make sure your feet are clearing the nearest frame structure; if you suddenly can't move sidewise that's probably what's got you stuck.

Soon you will see a guard shack and beside it, oddly enough, a guard. Don't get trigger-happy; resist the temptation to shoot him immediately. Keep moving sidewise, until you've got a reasonably clear view of the space on either side of him, especially between him and the guard shack.

When you shoot him, two guards will immediately come out of that shack and stand there beside him dithering. So you want to have a clear shot at them as well.

Try to nail him decisively on the first shot. A head shot is ideal if you can make it. You want him definitely out of the picture by the time his buds appear, and you'll be pushing your luck to get off another shot in that short a time.

When the other two come out of the shack, kill them. Shoot one, shoot the other, in alternation - if the first one you shoot doesn't die instantly, shoot his buddy before turning back to him. Don't give either of them enough un-shot-at time to get his shit together and shoot at you.

However, these three are not the brightest bulbs on the Third Reich tree; they're pretty much Larrisch, Moe, und von Schemp. I've run this mission a good many times and never yet saw them so much as fire a shot. That doesn't mean you can be careless, but it's extremely unlikely they'll get you before you get them.

And that's it. Get up and run down to the road, pause long enough to relieve the Three Uberstooges of their weaponry, and proceed on around the bend to the exit point.

Now if this isn't good enough for you - if your virtual martial spirit demands Ramboid heroics - then feel free to improvise whatever game plan suits you. But I guarantee you this one works, and it will get you through the mission and on to the next one; which will, I promise, provide more than enough pucker factor to make up for it.