I hate this mission. It is unforgivably stupid, and it didn't have to be. The basic concept isn't bad at all; certainly not in a class with some of the other missions in the game. It could have been a perfectly valid mission, of a somewhat no-brainer variety, if it weren't for one irredeemably stupid thing they did to it.

You'll see what I'm talking about when we get into it.

Fortunately it's not very difficult, once you know a few secrets; and, even better, it doesn't take very long. In fact it's one of the shortest missions in the game.

Dirt road, or rather track, across the North African desert. You've left the airfield, still in pursuit of Schumann.

Simply to drive from Point A to Point B, by whatever means, using whatever vehicle you left the airport in. No other requirements. You have to kill a bunch of people, but that's merely a means rather than an end.

For reasons which we'll get to in a minute, you may need to do some shuffling of equipment and weaponry in the setup menu; once the mission starts you won't be able to do much of this, if any.

Your man with the highest stealth rating should still be carrying strictly German equipment. He can have other stuff in his pack, that won't matter, he'll only need the disguise once and he'll have a chance to ditch the pack temporarily.

Your number one man should be driving. He should be carrying the Springfield and the remaining Thompson. He's not going to be getting out of the truck at any time so you can use him as a pack beast, to carry any extra ammo or other items. Give him the small first aid kits; the other guys are more likely to need them.

Now if your top stealth man is also driving - if he's Number One - then you're somewhat screwed; he won't be able to get any use out of his disguise. I hope you've got at least one other man in an enemy uniform, or else with a king-hell endurance rating. Again, you'll see why.

If you took the truck, your sniper should ride on the back with his rifle. Make whatever rearrangments are necessary, when the mission starts, to accomplish this.

The mission starts with a rather pointless cut scene involving aircraft. I guess it's a warning. The central fact of this mission is those two Messerschmitt fighters.

Might as well get this out of the way right off: the planes are the stupid part I was talking about. Not because they attack you, even if you're in a German truck and all the visible men are wearing German or Italian uniforms - but because they don't, and yet they do.

This is what I mean: as long as you stay with the vehicle, the airplanes will not bother you. They'll roar by overhead in a very menacing way, but they never ever strafe either the truck or the Jeep. Anyone on board is totally safe from their efforts.

Anyone who dismounts, though, is in danger. How much danger? That's even crazier: it depends on who gets out. If the driver leaves the vehicle, the planes will attack instantly and with great determination and accuracy; if he can't find excellent cover very fast, he'll probably be killed, and if he does they'll still keep trying to get him. For some reason they really concentrate on Number One.

The others, however, can perhaps dismount for somewhat longer periods before being attacked. Longer as in maybe a minute or less; eventually any man who leaves the truck will be strafed. And perhaps as in this is one of those things that varies from one time to the next. (And from one individual to another; sometimes they pick on one more than another, and no predicting which. Nor does disguise or stealth have any effect.)

Now is that insane or what? Usually, even in the really goofy-ass missions, there's at least some sort of possible rationale for the loony shit. You might have to strain awfully hard to suspend disbelief, but usually it's possible.

But in this one it isn't. The behavior of the aircraft is so blatantly illogical and artificial that it is never possible to forget that you're simply playing a game, with arbitrary rules. Especially since you have to keep doing weird things, that you'd never do in real life or for that matter in any other mission, in order to work around this silly shit.

As I say, this could have been a perfectly good little mission, in one of the best campaigns in the game; but then with a single bit of loony-ass scripting they turned it into Super Mario.

Right, then, let's get it over with. At the start of the mission you're all aboard the truck ready to start up the road. Before you do anything else, give the order Hold Fire. If you don't, your men will waste precious ammo firing at the planes, and the planes won't be any the worse for wear.

(Forget any notion of shooting them down. You can't do it. On a couple of occasions I've seen one plane fly off trailing smoke, but never both of them.)

Go on over the hill and down into the next valley, staying on the road as much as possible and avoiding the craters. Don't get too wild with your driving; the truck is a bit more stable than the Jeep but you can turn either of them over quite easily.

Soon you'll find yourself climbing a steep grade toward a kind of saddle between hills, with wrecked vehicles and other debris lying around. (It's better to drive the truck in third person so you can see this sort of thing farther ahead.) Pull off the road to the left, past the bomb craters, and up the slope of the hill. There are two men in amid the wreckage, manning a machine gun, and they've got the road covered. They've got your ass covered, too, but if you use the terrain so that the hill masks the truck, and get yourself around to their flank, you can get them.

If you're using the truck, take control of the sniper and drive from his position. (You can do that; it's a little weird but it works.) Work gradually up the slope - not too far, remember the mines - until the two Germans can be seen through the rifle scope. Pick them off, and do it quickly and accurately; don't give them a chance to return fire. Get the one manning the MG first, or the one closest to it if it's not manned. Do this without leaving the truck.

If you've got the Jeep this will be impracticable; the men in back simply don't have enough visibility or field of fire. You can have the sniper dismount and move quickly into position and pick them off, then haul ass back to the vehicle; he'll probably get strafed but not fatally if he doesn't stay out there too long.

Or you can just swing the Jeep around, up past those shell holes, until #2 can get them with the machine gun. If you've got a good man on that MG he can nail them before they shoot back.

See, that's what I meant about the planes forcing you to do silly shit. In reality you'd be crazy to take the truck or Jeep anywhere near that machine gun position; you'd dismount a couple of men and work around and gun them from cover. But you can't do that because the planes will strafe your men and, given time for a few repeat passes, kill them.

Once you've killed those two, you can drive on past the wreckage. You might want to save at this point, since it's a short mission and there are only a couple of other points where you'd have any reason to save.

Now drive on down the next grade a little way - careful not to build up too much speed - and turn off the road to the right, about halfway down the slope. Drive along the slope more or less parallel to the road, angling a little downhill, past that big bomb crater. Go slow and watch up ahead in third person.

You're about to come upon a kind of small valley or depression with another Afrika Korps junkyard, but this one with quite a few live Germans still hanging around, as well as one still functional tank, and an AA truck with its gun still working. A nasty spot to get through, even without the God-damned airplanes to make things even worse.

So you don't want to get too close. If anybody down there spots you, that tank will come rumbling up the hill and blow you to shit. You could probably outrun it, especially with the Jeep, but you'd still have to get past it. If you have the truck you could try knocking it out with the 20mm. but I don't fancy your chances.

Stop the truck, then, as close to the target area as you dare - this may require a couple of failed attempts before you get it right; that's why I said save back there - and have your main disguise man, the one with the highest stealth rating, dump his backpack and wait till his disguise is showing full strength.

(Unless your main disguise man is Number One, in which case you better have another man in disguise. If not, then you'll have to just pick somebody with a high endurance rating and hope he can run fast.)

Now comes the really nasty part. He's got to dismount and sprint like hell toward that disabled tank up ahead. Wait until the planes have just passed overhead, to give him maximum time before they return; but he will very probably be strafed, and hit, at least once before he reaches that tank. There's nothing for it but to keep going and hope the injuries aren't too bad.

As he comes in sight of the enemy, his disguise meter will start to drop very fast. Have him hit the deck and crawl the last few meters to the rear of the tank, where he can wait a moment and let his stealth build back up - and, if he got hit really bad, slap on a bandage or two. The tank will provide pretty good protection from the planes. (If he doesn't have a disguise then all he can do is keep running and try to reach the tank before he gets killed either by the planes or the soldiers. His chances won't be great, but he'll still have a better shot than Number One, whom the planes will almost certainly kill before he makes half the distance.)

Now get into first person, if you weren't already, and sprint around to the right side of the tank and hit the Use key, twice; and there you'll be, safe from the damn planes and the bullets.

At this point, definitely, save the mission. Just as soon as you're inside that tank, hit Save. The next part will almost certainly require a couple of tries, and I don't think you want to go through all that other shit again and again.

You've got two targets to take out, and you have to do it fast - and, as you'll see, you've got only a very few rounds with which to do it. You've got to destroy that tank over there to the right, and also that 20mm. flak gun on the disabled truck to the left.

And, contrary to what you'd expect, you need to get the 20mm. first. It shouldn't be able to penetrate a tank's armor, but that's just another damn fool thing about this mission; if you don't get that 20mm. quite quickly it will kill you. It's a much bigger menace than the tank, though you have to get that too.

Your first shot will miss, no matter what you aim at, but it should at least deter the crew until you can get reloaded. Aim for the gun itself, not the truck. You've got maybe three shots to take that gun out, and that's pushing it.

By now the tank will be in motion, and it may fire at you but it probably won't hit you. Aim for the hull just below the turret and hit it while it's still got its side presented to you; once it turns in your direction you're in trouble, your cannon won't penetrate it from in front.

When you've destroyed the tank and the gun - you'll know quick enough if you've got the gun, if it doesn't start firing again it's dead - you might have a round or two left. Use it on any group of men you see; over by the flak truck there should be a couple of assholes in need of a 37mm. attitude adjustment.

As I say, this will probably take a couple of tries before you pull it off, but it's not really all that hard once you get the hang of it. The hardest part is learning to control that tank gun, which tends to be much too sensitive and swing farther than you intended.

When you've done your thing with the tank, leave your man in there out of harm's way - after pausing to patch up any injuries, and if he didn't acquire a few he's incredibly lucky - and switch back to the vehicle and drive slowly in the direction of the enemy. If you've got the Jeep you'll need to aim it more or less directly at them so the machine gunner has a clear field of fire. With the truck it's better to angle downhill and to one side of the depression rather than attacking frontally; the sniper and the flak gunner can both fire, then. Either way, keep the vehicle hull-down as much as possible.

There aren't many Germans in the area, and they're scattered out and not organized; it's not hard to eliminate them. They're not very well armed, either; one silly son of a bitch will fire at you with a pistol. There's one up next to the tank that usually just sits there on his ass till you shoot him in the back.

Check out the area over to the right, beyond your man in the tank, over by those demolished vehicles. There should be a surrender monkey standing there with his hands up. If you've only got two men with enemy uniforms - or, worse yet, only one - then you'll want to drive over and have somebody jump down and capture him and take his outfit. Get as close to him as possible, because the planes will strafe while you're doing it (they may very well hit him, too, they don't give a shit) and get back into the truck ASAP. You might do better to split this up: get out, capture him, get back in the truck, get out again after the planes' next pass and take his threads. He's bareheaded, so you'll need to stop at the nearest bunch of stiffs and grab a helmet, again acting quickly.

If you've already got three men with disguises, then my advice is to leave the poor bastard alone. He's not going to harm you, you won't get any mission points for killing him, and you don't need his uniform all that badly; certainly it's not worth the risk of getting out to capture him, especially when Number One is the number one magnet for the planes' attentions.

One other odd thing: your compass's Bad Guy Indicator may show one or two enemies where you can't see anything but bodies. Sometimes there are a couple of wounded lying there barely moving. Do whatever you want; they're history anyway, though maybe the surrender monkey can patch them up after you leave.

Drive on up the road - up is right, the old truck barely struggles up the steep slope; this is one place you appreciate the Jeep - and on the other side of the hill watch out for a single man holed up in a big crater over on a hillside to the left. He's not very dangerous at this distance since he's only got an MP-40, so you can easily blast him out of there with the big gun.

At this point, if you've got a save left, you might as well use it. There's only one more problem spot remaining.

A little way up the road you'll come to the top of a short climb and find yourself overlooking a broad valley strewn with the wreckage of a Ju-52 transport plane. (The one that went overhead, trailing smoke, at the start of the mission.) Several Germans are scattered around nearby, two of them in craters and the others just standing around.

If you've got the truck, it's usually better to let the sniper pick them off, jockeying the truck around to give him a clear shot. This time you can give Fire At Will; your 20mm. gunner may as well get in on it, though don't be surprised if he mostly ignores the men in the valley and fires instead at the planes.

With the Jeep, you'll just have to drive cautiously over the crest and let your machine gunner get them. This is considerably riskier, as you have to expose the Jeep and all its occupants to enemy fire.

This can be a fairly nasty business; the Germans are difficult targets at that distance, especially the ones in the holes, and sometimes shoot back with unnerving accuracy. Rather than try to get them all at once, do a pop-up: drive over the crest, get one or two, then roar back up out of sight and come at them again from another angle. A couple of them may come charging up the slope, which will simplify matters if your gunner knows his business. You may well take some hits and have to retreat momentarily while everybody sticks on bandages. That's OK, the Germans will relax their guard a little when you pull back.

Once you've got them all, you might consider doing some looting. There are a couple of scoped Mausers down there, as well as shitloads of ammo. But I don't advise bothering with it. By now you should have two Mauser sniper rifles and a Springfield, and plenty of cartridges, and that's enough for what you have to do next. It's not worth risking further strafing.

Besides, sometimes, if you screw around too much, a truck comes roaring out of the hills up ahead and disgorges a bunch of German infantry who create a whole new problem. I've never known what the trigger is - it may be just a matter of time - but I sort of suspect it's got something to do with people wandering around the crash area. So all in all I'd just give the whole thing a miss, stay mounted, and get on up the road.

Watch out about that part, though. There's a dirty trick waiting for you up ahead. As you reach the floor of the valley, get off the road itself; stay over to the left, between the road and that line of craters. Despite what the map shows you, the area ahead is mined and if you drive straight along the road you'll be blown up.

When you get across the flat to the place where the road starts to climb again, you can get back on the road. About here you should get Mission Completed, and be damn glad to see it.

That's OK. The next one is a lot better.