At the end of September 1941, the Soviet defense along the Orelj River collapsed and the Italians were ordered to seize initiative and to surround as many enemy troops as possible. Colonello Biasoli, commander of the 79th Regiment personally led the motorized column to Petrikovka.

When the 9th Pasubio got in sight of Petrikovka, they were met by a Russian defense in depth to harass the Italians and to give the defenders of the town ample time to dig trenches. The Italians know that their artillery is arriving along the road so they cannot afford to bypass the Russian forward guard, so they split their force into two blocks, about a third is to attack the Russians on the road while the rest takes the scenic route towards Petrikovka.

Well, the Italians were in for a shock: those Russian road defenders turned out to be the most accurate and tenacious warriors of the Soviet Army. The Italian attack along the road cost extremely dearly in time as well as lives. Those Russians shrugged off all incoming fire and whilst leaving a few units behind to secure the road, the rest pulled back towards the town. During all this mayhem,Col Biasoli reached the eastern side of the town, came under murderous mortar fire and decided to push on. Mortar fire and accurate opportunity fire stopped this attack at least 400 yards from the outskirts of Petrikovka. Col Biasoli took a morale blow during this shamble and demoralized he tried to regroup his troops while hunkering down in the bushes northeast of the town. He decided to await his artillery column that would soon demolish those blasted defenders, all was not lost.

The Italian artillery rode on the battlefield in true splendid style, headed for a nearby hill and started to unlimber. At that moment a Russian artillery round hit a Bullseye, struck the Italian ammunition truck and vaporized both 100mm artillery units. Bye bye Italian artillery support! When word of this reached the Colonel (well he could see and feel the near atomic blast for himself), the old man tore out most of his already fading hairline, sank to his knees sobbing and had to be relieved of command. Maggiore Ferrari took over and immediately ordered a combined attack on both sides of (a now practically laughing their heads off) Petrikovka. The Italians clearly hadn’t suffered enough when these attacks once again petered down when morale broke of about all the attacking units.

At 5 o clock, Italian casualties were already so high that HQ ordered a retreat, telling the Italians that on the morrow a German contingent would do the job properly. Ferrari, frustrated that not a single Italian foot had entered the town, ignored this order and sent every man towards the town, threatening to shoot them in true Commissar fashion! Amazingly, for once, the Italians got in the town and even secured a small piece of it, but when a stupid rifle bullet took out the commander of the AFV’s, their morale broke and that was the last straw.

The vastly superior Russians cheered when the Italians surrendered , knowing that their splendid defense was never threatened and Maggiore Ferrari is now on the lookout for some new hotdice, cause the ones from this lovely game ended where they belonged, in the toilet bowl!