Normandy River Crossing

Back to Richard's spare room, and more WW2 skirmish. With an overload of players (five on line, two in the room) Richard performed magnificently, so if the narrative becomes incoherent that's on me, not him.

Tim and I were there in person, and we got to command and push the Americans about, whilst Chris K, Phil & Will shouted instructions at us. Richard was the German croupier for Jon and Ian, before Ian got too confused and went to bed.

The scenario is that the Americans have loads of kit and have to capture a river crossing, or build one. The Germans have to stop us, if they can. They have less kit, none of which is out on the table.

The Americans are off table to the right. Who knows where the Germans are. The two Panthers in the distance are revealed to be phantoms, once the fog lifts.

Will, as Company Commander, boldly moved on to the table, our one and only piece of armour to the fore, and most of his infantry in the open.

Phil and I controlled an infantry platoon each. We were a bit more circumspect. Phil moved cautiously up the road between the buildings, whilst I sneaked up round the hill. The little dice mark hex corners, I think. The big dice are unit hit points. It is a shame Richard can't find another way to record these, as it mars the look a bit. On the other hand it means the off table players can probably see the numbers.

Before he can loose off a round or two, Will's mortar section starts to get shelled. I think Will's CO is in that hex too.

I come under sniper fire from the pink building. I spray it with ineffective small arms fire and then  clear the building with a round from the bazooka team, followed by a close assault. I set up an OP on the roof, and get all my guys under cover.

Phil, meanwhile, resolved to dash up the railway embankment, on the grounds he could jump off when the shooting started. Best of luck with that.

Over on our left, the bridging unit arrived. In the top left you can see Tim's platoon pressing forwards to the river line. He has suffered in several ways. For one thing, with Will having got the Company CO killed, Tim had to surrender a base to replace him, weakening his platoon. And that was before the actual shooting at him started.

Tim pushed into the trees and got involved in a firefight with the Germans on the opposite bank. Will had spent several turns pounding that pillbox with our off table artillery and close range fire from the Hellcat. He then switched to firing at buildings on the opposite bank.

Phil and I then came under fire from Germans in buildings at our end of the table.

The bridging continued to make its stately progress across the board.

Phil had moved up to our end of the bridge. He has some men sheltering under this end where you can see the white dice. At least he wasn't on the bridge when Jon blew it up.

Overview: The attack on stone bridge has stalled, so Will is trying to get it moving again with the Hellcat. In the light of what just happened I did ask him if he really meant to halt it half way across the bridge. At our request, the US off table artillery is starting to hit the buildings up by the railway bridge. Although the Germans have detonated a charge, Phil gets a man up on the bridge, and reports we can pass the damaged section with care in single file.

Phil starts to infiltrate on to the bridge. I have suppressed the fire coming from the right hand, smaller building, so he can claim cover against the other troops shooting at him.

Will, seeing some badly beat up Germans flee from the trees, rushes the Hellcat across without infantry support to machine gun them. This reveals a Tiger tank having its tracks repaired round the back of the building. Ah.

With Phil pushing across the bridge, I move my platoon up into the lee of the embankment, prior to getting up on to the bridge.

Tim does some pointing, as he tries to establish where Will wants his infantry support sections

BANG!! The Hellcat explodes. Not hit by the Tiger, but by a Panzerschreck under the tree on the left. Tim's infantry is still stuck on the bridge, unable to help.

Chris starts to unpack the boats and the bridging gear. He is explaining patiently how this is actually done. Engineers, huh?

The Tiger pulls up. There's all sorts of shooting going on.Iit is all very confusing and unstructured down this end of the table.

Phil and I have killed/suppressed the enemy in the buildings either side of the railway bridge on the far bank, and are working our way across stealthily. We are in really good shape, especially compared to Tim & Will and what happened last time we were down this way. 

At this point the Germans withdrew. We had called in aircover, and had switched our artillery support about fairly effectively, and degraded them quite badly. It was time for them to cut and run.

We'd succeeded in taking the river crossing we needed, and got the bridging unit in place. In practice, unless we were stunningly incompetent or very unlucky, we were always going to succeed. The question was how much delay/damage Jon and Ian would inflict. Well, our left got pretty badly mauled, and we lost our only armour, so overall, honours even, I should say.