Silly After Action Report

In 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia.  Why?  Largely pique.  Italy had had a go at conquering Ethiopia the previous century and got their arse handed to them in a sack.  Since every other European nation was tearing themselves off chunks of the African continent without a military disaster the whole thing was rather humiliating.  For a while it looked like history might repeat itself but fortunately for the Italians poison gas had been invented in the meantime.  Even more fortunately the word hadn't filtered through to the Ethiopians.

Once Ethiopia was (more or less) conquered the Italians set up one of the "heroes" of the invasion, Rodolfo Graziani, as viceroy.  His policies were, shall we say, vigorous towards those Ethiopians who might still prefer their country to be run by an Ethiopian.  Graziani had to step down after somebody protested about his policies by tossing a grenade at him.  With the top job in Ethiopia suddenly open Mussolini made one of his better decisions by appointing Prince Amadeo, Duke of Aosta as viceroy in his place.  A cousin of the Italian king Aosta was tall, charming, cultured and handsome.  The king who was none of those things showed a disturbing eagerness to see his far too popular cousin packed off to darkest Africa.

When Mussolini joined the Second World War (in retrospect not one of his best decisions) the Duke of Aosta suddenly found himself commanding Italian forces in Ethiopia which were pretty much surrounded by British colonies.  The danger was far more apparent than real as the British barely had any troops in the area and were deeply concerned that Aosta's 150 000 soldiers might launch an invasion of the Sudan and Egypt in conjunction with the quarter million troops that the Italians had in Libya.

Aosta did think about it but there were a few problems.  Firstly the army in Libya was commanded by Rodolfo Graziani who was never keen on attacking someone who might fight back.  Secondly while the army in Ethiopia was sitting on top of a vast stockpile of supplies and ammunition they were cut off from Italy and they wouldn't be getting any more.  If he launched an invasion and bungled it every resource used would be that much less to defend Ethiopia from the inevitable counterattack.  Finally a good deal of the army was still engaged in persuading the supposedly conquered Ethiopians not to kill every Italian they came across.

So Aosta stood on the strategic defensive.  But he decided not to be totally inert (and straight away you can tell that he wasn't a full time Italian general) and launched a couple of attackettes to capture valuable positions on the Sudanese and Kenyan borders.  With those under his belt he decided to conquer British Somalia.  The question as to why leads to broader questions such as what were the British doing there in the first place.  Somalia was as desirable as real estate then as it is now.  Even the locals only live there because they don't have a choice.

Still the Italians gathered together about thirty thousand troops plus some tanks and artillery and invaded a place most people are quite desperate to leave.  Included in that number were the British who didn't have the resources to defend the place and if they did would have used them somewhere more valuable (anywhere really).  The only real battle took place in a group of hills outside the capital where the British garrison made a stand so that the Italians couldn't claim a walk over.

This is the very venerable ASL scenario A39, Showdown at Tug Argan Pass.  Here I shall command the conquering Italian legions (mostly Eritrean actually) attempting to push Ivan Kent's British (mostly Indian actually) off a particular hill.  To defend this particular hill Ivan has the equivalent of thirteen second line squads, three light machine guns, a single heavy machine gun, a 51mm mortar a pair of antitank rifles and a radio that connects him to an 80mm artillery battery with scarce ammunition.  To seize possible the most valueless real estate on the planet I have nineteen and a half first line squad equivalents, four elite squads (assault engineers) carrying a selection of lmgs, demo charges, a medium and a heavy machine gun and a dinky little 45mm mortar.  The real Italian punch is in their artillery and armour.  100mm offboard artillery with plentiful ammunition firing smoke and HE and six tanks.  Two of the wretched little L3s that turned up everywhere the Italians did battle, a single lancia fiamme flamethrower variant of the L3 and three M11/39 tanks crappy but unopposed.

The entire Italian force has to enter on the first turn which left me wondering exactly how to deploy my mass of infantry.  Eventually I decided on two thrusts.  To win I had to capture a specific hill location in the north (right hand side) and also a majority of the level four hill hexes.  My right hand force contained a little more than half my infantry (including all of my assault engineers) and my best officers.  Also there was a tank platoon consisting of the two L3s and the flamethrower.  These would target the northern objective.  Further south was the remainder of my infantry with the three M11s.  They would head towards the other hill hexes.

At start

I had intended to shroud my advance in the north with smoke from my artillery but I started moving before the artillery was ready.  In retrospect I should have been more patient.  With nine turns I had plenty of time.  Still my tanks clanked forward throwing up vehicular dust will the infantry plodded along in their wake.  It all seemed to go reasonably well.  I lost a half squad or two to Ivan's fire but that's why they were running around the desert shouting "look at me!".  Then things went horribly wrong.  Ivan had his hmg up on the target hill location (of course) and he also got his artillery into action before I did.  The result was a hideous massacre.

End of my first turn, not looking too bad

Ivan dropped his artillery right down on top of my northern group of troops and over the course of the next couple of turns systematically exterminated them.  His hmg added to the carnage all while my own troops were still too far away to return fire.  The only result I got was when a sniper shot dead his 9-1 who was directing the hmg.  This is even more significant than it sounds as Ivan only had three leaders for his entire force.  

The second turn proceeded in much the same fashion with rivers of Italian (ok mainly Eritrean) blood soaking into the sand as Ivan punished me brutally for my foolishness in not being more spread out.  I had joked to Ivan before the game that with twenty three squads that all had to enter on turn one I should really just line them up the length of the board.  Possibly that would have been a better idea.  I honestly thought I had lost the game in the first couple of turns.  At the end of turn two eleven Italian squads were out, either dead or broken beyond likely redemption.  Ivan's sole casualty was still his 9-1.

It looked so bad that Ivan offered to restart the game but I decided I had made my bed and should lie in it.  There were a couple of faint gleams of light.  Firstly Ivan had concentrated on the northern force.  My southern group were still advancing largely unmolested with the M11s in the van.  Secondly Ivan had concentrated on killing infantry so my little L3 wedge was also advancing with impunity.  It just didn't have any infantry to back it up.  Finally I got my artillery into gear and while 100mm Italian artillery didn't seem to be as good as 80mm British I did start to break the occasional squad on the hill mass.

The sole survivors of the northern massacre were a pair of elite squads toting support weapons and guided by my best leaders.  They didn't so much advance as flee forward until they found a gully to hide in.  There wasn't really any plan to that advance, they were just trying to get out of the way of the artillery. In the south I managed much better tank/infantry coordination and rolled up to his forward defences largely unscathed.  Ivan was defending this hill mass lightly with a pair of squads in sangars forward and a couple of concealed units in foxholes on the summit.  I suspected (accurately) that one of them was an officer with his radio.

Things continued to go well in the south where an M11 wiped out a defending squad with a critical hit and a second broke his other squad while my infantry lurked in the vehicle dust and waited for the shooting to be over.  With his forward defence broken my southern forces swept onward.

Things don't seem to be going too badly in the south.  Famous last words

In the north the L3 platoon, proudly alone, pushed into Ivan's defences and started burning him out of them.  My lancia fiamme was leading the assault and ignoring increasingly desperate anti tank rifle shots managed to fry and otherwise deal with Ivan's forward positions.  I had finally managed to get my artillery going and was dropping not particularly accurate shellfire onto Ivan's position.  Thanks to his foxholes and sangars I wasn't achieving the hideous slaughter that Ivan had gained with his artillery but nevertheless I was breaking or pinning some units and moving about started to become somewhat problematic for the defenders.

Taking advantage of the fact that Ivan's attention was focussed on the L3s I managed to race a squad with an lmg across to provide at least token infantry support.  So far his achievements to date have been to keep one British squad under DM and to break his own lmg.  It has to be said that Ivan's anti tank rifles were something of a disappointment to him.  Neither of them scored a hit (L3s are very small and you'd better believe I kept them in motion) and the flamethrower broke the squad manning one while the other broke the atr itself.  With his hmg as his only anti tank weapon I started to feel a little confident.  That was stupid as Ivan promptly stunned my flamethrower with his hmg and a stun is a recall on these little things.  My flamethrower was gone but worse was to come.  The surviving L3s had started climbing the hill and had done good service keeping broken squads DM'ed but then Ivan tossed aside his useless anti tank rifles and attacked them with tooth and claw.  A squad charged into CC and ripped an inoffensive little L3 to pieces with its bare hands.

In the south a squad and 8-0 have captured my first victory location.  Artillery would slaughter them immediately afterwards

To the south my advance was painfully slow as gullies, crags and cliff hexsides made getting up the hill a wincingly painful affair.  My little mortar had unshipped and started pounding his radio operator but its only achievement was a critical hit which resulted in the officer becoming heroic.  Not quite the result I was looking for.  In return Ivan switched his artillery to the southern hill mass and the slaughter of the Italian infantry began all over again.  I simply had no answer to this.  Ivan's troops can lurk in foxholes and sangars but mine are in the open and they are dying in droves.  To add insult to injury a snake eyes also burnt an M11 leaving me with a grand total of three tanks from six starters.  Again all the handful of survivors can do is struggle forward and pray.  Far to the rear a 6+1 officer (he started the game as a 7-0) has managed to self rally and celebrated the fact by killing a broken halfsquad he was stacked with.  In the centre an elite squad with a demo charge has actually managed to rally himself as well.

Again things looked ghastly but again they weren't quite as bad as they seemed.  My advance towards the northern hill had pretty much stopped but I had an lmg squad and an elite squad with a DC coming to help.  In the south the dreadful carnage had concealed the fact that Ivan hadn't managed to kill quite every one.  While the centre of my push was an unrelieved bloodbath other squads were struggling up the hill on the flanks and Ivan's sole defenders were an officer (with radio) and a half squad with what turned out to be an inconveniently placed mortar.  My two elite squads were crawling and scrambling up a gully heading towards the hilltop.

Regrouping mentally I finally struggled up to the top of the southern hill mass and started claiming victory locations.  Ivan's radio operator finally decided it was time to leave and scurried out of his foxhole towards what he fondly imagined was safety.  My 9-2 (remember him, it seems such a long time since he did anything) led his hmg squad out of the gully towards a pair of hill hexes in the centre which had a couple of attractions.  They were victory locations in their own right and perched up in the crags my hmg team would be able to sweep the northern hill with fire.  This was good because over on the northern hill things had got, if anything worse.  I dropped artillery fire down on the hills forward slopes to break the units there and dissuade Ivan from reinforcing them.  The sole result of this 100mm artillery barrage was that a broken, green halfsquad went berserk.  Worse was to come.  Ivan still had a squad forward in a foxhole but my remaining L3 was sitting next to him.  8+2 isn't a bad shot.  It is when you roll an eleven and break the MA on your remaining L3.  Then Ivan contrived to break my lmg squad which was currently the only Italian within a dozen hexes capable of producing any firepower.  I may have wept at this.  Re the previous sentence, delete the phrase "may have".

Well the southern hill is mine.  The north is a little iffy

To add insult to injury Ivan's berserk halfsquad charged into close combat with my remaining (and now unarmed) tank.  Fortunately these tankers were made of sterner stuff than their compatriots and all Ivan's guys could do was claw feebly at the paintwork.  The southern hill mass was mine, Ivan did try calling artillery down on his own position but then decided to run away instead.  When he reached "safety" and called up his artillery again he drew his second red chit much to my relief.

Despite the casualties I have an almost embarrassingly large force on the southern hill mass

I was slowly coming to the realisation that I just didn't have the troops in the north to achieve a result.  My force there consisted of one lmg squad (broken) one elite squad and an L3 with a busted machine gun and a bunch of green troops jumping up and down on it shouting "Kill!"  Then things managed to get better and worse pretty much simultaneously.  Believe it or not the lmg squad self rallied.  Far to the rear the 6+1 officer rallied an lmg toting halfsquad which was good for morale but was too far away to have an effect on the game.  Then a sniper broke the elite squad with the DC.  Apparently one squad was all I was permitted to have on the northern hill.  Ivan had rallied a decent amount of his force on the reverse slope of the hill and settled in for a comfortable defence.  Then my recently placed hmg opened up and literally swept the front of the hill clear of living defenders.  Even the berserkers died under the withering fire.

Ivan abruptly decided not to push his recently rallied troops forward to occupy the abandoned sangars.  The hill location I needed was empty if I could get to it.  But could I?  I miraculously repaired the L3's armament but apparently on the grounds that one miracle was enough per turn I failed the independent movement die roll.  This meant it was all up to the single lmg squad.  With the forward hill rendered harmless he moved forward and advanced into a sanger next to my target.  This was Ivan's final turn and this single squad would have to survive everything that Ivan could throw at it.  I suppose, technically, it did.

I'm occupying the sangar marked by the red circle.  The atr squad nearby is broken

Ivan realised, more swiftly than I did, that he didn't actually have to kill my guys.  He just had to stop them moving.  They were the only unit I had that could reach the victory hill.  Prep fire having proved unsuccessful he assault moved a squad and a leader next to my boys.  I held off firing (in retrospect a mistake), he already had a squad in the hex and I wanted to hit the lot in defensive fire.  Hit them I did, I broke one squad but the other with an 8-1 leader survived.  They then advanced into CC with my guys.  To their credit the Italians didn't die but neither could they kill Ivan's troops.  With my only squad locked up in melee as we entered the last turn I had one tiny chance.  I fired on the melee with my hmg team.  If I broke his guys and not my own I would be able to advance out.  It was a tiny chance and perhaps deservedly it didn't come off.  At the end Ivan squeaked a win by the skin of his teeth.

In retrospect I lost the game in the first couple of turns when I offered groups of infantry as fodder for Ivan's artillery and didn't wait until I'd brought down my own.  Subsequent to that committing the M11s to the southern hill mass was a mistake.  They broke his front line but then should have been sent to support their L3 comrades in the north.  It is almost impossible for tanks to climb that southern hill, the survivors had only just reached the top when the game ended.  Nevertheless it was a great game with swings of fortune on both sides and I very nearly pulled off an undeserved win.  Thanks to Ivan for the game.  I'm not sure what we're playing next.  Having pandered to a long held desire of mine to play this scenario I've invited him to dig out his own guilty pleasure for our next encounter.