Silly After Action Report - African Brothers

Maggiore Guiseppe Limoncello gazed at his forces with approval.  When he had first taken command of these colonial troops they had shown a distressing tendency to engage in fire and movement, feel for an enemies flanks and filter through weakly defended areas of the front.  It had taken months of patient drilling to get them to gather together into unwieldy clumps and plod slowly towards the enemy.  Now he would be able to demonstrate how well his troops had learnt their lessons.  The colonial battalions would be attacking Moyale, the Gibraltar of Africa as it was never known, under the watchful eye of Generale di Brigata Matteo Gorganzoli himself.  Perhaps if enough of them died he might get a medal.

The sound of a novelty car horn split the air, Maggiore Limoncello threw his hands into the air instinctively and turned to find the source of the disturbance.  An Italian soldier gave him a cheery wave.  He was sitting on, well it looked like an upturned bathtub on wheels.

"What the hell is that?" demanded Limoncello.

"It's an upturned bathtub on wheels," replied the soldier, "but add a machine gun and its an armoured car.  We've got three of them, where do you want us?"

Limoncello pointed at the nearest road,

"How about there?  Just, sort of drive down that a bit and see what happens."

The soldier ripped off a smart salute,

"Most comprehensive briefing I've ever had.  We can move out immediately."

So this is ASL scenario J162, African Brothers where Ivan Kent attempts to defend the Kenyan town of Moyale from the conquering Italian legions commanded by yours truly.  To defend the indefensible Ivan has fourteen squads from the King's Rifled Africans, four second line and ten green.  To back them up he has wire, trenches, sangars, a pair of medium machine guns, an anti tank rifle, a small mortar and a trio of officers led by a 9-1 plus a dozen concealment counters.  On turn four he gets four second line squads as reinforcements egged on by an 8-1.  On the attack I have the pride of the Italian colonial troops in East Africa (ie anyone who would turn up).  I have twenty squads, ten bersaglieri and ten regular Italian first liners led by three officers (including my own 9-1) and a genuine Italian hero.  That's a counter that doesn't get much of an airing.  Additionally I have three light machine guns, one medium and one heavy.  For long range work I have my own little mortar and a 105mm gun.  Coming on to reinforce in the first turn are three ancient armoured cars although given the state of their armour perhaps a better term would simply be "cars".  Still one carries an 8FP machine gun and the other two 37mm cannon.

To win I have to capture a certain number of victory locations within a given time frame.  I need to achieve two of the following; i) capture 1 location point by turn 2, capture 3 location points by turn 5 or capture 4 location points by game end.  There is one victory location on board 62 within easy reach.  There are four victory locations on the hill summits of board 5a and the stone church on board 5a is worth a massive three points.  Grabbing the closest one seemed an appropriate start and would also set me on the way to seizing the church for another three.  I set up a powerful force, including my gun and mortar on the board 61 hill and detailed a second force (accompanied by the hero) to come on the north edge of board 62 for a little flanking.  By SSR the orchard hexes were actually vineyards and bog terrain which seemed to restrict my armoured cars to the road.

Set up

Things went rather well to begin with.  Ivan had only a token defence forward to cover the first victory location mostly consisting of dummy stacks.  This left the kill stack I had built with two squads, the mmg, hmg and 9-1 with very little to kill.  Since the machine guns were rather heavy this mob would spend the rest of the game panting towards the battle which always seemed to be a little out of reach.  Still I hustled forward and plunged (somewhat nervously) into close combat with the genuine squad he had defending the first victory location.  My only serious casualty came when I idiotically waltzed a squad right down the road in front of his defenders.  The conscript halfsquad which were the only survivors spent the rest of the game hiding in a vineyard.

Still everything else went well, my northern flankers pushed through the brush and vineyards, breaking a green squad along the way and rendered Ivan's forward position such as it was untenable and the victory location was mine.  The armoured cars trundled down the road and got ready to assault the church where the real fighting would happen.  Meanwhile my southern flank was crowned with unexpected success as well.  The forward location and the church weren't enough.  I needed to gain at least one of the hill hexes as well and I had a force in the south which I envisaged would slowly ease their way forward against the pair of squads in sangars that Ivan had ready for such an eventuality.  Instead a lucky prep fire shot broke one of the squads and I was able to hustle forward and chase him out of his defended positions down there with minimal casualties.

Unexpected triumph in the south.  Ivan's forward squad is not long for this world

With two victory locations seized before the end of turn 2 I had satisfied one victory condition.  Now I had to try and get another one.  Unfortunately the cheap gains were over.  Ivan had a squad with a mmg in a trench up on the hill guarding the next victory location closest to my flankers in the south while in the north I would edge my troops forward towards the church doing my best to take advantage of cover and only occasionally wandering into his line of sight in open ground.  There were a fair few Italian casualties but I was also taking prisoners as Ivan's outlying forces surrendered to invincible Italian arms (no really) which gave me the opportunity to deploy some squads.

pushing left and right

As expected Ivan had garrisoned the church strongly with a pair of second line squads, his 9-1, an mmg and the atr.  Most irritating was a green squad hiding in a sangar just in front.  These bastards sneaked out in the advance phase, ambushed one of my squads, killed half of it and then withdrew back into the sangar.  Nevertheless retribution was approaching.  One of my armoured cars tried firing at his troops in the church and only succeeded in running out of HE for it's 37mm.  The other one would similarly run out before much longer.

In the south I was attempting to keep my flanking manoeuvre going, sneaking behind the hill mass and trying to get close to his mmg position.  To help this out I pounded the position with both my mortar and the 105.  At that range and with an early morning mist LV in effect the odds of hitting weren't great but I figured simple repetition would eventually yield a result.  I was wrong.  The one hill location I had gained would be all that I got.  Part of the problem was that while I had got past him on the right and left he still had forces in the centre which I had been forced to largely ignore.  These guys were able to at least menace any direct movements and force me to move slowly and with circumspection which didn't stop Italian casualties mounting at an alarming rate.  Actually both sides were losing troops rapidly, blood was being poured into the soil out of all proportion to the actual value of the objective.  

 With time for the second victory condition starting to get tight I pressed forward with my armoured cars.  I was sure some of his defenders were dummies and surely those that weren't wouldn't be able to resist shooting at such magnificent targets.  Thus my infantry might be able to get forward.  This sort of worked. My forward armoured car managed to break a squad of defenders and then forced his mmg squad to reveal itself by destroying the armoured car.  Since the mmg kept rate as a fire drawing exercise it left a little to be desired.  Meanwhile back in the rear my kill stack laboured slowly towards the battle secretly hoping it would all be over before they arrived (it was).

one armoured car down

As turn four rolled around I was in quite a good position on paper.  I had swept away most of his outlying defences around the church and was advancing slowly but purposefully on his mmg post up in the hills.  Unfortunately this had cost so many casualties that a brief pause had to be called while I attempted to bring up laggards and rally some broken units.  This went about as well as you might expect with Italian squads but I did get one or two back.  In the south I managed to get a concealed squad next to his mmg team but then Ivan brought on his reinforcements and shot them to pieces (with a 1+1 shot if you please).

Back around the church Ivan was bouncing atr rounds off my armoured cars without too much result and I was firing 37mm shells into the church with an equal lack of achievement.  I had gathered what I considered to be a sufficient force to beat up his guys in the sangar and plunged into close combat.  I rolled a snake eyes and generated a 7-0 leader which was handy as the 7-0 leader I already had there had recently been broken.

getting closer

Now with nothing but the troops in the church in my way I gathered a mass of mostly half squads to spread out and give Ivan a lot of worthless targets while simultaneously pressing forward through the vineyards to the building.  At this point Ivan's mmg decided to go on a rate tear, immobilised another armoured car and beat up some of my long suffering infantry.  I also managed to break the MA on my one remaining armoured car.  On the plus side my slow moving kill stack finally managed to creep up at least combat adjacent just in case the game dragged on into the later turns.

Turn five arrived.  If I could capture the church in this turn I would win automatically.  If not I would have to hang on for another two turns with a rapidly dwindling force and still capture at least two more points worth of locations.  They weren't going to come from the hills.  Ivan's reinforcements solidly held the centre position up there and I didn't have enough to chase them off.  It had to be the church.  Fortunately Ivan helped me out.  As is his wont he persisted in rolling threes which was my sniper number.  Justice was finally served when my sniper killed his 9-1 in the church and the squad with him failed the LLMC.  Ivan's troops in the church were reduced to a single squad albeit one armed with a medium machine gun.

Time for the last desperate charge

I had one armoured car left (albeit with a broken MA), it passed the independent movement die roll and I gunned it forward.  Ivan tried to hit it but these fiat jockeys were made of stern stuff and ignored the spray of bullets.  I sleazed him in bypass and moved up every available infantry unit I could.  This consisted of two squads, two half squads, a hero and two 7-0s.  I sent the lot into close combat.  They survived Ivan's fire and I had a 3-1 shot in CC for the game.  Close combat is not normally my friend but this time it came off and I cleared the church of living defenders.  My turn five ended with me holding five victory points enough to give me an automatic win which was good as hanging on to them for another two turns might have been problematic.  Thanks to Ivan for the game which was quite tense for much of the time with second rate troops breaking all over the place.  I very much doubt if either of us could have mustered a full platoon at the end.

It's always a pleasant surprise when I win

Maggiore Limoncello ordered his troops to attention and threw up a dramatically impressive salute as Generale Gorgonzoli strode forward.  His face was as black as thunder.  Behind him his staff had "oh Christ you've done it now" expressions on their faces.

"What," demanded the general in tones of outrage, "was that?"

Limoncello blinked, "Well sir, we attacked and..."

"Attacked!  Attacked!  Is that what you call it?  Moving through trees?  Taking advantage of folds in the ground?  And I'm pretty sure I saw a flanking movement.  Don't deny it.  I know a flanking movement when I see one."  Absolute disbelief registered on the faces of his staff.  The general yanked on one of the waxed points of his beard in outrage.

"Do you not know, you military neophyte, that when the Italian army attacks it walks slowly towards the enemy until it has taken enough casualties to justify surrendering with honour?"

"Forgive me sir but, we did sort of win," said Limoncello a little desperately.

This seemed to drive the general into a greater fury.  He waved a file approximately the same thickness as a telephone directory in the junior officer face.

"Do you know what this is?  This is my surrender speech, noting how we gallantly resisted to the last and exhausted every possible resource before reluctantly handing our weapons over to a vastly superior enemy.  I spent hours on it.  I got my sword specially cleaned so I could hand it over to the British commander.  Now you tell me the bastard's dead.  What am I supposed to do with it now?"  Gorgonzoli turned on his heel so abruptly that his staff surrendered and stormed off towards his staff car.  Limoncello turned back to such of his troops as had survived.

"Well I don't care," he muttered.  "I think you all did very well. And that flanking thingy, well done.  Good initiative."

His troops held a hasty conversation amongst themselves then one of their corporals stepped forward.

"Excuse me sir, we're all planning to desert to the British.  Would you like to come with us?"

"Give me five minutes to pack a bag."