Major Horea Stansinacu watched as his men reached their assigned pre-assault positions. They looked good he thought. Tough, eager, ready to fight. Then his gaze fell on his German artillery support. For some reason they had already hooked their guns up to their trucks and were intently studying maps all of which seemed to depict areas somewhat to the rear of their current location.
"Are you guys ready to support the attack?" demanded Stansinacu a little suspicion creeping into his voice. Their officer looked up and, after a certain hesitation, reluctantly saluted.
"Oh yeah, we're good to go. Just tell us where you want us."
"I can't help noticing that all your ammunition and supply trucks are currently barrelling down the road towards Sevastopol."
"It's their afternoon off."
"But you will be ready on my command?"
"Absolutely as long as our observer has radio contact with us."
Stansinacu glanced at the observer, he looked thoroughly miserable and was holding what appeared to be a pair of tin cans connected by string.
"Observer," called Stansinacu, the man shrieked and threw his hands up in the air.
"And he's ready to do semaphore if communications break down," added the artillery officer hastily.
Mentally writing off his artillery support Stansinacu returned to the comforting bulk of one of the assault guns that would be going in with his troops. The crew seemed to be dismantling their main armament but he put that down to last minute maintenance.
After my previous dismal showing against Dave Wilson (which you don't know about because it was such a catastrophe that it wasn't worth an AAR) it was my turn to choose the scenario and be the attacker. I was keen to try something with Italians or Axis Minors because I always am so I ferreted through a decaying stack of cardboard and came up with this one by Le Franc Tireur - FT190, The Land of Fire. Here a collection of suspiciously well equipped Romanians are attempting to prolong the death agonies of their nation a little further by destroying one of the bridgeheads the Soviets have established on the Kerch Peninsula. To perform said prolonging I have an at start force of six elite squads and eight first line squads including a pair of assault engineers. These heroes are led by an awesome 10-2 plus two other officers of lesser distinction and are equipped with a medium machine gun, four light machine guns (including two apparently borrowed from the Germans), a 60mm mortar, a demolition charge and a flamethrower. Lest this seem insufficient they have German support in the form of a pair of StuGIIIG assault guns and 100mm offboard artillery. On turn two these forces are augmented by another ten Romanian squads a couple more officers and another StuG.
To oppose the pride of eastern Europe Dave has seventeen Soviet squads including six elite, a heavy machine gun, a medium machine gun, three light machine guns, a pair of antitank rifles, a 50mm mortar and two guns; a 45mm AT gun and a 76mm infantry weapon. Armoured support turns up on turn two in the form of a Lend-lease Stuart tank that the British seem to have provided the Soviets simply to make them feel better about their own tank designs. Additionally he has four officers, six trenches, a pillbox and is allowed to fortify two building locations.
This seems like a perfectly adequate force to see off these presumptuous Romanians but Dave is hampered by the fact that a portion of his force is scattered to protect three widely separated strongpoints; a state farm in the southwest (top), a lighthouse in the southeast (bottom, obviously) and a row of hills in the northeast. To win the Romanians have to deprive the Soviets of ownership of at least two of these.
My plan was to strike hard for the lighthouse and hope to capture it quickly while the remainder of my force (and most of the reinforcements) crept up on the state farm and hoped to essentially drown the Soviet defenders in bodies. I would use my artillery to make a smokescreen which would hopefully reduce his forces on the hills to the north to impotence. Usually when I detail my plan the very next sentence is "Naturally this didn't work". Anyway, naturally this didn't work. The artillery's first spotting round wandered so far I think they were trying to shell Moscow and the German gunners, incensed by Romanian criticism, promptly drew two red chits and went home. The God of War having decided to take the day off it was all up to my Romanians and their armoured support. Below is the at start set up.
Things went ok for the first turn I managed to swarm troops around and kill the squad that Dave had posted in the southeast and started cautiously making my way towards the lighthouse. In the west I had brought on a StuG and a pair of lmg toting elite squads to make a show of threatening the state farm while the rest of my troops put their boots on and tiptoed nervously forward.
Bereft of artillery I decided to use my westerly StuG to drop some smoke on the state farm only to discover that he didn't have any. With that my troops in the west decided to hide out in the woods and await events. Events were indeed coming. Perhaps a little buoyed by my early success I decided that I had enough squads to take down the lighthouse and diverted a goodly number of my troops to approaching the state farm from the south. I also sent the bulk of my turn two reinforcements in that direction as well.
 |
| End of Romanian turn 1 |
In response to this less than blitzlike Romanian advance Dave sheltered beneath concealment counters and waited for his chance. He did reveal his 50mm mortar up on the hill which tried unsuccessfully to shoot up some infantry in the southeast. In the next turn this mortar would gain three critical hits in a row but fortunately without inflicting much harm on my troops. Hoping to keep the bulk of my forces intact I hastened slowly easing from cover to cover and trying not to give Dave any good shots. In the west my 60mm mortar started dropping a rain of largely ineffectual fire onto the only one of the state farm defenders it could reach.
By the end of the second Romanian turn I was starting to wonder whether I had been as clever as I thought. It was true that a vast tide of dark green was oozing molasses like towards Dave's positions but I could already see that an unholy traffic jam was going to develop on the south side of the state farm while events would soon show that I had not given the lighthouse boys quite the force necessary to do the job. Still I wasn't too bothered, after all I had a StuG to help them forward, surely that would be sufficient.
Dave was still working on the "discretion is the better part of valour" theory so apart from his mortar going on a maniacal (but largely ineffective) rate tear the only real action of his turn was bringing on his tanks (tanks, plural?). These rolled forward and after a little indecision Dave decided to commit them both to supporting his troops in the lighthouse. His sniper, seeing that the mortar was having little effect jumped on one of the squads that had shrugged off a critical hit and broke it anyway. Some days it doesn't pay to be Romanian.
By the end of turn three things were (in my rose tinted opinion) looking good. Not only had I casualty reduced another of his lighthouse defenders but I had taken the survivors prisoner. These in a gross violation of the Geneva Convention would be herded forward in front of their captors and would die in a hail of bullets meant for Romanians.
Up at the state farm all was deceptively quiet as I tried to get my unwieldy assault force properly placed in such cover as existed and my 60mm mortar contributed to the depletion of Romanian ammunition stocks without much result. His 50mm mortar continued to be the standout weapon on his side (to be fair it was pretty much the only weapon he was currently using) breaking another Romanian squad to replaced the ones sniped who had just rallied.
 |
| It's been relatively quiet so far but the bloodbath is not long delayed |
Down at the lighthouse Dave managed to bog one of his tanks on the beach trying to sneak around behind my forces but sadly extricated himself the next turn. I had pushed a halfsquad plus some prisoners forward on a "fact finding mission". The prisoners died but a snake eyes on their morale check sent the halfsquad berserk, right next to a trench full of an elite Soviet squad. For reasons I can't begin to explain I sent another squad and an 8-0 leader up onto the hill beside the berserkers where they were promptly monstered by the other of Dave's tanks. Retreating forward they wound up in the same hex as the berserkers and in Dave's next turn they would be broken while my berserkers stood proudly alone.
Things were starting to happen at the state farm too. I had finally gathered a large proportion of my force within shouting distance of the required buildings and I sent a squad forward (sacrificial halfsquads being a little thin on the ground) to strip some concealment. This wasn't successful but I did identify one of his fortified building locations. My 60mm mortar finally came up trumps scoring a critical hit against his troops in one of the state farm buildings, casualty reducing it and breaking the survivors. Unfortunately its on the other side of the farm from where my forces were massing still it was a good morale fillip.
Which was necessary because at the lighthouse things took a turn for the worse. I had brought my StuG forward to provide much needed fire support for my infantry and Dave cheerfully drove one of his stuarts right around behind it. I swung the StuG around and fired to no avail. Dave continued to roll happily past at a range of about six inches so I intensive fired the gun. Intensive fire tends to work when people use it on me. I have a long history of rolling boxcars when I try it and thus it was on this occasion. Suddenly my only armour support in the vicinity was following the example of the artillerymen and going home. Which left me with a not particularly impressive force facing at least equal numbers of Soviets hiding in trenches and a stone lighthouse. Things do not look terribly hopeful.
 |
| End of Soviet turn 4 |
That's where we left it for the night. When we recommence it will be Romanian turn 5 and time is definitely starting to run out. I also need to have a quick chat with Dave about the fact that he seems to have 100% more tanks than allocated to him by the scenario card.
No comments:
Post a Comment