Silly After Action Report - Just A Drive Along the Beach

A scene of devastation stretched across the beach.  Dead marines, bits of weapon and general detritus clogged it to the point where it was difficult to see any sand.  Offshore LVTs bobbed upside down on the waves and stuck up through the water from their new positions on the seabed.  Foxholes stretched across the edge of the beach providing shelter to such of the marines as had managed to travel the previous ten metres or so without losing any major body parts.  Sandwiched between a foxhole and a 37mm gun position was a small house.  Inside it the command group for the force currently stretched out on the sand was having an urgent meeting.

 

Three or four characters from central casting (US Marine Corps section) stared grimly at the tattered map in from of them.  They had shaven heads, hard eyes and chins that jutted into the next room.  An entire generation of Hollywood movies stars would make careers out of looking a little like them.  The map was largely irrelevant, a quick glance out the window would provide the observer with a view of the entire island.  Unfortunately a quick glance outside the window would also provide the observer with a detailed but very brief view of a Japanese 37mm shell traveling in the other direction.

 

"Well we're ashore," said the most senior jutted chin.  As the CO he was allowed to get away with stating the obvious.  "Now they want us to capture the rest of the island."

 

A lower ranked chin indicated his displeasure, "We're clinging to this beach by our eyelids and they want us to capture the rest of the island?"

 

"If it helps, we're getting reinforcements," announced the CO.  Assault engineers, more marines and tanks.  They should be piling in from the north any second now."

 

A second chin put us his hand, "Let's let them take the strain.  If they've got assault engineers and tanks they can deal with the goddam Japanese."

 

"Here they come!"  All four chins rushed to the window to see their salvation.  As they watched one tank went up in flames and a sword wielding maniac decapitated half a squad of assault engineers.  The commanding chin sighed.

"Get the men together and prepare them for the assault."

"Do we really have to?"

"If we don't capture this island I have it on good authority that we'll be sent to the Aleutians for the rest of the war."

 

"Where the hell are the Aleutians?"

 

"Ever seen Deadliest Catch?"

 

Without another word the marine officers returned to their men and prepared to attack.

As you can see my grasp on both the US Marine Corps and the Pacific War in general is a little shaky.  Despite this I am continuing in my attempts to get my American on and plucked this scenario more or less at random from a bunch offered to me by Dave Wilson.  After carefully checking to make sure the Japanese didn't get Tigers I took the somewhat battered heroes of the 2nd US Marine division as they expend both blood and sweat attempting to capture an island barely big enough to build an airfield on.

This is part of the Blood Reef Tarawa campaign game.  For someone who doesn't play campaign games I seem to spend a lot of time playing scenarios from them.  All of this involves not learning the special rules that apply and staring in puzzlement at the bespoke maps that appear to be designed to confuse people who didn't bother to learn the special rules.

In this scenario the job of my Marines is simple.  At game end there must be three or fewer good order Japanese MMCs south of the airstrip.  This means killing those who are currently geographically inconveniencing me.  To do this I have a rather shopsoiled collection of Marines, a dozen 558 squads buried at the bottom of foxholes dug in the approximately ten square feet of Betio they have managed to capture so far.  Three of the squads start out broken and under DM.  To support them I have a bazooka, two 60mm mortars, two medium machine guns, a .50cal and a pair of guns; one a 37mm AT gun and the other a 75mm Infantry gun.  These guns have a circled breakdown number of ten and use red To Hit numbers.  

Steaming simultaneously to the rescue and the attack are my reinforcements turning up on turn 1.  Another ten squads of Marines (including two 768 assault engineers) supported by another .50cal, a flamethrower, two demo charges and a pair of medium machine guns.  This combined force is led by six officers whose quality ranges from reasonable to high and are supported by four tanks (three Stuarts and a Sherman).  What could possibly stand in my way?

Standing in my way is Dave Wilson commanding the Japanese of the 3rd Special Base Force.  That doesn't sound particularly impressive but they're actually the 6th Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force who (being pedantic and literal) changed their name once they'd finished landing.  Dave has sixteen Japanese squads (nine elite and seven first line), five crews, four officers, two heavy machine guns, a medium machine gun, six light machine guns, three 50mm mortars, their very own flamethrower and a couple of demo charges.  In support is a multibarrelled 12.7mm anti aircraft gun (used here as an anti Marine gun) and a 37mm antitank gun which had a small chance of killing the Stuarts and pretty much no chance of killing the Sherman (experienced readers will already know what to expect at this point).  He also has trenches, pillboxes, wire and land mines. Also by a special campaign game rule Japanese squads may fire mmg/hmg without penalties.  This is either to demonstrate the elite status of the 3rd Special Base Force or a realisation by the BRT designers that they have to toss in a couple of special rules to justify their paychecks.  Some parts of the island were also on fire.  On two occasions gusts sprang up to scatter the burny stuff far and wide.

Below is the scene at the end of my turn one.  Dave has set up the bulk of his force at the very tip of the island as far from my reinforcements as possible without actually using another mapboard entirely.  However, he has also set up two very important speedbumps.  Based on some huts in the middle of the airfield (very sensible airfield design that) he has a pair of mortars and his 37mm AT gun.  Behind them flanking his main defences are a series of trenches.  This would turn out to be brilliant placement.  I for my part brought the main bulk of my reinforcements to roll south of the runway and reinforce my at start force while a small diversionary force dealt with the scattering of squads he had on the island's north (which is about a three minute walk from the island's south but never mind).

Keen observers will note that my reinforcing Marines seem to have got a little further than perhaps they should have.  That's because we forgot the special rule that noted that Betio's sand is particularly soft and takes a long time to slog through (two MP per hex).  Sadly for me we remembered it after the first turn.  Laughing his 37mm to scorn I have sent a Stuart charging down the runway to try and add some muscle to my diversionary forces while the rest of my armour shepherded the marines forward.  

I set my at start forces the job of clearing out his speedbump in the middle of the airfield and further south to try and start whittling down his forces in the main defensive area.  I wasn't particularly successful at either attempt but I did manage to generate two heroes while rallying or passing morale checks.  If nothing else this gave Dave more things to kill.

Things started to go wrong in the first Japanese turn when Dave's 37mm gained a critical hit on a Stuart and burnt it.  He would follow this up by killing another Stuart in the next turn.  This was terrible news because I needed that firepower to reduce his fortifications and provide some protection to my infantry so they could trot down the runway rather than struggle through the sand.  The only good news was that my 60mm won the duel of the mortars, killing the crew of one and striping the other.

That was it for good news as in the north my Marines proved once again that giving me 8 morale troops is merely a challenge that the dicebot was more than happy to accept.  With the 37mm and a remaining mortar still dominating the centre my reinforcing infantry shuffled forward capturing unoccupied buildings while waiting for my at start forces to complete dealing with them.  Only one of the buildings turned out to be not unoccupied.  Rather it was occupied by a HIP elite Japanese squad and a 10-0.  Dealing with these cost me both my 768 squads, not really a trade I was happy with.  Meanwhile my at start force having decided (accurately) that they were going to have to drive the Japanese out on their own had started repositioning south to see if they could filter through the palm trees towards the main Japanese defenders.

Oh yes, things are going swimmingly

With a pair of heroes leading the way and supported by a newly fanaticised squad (despite my bitching the dice weren't all bad) I started shuffling towards Dave's main fortifications.  Back in the north the 37mm had killed another Stuart and his squads had handled my diversionary force so roughly that I actually diverted troops to help them out (who is diverting what exactly?).  I also got thoroughly sick of the damn 37mm and drove the Sherman right up to it and challenged it to do its worst.  Fortunately it didn't and my 75mm gun (now under a low ammo counter) managed to take out his remaining mortar crew which allowed me to charge a squad across the runway and menace the gun crew.  I wiped it out in CC.

Now finally things could get moving towards the real battle but we were already three turns in, Dave's main defences hadn't been scratched and I had lost two tanks.  Without enough metal cover to charge down the runway some of my reinforcements instead trotted along the beach (hard sand) and arrived while the bulk of my reinforcements were still dicking about in the north.

I flooded the gap between my at start positions and Dave's defences with troops.  Despite the lost tanks, lost time and lost sanity things did look pretty impressive as a solid wave of olive green inched its way towards his collection of foxholes, pillboxes, wire, huts and bunkers.  The most you could say was that the Japanese were probably in there somewhere.

This newfound surge of hope lasted approximately fifteen seconds as I discovered Dave's minefields.  My forward troops were blown backwards (the "fanatic" squad wound up as a broken halfsquad although still technically fanatic I suppose).  The only person who survived unscathed was a single hero who jumped into close combat with a striped Japanese squad in a foxhole because the only other alternative was to sit around in a minefield looking stupid.  I would attempt to reinforce this melee but my troops kept treading on exploding things.

You may say, "why not go around the mines?"  That's a very good question; shut up!  The reason was time.  Dave had (very cleverly if I may say so) arranged his defence so that his trench dwellers in the centre covered the runway pretty much forcing me to go through the palm trees if I wanted to survive at all.  Having lost about three turns (and all my assault engineers) before my reinforcements even started heading south I didn't have the time left to dismantle that position and also attack his main defences.  This is also the reason for what happened next.

With my at start troops being blown into orbit and my reinforcing troops somewhat lackadaisically trotting south I turned in desperation to my tanks.  I should have had four of them but two hadn't made it this far.  I raced them down the runway to add their firepower to my struggling assault.  This wasn't wise and I knew it wasn't wise.  It had been my intention to cluster the tanks with infantry as protection against tank hunter heroes but I just didn't have the time.  I was essentially hoping for a miracle.  Unfortunately the dark god that alternately protects and tortures me was exercising his second option that day.

I did slowly start to pick apart his trench line in the centre and given a couple more turns might have been able to suffer horrendous casualties in a final assault.   As it was I didn't get anywhere and when a pair of tank hunter heroes charged through a wall of American lead and dismantled my two remaining tanks with their bare hands I decided to call it a day.

In retrospect that could have gone better

 

I did a couple of silly things, I should have advanced my tanks and reinforcements down the beach (its right there in the scenario title for god's sake) and I should have started trying to beat up on his centre trenchline before I did.  Nevertheless Dave set up a flawless defence (ie one good enough to defeat me) and never once did I look like I was going to actually win.  Thanks to Dave for the humiliation, I mean game, I shall try and do better next time (spoiler alert, I didn't.  In fact I did so badly I'm not even going to do an AAR).

"So, what are the Aleutians like this time of year?" asked one of the few surviving chins from our introduction.

"Cold, wet, bleak, miserable, frigid and uncivilised."

"What are they like in Summer?"

"Exactly the same but more so.  I hope you like crabmeat."