Silly After Action Report - Messervy's Men

 Tenente Carlo Monti was doing his best to inspire the frankly skeptical looking African soldiers who were at least notionally under his command.  He wasn't getting much help from his fellow tenente who was sitting on a nearby rock drinking something that was almost certainly not water from his flask.

"Dig it in lads," said Monti in what he hoped was an encouraging tone.  "A magnificent artillery piece like this will surely help us win the battle."  His colleague choked on a mouthful and sent a spray of  suspiciously rosé coloured "water" onto the rocks in front of him.

One of the banda soldiers stared at the weapon that was the undeserving recipient of his officer's praise.  He knew little about modern European artillery practice but he was fairly certain that the weapon in front of him was not cutting edge.  Peering at the barrel a little more closely he made out some writing engraved in the metal and asked the over eager tenente what it said.

Monti thought quickly, "A message of encouragement from il Duce himself to his brave African soldiers," he announced.  With the weapon dug in as much as possible in the thin brush and stony soil Monti moved to inspect the other positions.  On his way he was stopped by his colleague.

"What did it really say on that gun barrel?"

Monti looked around quickly before lowering his voice.

"Property of Franz Josef I. If found return to the Hofburg, Vienna.  Reward offered."

"Do you think it's too late?" 

In my increasing desperate efforts to gain a victory I have fallen back on my ever dependable Italians.  Just think about that sentence for a moment.  I'll give you a minute to stop laughing.  Done now?  Good.

Dave Wilson, possibly out of pity, agreed to play Scenario J127 - Messervy's Men which pitches a second line force of British (mainly Indian) trying to displace a force of first line Italians from a hilltop.  To do the displacing Dave has thirteen second line squads at his disposal (plus a first line halfsquad for some reason).  These warriors of the Punjab are headed by three officers (including a 9-1) and are equipped with a pair of 51mm mortars, a pair of light machine guns, a medium machine gun and an anti tank rifle.  Providing "armoured" support are a pair of Rolls Royce armoured cars and a pair of carriers.  The British have to seize the two right most hilltop hexes and ensure that no Italians are adjacent to level four hill hexes.  Should they lose more than 26 CVP in the attempt the Italians automatically win.

Grimly determined that this particular hill shall remain in the hands of the people who stole it most recently are my forces; ten first line squads (not a match in either firepower or morale for the British second liners), a pair of unimpressive officers plus a light machine gun, a medium machine gun, an antitank rifle and a 45mm mortar.  Providing some superannuated heavy metal is a positively ancient 70mm gun that the Italians captured from the Austro-Hungarians in the previous war.  I also have five small mounds of rocks to hide under.  Should my defences survive intact until turn three I receive reinforcements in the shape of a pair of first line squads toting another lmg and led by an inspiring 7-0 and supported by an M11/39 tank.  It is rare that an M11/39 can claim to be queen of the battlefield but of all the armour on the field that day it was the least wretched.  It was also the least effective.  Lest the men think they were fighting alone the Regia Aeronautica would put in a brief appearance to carry out a strafing run having expended their bombs on some menacing looking bushes in the rear.

I made so many mistakes in this game it is embarrassing (and possibly difficult) to record them all.  Nevertheless I shall try as I feel I serve as a warning to fresh young players about what happens when you don't read victory conditions, understand the rules or pay attention to the map.

The British forces come on from the south west (bottom left).  They can enter on the west edge or the south edge up to hex I10.  To help them on their way they get an automatic smoke concentration to blind the no doubt eagle eyes of the defenders.  Below is my set up.  As you can see the bulk of my force is at the top of the hill with a couple of outposts and some dummies further down.  You will all see a decent force in the (light) woods on the right.  That's because I didn't pay enough attention to the entry conditions and thought the British could enter anywhere on the southern edge.

Despite this idiocy I didn't think I had a bad position.  On the top of the hill I had (reading from left to right) a squad with the antitank rifle, the 70mm, a squad, mmg and 8-1 and a squad with the 45mm mortar.  This was to cover the open ground which was the most convenient way to get to the top of the hill.  Dave did in fact choose this route however the amount of damage I did to him along the way was negligible.

At start

Dave started with his smoke concentration.  It wasn't accurate but the misdirection turned a good smoke placement into a perfect one.  His entire approach was shrouded with smoke and his troops would be up next to me before I could fire a useful shot.  I had a squad with an lmg in the building to the south which served to prove that 6-2 is a useless shot if you roll high enough.  It then died in close combat.

The main obstacle to Dave's advance is the difficulty of climbing a hill covered in smoke

Seriously the principal difficulty Dave encountered was the terrain.  Sweating under their CX counters his troops laboured up the hill to a complete absence of Italian fire.  With one small but glorious exception.  He posted an armoured car in bypass on the left to no doubt assist his troops when they reached the summit.  Realising he was unlikely to get another shot (correct) my atr squad popped its head out of the sangar and took it out in my next prep fire phase.

Having realised that Dave wasn't going to enter on the parts of the board he wasn't allowed to I moved some of my right hand forces a little towards the centre.  The next turn or two were very light on firing as Dave choked forward through the smoke and my troops peered into the haze trying to see anything to shoot.  In the rear Dave had brought on his mortars and mmg team to start taking shots at the few things that weren't completely obscured.  I spent the time futilely trying to dig foxholes for the troops without sangars.  No foxholes were dug during the course of the game.  Incidentally you may have noticed that there are only three sangars, I kinda forgot the other two, my bad.

It's all very peaceful really

Still we were three turns in and my defences were holding (ie hadn't actually been tested yet).  And now my reinforcements arrived.  The squads and leader scurried across the bridge in the north and made it into the woods on the hill without event which just left the tank, my queen of the battlefield.  I drove it on, bogged it in some woods and broke the 37mm gun on the first shot.  It was painfully obvious I would need to do this without armoured support.

Meanwhile my defences which had been holding well proved incapable of continuing to do so now that Dave could actually inflict harm on them.  My atr squad was broken and chased out of its sangar.  In the rally phase they would roll snake eyes and would spend the rest of the game disrupted.  With his smokescreen gone Dave used his mortar to blind the eyes of my mmg team and pushed forward.  In doing so he marched a leader and a squad and a half directly in front of my still HIP 70mm.  I did manage to break one of the squads but frankly the gun crew performed more service by surviving two rounds of close combat immediately afterwards.

This is going well

Despite the slowly mounting series of disasters time was running out for Dave, we were four turns in of six and I still held the victory hexes and had plenty of troops available to be adjacent to level four hill hexes at the end.  I would need to make an unholy mess of things to guarantee defeat from here.

So I made an unholy mess of things.  Dave eventually killed my gun crew and turned the ancient piece on its previous owners (Franz Josef's revenge) fortunately without result.  My air support turned up, saw four hexes worth of British troops neatly laid out in a row and conducted a strafing run which broke precisely one halfsquad.  British firepower crushed the occupants of the remaining sangars (what a pity I hadn't had a couple more hey?) but time was now running extremely short.

At this point my stupidity reached drooling halfwit levels.  With Dave staring at the Italian forces still adjacent to the relevant hill hexes and with only a turn to go wondering how he was going to guarantee the win I advanced the bulk of my force out into the open.  Why?  You may ask.  Good question.  I had completely failed to notice that one of the wooded hexes was adjacent to a level four hill hex and thought I needed to move forward.  If instead I had defended that particular hex with tooth and claw I might just have scraped a win despite the preceding cock ups.  Just to add insult to self inflicted injury Dave's mmg team went on a rate tear in which he didn't roll more than four and wiped out the surviving Italians before any of his soldiers needed to move.

The end

I selected this scenario because, well, Italians.  But I also checked it on ROAR and the results were Italian 34 to British 29 which didn't seem too unbalanced.  Given the level of ineptitude I needed to display in order to lose I can't help wondering how the British racked up that many wins.  Anyway victory to Dave who deserved it simply because he wasn't a howling imbecile.  Dave has chosen a scenario from Red Barricades for our next game.  Hopefully that's a little more forgiving of incompetent play.

A British officer was overseeing the marshalling of prisoners and the stacking of captured firearms when a sudden movement caught his eye.

"You there, what are you doing?"

The soldiers addressed saluted sheepishly, "Nothing sahib."  

"What's that you've got under the tarpaulin?"

There was no answer so he strode across and jerked away the offending material.  An ancient artillery piece was revealed.

"Where on earth do you think you're taking that?" he demanded.

"Vienna."