Silly After Action Report - Able at Cesaro

 Tenente Dino Ingraziani cursed as he struggled with the entrenching tool. The hard Sicilian soil resisted his not particularly enthusiastic attack. All around him carabinieri were similarly engaged in an attempt to rearrange the landscape. One of them in a foxhole up to his neck was using a teaspoon to artistically arrange the dirt on the rim into animal shapes. "Oh for god's sake," snarled Ingraziani looking at his own pitiful scrape. "Were you a landscape gardener in a previous life?"

"For heaven's sake keep your voice down Ingraziani," Snapped the maggiore, "the whole point is that the Americans don't know we're here."

"What Americans?" demanded Ingraziani lowering his voice to a whine. For answer the maggiore pointed over the top of the hill to where a virtual sea of olive green was deploying in the distance.  Ingraziani felt ill. He cast a resentful glance at the field phone operators lounging on the top of the hill.  One of them was speaking urgently into the receiver.  Feeling Ingraziani's gaze on him he glanced up.

"I'm just ordering pizza, does anybody want anything?"

I recently acquire ASL Annual '90 after many years and was giddy to try the Italian scenarios therein. Scenting an easy victory my opponent Dave was more than ready to pander to what is, to be honest, one of the more socially acceptable of my fetishes. So here it is, Scenario A13 - Able at Cesaro.  I command a batch of Italian carabinieri who will absolutely not be doing what their historical predecessors did in real life as I attempt to deny possession of an apparently precious Sicilian hill to Dave's 47th Infantry.

To win Dave has to capture five of seven level 3 hill hexes after having panted across the width of two and a half boards to get there.  His force is impressive; 18 first line squads led by four officers including a doughty 9-2. He also has a heavy machine gun, three medium machine guns, two 60mm mortars (all dismantled at the start) and four bazookas. He also has two jeeps. My force looks impressive on paper until you remember that they're Italian.  I have twenty first line squads led by four officers including a somewhat less than doughty 8-1. I have four light machine guns, two medium machine guns, a pair of 45mm mortars and 48 factors of anti personnel mines.  I also have two field phones connecting me to two separate modules of 80mm mortar artillery.  The four leaders is somewhat less impressive when you realise that two of them are required to man the phones (what is this a battle or a telethon?).  I can set up on boards two and thirteen and can HIP five squads plus the usual assortment of hangers on but only on board two.

Below is my set up including minefields.  My plan was basically have a few speed bumps up front so he couldn't just pour down the board, then a second line to delay him further as he crossed the stream and approached the hill.  My final line of defence was behind the ridge beyond the reach of his firepower. I would dig foxholes there and hopefully sweep the Americans off the ridge with pointblank fire and reoccupy at the last moment for the win.  The two field phones I set up on the ridge to rain death down on the approaching Americans.  If I had checked a weather report I would have seen that the death was only raining one way.  I wasn't very keen about setting up on the ridge itself as I felt American firepower would handily sweep me off it before I could impose any serious check on him.  In this I was absolutely right.  Unfortunately to be useful the field phones had to set up somewhere they could see the enemy.

My set up

 

Before we start the AAR proper let's just get the artillery out of the way now.  It won't take long.  In the early turns as Dave advanced I dialled up my mortar batteries and placed a couple of spotting rounds.  In return Dave fired one of his mortars at my left hand field phone, scored a critical hit and broke, wounded and ELRed the officer manning it.  I was annoyed but not disheartened I still had one left.  In the next turn the officer manning that phone rolled an 11 and malfed the phone.  My annoyance increased and disheartenment was certainly knocking on the door.  The 7-0 manning the now malfed field phone ran across the ridge to man the first field phone whereupon Dave scored another critical hit with his mortar killing the officer and destroying the phone.  I got not a single fire mission out of either phone and lost two officers into the bargain (ok the first one survived but you'd be amazed how useless a 5-2 leader is). Disheartenment had arrived and was unpacking its bags.  Dave's mortars made the ridge unliveable.  Towards the end of the game desperate to have something to fire on his advancing horde I moved a concealed squad with a 45mm mortar up onto the ridge.  Whereupon Dave scored another critical hit with his mortar and that was the end of that.  The really annoying thing is that Dave managed that inbetween breaking his mortars (although they were rapidly repaired) and sitting under a fusillade of sniper fire which dismanned his mortars more than once.  My sniper number was four and when Dave wasn't rolling snake eyes he was rolling a lot of fours.

So onto the AAR which after that intro shall be mercifully brief. 

Dave's initial moves were cautious and well spread out to avoid giving any targets to my artillery.  There was little firing except on the left where a squad and a 45mm mortar team covered themselves with what could be mistaken for glory in a dim light. The rest of my troops frantically dug foxholes as the olive tide approached. Dave's jeeps sped forward (looking for minefields as he later explained).

This was early in the game and I still had hope that my artillery would play a role. The clutch of troops in the lane on the left includes his mortar teams.

By turn three Dave knew he had nothing to fear from my artillery and got the bit between his teeth.  He assembled a pair of kill stacks which could move with virtual impunity.  His machine guns he combined with a trio of squads and his 9-2 leader for a 30FP kill stack.  It was like being hit in the face with a slab of lead.  On the plus side my sniper got his first result, seriously my sniper was the one high point of the game for me it went off virtually every time Dave rolled a four and he rolled a lot of them.

No longer frightened of my artillery the Americans regroup

It has to be said that my outpost line and my first line of resistance did everything that could be expected of them.  They huddled inside stone buildings or foxholes and took their shots.  A trickle of broken American units moved backwards and more importantly the forward movement of the others was delayed as they winkled the carabinieri out of their lairs. Nevertheless by turn five he was across the stream and pressing forward.  His 9-2 kill stack was stripping any hex it fired at of all life and now he had troops to burn.

Here they come

One of his halfsquads plunged into CC with a particularly stubborn defender and when they couldn't get the job done in melee Dave simply hosed them all down with a 30FP attack.  By the end of turn 6 Dave had a foothold on the hill and was eyeing the summit with anticipation.

The concealed Italian units on the hill on the left is my mortar team. They will not last long

One of Dave's squads walked into a minefield giving me a brief moment of pleasure but other than that it was all one way traffic as he gathered his troops for the final assault.  I for my part eyed my troops hidden behind the ridge.  My best leader was here in a foxhole with a squad and an mmg.  The other squads had lmgs and could muster what for the Italians was decent firepower, at least at close range.

 

Dave is readying for the final push and yes I am still trying to dig a foxhole on the right

With manpower to burn Dave decided "to hell with subtlety" and pushed his forces up onto the ridge trusting that feeble Italian firepower would not be able to eliminate them all.  His trust was not misplaced.

I have one chance left...

 

With American troops on the victory locations it was time for my plan to prove its worth.  If I couldn't break an appreciable amount of the attackers their return fire would certainly annihilate me.  I took a few shots with mixed results but did at least manage to break up a couple of potential firegroups.  And finally it came down to the two leaders facing each other.  My 8-1 guiding an mmg squad hit his 9-2 kill stack with a six flat shot, and rolled an eleven breaking the mmg and what little was left of my spirit.  I gave Dave the concession.  There was nothing more I could do, he had enough remaining firepower to kill my troops through lead poisoning if nothing else.

Strangely I actually enjoyed this game.  I was not displeased with my play (except my minefield set up could have been better) and despite the total failure of the artillery managed to put up some sort of a defence (ably assisted by my sniper).  Many thanks to Dave for the game and because I am a depraved masochist (one of my slightly less socially acceptable fetishes) we will be playing Monastery Hill next.

Tenente Ingraziani blundered through the trees arms swiping wildly at branches that tore at his uniform and threatened to impede his path.  "What the hell is this?" he demanded as another branch hit him in the face.

"An olive grove," replied a soldier next to him.

"How do you know?"

"I was a landscape gardener in a previous life."

Silly After Action Report - A Sophoclean Tragedy

 "So, we're fighting Greeks, allied with other Greeks in an attempt to capture Athens from the Greeks and give it back to the Greeks.  Is that a reasonable assessment of the situation?" Captain Roderick Forster-Children looked at the written orders in his hand with a certain amount of distaste.  The colonel sighed, 

"I don't know if its a reasonable assessment but its pretty much accurate," he replied.  "Just get on with it will you?  A bunch of paras are holed up in a building and if we don't move now the Greeks will overrun them.  Don't worry about reinforcements, I'm giving you some Greeks."

"Which Greeks?"

"Those Greeks," said the colonel pointing.  A body of men, definitely Greek, were gathering outside.

"Are they on our side?" asked Foster-Children nervously.

"In a fast moving war like this who can tell."

Dave and I have been playing a few scenarios from Hazardous Movement "Uncivil Wars" pack.  This one pits British troops (and a few Greek hangers on) against the Communist (but definitely Greek) ELAS as they attempt to liberate Greece, for the right type of Greeks of course.  A bunch of British paratroopers (assault engineers and commandos but subject to ammo shortage) are trapped in a few buildings while with ELAS fighters attempt to convince them of the error of their ways in supporting the imperialist, capitalist running dogs.  Meanwhile another group of British (along with some of the aforementioned running dogs) are ploughing through stone buildings in a rescue attempt hampered by another group of ELAS fighters who are tripping them up and generally making a nuisance of themselves.  I have the Greeks (ie ELAS) in this one and Dave has the predominantly British but slightly Greek.  

Set up is sequential.  First I set up my para busters.  I have sixteen partisan squads (eight 527s and eight 337s) with two medium machine guns (Russian and so heavy they can barely move), two light machine guns, a pair of demo charges, an antitank rifle and two Mol projectors carted by crews.  Leadership is provided by three officers led by a 9-1.  Then Dave set up his beleaguered paratroopers; six 648 squads, a mighty 10-2 leader, two light machine guns and a borrowed American bazooka. Sixteen concealment counters aid in misdirection.  Third I set up my blocking force, tasked with holding off the British (and Greek, don't forget the Greek) reinforcements. This force has another eleven squads (eight 337s and three 527s), a medium machine gun, two light machine guns, a 50mm mortar, a demo charge and another Mol projector.  Three more officers command including a 10-0 commissar.  They also have eight concealment counters and a roadblock.  Finally Dave's remaining forces set up. Nine first line squads, three British leaders headed by a 9-1 collectively equipped with a hmg, mmg and three lmgs.  Eager to show they're helping the not necessarily Communist Greeks have contributed three and a half squads with a demo charge and a leader of their very own.  On turn three a pair of Sherman tanks roll on to give some added firepower to Dave's attack.  Dave can deploy all of his paras and I can HIP three squads.  We each forgot these particular wrinkles.  Finally each side can fortify one building location. This at least we did remember.

So my job was to overrun the British paras while my blocking force heroically fended off his reinforcements.  My assault units had to set up in buildings.  There was literally nowhere for them to go except directly into the face of his fire.  I duly fortified a building location I thought would be useful and packed it with troops, I put a crew with a mol projector on the roof in the hopes of shooting down onto a Sherman.

End of turn 1

 

My first turn went about as well as one could expect.  My brave partisans charged forward and were broken but in the process revealed Dave's troops.  His forgetting to deploy meant that his front line was thinner than it should be and over the next couple of turns I was able to wangle his paras out of their forward defensive line.  Over in rescue city Dave's reinforcements eased slowly forward, breaking any partisans to foolish to run the moment they came into view.  Still my main line of resistance hadn't been reached yet although my mortar crew had been terrified into abandoning their weapon and hiding in some nearby trees.

End of Allied turn 2 - check out the turn counter :)

Dave's neglecting to deploy had allowed me to get into the forward building of his defensive zone but it also meant that I was facing full 648 squads as I attempted to get further.  With his rescuers getting closer I felt the pressure of time.  I also found his fortified position, a pair of squads and an lmg guided by the 10-2.  Over the next couple of turns Dave's reinforcements essentially dismantled my defences with the exception of my fortified location.  The only reason for his delay was his disinclination to go past it while a mmg, lmg and a mol projector were still sitting there to cause him grief. 

Down in para central I pressed my forces recklessly forward entering into hand to hand close combat and successfully killed a couple of para squads, closing in on his fortified building.  And there I stopped.  I assembled an awesome amount of firepower but partisans can't firegroup so my attacks degenerated into a series of 12+4 shots that required good luck to get a result. Things were made worse when in response to one such shot Dave's leader battle hardened and became an heroic 10-3.  Attempts to breach the fortified building with DCs came to nought.

Dave's Shermans rolled on and to my absolute delight my mol projector team on the roof put a bottle of flaming liquid through a Sherman sending it up in flames.  Sadly the other managed to drop a WP round into the building effectively neutralising my toughest remaining force.

A Sherman burns merrily and his paras are surrounded. This is about as good as it got for me

A word about my commissar "Useless bastard".  Ok that's two words which is two more than he deserves.  His principle contribution to the game was to casualty reduce two squads in rally attempts. Other than that he might as well have not been present.  Frankly I wished he wasn't.  With the units in my fortified building attempting to wash white phosphorous out of their eyes Dave's remaining Sherman and surviving reinforcements rushed past to bring succour to his paratroopers who in the meantime had simply stood in their fortified building and taken pretty much every shot I could make against them.

 

It took six turns but Dave has relieved his paratroopers and I am screwed

I gave Dave the concession with my remaining troops on the brink of disaster.  There were a couple of high points. Frying the Sherman was one and the fact that not one of the Greek allied troops survived was another but I have to admit I didn't really enjoy this game.  The only way of getting the paras out of that fortified building is to continually bash your head against a brick wall and hope it gives way before your head does.  If it doesn't you're stuck.  Once you've closed the ring around the paras there is nothing left to do except hope the dice will be kind.  Dave did enjoy this game but as the British he had more to do.  He needed to cling onto the paras original defensive position and also co-ordinate the relief attack.  Meanwhile I bashed my head against brick and hoped.

"Well done Forster-Child," said the colonel approvingly.  "The Greeks have suffered a serious blow today.  Have you told the Greeks?"

"I can't," replied Forster-Child, "they're all dead."  The colonel completely failed to look disappointed. "Excellent, carry on."

"Where?"

The colonel waved vaguely, "Over there somewhere."

 

"Jaws!" Or Possibly "Gums!"

 I have a new favourite sea creature.  While the octopus will always occupy a special place in my heart the magnificent Greenland shark now takes top billing among the damper animal varieties on the planet.  As the name implies Greenland sharks live in the icy waters of the Arctic ocean. They are in fact the apex predator of those chilly waters. A bulky animal, it is one of the largest shark species still living (except for the whale shark which I think we can all agree is the result of a serious pituitary imbalance) and it roams the frigid waters unafraid of competition. It roams those waters very slowly, the Greenland shark is not noted for its speed. In a strong current a Greenland shark would go backwards.

If a Greenland shark had starred in the movie Jaws that movie would have been eighteen hours long most of which would have consisted of Roy Schneider sitting in a boat looking at his watch as the Greenland shark made its laboured, asthmatic approach.  That's always assuming it attacked the right boat because thanks to a small crustacean that lives in its eyes the Greenland shark is almost blind.

Moving slowly seems to have its advantages. The Greenland shark is the worlds longest lived vertebrate. Greenland sharks have been caught with harpoons inside them from the whaling heyday of the 1800s.  They don't even become sexually active until they're past a hundred years old.  They also don't breed very much, well of course they don't; they're over a hundred years old.  Also due to their eyesight its entirely possible that some mating attempts are with submarines or suggestively shaped icebergs. The oldest known Greenland shark was dated at over 390 years old.

Greenland sharks upper teeth aren't very spectacular, they're thin and without serrations and really serve as anchors while the shark worries large chunks of its prey off with its bottom teeth.  So, to recap; the apex predator of the Arctic region is a slow, blind, geriatric with bad teeth.  You can't help feeling there weren't many applicants for the position of "Apex predator of the Arctic Ocean".  They eat minke whales, seals, fish, carrion and the occasional polar bear.  The question is "how?"  All of these things (even the carrion with a breeze behind it) is faster than the Greenland shark.  Scientific opinion isn't so much divided as somewhat bewildered.  The best explanation they can come up with is that the Greenland shark sneaks up on its prey while they're asleep or (in the case of carrion) dead.  My personal opinion is that from time to time a prey animal will hurl itself into the shark's jaws out of sheer pity.

There are virtually no recorded cases of Greenland sharks attacking humans largely because they live in the sort of waters that aren't conducive to swimming, or living.  Also if you're attacked by a Greenland shark a brisk dog paddle should be enough to effect your escape. 

Being slow, blind, rare etc. means that of course the Greenland shark is endangered.  The only surprise is that the species ever got going in the first place although to be fair it didn't get going very swiftly.  Another reason for their scarcity is that Icelanders like eating them.  Greenland shark flesh is actually toxic but unfortunately for the sharks they live next door to the Scandinavians who have a proud history of consuming inedible seafood.  Several months of fermentation are required before Greenland shark flesh is transformed from something disgusting and toxic into something that is merely disgusting.  As is usually the case when a people have been doing something disgusting and depraved for long enough it is now claimed to be part of Iceland's culture.  Apparently this is a good enough reason to keep doing it.  There are a few depraved and disgusting things I could probably culturally justify if it ever came to a court case.

So if you're ever in Arctic waters and you see something large, blind and slow vigorously gumming a polar bear to death you have encountered the fabled Greenland shark.  Say hello for me.