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[Plain Ian]

Turn 71 Dec 23rd 10pm - Nadrin - Flamierge



Hmm 3 Bbn's of 15th Pz Gr Div turned up at Compogne this turn! So he did divert some units from Warnach as most of the armour of that Division is down there. 

Unfortunately I cannot do much here. The 159th Engineers is C morale but down to 352 men. The 2-505th is down to 385 men. (50%) There is one Bn of 106th moving up in 3 coy sized units. The 3-505th and 3-504th are reasonably low in fatigue but are also not at full strength. Admittedly the 26th VGD won't be at full strength and the 15th PzGr Bn's are only 450 men each I think. 

At Nadrin he has moved two more Bn's of the 2nd Pz into the village. So thats 3. I'm not going to shift that easily.

Flamierge. Last turn I thought he had moved off because I had a unit on Patrol and it wasn't showing any units? I had assumed that the unit was put on patrol on turn 69. This must have been wrong as I can see the enemy again? I must haveput the unit on patrol last turn and taken the screnshot and forgotten what I had done.

[Plain Ian]

Turn 71 Dec 23rd 10pm - Warnach Debaclesville



Its time for me to say my favourite phrase again. "With tanks and troops like this how can they not lose!!!!"

A busy map but I'll try to explain how I lost over a 1,000 men, 7 tanks/TD's and 31 armoured cars. 

A 2-317th hit with oodles (english slang for lots) of artillery and tank fire. Then assaulted by a Bn of 15th PzGR which advances. I'm guessing that it assaulted alone, possibly other units participated and did not move forward or possibly were disrupted? 


B - 6th Cav received the same treatment and was assulted by Pioneers. For some reason they chose to retreat NW? I guess maybe they are the 7th Cavalry? As in Custer.....

C/D/E - there then followed a series of assaults by these against my Group A. I think? This may account for some of his disruptions, although it doesn't explain why he broke down his 2nd SS Panthers into companies?

[color=#333333][size=small]6th...7th Cav lost 31 a/c's.
HQ 318th lost 97 men
1-317th lost 491 men
3-112th lost 383 men

G - A Fuhrer Grenadier Bn moved up.

H - FG Pioneer assaulted and pushed back 3-317th. (light casualties) and he moved in his armour. 

I/J - Pz Lehr infantry carried out further assaults. He held back his armour. 702nd and C/14th Tnk pushed back. Tank losses minimal. (2 for C/14th but it gained a lot of fatigue as it only has 2 coys)
Edit: note my arrows showing the retreat paths are wrong. C/14 Tnk was actually pushed back into same hex as the 702nd and then retreated with 702nd when this was assaulted. The 702nd contains 32 tanks but a disrupted unit is easily pushed back by any German sized infantry unit with decent morale. (A/B) Hence why he didn't use armour and has probably let them rest for a turn......or maybe he is sending them south now to the Bissen area?

K - after artillery disrupted the 602nd TD his infantry assaulted and pushed it back. 2 M10's were lost.

So things are looking grimm........can General Custer break out this time?

[Plain Ian]

Turn 71 Dec 23rd 10pm - south


Not much to see in his turn. The MG unit continued to run awayand has disappeared. It won't get far. The 37th tank Bn was the focus for every piece of artillery in the south. It lost 3 tanks and took about 4 fatigue hits. He didn't attempt to flank it or surround it.

The 23rd Arm Engineers were left alone sitting in T mode. So he doesn't have patrols in the area or he would have pushed up something adjacent and used the artillery on the T mode Engineers. If his artillery killed 3 tanks and caused numerous fatigue hits on the 37th Tnk Bn, then it would probably have taken out 100+ men and easily put the Engineer Bn into the red. I was lucky. Now I can deploy and start to look for a good place to build a bridge. 

[Plain Ian]

Turn 71 end of Allied Turn 



VP points and total losses after my turn.



Losses shown by phases. The VP points changes per phase shown at end.



And just for graph overload here is the losses by turn. As you can see I lost double the amount of men he did. He also did well in vehicle kills but remember 31 of these were M8 Greyhounds (defense strength 3) belonging to the doomed 7th Cavalry.....sorry thats the 6th Cavalry. (I just can't resist that) 

I continued my steady by painfully slow attrition of his tanks. I'm pretty sure he lost a Panther and a few tanks in his assaults, and in my turn I think I managed 4-5 tanks/assault guns. The rest of the 18 was Flak vehicles and some German armoured cars.

[Plain Ian]

Turn 71 Allied Turn - south



10th Armoured units have pushed forward on Mersch and found the MG unit. 10th Tank Bn night disrupted when trying to loop north. The 3rd Tank Bn and 61st Arm Inf Bn also disrupted. C morale units. 

35th Tnk Bn has occupied the RUBBLED Boevange (east) and I've managed to get a coy of Engineers into Boevange (west).

37th Tnk Bn spotted for my artillery, fired once then fell back. 

17th Tnk Bn (4th Inf Div) managed to reach 1-319th....which I forgot to move. I used both TD Bn's to fire at the Pz Lehr (good results) and they will probably come under artillery fire and lose 3-4.

At Bigonville the 702nd and 17th fired but the 5th Rangers refrained. Fatigue is already 55 as they were heavily werfered last turn and lost 25 men. (now 425) He knows that they are my main roadblock to the Clear terrain behind, so he will concentrate as much artillery on them as possible again. 

One more turn of Night then I can move a bit easier. 

[Plain Ian]

Turn 71 Allied 10pm Night (Mud) – Warnach (Little Bighorn)




The call went out to the 28th Cav Sqdn to attempt to rescue its sister squadron the 6th which was cut off and partially surrounded 2 miles north of them. The 1-317th (80th Div) and elements of the 3-112th (28th Div) were also cut off along with the 318th Regimental HQ.  Despite the atrocious ground condition and the fatigue of the unit (122), the unit struggled the 2 miles distance and arrived in good order at the perimeter.

The break out code was issued and the survivors started to withdraw. The 3-112th drew the short straw and was left to hold the ground. Despite losing 380 men (85 casualties) the unit had a fatigue level of 56?? With hindsight this was a poor command decision by the allies.

The withdrawal was too much for the 318th HQ and they disrupted due to night conditions. All seem to be going well............until flanking fire from the area of the 15th Panzer Grenadiers broke out! Cunningly they had held their fire and waited for the rescuing unit to show itself. The 28th lost two Greyhounds in quick order and became disrupted!!!

NUTS!!!!!!!!! Thank you AI for targeting the one unit I didn’t want to be hit! I guess I should have tried to draw the 15th Pz Gr’s fire but I had no units available for this. Well I did move A company of the 1-110th up adjacent to the enemy Panzer Grenadiers across the river, but thankfully for this unit no fire was triggered. (The other two elements of this Battalion were destroyed on the 1st day)

Panic in the allied High Command was now setting in. Should I move the 101st Combat Engineers in? No. It’s a D morale unit and will disrupt when moved, or possibly trigger fire and disrupt. What about B company 103rd Engineers who are C morale.  Mmmh a bit pointless moving them plus I need them where they are.
So in the end I left things as they were and decided to move a unit in behind the disrupted group as a ‘backstop’ to allow them to retreat. (something that would have saved me last turn) So I detached a company from the 1-104th and moved it up tactically.......and it disrupted! If I had used T mode it would have not been affected by night disruption......but it would not have had enough MP’s to come out of T mode.

And that was that. I did pull back the 2-318th which was already disrupted and moved the 610th TD away as it was about to be used for target practice by his armour.

I moved the 158th Engineers over the stream hoping they would stay undisrupted, but they didn’t. It shows he has the 15th Pz Grenadier Divisions recon unit in Hollange. Not sure if he will go for the assault which will be an automatic winner, or stay in the safety of the village with his armoured cars. Possibly he may use the 2nd SS infantry?

North of Hollange the 2-501st/2-328th/1=318th (3 different Divisions) fired at the 2nd SS unit earning some return fire but hopefully wearing it down. The 2-501st will have to pull back next turn.
The only fresh units arriving is the 2-112th at Witry. This has recovered enough and is a decent C morale unit.



So the rescue attempt at Little Bighorn will go another week......but I can’t see any happy endings looking at the situation above..


 
Last thoughts. Looking at the situation I see that I could have played this better. Much better.

After moving the 1-110th and pulling out the trapped troops, I should have pulled back 1-317th/103rd Eng south east and also the 101st CE south. 

This would have left him with only one assault option plus still kept a retreat path for anything that survived the assault..........rats too late.

[Plain Ian]

Turn 71 Allied 10pm Night (Mud) Nadrin - Bertogne



I haven't bothered putting unit designations labels on my units. 

At Bertogne I pulled back my exposed Engineers. 

At Nidrin I also gave up and pulled back the airborne. Despite being an A morale elite unit the 1-505th disrupted dure to night movement. SNAFU. 

In the top left you will see the French arriving. 2 Battalions of the French Lt Infantry. One is north of the river and one south although I think both will be going south.

[Plain Ian]

Turn 71 Allied 10pm Night (Mud) Samree



Again minimum unit labels. 

Basically I probed the 2nd Panzer stack with the fatigued 3-333rd and the 1-325th to check he had something behind it. As you can see he has a mobile Falk unit providing flank cover and I guess loc. 

At Grandmenil I pulled the battered 84th Division Battalions back. 

[Plain Ian]

Turn 71 Allied 10pm Night (Mud) Spa



Same as last turn. I'm hitting the same units. The only move I made was to withdraw two units which were pretty well badly beaten up.

Its a slugfest to use a well worn wargaming phrase. I can't do much damage to his units at Spa (40% RUBBLE 40 TRENCH) and his King Tigers must still be at full TOE and untouchable so I think this can go on until I give up basically because I think he has units to feed into the flanks?

[Plain Ian]

Turn 71 Allied 10pm Night (Mud) North



Last map then I have to start posting Turn 72 which I've just got back. No rush as its more bad news. 

I've pushed a 1st Division unit upand found another 326th VGD Bn. I've used artillery to pound both targets. 

I'll wait for Dawn to begin moving forward in the Hoes Venn. ( By the way I assume "Hoes Venn" is Belgian because if its supposed to be Geman shouldn't it be "Hoess Venn"? - German Higher 1975)