THE MAIN EVENT III! Arrow vs. Moondog

[Der Kuenstler]

Minute ten:

Starting off at the North flag, we can see that either Arrow was not planning to seriously defend this flag, or he is just not paying attention. His defense shows signs of sloppiness. Notice on the left he has put his weak green squad up there on point - and it is already in a state of panic. His other squad is regular quality, but he doesn't have his HQ close enough to keep them in command, so they are also panicked. His one good regular squad in this patch of woods has no LOS to the approaching Germans. Over on the right, he has another green squad on point. His regular squad tried to advance forward earlier and they are now routed. The green M1917 may or may not make it across the road. If it weren't for the regular M1919 MG in good position and the approaching M3A1, the whole defense would quickly collapse.



Here we see Moondog targets this high knob with one of his 81mm mortars - the target line is exactly where one of Arrow's 57mm guns is. Yet Moondog has no indication that anything is there - no generic icon, no halftrack showing in the vicinity.



From Arrow's side we see the deadly mortar does its job. But how did Moondog know to target that specific place? All we know is that this is the only high knob around the area, and the logical place for a gun to set up shop. Lucky guess? Intuition? Stroke of genious? Moondog wouldn't be looking at this thread, would he? Naaaaah - too many guys are reading this to give in to that temptation - much too risky - it would wreck his good name if caught. Its possible he may have seen the delivery car taking the gun that direction early in the battle and, with no other clear targets, figured he'd take a shot. Who knows? But regardless, Arrow takes another tough blow.



Back in town, Arrow is anticipating that dust ahead to clear just like Moondog is - he backs up one of his Shermans and moves it to the other side to try to assure both can see the two German AFVs when the dust dies down.



But Moondog continues the LOS arms race - he moves another Stug to the back of his growing German conga line. Now he has three AFVs all pointing towards the Shermans on the ridge in a straight line. POS would be proud. The dust should clear any minute. But who will still be alive afterwards?



Moondog finally orders his vet Tiger to do something- it backs up and begins hunting up the ridge. This may end up being a 4:2 tank engagement if Arrow is not careful. Arrow's other two Shermans are out of the vicinity, near the US flag pictured on main street.