**Death Road at Oltarzew - The Matrix Games version of East Front II

[Oltarzew, 15 km W of Warsaw]: [H2H] [HISB] [TS/GD]: By September 8th, 1939, the lead elements of the 4th Panzer Division, to which the motorized infantry of the "Leibstandarte" were subordinated, had reached the southwestern outskirts of Warsaw. The advance unit of this division, Aufklärungsabteilung 7 (AA7), proceeded toward Oltarzew and Domaniew but quickly found itself in a defensive struggle against increasingly strong counterattacks from Polish units attempting to break through to Warsaw from the west. After repulsing a number of attacks and destroying several armored trains, the recon battalion ran low on ammunition and was forced to withdraw southward into Pruskow, leaving open the left flank and rear of its parent division, now facing Warsaw. As the troopers of the Leibstandarte arrived at nightfall, they and AA7 were ordered to capture Domaniew, Oltarzew and Kaputy, thus securing the open rear flank of Reinhardt's 4th Panzer Division. In the middle of the night, the troops of the LSSAH and AA7 collided near Oltarzew with Polish troops of Army Lodz moving east and desperate to effect a link-up with the defenders of Warsaw. The action quickly became a confused, bitterly-contested melee, as the Polish soldiers bravely threw themselves headlong at the Germans. By morning, Polish resistance had collapsed, leaving the road through Oltarzew choked with dead and dying soldiers, civilians and horses. The grisly result of the night's action would leave a lasting impression on even the most hardened: after the war, Kurt Meyer of the LSSAH described the scene as a, "death road". [Not for play with Variable Visibility or Extreme Assault rules on; Armor Facing rule on optional] [This scenario borrows the excellent map from Charlie Kibler's original "A Bump in the Night"; OOBs for LSSAH and AA 7 are correct, Polish OOB is speculative, but based on units of Army Lodz which might have been retreating through the Oltarzew area at that time; version 2.1]