The Thin Gray Line - The Matrix Games version of East Front II

Timoshevka, 40km NW of Melitopol: [Best played as Axis] Following his appointment as commander of the German 11th Army in mid-September 1941, General Manstein prepared to smash into the Crimea through the Perekop isthmus with the 57th Corps. Meanwhile, farther to the northeast in the Nogay Steppe, the rest of the army, with the Romanian 3rd Army attached, paused to regroup along a line stretching from Nikopol on the Dnieper River, south to the Sea of Azov. On 26 September the Romanian 9th Mountain Group was completing the relief of the German 91st Mountain Regiment at Timoshevka when the Russian 218th Motorized Division attacked. With Manstein's attention focused to the south, the Soviet 9th and 18th Armies had chosen this moment to counterattack in the hopes of encircling the German 11th Army and pinning it against the Black Sea. At Timoshevka the thin gray line of Axis mountain troops fought a desperate battle in the narrow streets to prevent the Russians from breaking through.