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Section Leaders:
Riesberg German – Riesberg
German Commander - Robert Hall (Tomcat)
Turn 21 There
is very little I can do now except hope my troops will hold their
positions and keep to their orders.
It appears I now have LOS from the Flak 88 to the rear Sherman
so the Flak 88 is ordered to destroy that tank! A
new turn allows the US Commander to halt his assaulting infantry on my
left rear flank and prevent them from running into my ambush.
My two front line ambushing squads from E Platoon of
Volksgrenadiers now come under fire both from these halted US squads
and from US squads who stormed the front of the town last turn, so they
are caught from two directions and start taking casualties.
The Flak 88 holds target on the Sherman but before it can fire,
a nearby falling round of 105mm arty unnerves the crew and the still
buttoned Sherman manages to reverse out of LOS.
Now the Flak 88 spots the Sherman in the front of the town
advancing into LOS and starts rotating round to lock onto it.
Alas, the Sherman moves further forward and out of LOS so the
Flak 88 ends up not even firing a single shot during the whole turn.
More US troops enter the first line of houses on my right front
and all German troops in this area either Rout away or Surrender to the
US forces. The town takes
a heavy battering from 105mm arty, but it only appears to have caused
one direct casualty to a broken and retreating SMG squad.
Turn
22 I
decide to target the Flak 88 gun on the US Infantry attacking from the
front of the town for this turn since I have nothing else left to stop
this infantry assault, and also because the Sherman on my left rear
flank seems to be taking cover. I'm bringing another Panzerschreck unit back to my left rear
flank to see if they can do any better from the woods against the
Sherman. I also have my
second line of ambushing squads on my left rear flank for continued
defence from that direction and I do not think the US troops have
spotted these ambushers yet. My
intent is obviously to surprise and to disrupt any further assaulting
US infantry squads from that direction. One
of the central stone buildings in the town comes down at the start of
this turn due to prolonged heavy bombardment but there are no units
inside. The forward two
squads of my previously ambushing E Platoon Volksgrenadier troops on
the left rear flank suffer further casualties and are effectively put
out of combat during this turn. I
am surprised the US Commander has not advanced his second Platoon of
Infantry hiding in the left rear flank corner house as yet. The Flak 88 seems to take an age to fire and only manages one
HE round in a full 30 seconds or more of targeting. Meantime, the US Infantry units at the front of the town
start to advance, I see another US Sherman advancing on my left flank
and the town continues to suffer from heavy, but seemingly ineffective
105mm arty bombardment. Turn
23 Ever
had that feeling of being totally surrounded?
Again, I'm leaving the Flak 88 targeted on the infantry in the
front of town houses and just hoping I can do some serious damage to
the US advance. I'm sure
the Flak 88 will have been well spotted by now so the US forces will
surely not wait any longer for their final assault. As
the turn commences, the US launch their second wave of attack from the
left rear flank and I again manage to take out its Platoon HQ and
inflict significant casualties on the supporting US infantry.
Unfortunately, my ambushing units also come under fire from some
US infantry units who sneaked up on my right rear flank, bypassing B
Platoon which was supposed to be protecting that area!
The Flak 88 manages to fire a number of HE rounds at the
advancing US Infantry in the front of the town, again inflicting
significant casualties. The
advancing US infantry triggers the German ambush from D Platoon
Volksgrenadier squads hiding in the left near-front town houses which
achieves a few more US casualties.
But it appears my position is now totally untenable as I am
completely surrounded and even my sharpshooter succumbs at the end of
the turn.
Turn 24 Nothing
to do except keep the Flak 88 targeted on infantry units in the front
of Riesberg and hope my ambushing squads on my left rear flank can
continue to hold off the attack for a little while longer. At
my rear, the US forces advance from two flanks and totally overwhelm my
units on the left rear flank by sheer force of numbers.
The Sherman at the rear closes in fast but for some reason fails
to take out the Flak 88 which is rapidly(??) spinning round to try and
target it. Meanwhile, at the front of the town, the US infantry changes
its attack to the squads in the houses on my left flank and again
starts to overwhelm them by sheer force of numbers and incoming fire
from multiple directions. Turn
25 This
turn we may well be overrun but I am going to do all I can to hold out
a little longer. In desperation, the Flak 88 is targeted to the Sherman at the
rear, but I do not see any way it will be able to rotate and target the
tank before it is itself taken out.
I also decide to run a tattered SMG squad from B Platoon into
the middle of the Victory Flag building at the right rear of the town
in the vain hope of giving any attacking US squad a nasty surprise. Ha!
Surprise, surprise! The
crew actually manage to rotate the Flak 88 and take out that left rear
Sherman, but it is a hollow kill as the Flak 88 is quickly surrounded
and overrun by the attacking US infantry.
Unfortunately,
all the other nearby German squads appear to have been spotted and
suffer casualties from direct fire and arty this turn.
My German Commander and his 2 remaining staff members of HQ
Section are captured in the rear stone building of Riesberg.
Although they have totally surrendered, all three men are
summarily shot without warning by the despicable action of
uncontrollable US squads, totally ignoring all semblance of the Geneva
Convention!
Alas,
it will soon all be over for everybody else remaining alive and
Riesberg conceded to the Enemy. Turn
26 Well,
I can no longer issue any further orders, but my remaining units are
clearly not going down without a fight!
One tenacious SMG squad from B Platoon still holds the final
Victory Location building not yet occupied by the US to the bitter end,
while everybody else crumbles around them.
At the end of this turn though, there are simply not enough
German forces remaining combat effective to continue and Combat Mission
decides it is time for the Germans to finally surrender! German
Debrief The
initial German deployment certainly set the course the German defence
would take and it proved ineffective and too static. I
think I was absolutely correct not to place any of the German troops
inside the outer buildings of Riesberg.
I know it frustrated my opponent, as intended, when he did not
find any troops in the outer buildings he demolished. Lesson
1. Flak 88 guns need Infantry protection to keep them
secure from close assaults. Lesson
2. It was certainly a bad move to try and "crawl" B
Platoon on turn 1 into Riesberg. I
should have either run them quickly into town to keep them exposed to
possible fire for as short a time as possible, or I should have kept
them outside the town. In
hindsight, I do not think I should have tried to bring B Platoon into
Riesberg at all, but used them to protect the Flak 88 from a reasonable
distance away. B Platoon did not, in this game, offer any additional
protection to Riesberg by having them inside the town boundaries so I,
in effect, wasted the combat effectiveness of this whole Platoon and
caused them completely unnecessary casualties. Lesson
3. Leaving the default C Platoon ambush by the road in their
default position was far too obvious and I should have withdrawn them
into the town on turn 1 before they could have been spotted.
Failure to do this allowed my US opponent to pick them off
piecemeal. Lesson
4. A static defence only works for so long, and is then
completely and quickly overwhelmed by a properly co-ordinated attack.
In hindsight though, the US advanced on such a broad front, it
would have been very difficult, I think, to have achieved any sort of
flanking counter-attack on them. Lesson
5. Give every unit you do not want firing prematurely an
ambush marker, including mortar units! I
still believe my decision to place many squads in foxholes in woods or
heavy woods was an absolutely sound and correct move.
I do feel Combat Mission needs some tweaking in this area to
stop these foxholes being spotted by the enemy at 150m or so which is
completely unrealistic, IMO. Spotting
units in foxholes unrealistically far away allowed my US opponent to
pick these units off one by one, quickly weakening my whole defensive
strategy. To
stand any chance of effectively defending Riesberg, I believe the
Germans need to find some way to continually harass and weaken the US
attackers, without taking losses themselves in the process.
In my view, each Flak 88 gun should probably be able to take out
a Sherman a piece. Once
the Flak 88s expose themselves by firing though, a properly co-ordinated
US attack should be able to eliminate them very quickly with a combined
infantry and mortar attack, leaving at least 2 Shermans to lead the
final assault on the town itself. My
compliments to the US Commander for orchestrating such a nicely co-ordinated
attack from all possible directions.
It was a pity though he could not control his forces well enough
to stop them violating the Geneva Convention and shooting the German HQ
Section after they had clearly totally surrendered! Halfway
through the game I was beginning to think I might achieve some sort of
positive end-result by default through the US Commander running out of
time or simply being too reluctant and too slow to press his attack
home. As it was, the US
Commander was carefully building his encirclement attack so that it
would strike in most areas at the same time. At least I gave him a bloody nose by surprising the US forces
in a couple of places, but in the end, the weakened German defence was
simply overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers after I had allowed
individual defending units to be picked off piecemeal. Robert
Hall Movie Files German
Turn 21
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