Axis Turn 31

	TURN: 31 OF 60	SCENARIO NAME: Going to Town

Fionn Kelly - Germans vs. Americans - Martin Turewicz

My forces continue to advance but, with the abandonment of Kamfgruppe Vossen’s thrust to the north I must admit I have stopped looking for a victory and am merely looking to secure the buildings overlooking the bridge so that my forces will be in a good position to:

Kampfgruppe Vossen’s infantry have begun filtering to the south along the main road as I have abandoned any hope of crossing to the north of the river and am going to use Kampfgruppe Vossen to bolster my assault on the eastern riverfront of the village. The volume of American fire from there is unbelievable. It looks like at least a company and three or four upper-storey machineguns are firing on my forces as they are crossing the river so it is obvious that intense casualties will be suffered by this force if it advances straight up the hill.

I don’t really want to push infantry up the hill BUT I can see three bazooka teams there and they are the most important targets in the entire world right now. I MUST neutralize them to give Wiesenhofer even the slightest hope of supporting and surviving the city fight. Infantry casualties are of no concern. Those bazooka teams must die even if it costs me an entire platoon (roughly 1/3^rd of my remaining strength). I hate myself for planning this but I know that the mission comes before the men sometimes and that, in this position, the success of my attack rests on the neutralization of the enemy’s anti-tank capability.

I am determined to borrow a page from the World War I view of combat. Pound them with artillery, kill everything and then have the poor bloody infantry advance to occupy the terrain which has been swept clear of enemy units. In my case I want to use the tank to accomplish this but, in the same way that the Allied High Command sacrificed thousands of virtually untrained pilots during the spring of 1916 when it sent them up in inferior machines knowing that they would fly to their deaths BUT would, by their mere presence, turn back German reconnaissance flight which would, otherwise, have uncovered the logistical preparations for the great offensives of the summer and allowed the Germans to precisely prepare methodical defences, I will have to sacrifice lives in a death charge to accomplish my aims. Sometimes being the Officer In Command (OIC to British people and CO to Americans) isn’t a pleasant job at all. Am I trying to justify my actions to you all knowing that many of you are going to question my decision to send fragile human bodies up that hill? Yes. Do I think it’s a good move? No. Do I think it’s a move necessary to the preservation of my only surviving tank which I have identified as they only possible means of achieving victory in this game? Yes and that is why I am ordering it.

In the meanwhile though, to lift my mood of self-loathing for what I am about to order my poor bloody infantry to do, I can turn my attention to the "Great West Bank Overrun".

As you can see the first enemy units in this position have begun to surrender to me. They are in terribly, terribly poor shape. Sergeant Riley’s first squad, D platoon comprises of only two men. The other ten have had their lives ended in this merciless fight. It would appear that my pre-assault bombardment and main gun direct fire has very seriously attrited the enemy. Martin’s position is untenable and I can see some of his infantry withdrawing northwards as quickly as they possibly can.

As you can see I’m beginning to use my half-tracks more intelligently also. I’ve realized the utter stupidity of racing them almost directly on top of the enemy positions and have decided to simply whittle the enemy down from as long a range as practicable. This way I attrit the enemy forces all through my advance whilst keeping my own half-tracks out of enemy direct fire weapons range. (Although it must be noted that I lost more half-tracks to artillery and air attack than I did to Martin’s various ambushes and defensive positions.)

I will wait to see how this flank sector develops when the majority of enemy infantry in the western bank defensive position have surrendered and I can truly gauge the effectiveness of enemy fire.

Kampfgruppe Backe is on the move. The two half-platoons are sweeping northwards in an attempt to capture and kill as many of Martin’s southern defence forces as possible. Unfortunately it appears that most of a platoon has just run hastily into the town but if you look carefully at the picture below you can spot two squads, one on the extreme right and one on the extreme left of the picture which should fall easy prey. They have all the hallmarks of panicked units and will be swept up shortly

As my southern forces advance farther it looks like they will come under fire from at least four and more probably the remnants of five full platoons. No doubt this will pin them but I need to use short dashes to work them closer to the first line of houses so that I can use these houses as bases of fire to support the manoeuvre of my reserve Panzergrenadier platoon against the blockhouse guarding the river.

How successful all of this will be is anyone’s guess. I think I will force my way into the village BUT by that stage I expect my ammunition to be almost spent (perhaps half of my units will have three to four minutes of ammunition left but the other half will certainly be almost empty), my morale destroyed (currently it is hovering at around 31 % ) and my last reserves committed. I don’t see how I can cause Martin to surrender the entire town to me unless I aggrandize the threat he is facing and use Wiesenhofer’s panzer with unparalleled aggressiveness. Fortunately I like playing mind games with Martin so I have, consciously, been attempting to seem like a much greater threat than I am over the past turns and hope that some aggressive movements aimed at his blockhouse with Wiesenhofer’s panzer and my remaining armoured vehicles will break his nerve.

It isn’t feeling like a game anymore. I know that sounds a bit strange to people but now it’s beginning to feel a bit like a visceral struggle. I have been ordered into the town and come hell or high water I’m going to get into that town. I can see that the time for fancy plans is over and I’m feeling extremely tense about the next few turns. I guess I’m lucky that I can get "into" a game this much but I think it has a lot to do with Combat Mission’s sound and graphics helping to immerse me. Certainly I never felt this way with Close Combat or Steel Panthers (not an attack on either game just trying to relate something to anyone who is reading) since they put the player at some distance or simply weren’t what I would term believable (as with Close Combat prior to the RealRed or RealPara patches threw up such ridiculous combat results sometimes that all immersion was totally lost for me).

Martin has been telling me how he’s been going through FAR more cigarettes than normal during the turns for this scenario and I admit my adrenaline levels shoot up while plotting turns too since I am very attached to my infantry and tanks by this stage. I know who my "hero" squads are, exactly where they are now and what they have recently done and I really, really don’t want to lose them. What I said before about hating myself for having to order the infantry up the slope towards the bazooka teams in the village isn’t an overstatement. Quite literally I am dreading watching that turn movie as my infantry units cry out as individual men are killed, as they jerk backwards in response to hits and as they eventually disappear totally. I can name you all the squads (and disembarked crew) which I’m about to order forward and I just know many of them are being ordered to their deaths.

I’ve NEVER dreamt about any other game before but just two days ago I dreamt about this scenario (I’ve had two or three other dreams about other scenarios in the past couple of months also). I had a dream about an artillery barrage on the town. I dreamt that I had a huge number of artillery batteries (155s) on call and had them all plot a time on target (TOT) strike. I dreamt of watching the movie of the turn (it was in black and white but that’s cause we dream in black and white I guess) and freeze-framing it when the entire town was covered in huge shell bursts. It was a VERY pleasant dream. Sensibly I haven’t told my fiancee about it though ;-). I really think that having the turns replayed back in a real-time movie hugely increases the immersion. It must if I’m having dreams about it ;-).