German Battle Report: Turn 36.

 

I’d like to start this turn by focussing a little on my appreciation of the possible approach routes to the village. I have conducted a lot of scouting of the various approach routes to the village and have made some very interesting findings:

  1. It is absolutely impossible to rush the village from the south with my present forces as Martin has arrayed four platoons facing southwards to defend that approach. It is, however, possible to for one of my pinned units to make a quick dash towards a house less than twenty metres from its sheltering crater and only be exposed to the fire of a half of a platoon of infantry for most of that distance. Unfortunately the first five or so metres of movement will be in full view of at least two platoons of infantry but my unit’s speed of movement should carry them out of that danger zone before most of the enemy can even re-orient and target them.

2. My reserve panzergrenadier platoon has advanced as far as it can in cover and, any further advance it makes will be made under the guns and in clear sight of the enemy defending the blockhouse. If I order it to march straight towards the blockhouse it will be annihilated BUT a little bit of extra searching has shown a major flaw in Martin’s defence of that position. He has neglected to put anyone at all onto the top floor of the blockhouse, hell, he’s even withdrawn the infantry from the bottom floor of the blockhouse. I have learnt that, very often, units which disappear from view to units in the bottom floor of a building are still easy prey for units in the top floor. Units taking advantage of a small undulation in the ground to shelter from fire directed at them from the bottom floor of a house are, almost invariably, still in full view of units on the top floor of the house and these units can bring a devastating fire on the enemy who, has almost invariably stopped to re-organise when in concealment. This re-organisation is done in coverless terrain and with units bunched closely together, just the recipe for a massacre if fired upon.

Anyway, a little scouting has shown that if I route my Panzergrenadier assault eastwards I can hug a line of elevation which will hide me from most of Martin’s fire and which will allow me to race the panzergrenadiers to a crater only metres from the house beside the blockhouse. This will be an excellent position from which to launch my final assault once my other, supporting, infantry and vehicles are in place.

 

Here Wiesenhofer’s tank is on the main road leading to the blockhouse. You can appreciate, from this angle, how only the blockhouse is in a position to bring fire to bear on this section of road for the vast majority of its length. With the Americans having abandoned the blockhouse Vossen’s route of advance is clear.

 

  1. The main road leading to the blockhouse is ONLY capable of being observed for the vast majority of its length from the top floor of the blockhouse. As I have previously pointed out Martin has not placed any troops there and this has resulted in the majority of this road being completely out of his line of sight. My assault up the western bank towards the village is now allocated merely a diversionary role since I intend to move Vossen’s infantry towards the blockhouse.

As Wiesenhofer pulls out of the American position my vehicle crew and two panzergrenadiers advance up the hill in a probe and an attempt to destroy the enemy bazooka teams. I can clearly see two American bazooka teams running for the rear as one actually surrenders to my forces. For this important victory (the pushing of bazooka teams from the periphery of the town and the neutralisation of one of those teams) I have lost only two dead and one captured. Well worth the cost. Unfortunately the sheer volume of enemy fire directed at my forces has convinced me that to push sixty volksgrenadiers up that hill would result in very heavy casualties indeed. One of the panzergrenadiers survived the assault and has occupied a building near the church but, personally, I think one pistol-armed officer isn’t much to lead an assault with and so I order him to hide and hope the Americans don’t counter-attack his position and kill or capture him. One contributory reason for my determination not to push up that hill is that I can see no way to pull my forces back without extreme loss if the Americans prove too strong for them. The single panzergrenadier who made it into a building can’t be pulled back in the face of the American fire and I don’t want to have thirty or forty men similarly trapped if I order an assault.

 

In the south several of the units in and around the craters have panicked due to the extremely heavy incoming fire but fortunately none have broken and run screaming to the rear… yet. As my reserve panzergrenadiers are conducting their right hook I order the less affected half-platoon in the craters to dash forward to the nearest building from where it will be able to lay down fire on the Americans in the blockhouse and, importantly, draw some fire onto itself and away from its more exposed brethren.

Unfortunately the volume of American fire is still enough to cause these infantry to hit the ground almost the instant they start moving. It looks like I’m really going to have to bring a lot of suppressive fire to bear on the American’s in the houses via my half-tracks and Wiesenhofer before my infantry are going to move out. My global morale is now in the 20s and basically my infantry are extremely shaky and unwilling to expose themselves to fire. Damn that Jabo ! It dropped my morale by well over 10%. If my morale was up at 40% it’d make a huge difference to my ability to conduct this assault.