kaliyama
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Joined: 7/22/2004
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Turn 3:
THE GERMAN TURN: Air recon picks up more SS units moving through the Pfalzerwald to hit Lembach. *Gulp* My units around Phillipsbourgh pull back further before being too savaged, but elsewhere, it isn’t pretty.
From east to west:
The 256th run a single attack against the 45th, pushing back the engineering unit and splitting it in 3, but otherwise doing little. The remaining strong units-an infantry regiment and a tank battalion, are untouched and half of the VG division are in amber, yellow or red health.
The center of the eastern German attack has succeeded: half of my units are routed and everything is at red health, and I am faced with an amber-crowded stack of SS units with infantry and cavalry on either wing.
The 257th has failed to capture Philipsbourgh, and probably won’t unless I let them. I have totally blundered the east—I left the bulk of TF Hudelson in the west defend P-bourgh, and then the cream of the 45th hold Hunspach. I stuck an engineering battalion from Hudelson, an infantry regiment from the 45th together with some HQ units. They were directly in the path of the oncoming SS division, and while they put up a good fight the result was unavoidable: they got steamrolled and are effectively finished as a fighting force. The VG are doing their job in pinning down enough of my troops to keep me from doing anything substantial to check the SS divisions.
I have deployed better against the western drive, though. The 44th was deployed in a wider front, and is only beginning to show any strain from it. The 36th and 19th VG pushed hard against me, but have bunched up their forces to do so and stretched themselves too thin in the process—the flank at Sarreguemines is only held by specialist battalions and recon units from the 19th. The division has only two infantry units, which have been lumped with the 36th to roll up the able-bodied units on the SS’ flank. So far they have been making incremental gains, wearing down my forces—one infantry regiment this turn posted 30% losses to a push supported by Nebelwerfer attack, but my line is holding.
The 100th division is budging only slowly—they are holding the western edge of the forest and the road and rail routes against the 17th SS and the 559th VG. This VG division has more infantry units than the 19th, but it hasn’t done a whole lot. The German push last time saw SS units routing and splitting a tank battalion and infantry regiment holding Rohrbach, but it has also bunched up the German offensive. I am reeling, but I should be able to stop the bleeding soon.
MY TURN:
Essentially, I am saved by reinforcements. Three infantry regiments and an armored division with artillery support come in south of the 6th SS’s attack—they can reach the beleaguered ad hoc group holding the Germans at bay this turn. An infantry regiment and four (!) motorized artillery units show up in the west, along with another armored division. I rush these up to hold a gap that the 17th SS had opened up around Rohrbach when my tactical reinforcements were rebuffed trying to hold the town.
I look at the strength numbers of the units I can see, and generally, I am not very impressed. I figure I won’t be getting any more reinforcements any time soon, and the longer I wait, the more likely it his the southernmost SS group will punch through to Petit-Pierre on its own, or that the western SS group will link up with the western Volksgrenadier wing and sweep my guys into a pocket in the forest. Either way, game over. So, I decide to ATTACK! I push most of my guys into ignore losses attacks, and hope to throw him back across Alsace.
Largely, I succeed—I thought my attack would forestall any crushing attack from the oncoming SS forces, but it turns out that the German formations are a lot more brittle than I thought. I probably have as many artillery units as I do front line formations, and I use them all—under the weight of all that fire, the Germans collapse, with the SS formation, bunched up with heavy penalty modifiers for overcrowding, taking up to 80% losses in different fights. The hardest fight of mine is on the far west, where I scrape together some troops to have a go at the infantry units of the 19th. I send them packing, but lose 10% of my men in the bargain. I caught the support assets of the 36th holding the east approach to Sarreguemines, and rout them without clashing with the infantry assets—this may be a problem next turn if the quite-healthy regiments decide to counter-attack against my overextended troops.
The big surprise was that my battered and retreated troops backed by one healthy tank bn, with LOTS of artillery support, inflicted 30% losses on the lone tank battalion holding Rohrbach. I hope my attack wasn’t too gamey. Similarly, I hit the 6th SS's amber stack with a single artillery unit and gave it like 15% casualties. Elmer doesn't exploit stacks this much, so I had no idea of the danger it poses.
I have harder going against the VG units since I put all of my strong units up against the SS divisions, but I don’t do badly anywhere. The only big failure is my inability to drive out the HQ unit occupying Bitche (tee hee).
Beginning and end of Turn 3:
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< Message edited by kaliyama -- 8/13/2006 9:58:59 PM >
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Operation Nordwind 1944: A tragedy in five turns - 
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