Old Hickory CoC Campaign. Fight 1, Red One

“Well Franz, at least we will be attacking for once!”, ‘der Kaiser’ looked at the suntanned and grimy face of the big man stood next to him and couldn’t help but return the beaming smile he saw there. “You are right there Jürgen, but let’s hope we have caught the Ami’s napping”. As he spoke the air was rent by the sound of shells screaming over their heads towards the enemy’s lines. “Good to not be on the receiving end for a change” shouted the Feldwebel and he jogged off to pick up the ‘heavy’ MG42 team he would be responsible for in the forthcoming fight.

Beckenbauer moved into the wood where the majority of his Erste Zug waited for him and ran through the plan once more in his head. Luckily the unit had been very aggressive in their patrolling and had caught the Americans flat footed whilst allowing the Zug to both get well forward and to get a good handle of where the enemy was. A minefield had been discovered where the road bent and was hemmed in by a couple of hedges but he had decided to not take the offer of some Pionere to clear it, instead he had told Klopp to cover the area and the likely point nearby where an enemy might appear with a tripod mounted MG42. He would take the majority of the Zug through the wood as quickly as possible to pin and hopefully overwhelm any defenders across the field whilst trying to also close down any attempt of the enemy deploying on the right flank. ‘Der Bomber’ would be holding one Gruppe back in reserve along with a sniper and the hope was that the barrage crashing down on the Ami’s would help this plan unfold before they could react. 

Red One (craters on the left standing in for minefield)

Klopp and his MMG lads set up and overwatch the minefield

Upon meeting his lads he nodded to the curly haired NCO looking up at him who turned to his men “Right ladies, let’s go and sort these Yankees out shall we” and with that 1.Gruppe moved swiftly off. Breitner then told off a couple of his men and told them to move over to the right to check out the flank, whilst behind him to the left he heard Klinsmann getting his men forward too. Both of the sections moved swiftly forwards until they hit the hedge surrounding the field when they were taken under fire both from a machine gun across the field and from some riflemen on the right. This fire wasn’t very accurate however and pretty soon both NCO’s had their Gruppen pouring fire back. Over on the right the two scouts were seen running back after taking some withering fire from the squad of infantry that they had run into.

Breitner and 1.Gruppe move out

Yanks pop up

Scouts find them

1. & 2. Gruppen pour fire on the enemy

Brietner had just told his right hand gun to keep firing on the infantry to the right when another burst of MG fire tore through the hedge knocking over two of his lads and also winging him. “Scheisse, are you alright?” said his no.2, “Aye, keep firing, I’ll be ok in a minute, just keep hitting the enemy”. That they were hitting the enemy, and hitting them hard, was evident as very soon the MG fire to their front stopped altogether and the enemy to the right suddenly disappeared. Klinsmann then appeared as Breitner was being patched up: “Bloody hell Paul I think we’ve made them run!, I’ll send a couple of lads across to make sure”. Soon the scouts jogged back across the field and confirmed that the enemy had definitely gone and the only thing visible was a completely wiped out MG team and a dead officer. “Right then lets let the old man know what’s happened and hopefully we can have a well earned rest” said Breitner and let out a long sigh of relief, not only had he had a close escape but they had seen off the enemy and both men that had been hit were also only nicked too so were ok to get back into action straight away, “a good day’s work lads, well done.”

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So a very quick and quite bloodless game (well for me anyway) aided by some great dice luck from me and awful luck by Dan. I managed to get lucky in the patrol phase and got 6 free moves which helped me get far through the wood and forced Dan’s JOP’s across the field. This (coupled with me ‘winning’ the morale roll too having 10 to Dan’s 8) made me decide to just pile forwards with the sections to try and engage as soon as possible while covering the enemy JOP by the minefield with the MMG. Even though the scouts were broken and I took a few hits I managed to keep my luck going and didn’t lose any morale points. Unfortunately for Dan the combined fire of 3 MG42’s made short work of his MMG team and even worse his Platoon commander, Hiram P. Wilderbeest III, deployed with the team had been hit and wounded 3 times and so was killed. His bad luck with the dice held when rolling on the BTH table and his morale had dropped to 4 pretty quickly, this coupled with the death of his CO made him decide that bugging out was the best thing to do. I’m expecting a tougher fight next time as I reckon there will be more enemy to face. Oh, and the pre-game barrage didn’t stop Dan deploying at all!

As for opinion, 1.zug are now at +3 for the men and -1 for the CO’s (they started at that unfortunately!) with Beckenbauer’s outlook still Thoughtful.