The Dark Summer Part 2 - A Knife's Edge Conclusion

The second half to Ted Racier's Dark Summer ran quicker than I had expected. After the conclusion of my last post, I thought that maybe there would be another two to three turns of head-bashing assaults against the German defensive line. That's how turns three through five had mostly turned out, but as I so often forget, momentum requires little to make a significant change in direction. Was it Erwin Rommel who said that it is often possible to decide the issue of a battle merely by making an unexpected shift of one's main weight? Well, damned be the experienced, because I cannot quite keep that one at the forefront of my memory.

Rather than slogging it for five more turns, all it took was the right punch through the German defenses for the entire map to come alive. 

As one final introductory note before I proceed to the rest of the AAR, I should mention that the victory conditions for the Dark Summer really necessitate a good grasp before play commences. While both sides have to watch out for sudden death victories, the Germans win by grinding down the right Allied units and exiting combat units off the eastern map hex. The Allies for their part, on whom the game hinges, need to amass more victory points than the Germans. They do this by securing objectives early (notably Caen and Cherbourg) and exiting forces off the map. The majority of the victory points come from the eastern exit of their forces, but this can only be achieved (in large part) once the Americans have made a southern exit into Brittany. I was, initially, so focused on rounding up and destroying German forces on the field, that I neglected to seriously consider the timetables involved with securing Brittany to capitalize on all possible avenues of achieving an exit along the eastern map edge. Meanwhile, while weighing all of this in terms of calculating victory points, the Allies seriously have to adapt their strategy to the weather and the activation sequence, because with Montgomery and Leclerc as my witnesses, both reared their ugly heads in this game. The overall picture that one gets from this wargame is that of a well-finished product, where the fighting is toward a particular end, and not the object in and of itself. This makes the Dark Summer quite the surprise in my view.

Things get interesting with the breakout from Caen.

But anyway, let's be on with it. The first telltale signs of a change in force disposition came in the open ground south and east of Caen while the weather was still dominated by rain and showers. First, the Guards Armoured Division prevented an attempt by the 12th SS to cut off the four Commonwealth divisions that had crossed the Pegasus Bridge. The second blow came from the British 53rd Division. Making a crossing of the Orne, it attacked the exposed flank of a regiment of German infantry that, supported by artillery fire, rolled up a significant part of the German line. 

A bird's eye view of the front at this stage in the game.

Exploited by several other British and Canadian divisions, the last German defenders in Caen, supported by the majority of the German heavy armor on the field, had to pull back to regroup and establish a new line of defense. This last course of action required the 12th SS Division to cease all further offensive operations.

The Germans struggle to contain the British advance.

Making short work of the newformed gap, no less than eight divisions from the British 2nd Army and the Canadian 1st Army crossed the Orne - in addition to those already defending the crossing at Pegasus Bridge. The Germans east of the Orne regrouped along the heights SE of Caen while the remainder of their line to the west of the river bent back from the forward positions of the 9th SS division to keep the frontline secure. This, for a time, stabilized the front facing the Commonwealth forces, despite being clear that it was little more than a delaying action that the Germans could deploy. Reaction chits were to be in their favor, as opposed to the combat forces they could bring to bear. 

The Coutances offensive.

The big breakthrough, however, came just south of Coutances. Four panzer divisions held a significant part of the US line in check in and around St. Lo, but to the west, beyond the positions of the 1st SS division, the remnants of four German divisions were strung out along minor rivers running east to west below Countances. From Coutances, as the weather began to turn from showers to clouds and fairer weather, the Americans launched a concerted effort to drive through the lines of those four divisions. From left to right, the American 5th Armored, 90th Infantry, 3rd Armored, 4th Infantry, and 2nd Armored Divisions launched a coordinated strike directly south of their positions. With mixed results on the east side of the attack, the German defenders along the coast were completely wiped out, opening a path of advance unopposed to Avranches (and thus Brittany). 

The 5th Armored claims glory by forming the Coutances Pocket.

Thus began the race around the German flank. Benefited by the clearing skies (which prevented the German use of open roads), the Americans sped through the open breakthrough, with the 5th Armored in the lead, followed closely by the 90th Infantry and 3rd Armored. With Avranches quickly secured, the 5th Armored pushed deep into the German rear, which quickly began to contract. 

Closing the Coutances pocket, with no less than four German panzer divisions ensnared.

By the time the Germans abandoned St. Lo and began retreating into the Vire river valley, the 5th Armored Division had taken Pont-Farcy, advancing far enough behind and then up into the German line to trap the German defenders of St. Lo, supported by the 4th Infantry, 90th Infantry, and 3rd Armored Division. 

The 5th Armored takes, and holds, Pont-Farcy.

The result: four panzer divisions (the 1st SS, 2nd Panzer, 116th Panzer, and Panzer Lehr) bagged along with the remnants of the reserve infantry that held the line south of Coutances. The Americans had effected their breakthrough, and thus given the British their chance to follow it up.

Capitalizing on the earlier breakthrough over the Orne, the British drove straight south to try and trap the remaining German defenders west of the river, but just one turn away from extending far enough south to close off their exit, both the weather and the chit-pull sequence gave the Germans a chance to escape total disaster. The British 43rd Division was held in place, buttressed for good measure by the 10th SS and allowed seven German divisions to escape annihilation. (Three uninterrupted activations for the Germans on favorable weather turns will do that in this game). Not only did the British fail to pull off their own Coutances pocket, but the botched effort also permitted the Germans to throw up a final defensive line against the eastern exits on the south side of the map.

The British launch their last offensive at St. Pierre-sur-Dives.

Not to be undone, the British, Canadian, and Polish forces launched a final effort to the north to achieve an eastern exit. The heights SE of Caen cleared, carpet bombing of the defenders in St. Pierre-sur-Dives followed with a massed assault by the 15th Infantry Division and the 3rd Canadian Division, supported by plenty of armor. The defenders were completely overrun and nothing but open road lay before the British 2nd Army. But, activations be damned, a sequence of German activations and no British move chits prevented me from taking advantage that the opportunity of a breakthrough. Instead, the British and their Canadian counterparts were caught sipping tea when entered the 12th SS Division (this gives me flashbacks from A Bridge Too Far).

The path of their advance blocked, once the British did make an attempt to sally forth and make for the exit, the turns were coming down to the wire. Efforts to budge the 2nd SS aside by the Canadians and Poles or the last Tigers of the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Battalion by the 7th Armoured met with equally frustrating results.

Enter the 12th SS Division.

And, to make matters worse, the Germans threw enough roadblocks in the path of the advancing Americans to force it all down to one possible route for achieving the elusive exit. Mind you, by this time, the Germans began withdrawing what units they could afford to let slip east. I hadn't yet done the math to figure out where I stood in terms of victory points, but I knew it'd be close.

With the Americans mopping up the Coutances pocket, securing Avranches, exiting down into Brittany, and following the front east, there was a lot of drive to accomplish a lot in short order. As the last of the German fortress divisions and reserve infantry made like the devil east out of bocage country, the forward units of the American line of advance were hot on their heals. In the region of Falaise-Argentan, the 5th and 7th Armored Divisions led the way, supported by the 9th Infantry. Try as they might, though, there was too much ground to cover as the Germans escaped east, out of reach. The Germans still had to escape what roadblocks the British had set up in their path, but by and large most escaped unscathed.

The Fallschirmjägers give the French everything they're worth.

Only in the south, however, did it come down to the wire. At the far end of the line, without reserves in their rear to prevent another breakthrough, the French 2nd Armored Division, commanded by General Leclerc, and with the 6th Armored in support for good measure, caught up with the 3rd Fallschirmjäger Division at a crossroads west of Alençon. Outnumbered more than three-to-one and harassed by Allied aircover, the Fallschirmjägers - yet unbloodied in the fighting in the hedgerows - somehow held their ground against the advancing French armor to retreat in good order. Hot in pursut, a second attempt by the French to carry the position and overrun the Fallschirmjägers met with equally little success. Inflicting little more than moderate casualties on the dogged defenders in the woods outside Alençon, the French and American armor rounded out the last offensives of the game with poor die rolls, poor results, and a failure to break into the German backfield one final time. 

In spite of their dogged efforts, the Allies can't budge the Fallschirmjägers.

The cost came at the expense of a failed British offensive against the 12th SS and not a single regiment exited east. By comparison, the Germans managed to let three reserve divisions slip east and the all-too-critical 9th SS Division to boot. 

A final view of the field, with no eastern exits achieved by the Allies.

The result? A tie game in victory points, with ties going to the Germans. A surprising, Axis victory! And more importantly, a grim, heart-breaking defeat for the Allies. American victory points came from the possession Arromanches (1 VP), early possession of Cherbourg (2 VPs), and the presence of four divisions in Brittany (4 VPs). In total, 7 victory points, the same number scored by the Germans from inflicting casualties on the Allies and exiting the crucial number of regiments east to achieve a tie. 

Americans examine the burnt-out hull of a German panther tank. Heavy fighting is already behind them, and thanks to my loss in the Dark Summer, there's still plenty of heavy fighting to come.

The casualty total for the Germans was exorbitantly disproportionate compared to the losses of the Allies, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how many panthers you knock out or divisions you encircle. Rather, it's part and parcel of a larger conflict with bigger objectives. Looks like the hell in Hurtgen or the slog through Lorraine is going to be just that much more of a headache. Oh well ... luckily we don't have to run through that game. 

In sum, this was a phenomenal experience. I'll have this game back out on the table again real soon.

Ted Racier's Dark Summer Part 1 - Battling chance in the Normandy hedgerows

As an undergraduate student in Vermont, I had a French history professor who held some pretty strong opinions on different period topics in French history. When it came to our unit on the Second World War, my professor took a pretty critical line on the efforts and tactics of the French Resistance. While not criticizing efforts to fight the collaborationist regime in Vichy and the Nazis themselves, he was adamant that the efforts of the French Resistance had both a negligible impact on the course of the war itself and, as a consequence, was not worth the reprisals that their activities costed the French people. Over the course of his class, I got to the sense that when it came to the French Resistance, his stance was: they should have done more. This is me projecting, to a certain extent, because his actual reaction in one class amounted to saying they should have done nothing (but that felt a measure too defeatist or at its worst favorable towards the Vichy regime). At any rate, I say this because as far as some sources would claim, on D-Day itself, the activities of the French Resistance caused significant delays in the arrival of reinforcements from the south of France to the beachheads in Normandy. One account that I recall reading claimed that the 2nd SS Division (Das Reich) was delayed a full week (or possibly two weeks if my memory serves me right) when it should have taken at most two to three days to make the journey north to reinforce the defenders. While I'd need to do more research on substantiating this claim - and to make many such similar claims as well - to attribute the slow arrival of German reinforcements to the French Resistance and not only bureaucratic ineptitude at the highest levels of the Third Reich, the point illustrates itself nicely, ...

... BECAUSE, in this game of Ted Racier's Dark Summer, all events in the game conspired against me to lose the race for a breakout from Normandy. And as told below, the first half of this game has gone from a lightning invasion to a slow-grinding slog. 

The depths of hedgerow country await ...

Racier based the "Dark" series of games, which started with the Dark Valley, on a chit-pull system that leads to a randomized sequence of player activations - at least in part. Weather is also randomized, like activation, which permits some serious variability on the first days of the invasion. Reinforcement arrival is also randomized to a degree, but it amounts more to possible delay over anything else (how to do you like the French Resistance now, professor?)

The reinforcements.

To open this AAR, I've include a preview of the reinforcement stacks awaiting their turn of entry. Combat units along with combat support markers arrive via the reinforcement sequence.

My plan was pretty simple from the get go. For the invasion forces, I planned to secure as quickly as I could the breakout from the UK beaches to secure Pegasus Bridge over the Orne River. I knew I wouldn't blast my way through Caen easily, so I left that to variable chance if opportunities presented themselves. With the Americans, I planned to cut across the length of the Cotentin Peninsula as fast as I could, knock out Cherbourg, and then plunge south along the west coast of France. I planned to let, if possible, my southward drive with the Americans my hammer to the British anvil against the banks of the Orne. As for the Germans, I planned no delaying actions - no needless waste of regiments willy-nilly - and instead opted for an elastic defense. 

First wave landings at Utah and Omaha.

First wave landings at Gold, Juno, and Sword.

Omaha and Juno beaches opened with greater cost than I would have liked, but the breakout from Utah, Gold, and Sword went off without a hitch.

By the time all five beaches were secure, the 4th and 90th US Divisions began to mop up along the beachfront towards Cherbourg while the airborne and pathfinders held the line against what slow-to-arrive German reinforcements that I assigned to the peninsula. 

A concerted effort to enlarge the beachhead at Utah and link up the infantry landing at Omaha.

In the British sector, the first wave infantry took some hard knocks keeping the 21st Panzer under pressure while the red devils held their own against elements of the 12th SS Division which maintained a close hold on the British bridgehead over the Orne. Only there, along the breakout across the Orne, did I adopt any hard crust tactics. 

The British (and Canadian) zone.

Fate (the randomization of the chit-pull system), however, shined brightest on the Germans. My first two activations post invasion sequence were German move activations, which permit a flood of reinforcements to surge to the fringes of the bocage terrain along the exits from the beachheads. 

Situation and displacement of forces at the end of turn 2: the invasion is contained.

By the end of turn two, the invasion was fully "contained" (even with the arrival of significant British armor on both banks of the Orne); the advance was not halted but all breakthroughs were fully prevented. From the end of turn two through the end of turn five, that remains the current status. The Americans successfully isolated and eliminated the garrison at Cherbourg, led by the 4th, 30th, and 90th Divisions. 

Extent of the Allied advance at the end of turn 5.

That, however, remains the extent of the success of the invasion. The Germans continue to hold their own, with the drive along the coast halted thanks to the mixed effort of German reserve divisions thrown into line west of St. Lo, anchored by the defensive deployment of the 1st SS and 5th Fallschirmjaeger Divisions. With the attrition among the American infantry, I've resorted almost exclusively to the offensive potential of the 2nd and 3rd US Armor Divisions to hammer their way toward St. Lo -- I can't expect any other potential breakthroughs otherwise. And as for the British, they only secured the northern parts of Caen thanks to a strategic withdrawal by the German defenders. Efforts by the 2nd and 12th SS Divisions to close off the bridgehead over the Orne threaten disaster on the British flank, so we'll see how part two turns out. 

Stay tuned!

The Cherkassy Pocket

After two weeks, I put the first scenario from Decision Games's Cherkassy Pocket into the books. Had I played out another two dozen turns, I would have finished the entire campaign.

The game starts with the Russian 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts (respectively disposed on the left and right sides of the board) positioned for a breakthrough and link-up south of the Ukrainian city of Cherkassy (offmap) against the bulk of the German 8th Army caught between the two of them. The Russian player is tasked with breaking through the German defenses, quickly, to link up the two fronts and trap as many units as possible of the German 8th Army north of the link-up forces, surrounded at their supply base at Korsun. 

The above image gives a birds-eye view impression of the disposition of troops at game start, with the Germans holding a thin-crust of defensive emplacements running north to south between the Russians, deployed on the eastern and western edges of the map. Russian armor and mechanized units are the red units (infantry the beige/tan colored units). German infantry are in field gray and the German armor and mechanized units (plus panzer recon units) are in black. Armor and mech (and German panzer recon units) can ignore infantry zones of control, which permit easily exploited breakthroughs when one side can bring their armor to bear against unsupported infantry lacking armor support. 

The above map gives an impression of the historical progression of the fighting around Cherkassy and Korsun. 

Historically, the Russians took two days to break through and link up south of Olshana. More of the type to slug it out and try for a sidle than leave my flanks to the wind and slam my tanks on the gas, it took me four days to affect a breakthrough and a union between the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts. 

The fighting kicked with the 20th Tank Corps battling headlong against the German 3rd and 14th Panzer Divisions, which proved adept at elastic, delaying actions. Supported by the 66th, 80th, & 375th Infantry, along with the 6th, 66th, and 69th Guards, the 2nd Ukrainian Front pinned the bulk of the German armor on the field, allowing the remainder of the Russians on the eastern flank to widen the gap that formed. These were primarily exploited by the supporting armor of the 18th and 29th Tank Corps.

On the western side, the charge was primarily led by the 5th Guards Tank Corps and the 5th Mechanized Corps, but without similarly beefy infantry divisions in the 1st Ukrainian Front, progress was slower to exploit German weaknesses once the fixed positions were eventually overcome. 

More a battle of breakthrough attrition than a self-less disregard for safety in exchange for a quick link up, the fight saw a meatgrinder effect overcome individual German positions in the 2nd, 3rd, and especially 4th day of the offensive as the Russian tidal waves both east and west on the map overwhelmed German defenders. 

The only negative consequence of this strategy was that the retreating 5th SS Division, which entered on the north side of the map, racing for the safety of the south edge of the map, survived the eventual encirclement of Korsun wholesale, at the cost of 1 VP. 

On the evening of the 4th day of the offensive to encircle the 8th German Army, the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian fronts met in the small town of Schevchenka (what I believe is today's Shevchenkove in Cherkasy Oblast) when advance elements of the 5th Guards Tank Corps linked up with armor from the 29th Tank Corps. 

Link-up achieved. Now all that's left is to mop up the OOS units north of Russian cordon.

At that point, most of the German armor that had not been previously isolated in independent rearguard actions was safely south of the Russian cordon (the whole of the 5th SS Division and most of the 3rd Panzer along with straggler elements of the 11th and 14th Panzer Divisions). When all was said and done, the German losses were exorbitantly disproportionate (upwards of 8-9 divisions lost in combat/overrun) when compared to the Russian losses (amounting to just a single division and another two divisions of armor lost due to breakdown under the stress of advance).

The game result: a Soviet Tactical Victory (achieved by isolating more than 14 German units north of the Russian cordon).

In all likelihood, had I finished the entire campaign, I would have ended up with a Soviet Strategic Victory thanks to the number of German armored units destroyed, but, I will leave that game for another day. Next, off to Normandy.

My Return (and some acquisitions to boot)

It's not quite the legendary stuff of MacArthur in the Philippines, but long overdue -- and yet sooner than anyone ever expected -- I've returned to a life that allows my focus on AAR Central, and for good at that. I'm back after having promised to be gone for several years. Certainly for the better, I've chosen to return to my roots as far as my everyday life is concerned, and as a secondary beneficiary to that decision, it means I can return my focus to hobbies that include, among the many others, my focus on this blog. 

In the months that follow, I expect to ramp up playthroughs of various games that I acquired over the last 12 months. Among those are two "homecoming" gifts, if you will, that I purchased in advance of my arrival: Cherkassy Pocket: Encirclement at Korsun and D-Day at Omaha Beach, both Decision Games productions. 

Both come second hand as older DG publications, but still in excellent condition. My thanks goes out to the previous owner of Cherkassy Pocket in particular for acquiring the necessary errata counters, nearly quarter of a century ago now. (Time sure does sneak up on us all, when you think about it).

I've already played through the first scenario of Cherkassy, so that AAR will be going up shortly. At any rate, a nice little haul to welcome me back. Now to find out what I did with all of Ted Racier's games and a dozen other titles I seem to have misplaced. Time to go diving through the boxes in the attic.