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!