After a week of war, the German invasion of Poland ran according to plans. German troops of the 8. Armee were marching eastward on Warsaw, and on the other side of the Bzura river were Polish troops withdrawing in the same direction. Stretched along the Bzura, protecting the army's flank, was the 30. Infanterie-Division. On the morning of 9 September, the Polish Knoll-Kownacki Operational Group launched a large-scale assault across the Bzura. For the first (and would it prove later, only) time during the 1939 conflict the Poles mounted an offensive.
This tumbling brawl pushes your infantry skills to the breaking point. My defending Germans squeaked out a victory over Bill’s Poles in the last turn and a half, after five turns of running scared.
Bill opened with devastating prep fire from his Polish kill stack (9-1 leader, hero, three squads, and an MMG) all firing from the woods at F3 straight down the hex spine to hit my concealed German strong point behind the stone wall in J3. That shot broke my 8-0, 4-6-7, and half squad manning the mortar, all of whom later routed – without the mortar – through the K4 grain into the central L4 woods cluster. His mortar prep fired from F5 to pin my (formerly) concealed squad in woods at I8. The Poles were heavy along the western edge and made their thrust there. My half squad in J10 pinned some. A couple of German shots at two-down-two whiffed! My concealed 4-6-7 and LMG in J8 held fire, later falling back to L7, the central woods cluster. The German 8-1 hid under concealment in J7 with a squad, half-squad, and LMG until they too withdrew to the L7 cluster. The German squad in I5 pinned some Poles while others approached through the grain. The I5 Germans defeated two half squads in close combat. One German squad lurked around the eastern wood mass at J1 to discourage movement along the flank. The German MMG and team started in the steeple at R3 with a good view of the German kill stack which they soon broke while also wounding the hero! In the cover of E4, the inverted Polish 9-1 promoted to 9-2 via heat-of-battle as he rallied the whole platoon.
The Germans quickly fell back. Of note, the squad in the I5 stone house made smoke in I6 and then moved down the central road to J5, but pinned under fire from the other side of that smoke. I had three of these unfortunate pins that left me exposed, another stopped my eastern squad in the open at K1. Polish sharp shooters casualty reduced one German squad. Fortunately, my best troops did make it back to the L7 wood mass to establish a porous second line.
A Polish half squad doubled timed through a gap in the German defense to get adjacent to and inflict DM upon an ever-increasing number of broken units around M5 and M6. Most German units had to hold fire to constrain the movement of nearby full squads. The Polish 9-2 and MMG set up in the I5 building with a clean shot down the road that bisected my position. So, German resistance centered on the other side of the woods in the M8 crag where that MMG could not strike. One at a time, four Polish squads came along side in M7, L7, and L8. The concealed defenders (8-1 and squad with LMG) let loose with point blank fire to break two of them, but the other two then fired to break the Germans, who later routed back toward S10. Deep in the woods at M6, a German squad and a half with LMG counter attacked that infiltrating Polish half squad at L5 and killed it in close combat, but it took down a German half squad too. Meanwhile the German MMG in the R3 steeple went to ground to avoid the two mortars now locked on the bell tower above and the bypassed squad in K1 skulked north – away from the village – to hide in the J1 wood mass.
Around turn three, tattered Germans clustered at the column P woods. They were in desperate straits with only three good order multi-man counters and twice as many broken. But an accumulation of three cc kills, several breaks and as many pins had dispersed the Poles to sap their momentum. Hence, feeble German resistance was enough to buy one more turn for all those broken Germans, gasping from all that routing, to start rallying. Thanks to the urging of an 8-0, two German squads came together at O5. In coordination with the MMG in R3, they held the Poles at bay for a turn. That forgotten squad in the J1 wood crept back toward the action. Under enemy fire in the heat of battle, a German half squad in S10 spawned a hero.
Finally, the Germans managed some semblance of order. They “advanced” back toward the S6/7 stone wall while the MMG stood firm in that country church at R3. The Poles rushed forward to catch the Germans in the open just north of the wall. But the defenders fired to wound the Polish 9-2 and then survived return fire from exhausted 4-5-7s.
By turn five, the reconsolidated Poles were pressing on the S6/7 stone wall, but the German MMG in R3 twice placed a fire lane to R10 that severely inhibited their advance. That forgotten German squad along the east edge had moved to H1 where his straight shot to N4 prevented the Poles from outflanking the church. So, a static firefight ensued. In a classic display of unnecessary melodrama, the by-then broken German 8-1 in W10 scored heat of battle, but went berserk to charge an entire Polish platoon assembled around the P8 orchard/hedge cluster. They smoked him, but were in turn broken by that pesky MMG in the R3 church when they tried to assault move forward. Three Polish squads used the advance phase to enter column R without reprisal from the German MMG in the church. A German squad in S7 later prep fired (rather than retreat) to break two of them with point blank spraying fire.
By the last turn, Bill calculated he had to score some combination of three and half squad kills or building captures to win. The Germans had rallied a handful of half squads to occupy the four wooden buildings between columns R and V, the north edge of the village. A hero with half squad anchored the left at V7 while the MMG held on in the church at R3. A squad held on behind the stone wall at S7. That forgotten squad along the east edge had by now moved to M2 where he intensified fire on Polish efforts to flank the church.
With a two-to-one manpower advantage, the Poles charged from three different points to hopefully capture buildings in close combat, but my modest first and subsequent first fires (usually two-down-two) pinned or broke all of them to maintain the village and victory.
2020-10-18
(D) Andy Goldin
vs
David Ready
German win
A challenging and fast playing scenario where the German must stage a "fighting withdrawal" (delay) and preserve his combat power against a numerically superior force. David massed his force on my left to take advantage of the woods at the start line and quickly broke and captured one and a half squads for failure to rout. I managed to get a KIA on one of his squads moving across open ground but knew I couldn't continue to sustain losses at that rate. The next turn I played coy with my re-positioned mortar team and didn't take a decent shot at a squad in the woods in the hope of getting a better target. Sure enough, in a hasty move, David moved his kill stack (a platoon of squads, the MMG and his -1 leader) into woods just barely in my LOS. A long rate tear with the -1 modifier on effects, some hot dice for me, and a long series of failed MCs reduced his kill stack to a bloody mess. At that point he had neither the firepower nor the manpower to push me back, so he resigned.
