Them Germans were good

[Imp]

Came back to WW2 after a long break playing MBT so decided to give the long campaign a bash to get up to speed, needed the practice Bob.
Poles did not cause to many heart stoppers though the last battle they mounted a last ditch attack. Had a lot of trouble holding the line as just went with my core & 2 Stukas.
Those big squads take some stopping & I was about to get overrun when their morale broke halting the surge forward. My poor machine gunners must have been emptying their canteens over the guns to keep em cool. Of note Polish infantry AT weaponry seemed surprisingly accurate regulary scoring hits at 4-500m, not enough to kill but damage was a real possibilty.

Core as stands at move to France
3 Rifle Companies each with 2X MMG & scouts, 2 with ATRs
2 Truck transport Companies
4 Halftracks (new addition upgrded from above)
About 20 tanks MK IIs IIIs & IVs ratio about 6-10-4
Recon
6 assorted armoured cars & 3 motorcycles
Guns
3 37mmPak
2 AA
2 SPAA
4 81MTR
4 10cmNBw MTR
6 15cm Inf guns in arty role
Transport for above

So we head for France first battle is an assault so spend support as follows
1 company of engineers (thank god)
2 10cm, 1 15cm offboard
4 Ground attack & a spotter

Vision is 34 map 140x130 turns 48
What a map inverted Y stream running through with hills behind with a rough ridge near the stream protecting 2 of the flag clusters. 3rd is on a hill with little cover near. Cover to stream is good & fair from the one road that crosses the first. The second stream is deep in his territory with nice cover on his side & that ridge.
Bottom of map where fords are I can see wire (mines?) & some DT.
Fords to top have trees by river but followed by a KM or more of open terrain.
I would like to defend this lets see what the AI makes of it.

Main force heads down central road to first stream & crosses straight into a tight quarters fire fight. Luckily troops faned out & crossed but the 1 AC that tried got stopped by an ATG. Artillery is strangely quiet just some small stuff.
Fight way forward a couple of mines on road & armour crosses. Some nasty fields of fire here but the AI has deployed some units behind trees meaning sticking your head out for a look at sneaking round often results in getting it blown off close up.
Luckily French inf At weponary is not up to Polish standard as tanks are close.
Slow going but groups rather than main force so armour is turning the tide.

Top force has finaly reached the stream & infantry crosses & moves for a turn to see if can spot anything, notice a bunker then my smoke screen comes down & vehicles start to cross.
AI must have spotted someone or waited for smoke as steel rain poured from the sky.
3 of my new halftracks are gone & same amount of tanks are immobile.
Vehicles beat a hasty retreat as troops have spotted 3 bunkers & slightly further back some H-39s. I only have 1 platoon of engineers with this rifle company so send in the planes, second one flys straight over a AAA gun & leaves smoking. That does not bode well for my infantry this is open ground with lots of automatic weapons.
Drop smoke & get engineers to bunkers, ready to assault & armour pops out to suppress to find 3 ATGs had not spotted, more time lost.
2 Bunkers down but the third one seems to have a rifle company screening it by the amount of fire my scout just took, going round it.

Meanwhile the main force is nearly at the second stream relativly intact & all hell was about to break lose.
The AI has infantry all over the rough ridge & I have few safe crossing points for my vehicles. First to try was damaged as the hills seem full of Char-Bs
This turned out to be one tough battle those Char-Bs shruging off most arty & air attacks while my troops took heavy loses protecting the engineers from his infantry screen.
Tanks have given limited support as having to fight behind a smoke screen & I lost a couple when it disapeared a bit quicker than I had anticipated.
As it stands think I have got most of his Chars but at some cost & control central flags.
Top Group got to hill flags on without much trouble only to come over & find more H-39s in a reverse slope defence. Every sort of gun is here to further back & now I think the infantry I bypassed will come for me. I was hoping they would as will leave foxholes but did not want to be the meat in a sandwich. If the H-39s decide to charge as well I could be in big trouble.

A nod to Andy & Don as pester these last 2 battles have been very good no half hearted playing here & this one in particular my core will be heavily mauled. Good job it gave me a decent amount of time otherwise I would be kippered.

If the next battle is an assualt I think I might take a bit more arty as new routines mean it spends more time offline. As I said at the start the German War machine was awesome my armour is totaly outclassed, if I had not bought those enginners this could have been a disaster.