valos german adventure

[valo2000]

9 finger jifko has been relocated to one of the cavalry squads and he learned to pull the trigger with his middlefinger.

the HMG Squad is now led by a men from Siebenbürgen.
Finally my polish beutetanks have arrived. They are also crewed by schlesiers but we just call them poles. they hate it.

After my bad handlicng of the precious panzers in the ardennes where 2 were destroyed and one damaged by mortarfire i have been send to a Flankguardaction near Arras. My forces are stretched thin as i only have an infantryplatoon mgs and some topless tankdestroyers with paperthin armor as at support. At least their gun is good.

We expect a british attack that means now nasty french tanks.

here are my forces in the deployment the HMG has been placed far behind the lines to make max use of its range. the frontline to hold is a bulge and there will be some shortenings during battle. if the brits manage to get through the weakly guarded centre booth forces will be seperated we will zee what will happen.

[valo2000]

My unit stayed in the same sector and to be able to hold my ground better i got another infantry platoon assigned. It consists of 2 normal infantries one heavymortarinfantry scouts and a pioneer squad made up of students from the technical university of berlin. Unfortunately their technical skills were more or less theoretical in nature and they had some problems handling their explosives and rifles.

My job was it to take the centre crossroad and stop any enemy movemnt o up this road so a panzergroup could move along the northern road.

the panzer commander made a great job and with help of the 105mm guns he took out one belgian infantry company 2 mortars and 2 two AD guns along his das through the road.

the belgians were trying to flee west on this road and were pretty surprised by our attack. thi sled to the total destruction of the belgian unit only 3 tanks could get away.

unfortunately they had some 120mm batteries we couldnt reah yet and 18 of our 23 causalities were from shrapnell wounds.

one of the 105ers was hit paticulary hard as the building they fired from collapsed killing 2 and leaving one man with a legwound that led to amputation later.

we all feel a bit let down by the luftwaffe that we are still fired on by artillery they should have been taken out already.

the belgians lost a 600 men strong taskforce here because the commander didnt use combinded arms tactics and left his infantry to be taken out by my tanks.
it looks like this is another sign of the imminent breakdown of belgian armed forces.

thi9s was my first major victory and iam promised some organic aty support for my understrength riflecompany with
tanks.

[PanzerBob]

Good day Valo,

Like the briefing graphics, today Belgium tomorrow the World. Ja!

[valo2000]

since we destroyed the belgium unit the situation has stalled the last few days. with the norther route cleared the panzers can roll westward and the only enemy presence is a britih strongpoint in the southwest which is commanded by the same officer who tried to push me out of this area a week ago. Since we are short on manpower i was told to stay in position and watch him and his men. During this period of rest my Heavy Weapons Platoon has been formed. I know have my own mortar and a nice english AT Gun we found in the village we captured in the actions against the belgians.

So the last few days have seen some harrasment fire from his mortars on our westwards moving coulums but he hasnt tried another attack.

Yesterday divison moved some artillery (a platoon of 75ers and 105ers) into the area and now Divison HQ has decided to send me to take out this strongpoint.

to make up for the shortage on manpower (we are about equal with the defenders) i have been allocated access to Kampflieger that will bomb the crap out of the englishman.

then my cavalry will ride in and take the survivors as prisoners.(this part of the plan can be subject to some changes)

[valo2000]

The airstrike was mostly a failure and the village was hit only a little by the bombers. most bombs went into cornfields an didnt do any damage.

the plan was changed in the way that my "company " didnt attack on its own fromnt. instead it followed the other company.

the british resistance was rather light and infiltration through the lines worked well with only minimla losses.(1 injured)

the village was taken with little resistance of a few dug in
infantry squads and ATR teams.


The enemy mortars that had shelled our supplies moving along the northern road for days were taken out by 3 consecutive airstrikes. Another mortar was destroyed by our scouts.

The brits tried an ill fated counterattack and after a few exchanges of fire most englishman were either on the run killed or captured.

this closes the last chapter of allied presence in this sector. we are now to attack further into the south while the "elite" formations" will go after the BEF in Dunkirk.

[valo2000]

on our road through the countryside we met slight resistance from british units that were dispersed over the countryside.

My company battled around against a company of british light infantry for some hours and with the help of Luftwaffe units who strafed around and took out one of the mortars in the area
we were finalyy able to send them into retreat.

as they were runnig back they met a Panzergroup that had bypassed them and had taken out their mortar support.

Under this circumstances the britsh commander decided it would be best to surrender his remaining forces.

now on to Paris.

[valo2000]

After the english were destroyed we moved further through the plains were we met a nz delaying attack that had us occupied long enough that the rest of the enemy could escape.

one major cause for this was the bad terrain and the high quality of the anzac troops.

due to lack of armoured support my positions were never endangered of beeing overrun.all in all pretty boring most of the time was spent firing mgs.

because the number of unit under 1st kompanies command is getting high i have formed a new kompanie led by a stug iiia a pretty useless piece of equipment. an mg would surely help them.

[valo2000]

the rest of mai was spent fighting the remants of the greek army who had 3 cruisers in every single battle.

in one of thoose battles the last surviving cruiser moved up and took out one of the poilsh tanks led by oberleutnant podolski. the tank was completely destroyed and podolski died on from his wounds on the way to the lazarett. his crew survived bud was badly injured and is on home leave.

after finishing our mission in greece we are tomtake part in army group centres attack on russia.
After the balkanfeldzug i managed to get my hands on one of the italian longrange mortars (is this correct pr an oob mistake?). As replacement for podoslki feldwebel zahn in his brand new pz 3h arrived and he iss an elite commander thenks to a bug in the game (if you change a destroyed unit it still has good xp from the crew thart has become causalities). the 2nd Kompanie has been reeinforced by romanian infantry platoon. this kompanie will soon rreceive a hungarian part as well to complete its three infantry platoons as i have heard. Also on the way is one mountain gun i took as trophy in greece.

our job in russia is to stop a breakeoutattempt from the kessel of byelovatsomething. support consists of 2 stukas and 3 mobile 5cm paks.
wnd kompanie will hold our part of the road and 1st kompanie will attack at the northern flank.

btw imho the game can be played with tanks and scouts alone i am not very well at infantry command because the enemy is always superior in numbers.


A kessel has been produced and some russians are trying to break out

[valo2000]

after a series of skirmishes and the surrender of the russians in the kessel we moved on into ukraine. it was our job to secure a railway bridge in this area and what looked like an easy job became a heavy fight.

the area around the bridge was full of russians and at least a company of russian tanks attacked us.in the shortrange firefights with a few t-50 tanks our 3h was beadly damged receiving 2 hits to the turret.It had to retreat ot of the battlefield. a few minuits later the stug3a of second company received a catastrophic hit as it ran into a t26.

we are now down to one polish tank and 2 mg carriers in the armor part......

in the meantime 2nd kompanie was able to cross the river and is approaching the railwaybridge.

[valo2000]

the battle ended with a total rout for the russians and 2nd kompanie arrived in their back to shoot retreating units. Seeing this the russians surredered.

all battles against the russians follow the same pattern tanks rush forward and pose a danger if i dont hae at support bcause my anti-tank assets are to weak. after they are taken out i have to reduce the russian inf horde that is slowly and bulky moving around while dodging his aty.I try to show him my tanks for 2 rounds and then move them sometimes this triggers aty bombardment. meanwhile my two snipers are runnig around searching for his aty (iam playing a 100x100 map and they are able to sneak through pretty easy).
My infantry is pretty useless and sneaks around most of the time following the snipers into the backyard but they can get massacred by aamgs pretty easily.
the mgs are of some use moving down the russaian inf masses and pinning them for my mortars.this part of the battle is pretty boring and most of my losses occur here because i move my inf to fast.
i really need to find some use for my inf against enemy inf.
they are pretty good at taking out russian tanks in the woods, especially pioneers with flamethrowers but the rest of the mission is won by mgs,tanks and aty.

as i need some at power i tried to capture a russian 76,2mm gun. and my sniper had taken out the crew of one but we were unable to secure it in the next encounter 2nd kompanie will try to capture one of these formodableguns intact for thir at-platoon.