My Campaign Battles Part I

I started playing Biltong's Campaign Rules but since I don't get to play all that often it could take me years just to get out of 1941. Rob O's Quick Campaign appealed to me, but I preferred some of the rules as they were in BCR. So I developed my own Campaign Rules that I will be playing by. My campaign will be following the exploits of a Soviet Regimental SMG Company with a few support units and a T34 attached.

Battle 1: June, 1941

We had been hearing rumors of German troop movements for a while. But now we have moved to the realm of fact. The treacherous Germans have opened the attack against our beloved Rodina.

My men and I were being deployed to a wooded area in the north when we got word that the fascists were advancing in our direction. We immediately set to work preparing our defenses. We were deep in the forest so the Germans would have plenty of cover to move through as they approached us. A large stand of trees thrust right into the center of our position. I figured that was the most likely avenue of advance for infantry. It provided cover right up close to the line we were to hold. Secondary avenues of advance included coming down the center and then cutting over to our right, or approaching down a thin strip of woods at our left. Between those approaches are two narrow passes where the trees are thin enough to get a tank through. I wasn't sure there was enough room in the trees beyond us for a tank to get even that far, but I mined them both thoroughly anyway.

My plan was to get the enemy into that central stand of trees and deal with them there. That was where they were most likely to go anyway, but I set up wire on both sides to encourage them. Surrounding those trees was a U shaped clearing. I covered all angles of that clearing with tanks and tankettes. If anyone tried to leave those trees the plan was to drive them back in with machine gun fire. Once I was sure a good number of infantrymen were bunched up in there I would open fire with all the artillery I had. I put my AP mines in the approaches to those central trees. They might flush men out into the open where I could harass them from a distance. They would at least provide me with a warning that the enemy was close.

My men are very poorly supplied and we have barely half the compliment of men we are supposed to, but I put what infantry I had in the trees on the right and left. If the plan to keep them in the center failed they would hold their fire until close quarters. About a platoon's worth of men were kept in the rear as reserves.

It had rained that day. The sky was still overcast and the ground was wet. A cool evening breeze blew in as we heard the first rumor of the approaching enemy army. The waiting was tense until Efr. (Corporal) Bobkin spotted troops in the trees opposite him and opened fire with his Maxim.

For about the next five minutes all the contact we had consisted of potshots with that Maxim and half seen infantry in the trees. Finally, a scattering of infantry squads were seen moving into the central trees. The 76 I had in a pillbox fired on them. Soon after that explosions were heard in the woods, meaning the Germans had discovered the minefields.

Someone set up a machine gun just out of sight of my men and started firing at the pillbox. Whoever it was, I never got rid of them. They kept periodically firing at the pillbox throughout the rest of the battle. In the end they were the last ones shooting. I tried several times to focus tank fire on them, but with little effect. Fortunately he did no significant damage to the pillbox, its gun, or its crew. They kept up effective and useful fire through the whole battle.

During the next few minutes a couple more mine explosions were heard in the woods and when I saw a squad of men coming out of the trees in my direction I knew the time was near. Within a minute, a platoon's worth of men had appeared and were mostly turned back by machine gun fire from my tanks. There were two TRPs in the trees there and I opened fire on the right one with 82mm and 50mm mortars, and directed the 76 to fire into the woods as well.

That lit the fire. Shots came raining in and were heartily returned as men moved out of the trees to avoid the arty and back in to avoid the machine guns. I kept the mortars firing until they were out of ammo.

Some of the enemy infantry had pushed a little to close for comfort at that point, so I ordered my reserves forward to the nearest patch of the central trees. I also ordered a heavily depleted platoon from the left (where absolutely nothing was happening) to pull back and swing through the trees to the center, in case I needed them.

The exchange of fire continued to be intense and after a couple minutes without seeing any troops move farther to the left, I opened fire with my left artillery (a 50mm mortar and a 76mm gun).

After a few more minutes of heavy fire I decided to move my tankettes. I had several and they were all off to the left in case of an infantry push down that avenue of advance. I ordered two to move around to the center to provide additional fire support against a machine gun that had set up in the scattered trees near my center. As soon as the T38 was in view that gunner turned around and fired on it. He held his ground and fired back. After about a minute some artillery started falling near the T38 and just then a shot from the machine gunner took him out. The crew got out and ran for cover but one of them didn't make it. After that the MG concentrated on the T37 that I had moved. This time after about a minute it brewed up spectacularly. I'll have to remember that tankettes cannot stand up to machine gun fire.

After that, though, the German MG didn't have a decent target. Every time he would spot something and begin shooting, the BT-7 and T26 nearby would open fire on him, sometimes with HE. He was ineffective after that.

The artillery that had fallen near the T38 was covering a wide area on my left. I still don't know what it was they were firing at, but I backed away my left infantry so they would be well out of the line of fire, but still covering those left woods. From then on about every four minutes there was an artillery barrage in that same empty area for about twenty seconds. I don't know what they were trying to accomplish there.

Soon I noticed a few men entering the woods on my right. I figured they had a surprise coming, since that's where my SMG company was hiding. But the surprise was unfortunately mine a minute later when a German flamethrower began spraying my nearest squad. He backed into the woods and support from his comrades kept the flamethrower at bay after that. I was lucky that it caused very few casualties.

About that time the audacious machine gunner in the center packed up his gun and began walking right toward my tanks, making no effort to hide himself. After a moment to express their disbelief, the BT-7 and T26 opened fire on him. They immobilized him and he finally surrendered.

That was the first signal that the battle was waning. Over the next five minutes firing died down to only an occasional shot taken at my pillbox. That continued for a couple minutes and we flushed out an enemy squad that had been hiding nearby. They tried to run for it but a little gunfire convinced them to surrender.

The result was a total victory and morale among my men is very high. They had survived their first battle and they fought well. I later learned that we were spared the worst because there was a lot of armor in the area (4 Panzer IIIs, 7 Panzer 38(T)s, and 3 StuGs plus a few armored cars) that couldn't reach us through the forest. I haven't told my men, though, they deserve to feel good about what they've done.