The Road to Bremen - Table 1, Game 1

Jamie and I have been working over the last few weeks towards being able to play The Road to Bremen - a Chain of Command mini-campaign set in northwest German during the last weeks of World War Two.  The plan is to play on Monday evenings while the lady of the house is out at her community choir.

Last night we played the first action, in which Lieutenant Tom "Pudding" Lane's platoon attacked a German village surrounded by low-lying, boggy fields.  On all of the maps in this campaign, the British will be attacking from the left.  Those grey-brown fields are likely to cause any vehicle crossing them to bog down.

As both the British player and the umpire, I know more than I should about the German options but for any given scenario I only know what broad kind of unit I am to face.  In this case it was an understrength Volkssturm platoon.  What, if anything, they would be reinforced with was a mystery.

We've switched the campaign around slightly because my late war British collection is focussed on 11th Armoured Division so Shermans and Kangaroos were replaced by Comets and halftracks in my reinforcement charts.  I rolled the maximum level of support and took a Comet tank, a mortar battery, a medical orderly, and, I think, the battalion adjutant.

The patrol phase went reasonably well and I managed to get a jump off point into the garden behind the thatched cottage, one in the ploughed field quite high up the left side of the table and a third by the road leading onto the table from my edge.  Jamie had one behind each of the further houses and his third on his baseline.

With a significant advantage in Force Morale (11 to 8) Jamie went first and deployed a squad in the house at the back of the village to the right of the road (from a British point of view).  This was an advantageous position because the angle of the road meant the apothecary’s shop was in the way. Any British armour moving up the road would be unable to target them without venturing into the buggy fields.

As my first squad moved forward from the jump-off point on the left side of the table, I used the mortar observer and the 2” light mortar team to begin blocking Jamie’s line of sight to my deployment areas.

Jamie sat on his hands and left me to it.

It quickly became clear that the forward observer, deployed from the left flank jump off point, was in a position from which he’d struggle to put the barrage anywhere other than right at the front of the village.   The 2” mortar team, meanwhile, were in a position on the road from which they could only really add smoke to an area that would already be blocked by the barrage.  Clearly I hadn’t thought this through at all.

Never mind, I could get another section into action and I did so, deploying it again from the left hand JoP.  I could have put a section into the thatched cottage but that would have put it into a straight firefight with the Volkssturm squad in the the house over the road.  Experience has shown that going up against a squad with an MG42 when you only have a Bren is not a great idea.

I also got the mortars firing and brought down a nicely positioned barrage on the village.  in the picture below you can see the British first and second sections moving up from the left-hand Jump-off Point.  A German squad is moving around the back of the village to oppose them.

I’d just got the mortars firing, when Jamie rolled three sixes and ended the turn.

By this time my first section was on the edge of the village.  It didn’t look safe to start trying to bring down another barrage in the cramped quarters of the village.

The 2” mortar was available, though, so I should be able to bring down one of the team’s precious HE rounds against the Germans moving against me.  Except of course I rolled snake-eyes and the 2” was out of ammo!

So I tried pushing forward with the second section (and eventually the third) but the dice weren't kind and I found it very hard to coordinate the advance.  My first squad was pinned and the close terrain made it hard to find a decent way to concentrate fire on the Germans.

At this point I made the latest in string of bad decisions.  I brought on my Comet tank.

With one German squad hiding in a building and the other in the open but both on the opposite side of the village, the tank wasn't exactly able to influence matters.  My continued ability to throw nothing but fours and fives meant that I was building up Chain of Command points but I wasn't getting the Comet into action.

Evventually, however, a couple of phases with three rolled allowed me to bring the tank into a position where it could fire (to no great effect) on the Germans in the village.

Of course that put it within Panzerfaust range. It now emerged that Jamie had chosen the Panzerfaust dump as his only support option on this table.

A couple of brave men ran out into the street and Jamie rolled an adequate number of fives and sixes. My saves were nowhere near enough and the tank was knocked out.  The only slight chink of daylight was that the tank didn't explode so I didn't lose the Junior Leader as well as the support element.

However, with time ticking on and with my force morale down to 4 against Jamie's eleven (I'd earlier had a leader slightly wounded and Bren wiped out by MG42 fire under the control of Jamie's platoon commander) I decided to withdraw and try again another day.

So first blood to the Germans.  Given the difference in force morale, all of their casualties will be back in the next action while the British will be down seven men!  The only advantage I have is that I now know what I'm facing when we fight this action again.

In retrospect, I perhaps should have made the Volkssturm Green troops, which would have given me a better chance in a straight firefight.  On the other hand I realised afterwards that the British don't get the mortar battery the first time a table is played (not that it helped me at all).

Oh and finally, the big error on my part.  I had a full Chain of Command dice at the end; I should have used it to interrupt and machine-gun the two guys who ran out in front of my tank!

The British CO's opinion is -1 and the men are equally unhappy with Lieutenant Lane's performance so far.