Sgt Joch

Regarding whether soldiers swore or not in WW2, I will just quote the text of the speech General Patton gave to the Third Army on June 5th, 1944. Those who have seen the movie "Patton" will recognize it as the speech at the opening of the movie, although the movie version was sanitized. caution: strong language. http://www.5ad.org/Patton_speech.htm http://www.pattonhq.com/speech.html

Meyer was directly responsible for the massacre of canadian troops in normandy and was convicted after the war for it. Why he did not hang for what he did is beyond me. His book "Grenadier" was an attempt to whitewash his reputation. Most serious historians who have looked at it say a lot of his excuses were made up after the war to justify his actions. Having said that, he was a great combat leader.

I am aware of that order, which is also the only one that I am aware of on the NWE front from the Allied side. It was issued in reaction to Malmedy and rescinded a few weeks later after tempers cooled down. There is no evidence that it was ever acted upon.

Link? Note that much of what you find on the internet, even Wikipedia, about alleged Allied War Crimes is highly suspect. A lot of it is posted by neo-Nazis trying to justify Nazi policies. For example, the so called "Chenogne Massacre" of German POWs which has appeared on the net over the past few years as a counterpoint to Malmedy appears to be a made up event. No credible evidence that it ever occurred has been presented.

Interesting juxtaposition, but I don't see how you can equate the two. At Malmedy, and there actually 4-5 separate such incident, a total of 140 unarmed allied POWs were murdered in cold blood. In the other incident, which is actuaaly the British at El Alamein, a commander comes upon trenches full of supposedly sleeping, but presumably armed enemy troops on the battlefield. He has various options:1) leave and hope the germans dont pop up and gun down his men; 2) announce his presence and intention to take them prisoner, and hope they dont pop up and gun down his men; 3) take them prisoner and hope that while taking that noisy bunch back to his lines, other troops dont pop up and gun down his men, or 4)toss in grenades and neutralise the enemy. His actions were perfectly legitimate within the rules of war, those soldiers were legitimate military targets. There is a disturbing trend in popular culture, especially since the vietnam war, to try to create a moral equivalency between the actions of the Western Allies and those of Nazi Germany, to try to argue that our actions to win the war were as bad as theirs. But if you study history, real books written by serious historians, not what passes as history on the internet or movies, you realize that our actions, harsh as they may appear on the surface were not any where close to the evil perpetrated by the Nazis. To me the "banality of evil" is the 6 millions jews killed in extermination camps, the 2.5 million Soviet POWs killed in German POW camps in 1941-42, the killing of crippled/ retarded children in German orphanages, the medical experiments carried out on prisoners, the 1 million+ who were worked to death in the slave labour program, etc., etc. Each a horrible crime in and of itself, but there were so many crimes committed by the Nazis that they tend to get lost in the shuffle.

What I heard from relatives (or friends who had relatives) who did serve in the french-canadian regiments was that they just did not give the germans a chance to surrender. This was after it became common knowledge that the SS were shooting prisoners. However, I know from experience that Quebeckers never let facts get in the way of a good story.

To continue on the prisoner issue. You have to make distinction between soldiers killed while attempting to surrender and the deliberate murder of POWs. Surrendering has always been one of the most dangerous act for a soldier in any war. In the heat of action, the line between legitimate military target and POW is not always clear and mistakes or excesses were made by both sides. However the deliberate cold blooded murder of POWs who have been disarmed and are in custody is an entirely separate issue. All the documented cases on the western front are of German, especially SS troops, cold bloodedly murdering allied troops. The murder of close to 100 canadian soldiers by the 12th SS is one example. Canadian soldiers were murdered days or weeks after they had been captured, sometimes hundred of kilometers from the front. In the case of 26 canadian prisoners held at Chateau d'Audrieu, the order to execute them came directly from 12th SS officers. There is no evidence that allied officers ever ordered the murder of German POWs, only the SS sank to that level.

When dealing with the SS, it is difficult to separate the myth from the facts. The myth was that they were elite soldiers, superbly equipped who fought to the last man. The truth is actually more mondane. The strength of the SS divisions came more from the fact that they were usually at full TO&E when they entered combat whereas many Heer divisions, especially in 1944, were often severely understrength. However, this was more the case on the Ostfront, in Normandy many Heer divisions, such as Panzer Lehr and 21st Panzer were also at full strength on june 6. In terms of manpower however, there does not appear to have been an overall advantage. For example, if you look at the 12th SS Panzer, it had a cadre of officers and NCOs with extensive combat experience on the Ostfront, but the majority of the troops were raw recruits fresh out of basic training. In june, it was facing the 3rd Canadian infantry division/2nd armored brigade. None of the Canadians had any combat experience, but they had extensive training. In actual combat, however, the Canadians performed as well as the SS troops. Where the SS did shine was in their fanaticism. There are many documented cases of the 12th SS murdering canadian prisoners in cold blood. On the other hand, it is true that they surrendered less than regular line unit. The Canadians fought the 12th SS from june to august, but only captured 206 prisoners from that unit. In terms of CMBN, I see no reason to rate SS units higher than "regular", although they may merit a higher motivation rating.

I have been keeping an eye on WITE, reading reviews and AARs. It looks good, but massive. It requires a lot of micro-management which is what holds me back from a purchase. I have WITP:AE which is excellent, but I never really played it because of the micro-management required.

Knowing the effective range of weapons is good info to have and Marco's mod will be very popular. However, that info is not really that pertinent to a squad leader on a WW2 battlefield or in CMBN. 1. almost all infantry combat took place at less than 300 meters. Even snipers rarely shot past that distance, there was a study done recently which showed that the average distance at which U.S. police snipers fired their weapon over a 20 year period was around 93 meters; 2. the role of small arms on a battlefield is not to kill, but to suppress, therefore ROF is more important than range. Small arms caused relatively few infantry casualties, around 10-20%. Most infantry casualties were caused by artillery/mortar fire. In a German squad, the LMG was the most important weapon and everyone else was there basically to support/protect the LMG. In a U.S. squad, it was thought the semi-automatic Garand and the 1 BAR would provide the required ROF. When that turned out not to be the case, it became common practice for squads to acquire a 2nd or even 3rd BAR to supplement ROF. In fact, the move to 5.56 ammo in the 60s was motivated principally by this. 5.56 ammo weighs less than half of what 7.62 weighs, therefore soldiers can carry more and provide a higher ROF.

Dont get your panties in a knot, you're starting to sound like my wife. MikeyD did not call anyone a moron and has nothing to apologize for. As Marco Bergman posted above, the relevant info will be available in game.

To each his own I guess, I have been playing CMSF regularly since 2007 and find the UI easy to work with. In fact, when I fired up CMBN beta and realized BFC had changed the hotkeys, my first reaction was: WTF!?!, my second was to copy in the CMSF hotkeys. I like being able to use my left hand to control the viewpoints with the QWEASDZX keys, use the space bar to select orders 90%+ of the time and use the mouse in my right hand to select units and give movement/targeting orders.

If you play the game as a real commander would, namely take your time to scout out enemy positions, stay under cover, use artillery/AFV direct fire to root out enemy positions, you can advance with minimal casualties...however that does not make for an exciting video AAR since your troops will spend most of their time sitting around waiting.

Most mid-range setups should work fine. My system is no longer top of the line: Intel Q9550 (2.83 ghz), Gyga P35-DS3R, ATI radeon 4890, Dell 27" widescreen monitor @ 1920x1200, 8 g. DDR2 @800, 1tb WD Caviar black HD, X-Fi Fatal1ty, win 7 64bit ultimate. But I can all play CMSF, CMBN scenarios at best/best, 4xFSAA settings and very acceptable FPS. Obviously, it is possible to build a huge scenario which will bring any system to its knees, but a company size battle on a medium urban/Bocage map is no problem. I would say the most important component is the CPU, the more powerful the better.

Remember that in RL in WW2, many units would get lost and never get into contact with the enemy or would go to ground as soon as they contacted enemy troops, so even in a full scale assault only part of your forces would be involved. Here, the player is always operating in god mode so he can make sure all of his forces are in action and his pixeltruppens will never disobey an order to charge a MG nest, so obviously casualties will be heavier than in RL. However in an actual firefight, say two squads firing across a field from behind respective hedegerows, casualties are about what you would expect: much lead flying, lots of suppression, minimal casualties per turn. WW2 firearms were less deadly than modern weapons (shorter range, ROF) and firefights are more drawn out than in CMSF.

very nice scenario, nice map.

As in CMSF, you can make 4x4km maps and play on huge maps...assuming you like slideshows. However, playing in Bocage country, you don't need big maps. Most fields were less than 200x200 meters and visibility is limited.

Still playing CMSF here as well as CMBN. I like the modern setting as much as WW2. Both play fine on win 7 64 bit. The one casualty as actually been CMBB which I finally retired after finishing my last PBEM game.

55 here, started wargaming in 1971 (AH Bismarck), then moved on to Panzerblitz, Panzerleadr, Arab-Israeli war, Squad leader and pretty much every other game AH or SPI put out.

Tactically, even when the Germans had superiority, they did not succeed. A good example is the defence of Putot-en-bassin and Bretteville by the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade on june 7-10. They were attacked by the 12th SS Panzer division, but by employing proper defensive positions backed up by AT guns and pre-registered artillery, the 7th Bde stopped all the attacks cold. The 12th commander, Kurt Meyer, later admitted he had underestimated the canadians, employing tactics that had worked on the Ostfront (basically charging his tanks at the canadian positions) but that were useless against well trained troops.

I designed the scenario and even I wonder. It is supposed to be difficult and is based on some RL battles between the Syrian SF and the IDF in 82. The Syrians have a variety of plans and setups, but will not maneuver once in place. The Marines are moving through the valley not necessarily expecting resistance. The best approach appears to be to probe and reccon the Red forces. Once you know where they are, concentrate on a flank and try to destroy their forces piecemeal. The Marines have enough forces to do the job, but not if you go in piecemeal. Btw, watch out for the minefields.

Looking forward to it. I thoroughly enjoyed your Stalingrad operations for CMBB and the Anzio op for CMAK.

I played many CMSF PBEM games, almost all in Iron mode. In a PBEM game, Iron is not more difficult than Elite, but knowing what each unit can see does make you aware of any "blind spots".

I would just say "Canadian Army and friends" since the Canadians did all the real fighting against the SS anyway.

There. Fixed that for you.