Christian Knudsen

Since I started reading JasonC's posts, over the last 15 years or so, (I've been lurking here a long time, I guess) he has pretty unwaveringly (and at times, to be fair, somewhat brusquely) advocated an attritionist stance, both operationally and tactically.  As an attritionist, he argues that efforts that do not aim to reduce enemy fighting power are at best an inefficient way of winning, and at worst a waste of resources. 
 
Therefore he argues that terrain has no value, unless it imparts an edge when it comes to destroying enemy power.  A bridge that crosses a major river is just a bridge.  A bridge that is the only supply route for an enemy formation, the destruction of which would leave them unsupplied and cut off, is a valuable target.  The minute the enemy finds another MSR, that bridge is less important.
 
So his position is that any piece of terrain has only relative value tied to its ability to affect the reduction of enemy fighting power.  Great, sounds good.
 
But the current question (and we are far from German tactical doctrine now), has become one of scenario design.  As I understand it, JasonC is basically saying that a scenario designer who ties the balance of victory to terrain locations is handcuffing the player by forcing them to go after ground, not go after the enemy.
 
Now I'm not knocking scenario designers - I've tried designing some, and I know it's really really difficult to do, much less well.  My hat goes off to anyone who gets one finished, frankly.  But I see his point about scenarios that overvalue victory locations.  Why do I have to put boots in that village when I can just drive around it because I have killed off everything outside of it, and it is now totally isolated, all the ground around dominated by my fire?  The enemy there is powerless, and I can kill him whenever I want, because he can't move without being blown to smithereens.  Yet achieving this, I have lost the CM scenario, because I have not physically planted my flag on the enemy strongpoint, as it were.
 
I can, however, see two situations where one would design a scenario with a patch of ground that absolutely must be taken.  The first is that you as the scenario designer provide a reason that makes that village an important piece of terrain.  Maybe it is the only good option for an MSR for forces advancing past it, or it has an important bridge crossing that you need to use.  Maybe the important VP location is the hill that allows your FO to see the the road going through the village!  The other reason is to create a scenario in which you have to take that village because your commander thinks that ground has intrinsic value in and of itself, and you are just the poor schlep following orders!  But even then, I think that victory should not be solely or largely dependant on holding that ground at the end of the scenario, in terms of victory points.  If all the defenders are dead or shattered, they will not hold that village for much longer.
 
As a final point, one of the big reasons I am hopeful that choppinit's operational layer project succeeds is to reduce that sort of terrain VP based mentality.  One almost never sees defenders withdraw in a CM scenario.  They stand to the point that they break or die, and it is rare that a scenario awards a majority of points for defender force preservation.  I realise that it is very hard to do from a design and balance standpoint, so there is that.  But in a dynamic campaign, force preservation can become huge, and the idea of living to fight another day can have some real merit, so long as the campaign itself is well designed.  Of course, I'm sure we will see the same arguments repeated then, with "campaign" substituted for "scenario".  I look forward to it!
 
 

Lt Bull, I actually disagree with your premise that these types of "looping" was not that common, but with a couple of provisos, which I will address.
 
The amount to which a unit is "dug in" is directly a function of time spent on position.  And there were periods, especially when the Amis were busy clearing Cherbourg, that the Germans had plenty of time to improve positions, as First Army did not really turn south in any strength until the first weeks of July, giving German units almost a month to prepare positions in some cases. 
 
When a unit occupies a defensive position, there is always a priority of work that goes on.  This usually looks something like this:
1.  Deploy OPs/LPs
2.  Dig slit trenches - these are usually just big enough to lie in and still below the plane of the ground, and can be dug in a very short time.  In this case, I agree with you that it would have made sense to start with the ditches at the ends of the fields, assuming these were not waterlogged.
3.  Prepare range cards.
4.  Dig fighting trenches.
5.  Lay comms wire all over the bloody place.
6.  Begin constructing defensive obstacles according to the obstacle plan.
7.  Dig overhead protection and shelters.
8.  Dig depth/fallback positions
9.  Dig communications trenches between positions.
 
Keep in mind that this is off the top of my head, I am probably missing stuff, and things like defensive fire pre-registrations for direct and indirect fires would be started early and continue throughout, in increasing complexity as secondary killzones are covered.
 
The point I am trying to make is that the development of a position is a very planned and organized affair that is done to a timetable - for instance I expect that fighting trenches will be complete and overhead protection started no later than six hours of troops arriving on the position.  After a month, I would expect that fighting positions, obstacles, shelters and comms trenches would be extensive, which is what we see on Hill 192, and, I would expect that to be repeated in any position that was occupied for any length of time.  In fact, a competent unit should have a fully developed position, with strong fighting positions, some fallbacks, and a developing obstacle network, after only a few days on position, with this time getting shorter the further away from the enemy the unit is. 
 
So we can see that time is less of a factor than one might think.  Of course a unit might lack some sorts of defensive stores like wire and mines, which would lessen the obstacle plan.  But digging can be completed very quickly, even while manning the MLR, maintaining outposts, and conducting standard administration like eating and maybe even sleeping once in a blue moon.
 
Your main argument against "looping" and digging "into" the bocage (where possible, of course), seems to be that it was too hard, what with all the rocks and roots and such.  But there are several advantages to doing it that make the effort really worthwhile for the defender versus fighting from the top of the embankment.  First is that you have more overhead protection, thus removing the need to jump into a separate foxhole, from which you can't put fire into the adjacent field.  Second, you are much harder to spot, as you can camouflage your firing slit quite easily.  Just these two factors increase survivability quite a bit.  So why would you not, especially if you had time to do so?   It's what I would have done, and I value my skin quite highly.
 
And to those who object that the firing slit would have restricted field of view too much, this actually is a bonus.  You dig the slit just wide enough to cover the arcs of responsibility for that weapon system, and trust your flanks to your comrades.  While it is good to be able to see, whatever you can see can potentially see you too, which is why you never occupy a position that has longer lines of sight than you can engage with your own weapons systems, and why reverse slope positions are so valued.
 
Anyways, I want to stress that the level of fortification encountered was largely a function of how long the defender had to prepare, and there were plenty of occasions where the defenders did not have time to do much more than dig a few foxholes behind the embankment and then fight from the top.  But digging in does not take long at all, especially when you are motivated to stay alive, and the advantages to digging IN to the embankment far outweighed the disadvantages.

"During the period 1-10 July plans were made for-the capture of Hill 192. Aerial photos showed us that the enemy had certainly transformed the hill into a major strong point. Deep communication trenches were observed behind most of the larger hedgerows, but due to good camouflage and well concealed positions the exact location sof firing points, machine gun and mortar positions, and anti-tank positions could not be determined. We found out after the hill's capture that some german dugouts were as deep as twelve feet with underground passageways to concealed, firing positions within the hedgerows. The firing slits from these firing positions were covered by vines growing out of the hedgerows. Machine guns were located under hedgerows at junctions in order to cover all possible approaches."
 
This is from a paper written in 1947 by the CO of 1 Bn, 38 IR, 2nd Div, available at http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/p124201coll2/id/429/rec/1.
 
""I snapped the turret to the left and put an HE on delay into the corner of the hedge.  It passed through the bank and exploded in the middle of a machine-gun nest.  The Jerry gun that had been pointed through a small slot on the bottom of the hedge fired no more."
 
Taken from:  Yeide, Harry.  The Infantry's Armour:  The U.S. Army's Separate Tank Battalions in World War II, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, 2010, Pg 165
 
There is also a great picture of a German MG position dug INTO the embankment on pg 81 of the War Department's Historical Division's St. Lo, published in 1947, and available at https://archive.org/stream/St-Lo#page/n89/mode/2up. Too lazy to try and post it, though.  Also some good ones on pgs 83-84.
 
I'm not saying that all hedgerow positions were so constructed, but certainly some were. 
 
And as for the power of the entrenching tool, I was in the infantry for over 15 years, and have dug many a hole, all too often in rocky and root-filled ground.  Given several days, I could certainly dig at a bare minimum a fire position (and living quarters, and communication trenches), in thick embankment,  As c3k mentioned, I too would be more than happy to demonstrate!
 
But again, it is sort of a moot point, as the engine will currently not allow us to co-locate fortifications and linear features.  So how do we, in the game, give hedgerow defenders the protection from small arms that they seemed to enjoy, to the degree that the winning formulas devised for cracking such defences ALL involved large amounts of HE, both direct and indirect?