Jaeger Jonzo

I remember reading a German vets account on the ost front who sat in his foxhole watching a Luftwaffe field division take over their forward positions. He marvelled at their immaculate uniforms and weapons including shiny new mg42's and high level of equipment. The same night the wily Russian foes launched a sneaky night assault and completely over ran the LF positions capturing all the shiny equipment and turning it on the now hard pressed wehrmacht unit who were attempting to stabilise the hole in the line. Amongst other expletives he cursed them as chocolate soldiers and a waste of good manpower.

liking that first picture, great looking work

Fantastic work again Vein, already got your Normandy uniforms and will definitely grab these too.

Excellent mod, thanks for sharing. Love the improved artillery rounds and tank clatter.

Great work vein, will definitely download! Many thanks for your efforts.

Great stuff Jon, hopefully you can inspire a few more of us to create scenarios. I have long wanted to create them based on many great encounters i continually read about in ww2 books/unit histories but real life lack of spare time never allows. I am really surprised at the lack of scenarios written for CMBN/FI and assumed it must be level of complexity, compared to the hundreds made for Cmx1 sims? one other small complaint, can we keep the posts on topic rather than waffling about gin etc? These threads get big enough to wade through as it is.

Great work tank hunter, be great to have an op layer to give more meaning to the cm fights, just what this great sim needs.

'Lost Evidence' on H2 channel this weekend is on Sicily in '43, half the program covers the primosole bridge with veteran interviews and footage from the DLI and FJ. Interestingly lots of the troops on both sides are in tropical shorts, including the fallschirmjager.

Ps ch4 tv are doing 'live' updates throughout the day and another hour long show tonight. I'm not getting much work done today! The tweets are addictive like a live commentary as the guys go in.

This is amazing stuff, what a great concept to use the live timeline and a modern media like Twitter. It's gripping stuff reading the live tweets as each character goes into battle. I am following a British para, a royal marine commando and a french commando. There is also a US 1sr infantryman at Omaha and a midget sub commander to follow, which I will when I find their names out. Check it out at @dday7 Go to channel 4' s dday7 website to follow the timeline and battlemaps as well as a lot of great video and photos.

found some good maps (just in case anyone is feeling tempted to create this campaign ;-) )

The quality of these is excellent, can't wait to get them in game. Great work vein.

Thanks for the heads up on the Lions book, will pass on that one. Micheal, again, can only say what I read, the divisional commander thought the information very important and relevant to his dispositions over the following days so can only deduce there was plenty of useful intel contained in the captured documents, or why mention it? Surely it be would easier for him to say he out guessed or out smarted the landing forces for 2-3 days?

Agree with most of that One set of orders was allegedly found on a smashed beach masters boat that drifted in near the shore on the tide. Other set was a briefcase handcuffed to an American officer killed in a German counterattack to retake a village (think it was Coleville,which changed hands several times). Apparently both sets of orders were forwarded on to higher HQ and were initially dismissed as a ruse. However general Kraiss of 352nd took copies of useful docs before he sent them on and used them for his own deployments to (alleged) great effect. The docs contained operational objective targets and timescales, divisional boundaries & reinforcement/resupply timetables from what I can gather. I'm just relating what's in the book, people can make their own minds up on its authenticity or intention. Good book though

As an aside, has anyone read 'Lions of Carentan' about the 6th FJ Regt.? Looked an interesting read and may get it sometime in the future. I like reading books from both sides to fill in the picture.

Will look forward to you re-releasing the excellent campaign. I thoroughly enjoyed it the first time and since then have read a couple of books on this operation to set the scene and would also like to think I've improved at the tactical level...through the school of hard knocks!

Understand what you are saying Jon. But what I would say, is that the book in no way gives off a vibe of glory or gloating, more of a severely pressed and brow beaten formation operating as best they could under extreme circumstances and counting themselves very lucky to be alive at the end of each encounter. It doesn't shirk at mention of any individual units failing in their actions or having to retreat etc. and the vets accounts appear very honest and frank. Also, The two incidents of captured orders are explained and seem quite realistic situations to me. The lads look so young in the photos, baby faced 17yr olds but backed up by a large quota of experienced Ost front nco's and officers.

Reading further, it seems some of the bunkers on Omaha beach were still in German hands on the 8th June! They had lost radio contact but were on orders to fight and harass the landings and re supply until they ran out of ammunition. What's more amazing, the 352nd did not switch from offensive to defensive mode until the night of the 8th. By then they had suffered 2000 casualties and for the most part had not slept or eaten since the night of the 5th. Those young grenadiers had amazing endurance. The 352nd also captured 2 full sets of operational orders for the US V corps within 24 hours and were able to deploy certain units to known axis of advance of the allied units and know inter divisional boundaries etc. open radio intercepts often forewarned them when a certain village or woods was about to be attacked from air or arty and they would quickly evacuate and then move back in once the attack was over. The arty reg was firing over open sights at British armour and the Stug Btn was down to 6 stugs that accounted for 40 enemy Afvs on the 8th, 15 of them tanks, the rest armoured cars and half tracks.

Another thing that struck me in the book was just how tough some of the bunkers must have been to hold out until the 7th with all that firepower against them. One radioed back to say it had 6 tanks and a company of infantry stalled before it and had withstood all day. And yet many of the 352nd were only in wooden fortifications, probably the non survivors of the day.

Exactly that Micheal, smoke and mirrors I guess. If green troops see several mgs blazing away they are likely to stall. Am sure the Germans wished they had ample real bullets but by days end they were running very low. The book ably explains the reason for the 352nd running low on ammo. It was on immediate orders to be able to deploy anywhere in France at a moments notice and therefore never had normal stockpiles stored nearby. It's arty batteries were likewise on a 3 round per gun ration by the night of the 6th. Shocking when compared to the might of the fleet and forces arrayed against them!

John, your surprise matches that of the mg gunner when he was given them! At first he refused to carry them until the QM explained the tactic for their use. Another US infantrymans quote in the book mentions also finding an abandoned mg pit outside Coleville with the wooden ammo in belts. Apparently these wooden rounds were the German equivalent of blanks and burned off before hitting anything, so not the same as any nasty Japanese invention. SB, I like the sound of having an op layer for cmbn battles, its something that's just missing for me in my cm battles. The individual battles are great but be nice to know they are affecting a bigger picture, hence why I prefer campaigns over scenarios at the least. I do hope someone develops a campaign/operational layer to this great sim. Some guys were working on using the Panzer Campaigns series in conjunction with cmbn, not sure what's happened to that?

I played it real time for my win. Split the squads and put 2 Bren teams in the building along with the mortar team to duke it out with the enemy on the hill. Sneaked an Fo and Bren team outside to put fire on the station from some shell holes near the tracks. Whilst the station defenders were suppressed I ran two tommy gun squads upto it and sneaked them into the first unit where they cut down several defenders (don't try this with rifleman!) they kept the remaining Jerries bottled up in the last building whilst I moved up some flanking riflemen and the Piat team to blast that last building. Job done at the station! Meanwhile the farm defenders had taken casualties or were suppressed enough to then flank them on both sides of the hill and close for the kill.

Severloh is mentioned a few times in the book, obviously one of the surviving veterans who contributed to it. Mind you, another bunker mg42 gunner mentions standing in a pile of 15,000 expended rounds! Their entire ammo quota. He put together a clip of the remaining 62 rounds to use in their escape from the bunker with two other comrades.

Yes have seen that documentary on the military history channel, again a harrowing and yet fascinating program. They reunite the mg gunner with a US vet from the landings, very poignant. I can't recommend this book enough, almost every other page has startling revelations and insights, like German mg gunners being issued with wooden training 'blank' ammo as their real ammo ran low. They quickly realised green US troops would go to ground as soon as an mg let rip, allowing the Germans to retreat or redeploy without wasting real ammo! Also many bunkers on the beaches held out into the following day! The 352nd also launched night attacks against the beaches on the night of the invasion day, not to mention them defending against elements of 4 different divisions! The 352's stug abt. Launched counterattacks against the British 50th and US divisions in the early morning of the 7th, supported by inf companies...I am amazed they had any fight left in them after a day and night of constant naval and air battering. Veterans tell of Jabos hunting individual runners. Some runners were even on horseback! Another great chapter in the book has the radio transcripts from both sides time coordinated and it gives a great picture of how events were unfolding on the day of he invasion. Another veteran tells of Ost units murdering their German officer and comrades in a neighbouring bunker so as to surrender, but an incensed obergefreiter took retribution in his own hands and grenaded them inside it! The US 1st and 29th were surely very unlucky to be confronted by a veteran infantry division stationed right on their landing sector, poor guys. It could have been even worse for them if the British 50th division didn't heavily attack westward from their own beachhead and taking a lot of pressure off by hitting the 352nds flank, who in turn counter attacked them to prevent the capture of Bayeux instead of assaulting the US beaches. Sburke, is there a 352nd campaign available then? I would love to fight that one out whilst reading this book. Will try out that scenario in your sig when I get a chance. This book alone could create a fascinating array of scenarios! I had never heard or seen of this book and spotted it by chance in my local library! The only thing it lacks is maps, which often happens in good ww2 books, and I would recommend having a map of the invasion sector whilst reading as its great to cross refer as individual actions and villages are mentioned for the ebb and flow of combat.

Enjoyed reading that, thanks for sharing the links.