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Gaps in bocage: there have to be some, right?


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Define "right"; do you mean not right as in "in reality, there aren't likely to be fields without at least one proper entrance" or not right as in "the scenario designer can't possibly have intended to make fields without proper entrances"?

The designer may well have intended to do this, but in reality a field isn't much good if its owner can't get his livestock, equipment, and/or produce in and out of it. The majority of bocage-bounded fields I've seen in Normandy have one gated entrance; no more, no fewer. As to the man-sized gaps, these are few and far between in real bocage.

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There's a compromise to be made by map designers: Yes, fields should have at least one proper entrance/exit for the farmer. But does that mean the entrance/exit would have been 8 meters wide and permitted AFVs to go through them?

Much of Norman agriculture in this era was still horse-powered and the landscape reflected it. I can only speak for myself, but on my maps I make most entrances/exits with a gapped bocage object to reflect that it would have been too narrow for AFVs. I also make occasional fully open entrances/exits, usually in areas where larger fields and wheatfields suggest the farming may have been more mechanized.

I also make a lot of man-sized gaps at random spots. This is also a matter of debate. Some say the bocage, while thick and impassable to vehicles, had a fair amount of thin spots and gaps that people could wriggle through. Some might say this makes the game unrealistically easy, and neuters the bocage, but your enemy will also know where the gaps are too, and is likely to have them covered. So we've found that it doesn't really change things that much. You'll still need engineers to blast your own route, and to deal with mines. And if you don't make some bigger gaps yourself, you won't have any armored support to follow your footsoldiers.

Bottom line: It's definitely not realistic to have a solid matrix of fields, bounded by unbroken walls of bocage without gaps or openings.

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Of course, the question I'm looking for the answer to is "how big is a proper gap".

I thought, but maybe mistakenly, that every field should surely have a gap that a truck can go through.

Am I mistaken in thinking that trucks can't go through those narrow looking gaps? The ones that "a person or a horse" can go through? Surely farmers needed not only horses, but also ploughs to go into fields?

I'm happy to be educated otherwise ... it just seems wierd to me at the moment!

GaJ

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Of course, the question I'm looking for the answer to is "how big is a proper gap".

I thought, but maybe mistakenly, that every field should surely have a gap that a truck can go through.

Am I mistaken in thinking that trucks can't go through those narrow looking gaps? The ones that "a person or a horse" can go through? Surely farmers needed not only horses, but also ploughs to go into fields?

I'm happy to be educated otherwise ... it just seems wierd to me at the moment!

GaJ

If tanks could get into the bocage fields without demolition (which was difficult and dangerous to do) by the engineers, the bocage would not have been such a nightmare for the US army. Tanks were restricted to the road networks (where they were easily ambushed),

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If tanks could get into the bocage fields without demolition (which was difficult and dangerous to do) by the engineers, the bocage would not have been such a nightmare for the US army. Tanks were restricted to the road networks (where they were easily ambushed),

Agreed. So the real remaining question is whether (and how prevalent) the person-sized gaps in bocage should be. I don't think anyone here has the authoritative answer. Over many months I think I've read posts ranging from...

1. Those insisting that dismounted troops should be able to pass through bocage at will (perhaps with some delay for hacking/digging through),

2. Those saying it was impenetrable to infantry where it was solid, but it had frequent gaps and thin spots that a person could crawl through,

3.Those saying bocage was (or should be) like a green wall that only dynamite could breach.

I think there's never going to be any definitive formula. So it's a matter of finding "the sweet spot" between a tactically challenging green wall and meaningless swiss cheese. The best maps, IMHO, are the ones with the most variety. So a good mix of high bocage, low bocage, hedge, people-sized gaps and the occasional vehicle-sized gap seems best to me. The worst thing is to make it uniform and predictable.

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Of course, the question I'm looking for the answer to is "how big is a proper gap".

I thought, but maybe mistakenly, that every field should surely have a gap that a truck can go through.

Am I mistaken in thinking that trucks can't go through those narrow looking gaps? The ones that "a person or a horse" can go through? Surely farmers needed not only horses, but also ploughs to go into fields?

I'm happy to be educated otherwise ... it just seems wierd to me at the moment!

GaJ

As has been noted, Norman agriculture in the 1940s was not heavily mechanized, so trucks and tractors would have not been much of an issue. Horse-drawn carts and wagons, on the other hand, might have been, and certainly individual animals. More importantly, Norman fields, especially the small bocage-bounded ones, appear to have been most often used as pastures, not for cultivation; cultivated fields would have had less reason to be surrounded by an impenetrable hedgerow. This helps to explain the existence in some instances of seemingly meandering narrow bocage lanes (too narrow for vehicles) connecting fields with individual entrances/exits; likely they were essentially cattle chutes used to move the herd from field to field without possibility of escape.

If tanks could get into the bocage fields without demolition (which was difficult and dangerous to do) by the engineers, the bocage would not have been such a nightmare for the US army. Tanks were restricted to the road networks (where they were easily ambushed).

Remember that once in a field, the usual idea was to exit the other side, not to go back out the way you came. That requires two gaps, not one. Also, demolitions would have helped not only clear vegetation but to lower the steep berm at the base of much of the bocage. Also, many of the roads are sunken after centuries of use, and narrow enough to make turning difficult, plus (as noted above) many of the field entrances are not located on the roads themselves, but along narrow paths.

I do agree that there's a difference between good game balance and historical reality (which is hard to pin down authoritatively in any case). I tend to use bocage as a way to channel forces, or at least suggest particular avenues of advance or lines of defense; more or fewer gaps can have a huge effect on the speed of advance and the effectiveness of defense.

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Good comments here. The reason bocage exists is that the fields of upper Normandy are both exposed to bitter winds from the Atlantic and very rocky. So for the ancient subsistence farmers it made sense to create walls with the rocks. Over time these became overgrown, creating hedgerows. Then tall hedges and trees were planted up top to maximize windbreak value and compensate for the cutting down of the primeval forests.

Around the Renaissance, subsistence farming gave way to commerce and specialization. With demand for meat and dairy products soaring in the cities, the Norman seigneurs found it profitable to specialize in pasturage and orchards, leaving crop raising to the more fertile river plains (e.g. the British sector of Normandy). What crops you do see in the uplands are for local use, primarily as feed.

As to gaps, I feel Broadsword has it right -- nearly every wall, tall or short, should have at least one gap or Hedge segment to allow infantry to cross. I usually pair the Hedge segments with Mud tiles to reflect the delay and Bog risks.

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I think there's never going to be any definitive formula. So it's a matter of finding "the sweet spot" between a tactically challenging green wall and meaningless swiss cheese. The best maps, IMHO, are the ones with the most variety. So a good mix of high bocage, low bocage, hedge, people-sized gaps and the occasional vehicle-sized gap seems best to me. The worst thing is to make it uniform and predictable.

I think that the "sweet spot" formula is also highly dependent upon the resources provided to the defender (especially if the defender is the AI). Snipers, mines and TRPs are essential to a bocage defense, especially if the attacker has a wide variety of possible lines of attack. For example, any place where the Germans decided to defend would have anti-tank mines located where there were vehicle sized gaps. OTOH, if the area wasn't defensible with the available resources, the Germans wouldn't try to defend it.

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For example, any place where the Germans decided to defend would have anti-tank mines located where there were vehicle sized gaps. OTOH, if the area wasn't defensible with the available resources, the Germans wouldn't try to defend it.

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but do you or anyone know how AT and AP mines would have been assigned and how many at what levels of the German organization? For example, if you have a German battalion defending but it has no attached Pioneers, how many and what kinds of mines would it have, and how long would it take the battalion once it occupies a position to have these mines in place?

Thus far, my rule of thumb for setting up battles has been that units that have been in their same location 24 hours always start with foxholes for everybody (since soldiers always dug in any time they stopped, especially overnight), and TRPs for most of the obvious places that would have been pre-registered, like crossroads and chokepoints.

But I've been told that even plain infantry companies had at least Bouncing Bettys and schu mines that they could deploy without any Pioneers.

But how many per platoon or per company, I wonder? I reserve the more serious fortifications (bunkers, trenches, wire) for prepared strongpoints or areas where the Germans had ample time with Pioneers to prepare deeper defenses.

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This helps to explain the existence in some instances of seemingly meandering narrow bocage lanes (too narrow for vehicles) connecting fields with individual entrances/exits; likely they were essentially cattle chutes used to move the herd from field to field without possibility of escape.

Nice one! I've previously thought "how ridiculous" when I've bumped into bocage lined roads in maps that a truck can't go along. Now I will stop thinking that :

GaJ

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From the first hand accounts I've read, infantry should be able to find a way through most hedges. A lot of the battles are described as fighting for one hedge after another, with the Germans falling back each time. Now, if they had to bring their pioneers over to blow a gap for their infantry all the time (like in some CMBN scenarios), I don't think they would have lasted so long :P Another thing, if all the hedges are thin enough for infantry to see right through and fire weapons, MGs, bazookas, etc. through, shouldn't they be able to wiggle through there in a reasonable amount of time?

I think reality would be best reflected by at least a couple of infantry gaps in just about every hedgerow. You could decide that one was particularly thick and tall, so it has no gaps, if you wanted.

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From the first hand accounts I've read, infantry should be able to find a way through most hedges. A lot of the battles are described as fighting for one hedge after another, with the Germans falling back each time. Now, if they had to bring their pioneers over to blow a gap for their infantry all the time (like in some CMBN scenarios), I don't think they would have lasted so long :P Another thing, if all the hedges are thin enough for infantry to see right through and fire weapons, MGs, bazookas, etc. through, shouldn't they be able to wiggle through there in a reasonable amount of time?

That's one big non sequitur.

The stories you've read are about them fighting from one hedge to another. The stories you haven't read (by choice, or because they never got written) are about all the hedges they couldn't get through.

I can see and fire through a balckberry partch (for some definition of 'see' and 'fire'), but in terms of movement I'd certainly be looking for an alternate route. Firstly because it'd hurt like buggery. But it'd also be excruiciatingly slow, and it obscenely noisy.

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Another thing, if all the hedges are thin enough for infantry to see right through and fire weapons, MGs, bazookas, etc. through

Only the Germans could do this, because they had time to prepare their hedgerow defenses to create firing lanes. The US Infantry could not do this. They had to advance into the bocage field and fight it out from there. They also could not use their mortars because of the likelihood of the shells dropping into those fields (especially spotting rounds). They also couldn't spot the German defenders until they were right on top of them (i.e., grenade range or less). Tanks were also useless until they could get the tanks into the bocage field, or else give them an open field of fire at the hedgerow itself (using demolition, rhino attachment, etc.).

Needless to say, bocage fighting in CMBN tends to be less of a brutal challenge for the attacker than was true IRL. :)

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You guys make fine points. I don't want to get into a big debate about the finer details, since the war was different from one field to the next anyway. The game doesn't match reality, in multiple ways, but I don't think a 100% realistic game would be much fun. So, I will rephrase my statement: For the purpose of enoyable, playable scenarios for CMBN, I would prefer to see infantry gaps in most hedgerows. I don't think anyone likes the maps that force you into artificial chokepoints by making every hedgerow an impassable wall, and even worse, not giving you any charges to blast through it with.

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"Frequent gaps and thin spots that a person could crawl through" seems a bit overstated to me, but even if that were the case, consider the prospect of crawling through a particularly dense bit of vegetation atop a berm 3-6ft high under the watchful eye of a bunch of armed men intent on harming you. Not exactly a morale builder, IMHO. The gaps in the game are much, much easier to pass through quickly; using mud or marsh in conjunction with gaps is a reasonable way to slow down the passage, though it's probably still a bit too easy to get through.

For reference, a few shots I took last summer:

IMG_2661.jpg

IMG_2662.jpg

IMG_2664.jpg

IMG_2665.jpg

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They didn't call it "Hedgerow Hell" for nothing. The fact is that they did attack through hedges just like that, right into defended fields.

I guess the best solution would just be more options in the editor. Something like "small' gaps that infantry can pass through but at a much slower rate. They could be put in more frequently than the big gaps, but the downside of using them is tiring your guys out quickly.

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They didn't call it "Hedgerow Hell" for nothing. The fact is that they did attack through hedges just like that

No, the fact is they didn't. Otherwise it wouldn't have been called "Hedgerow Hell", nor commonly described as 'a maze'. Some places they could get though, a lot of places they couldn't. Increase the former by decreasing the later was the fundamental tactical problem facing the US Army for eight weeks, and the various ways and means they developed to do that form the basis of Doubler's thesis. If they could just filter through anywhere, then the US army must have been a bunch of muppets, and Doubler should hand back his qualification.

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There were just three ways that our infantry could get through the hedgerow country. They could walk down the road, which always makes the leading men feel practically naked (and they are). They could attempt to get through gaps in the corners of the hedgerows and crawl up along the row leading forward or rush through in a group and spread out in the field beyond. This was not a popular method. In the first place often there were no gaps just when yon wanted one most, and in the second place the Germans knew about them before we did and were usually prepared with machine-gun and machine-pistol reception committees. The third method was to rush a skirmish line over a hedgerow and then across the field. This could have been a fair method if there had been no hedgerows.

Usually we could not get through the hedge without hacking a way through. This of course took time, and a German machine gun can fire a lot of rounds in a very short time. Sometimes the hedges themselves were not thick. But it still took time for the infantryman to climb up the bank and scramble over, during which time he was a luscious target, and when he got over the Germans knew exactly where he was. All in all it was very discouraging to the men who had to go first. The farther to the rear one got the easier it all seemed.

Of course the Germans did not defend every hedgerow, but no one knew without stepping out into the spotlight which ones he did defend.

It was difficult to gain fire superiority when it was most needed. In the first place machine guns were almost useless in the attack....

....when our men appeared, laboriously working their way forward, the Germans could knock off the first one or two, cause the others to duck down behind the bank, and then call for his own mortar support. The German mortars were very, very efficient. By the time our men were ready to go after him, the German and his men and guns had obligingly retired to the next stop. If our men had rushed him instead of ducking down behind the bank, his machine gun or machine pistol would knock a number off. For our infantrymen, it was what you might call in baseball parlance, a fielder's choice.

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