Digging in

[JoMac]

Yes, actually, going to agree with you on many aspects of your statement in that there is a distinction between Quick and Longterm Demos.

CM does have that one-size fits all abstraction, and I can live with that.

[Warts 'n' all]

I agree that there are plenty of references in books about Normandy to British troops "digging-in" fairly quickly. But, there are also loads of references to them "stopping for tea", most notably, just up the road from Villiers-Bocage. So perhaps we ought to be careful about what we wish for.

Yes, the Germans were very adept at counter-attacking quickly. But CM has always been about the "battle" going on at the moment, whether it be 15, 30, 45 minutes, or a couple of hours. So any counter-attack would be in another battle. I think that we have to take it as read that troops "dig-in" after they have reached the objectives set in a particular battle.

Of course, if at some time in the future BFC reintroduce the original style of "Operations" then the ability to prepare field fortifications during each and every set-up phase would make sense.

[Atago]

A happy medium may be that after not moving for a set amount of time the infantry is considered to have more cover (sort of partially dug in). You would not necessarily need to indicate that by changing terrain as it's not fox holes with sandbags and such as the game now displays. More cover than before, maybe a bit more concealment too.

[Michael Emrys]

I do agree, though, that use of demo charges to breach bocage is much to fast and easy in CMBN; breaching an earthen embankment like bocage with a demo charge is actually fairly difficult and takes a fair amount of prep. At the least, it should take much longer.

Yes, it is too fast. But I'd be willing to bet that you are already aware of one technique that got worked out that speeded the process up by about an order of magnitude. The Americans would take a tank and weld two pieces of pipe to the front. The tank would drive into the hedgerow with the pipes penetrating the soil, then reverse back taking two plugs of soil with it. Explosives could be placed in the resulting holes, tamped, and you were good to go. It still wasn't nearly as fast as we get in CM, but it did avoid the laborious process of digging in by hand, possibly while the Germans are dropping mortar bombs on the location.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

...and bangalores were certainly used in the ETO.

Used in fact on the Omaha beachhead. So yeah, from day one.

Michael

[postfux123]

I think that the time limit is already some sort of abstraction for the sake of playability. 40 min to decide success or defeat seems to be a very desperate situation. Also 2 hours for some bigger operation isnt too much time.

The result of this is that assaults have to be if not rushed than at least executed very efficient without unnecessary pause.

I am happy with the demolition charges as it gives some tactically flexibility many maps would be very predictable without. You are surely right it is not historically correct but neither is pitching two equal forces in a fight to the last man except on rare occasion.

It would seem alright for me if infantry could dig cover in lets say twenty minutes beeing highly visible doing it and exhausted afterwards. I just dont think that would be a great improvement to the game.

Automatic digging in would annoy me for some reason. Changing position still is the best way to avoid indirect fire on the CM scale.

[Jaeger Jonzo]

Guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one then

To me it's always felt tactically wrong to not be able to consolidate a position. Play a large map with several companies in command and arty present on both sides and you might feel similar. It will not apply to your regular 30-40 minute slugfest but as soon as larger distances and bigger forces are involved the situation tends to require some way of being able to defend a position, rather than hiding in some trees.

As for Brits stopping for tea in a battle, think that's mostly Hollywood directors taking the usual cheap shot, bit like the scene in bridge too far where the US airborne implore the Brit armour to steam down the single road. I read a very different reason from a British tank officer in his memoir.

[Sgt Joch]

I do agree, though, that use of demo charges to breach bocage is much to fast and easy in CMBN; breaching an earthen embankment like bocage with a demo charge is actually fairly difficult and takes a fair amount of prep. At the least, it should take much longer.

True, the time delay is too short.

However, if you read Doubler, "Busting the Bocage", p.32, one of the technique which seems to have been fairly standard was to place 2 x 24lb demo charges 8 feet apart and 18" off the ground directly on the offending shrubbery. That blew a hole which was generally big enough to allow a Sherman to pass. No mention of the time required, but it does not sound very time consuming since no digging is involved.

[Wicky]

Re. Brits and their afternoon tea breaks

Stephen Ambrose (in his book 'Pegasus Bridge) recounts an interesting tale from the desert war.

In North Africa, Hans von Luck was fighting in the only war he ever enjoyed. He commanded the armed reconaissance battalion on Rommel’s extreme right (southern) flank. He thus enjoyed a certain independence, as did his British opposite number. The two commanding officers agreed to fight a civilised war. Every day at five p.m. the war shut down, the British to brew up their tea, the Germans their coffee. At about quarter past five, von Luck and the British commander would communicate over the radio. “Well,” von Luck might say, “we captured so-and-so today and he’s fine and he sends his love to his mother, tell her not to worry.” Once von Luck learned that the British had received a month’s supply of cigarettes. He offered to trade a captured officer – who happened to be the heir to the Players cigarette fortune – for one million cigarettes. The British countered with an offer of 600,000. Done, said von Luck. But the Players heir was outraged. He said the ransom was insufficient. He insisted he was worth the million and refused to be exchanged.

One evening, an excited corporal reported that he had just stolen a British truck jammed with tinned meat and other delicacies. Von Luck looked at his watch – it was past six p.m. – and told the corporal he would have to take it back, as he had captured it after five p.m. The corporal protested that this was war and anyway the troops were already gathering in the goods from the truck. Von Luck called Rommel, his mentor in military academy. He said he was suspicious of British moves further south and thought he ought to go out on a two-day reconaissance. Could another battalion take his place for that time? Rommel agreed. The new battalion arrived in the morning. That night at five thirty p.m., just as von Luck had anticipated, the British stole two supply trucks.

[YankeeDog]

True, the time delay is too short.

However, if you read Doubler, "Busting the Bocage", p.32, one of the technique which seems to have been fairly standard was to place 2 x 24lb demo charges 8 feet apart and 18" off the ground directly on the offending shrubbery. That blew a hole which was generally big enough to allow a Sherman to pass. No mention of the time required, but it does not sound very time consuming since no digging is involved.

Yes; I have read that passage and found it quite curious as it goes against a lot of other things I have read regarding bocage and breaching charges in general.

2x 24 lb. charges set above the ground at an 8 ft interval will certainly create a nice, large gap in the shrubbery and trees on top of the bocage, but relatively small charges detonated above the ground like that won't really do anything to the earth & stone embankment. A charge really has to be buried in the ground in order to move earth.

And from what I've read, the trees & bushes were only part of the problem for vehicles crossing bocage -- the embankment of the bocage was often steep enough that vehicles had trouble getting over it without hanging up.

My SWAG is that the above-ground charge technique described in Doubler is legitimate, but could actually only be used where the embankment was relatively low and/or not as steep; in these areas, removing the trees and heavier bushes on top was probably enough for a tank to get through. But in places where the embankment was higher and/or steeper, buried charges probably had to be used to excavate the top of the embankment and create a breach that a vehicle could reliably cross. The latter would, of course, require much more prep work.

Buried charges were definitely used at times -- see Emrys' description of the so-called "Salad Fork" device above, which was specifically developed to speed up the time it took to set buried charges into the bocage.

This gets into another issue, which is that bocage in CMBN is a relatively uniform thing. There is some variation -- in the game you can have low bocage, high bocage, and small and large gaps. But in actual fact, it there would probably be much wider variance. In areas where the bocage was relatively low and eask, it might well be fairly easily breached with a small, quickly set charge. Other areas of the bocage might be very strong indeed and require large, buried charges to breach.

[Warts 'n' all]

As for Brits stopping for tea in a battle, think that's mostly Hollywood directors taking the usual cheap shot, bit like the scene in bridge too far where the US airborne implore the Brit armour to steam down the single road. I read a very different reason from a British tank officer in his memoir.

Don't worry I would never confuse Hollywood's A Bridge Too Far with history. That is why I cited the example of the British stopping for tea on the road out of Villers-Bocage. Just before Wittmann gave them a hand with their "Brewing up".

[Michael Emrys]

To me it's always felt tactically wrong to not be able to consolidate a position. Play a large map with several companies in command and arty present on both sides and you might feel similar. It will not apply to your regular 30-40 minute slugfest but as soon as larger distances and bigger forces are involved the situation tends to require some way of being able to defend a position, rather than hiding in some trees.

Okay, I can understand that. The problem is that CM is probably built on the wrong scale for that. You need a game that is modeled on a scale one or two levels higher than CM. Say, instead of the squad as the basic unit with individual men represented, the company would be the basic unit with squads represented. Instead of one minute turns, turns would now be 15-20 minutes or something like that. Instead of 8m ASs, the terrain would now be broken down into 50m squares or hexes or whatever. Then the kind of longer term tactics that you are talking about would fall naturally into place. Of course you'd lose a lot of the detail that gives CM its character. It would be a very different kind of game. Battles instead of lasting from half an hour to two hours would now run 6-12 hours, which I daresay would be more in line with the kinds of narratives with which you seem to be familiar.

Michael

[Erwin]

The OP brings up a valid point, but as been mentioned in the past being that Combat Mission is not really war and you don't face the real dangers of real war, players are far more aggressive than they would be in real life and therefore battles suffer a compression effect.

In real life I could see digging in happen and a few hours if not more pass before the next hedgerow taken, but in CM it doesn't work that way.

Designers could make this more like RL by making friendly casualties have larger penalties - rather like we often saw in CMSF scenarios. If a player could more easily lose a game cos he was profligate with his men's lives, it would probably make CM2 battles more realistic.

And re Michael's good point about CM scale. That is the reason many of us still play and enjoy CM1 as it has a different feel to it... being less "bitty" and not requiring as much micro-management as CM2 - thus enabling much larger but very playable scenarios.

[JonS]

there are also loads of references to [british troops] "stopping for tea"' date= most notably, just up the road from Villiers-Bocage. So perhaps we ought to be careful about what we wish for.

I recall reading an account of one of the NWE airborne ops, probably Arnhem. The scene is a Horsa glider under tow, packed with a jeep and trailer, loaded with explosives and ammunition. The glider copilot looks back to check on his passengers and is more than a little alarmed to see that they've set up their petrol cooker on top of the explosives and are brewing up. He reports this with some agitation to the pilot, who calmly replies something along the lines of "Oh, excellent. Make sure they pass us a mug too."

I really don't see what the problem with brewing up is. Hot drinks are excellent for morale*, and if you're stopped anyway, why not brew up? I think that's the problem. It always gets reported as 'the unit stopped to brew up', instead of 'men in the unit sensibly brewed up while they were halted.'

Jon

* for all sorts of reasons; there's the re-enactment of a domestic routine, sharing something with your mates, a chance to catch up friends and trading yarns, taking on warmth and sugar, etc.

[JonS]

Joe, if you play 30 minute encounters then ... there is no point but the majority of my pbem fights are 1hr plus.

Sure, but even in a 1 hour plus scen there's still very rarely much point in the game supporting digging in. Generally it'll take you 20-30 minutes to get there and fight on to the position, maybe 5 minutes to reposition the units into a defensive organisation, then it'd take 30+ minutes to actually dig in, meaning the new fighting positions would be ready ... just as the game ends.

Besides, who would actually use that, in the game? If the newly won position is likely to be re-taken, then you won't have any opportunity to dig in anyway. On the other hand, if you're left alone on the new position, practically every player is going to re-use most of that company to move on and attack the next position, leaving only a token garrison. No one is going to waste a company by having them sit still digging in and waiting for something that's not going to happen.

Furthermore, if the position was defended, it's highly likely the enemy will have had trenches and/or foxholes which your guys can promptly occupy.

It just seems wrong that you advance a company to say capture a hill or village then they just sit openly on the local terrain waiting to get hammered by fire.

Villages have, by definition, quite a lot of cover. If that hill really is barren, then you're going to get 'hammered by fire' during the 30+ minutes it'd take to create new holes, so they'd never get dug anyway. Maybe you could dig in overnight, which is outside the scope, but not in the midst of things. Besides, even if you could, you shouldn't be 'digging in' on the position, but around it in places that do provide cover and concealment (in trees, on the reverse slope, etc). And if you do that, you aren't just 'sitting openly waiting to get hammered by fire', regardless of whether you can create new foxholes.

[Warts 'n' all]

Jon, I certainly agree with you that it does always seem to be portrayed, whether in movies, or in books, in a negative fashion. And, also, to my mind having a drink mid-battle does also seem to get viewed differently depending upon the nation being referred to.

U.S. troops have a "hot, strong coffee" and get straight back into the fight. Whilst the Limey's "stop for tea" in some terribly English fashion. Almost as if they were laying out scones and cream. It would have been a world apart from how the average "Tommy" had his tea.

I just think in the example that I cited at Villers-Bocage, they stopped in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy just happening to turn up.

[JonS]

I just think in the example that I cited at Villers-Bocage' date=' they stopped in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy just happening to turn up ...[/quote']

Yup, and local security while they were halted was also pants - Wittman should never have been able to 'sneak' up on them, not in a freaking Tiger! But none of that had anything to do with the tea

[varnp]

http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/d-day/videos/allied-advance-stalls-at-normandy

-Pv-

[varnp]

Tank through bocage:

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675075108_United-States-howitzer_World-War-II_M-4-Sherman-tank

-Pv-

[varnp]

More:

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675076253_American-soldiers_holding-hedge-cutter_mounting-on-tank_soldiers-working

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675075120_United-States-infantrymen_M-4-Sherman-tanks_M-10-motor-carriages_crouched

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675070141_United-States-soldiers_M-4-Sherman-tanks_advancing-infantrymen_cutting-lines

-Pv-

[Warts 'n' all]

local security while they were halted was also pants]

Although Eric Lefevre mentions the usual cigarette and "brew up" in his Panzers in Normandy book, he also talks about men taking the opportunity to stretch their legs. It does beg the question, did some of them go off into the bushes or the roadside ditch to answer the call of nature, and therefore get caught with their "pants" down both literally and metaphorically? Not a pleasant thought.

[Jaeger Jonzo]

Well again, the very next chapter I've just read, the author states that as soon as his company gained the crest of Hill 113 at the Odon after a direct bayonets drawn infantry assault, which he quotes as 'reaching our first objectives' we began to dig in, two men digging each slit trench'. As each enemy salvo came in, they hit the earth, got up and carried on digging.

Interestingly he also says a R.E. Bulldozer arrived to dig the battalion CP out the reverse face of the slope!

As for brewing up, well we Brits do love our tea, it does have a calming effect, probably in the same way people took up smoking during the war. They still offer us tea at hospitals here if you've had a bad turn or dizzy/distressing spell...like it's a miracle cure!

The tankers often brewed up inside their tanks or just behind it at any opportunity/forced halt. Pretty sure the pbi did too using a bit of sand and petrol and ration tin, a trick learned in the desert war.

[Warts 'n' all]

That kind of behaviour could possibly be replicated in the game at the campaign level as I said before. For example, if someone could string the four "In the Shadow of the Hill" battles into a campaign and somehow design it so that the British could begin missions 2, 3 and 4 in foxholes.

Although for me I find it awkward enough getting my HMG's into decent LOF positions amongst the hedgerows as it is. I certainly wouldn't want them to sink 1 or 2 feet into the ground just because they'd remained in one spot for a certain length of time.

[sburke]

That kind of behaviour could possibly be replicated in the game at the campaign level as I said before. For example, if someone could string the four "In the Shadow of the Hill" battles into a campaign and somehow design it so that the British could begin missions 2, 3 and 4 in foxholes.

Although for me I find it awkward enough getting my HMG's into decent LOF positions amongst the hedgerows as it is. I certainly wouldn't want them to sink 1 or 2 feet into the ground just because they'd remained in one spot for a certain length of time.

That is simple enough to do, the foxholes just show up as reinforcements and not the core forces. And yes more appropriate. While it is true that soldiers would routinely be told to dig in upon reaching an objective, the timing for them to dig in and the enemy counterattack would typically not happen within the scope of a single scenario in CM. Not impossible, but you'd have to take about a 4 hour scenario and leave a huge gap of boring nothingness to simulate the digging in period.

I have never tried to add foxholes in as reinforcements, but it might be worth someone's time who cares to actually simulate this ( I don't ). Take a scenario, add fortifications and see if you can add them to a reinforcement group.

[Warts 'n' all]

While it is true that soldiers would routinely be told to dig in upon reaching an objective, the timing for them to dig in and the enemy counterattack would typically not happen within the scope of a single scenario in CM.

I concur with this totally. As I said in an earlier post. CM has always been, for me at least, about the "moment" of action for the men at the sharp end. I think digging in has to be treated in much same way as the game treats things such as:- Heavy Bombers, Preparatory Arty, The march up to the start line, Evacuation of the wounded to a Field Hospital etc. These things are taken as read, and therefore are outside of the games remit.

I know that it is never fun when you reach an objective and your men get stonked by the enemies mortars. But, organised counter-attacks by the AI are pretty rare. Things of course, could be different in H2H depending upon your opponents victory points situation.