Gebirgsjäger Pack 1 - Podvyssokoya AAR

[Sergei]

It was a terrible Autumn day in southern Russia, with rain pouring onto us and ground so muddy at places that often it would suck the boot off your foot. We were Gebirgsjägers, proud mountain troops, and we all felt being out of our element here. My reinforced company was supposed to take the little village of Podvyssokoya that lied on a gently sloping hill and prevent Russians escaping from a pocket. Another company would be sent by midnight, and hopefully at some point the artillery would have moved their pieces close enough through the muddy roads so that they could support us. I was told to try to take the objectives by dawn, because at that point the enemy would probably try to counter-attack. My superior was unhappy about us being used for a purpose clearly not meeting our special training, like if a butler was told to cut the grass, but we knew that all men were needed. And why not - after we defeat the Soviets, the English will agree to peace and there won't be a war ever again.

Thus I started arranging my company for attack. I had no idea of the strength of my enemy, so I'd have to get there and find out. I was attacking from the east, along a road that ran through the village to the west. I didn't have enough forces yet to cover the whole frontage, so I positioned one platoon on the left side of road and two platoons on the right side. Their intermediate objectives would be to reach the high ground on both sides of the village. The ground was not good for advancing with heavy weapons. I left my two 81mm mortars and a PaK 36 near the road, so they could bomb the village outskirts if they saw any movement.

The advance was slow because of the deep mud. Trying to run would have quickly exhausted anyone. Seeing my men constantly slipping and stumbling while scaling even the most modest hillsides made me think that we might have done wisely if we had taken the climbing gear with us... There was just rain, rain and rain, but where was the enemy? After advancing for quite some way, my leftmost platoon received a hail of fire. Couple of men were lost, but defenders seemed weak and I pinned them down while moving some squads forward. On the right no real opposition was met, only some random bursts of fire came to their direction from distance at times, without causing any losses. Before the battle was ended, a Soviet tank, possibly a T-26, was noticed in the village. Who would have known, despite the ground conditions the Russkies think it's a nice day for a tank drive!

But I needed to regroup my men. Seeing as my men on the right flank were closer to their objectives, I moved my leftmost platoon to join up with my company. There was no point in splitting up my forces. They would have to take the forest and the houses on the right side of the road. I also moved up all the support weapons so my mortars could bombard the woods and my PaK could keep the road clear of enemy tanks.

And so as the sun started to set, I began my strong attack. There were some more or less determined defenders that I had to rout or kill to the last man, but after that the route was quite clear for exploitation. I had left no sentries to the left side of the road, so some Soviet scouts could be seen there. Long distance fire from my support units stopped them, however. Another advancing party was seen on my right flank, a platoon or so. I sent couple of squads to hold them off. Rest of that platoon was to penetrate deeper into the enemy territory, to cut the road leading to the village. The other two platoons meanwhile took positions on the right side of the road. A T-26 showed up, but got so far forward that my PaK got it. Another one came as well, and met the same fate. Yet there still was enemy infantry on the other side of the road, and there was too much open for men to just dash across. I waited for the night.

As it got pitch black, the second company arrived. I wanted to use them to advance to the village on the left side of the road so they'd surround the enemy together with the first company. I also had to deal with the enemy scouts that still were supposedly hiding in some woods inside my area, so I formed an ad hoc clean-up party to take care of them. Also a patrol was sent to check that my right flank didn't have any enemies and then join the party blocking the village road.

First things went fine, except that the second company's rightmost platoon met some fierce resistance as they came across an enemy MG in a hut. It was surrounded, but difficult to eliminate as friendly fire occurred and men were not very inspired. To the left of them two platoons sweeped to the western side of the village, meeting only one sentry post that was quickly destroyed. Meanwhile my first company had tried scouting the opposition by sending a half-squad forward, but they were quickly lost without others being able to determine the enemy locations. I hadn't had this kind of night battles before, so it was difficult to tell which methods would work and which wouldn't. In the end I was pressing the enemy from all directions, especially from the south (my left). Soviets were losing men in a rapid pace. But meanwhile, due to the conditions, so were we, and there still seemed to be a lot of men in that forest. I was considering halting the assault and continuing in the morning, as then I could better bring all my support weapons on the enemy. But on the other hand, if this village wasn't seized tonight, then the enemy could repulse my forces with a counter-attack at dawn. It was a difficult decision, but in the end I decided to press on. There were still some Russkies there at the end, though.

Morning came, rain continued and fog emerged. I needed to swiftly take the southern part of the village and then defend the village against any counter-attacks. For this I had received spotters from a 105mm battery. It would be difficult to direct fire with such short visibility...

In this case I did some very bad errors. As I thought the enemy to be more likely to counter-attack on my left, I placed the fresh second company there almost entirely. Meanwhile I didn't know that during night some enemy forces had crept closer to my right side, allowing them to deploy there. My first company had already lost many fine men during the first three battles, and as I mis-deployed a half-platoon into open where they could be seen by the enemy and were killed on turn 1, I further aggravated my situation. After setup I could also see what had happened, as three T-26's were only 90 meters away from my troops, near an objective that was defended by little more than a platoon. Having nothing else at my disposal, I ordered a pre-planned artillery barrage on the T-26's. That was meant to slow his forces while I would shift troops from my left. Also one Pak36 was ordered to move closer so it could restrict the T-26's. On the left the second company quickly seized control of the woods and took some prisoners, even. On the right, even more T-26's showed up, with several platoons of infantry (I couldn't tell because they were lurking in the woods). Couple of tanks were fortunately knocked out by the artillery. The artillery also kept the infantry's heads down, but two T-26's advanced towards my line. Some four men who had been hiding in grain field got close to one of the T-26's, and got it immobilized. Meanwhile my Pak36 got into position, and from close range destroyed both of the nearby T-26's on the same turn. My saviours! Things started looking much better, and I called a ceasefire with the enemy.

It came out that he had actually had two more companies of men, but they had to be deployed so far to the back that it would have taken long for them to march to the village. He also had lots of men in the woods, but he couldn't know how little forces I had there defending, and with nearly all tanks lost (the last one being immobilized in some scattered trees) there was little point in continuing. At least now I knew that if I earlier wanted to take that hill, carrying on the assault was absolutely necessary, even if it meant high losses of men. If they could have reinforced the defenders in the morning, I would have lost. But now the Soviet forces in the pocket are doomed, and the blood sacrifice of Gebirgsjägers has brought this war one bit closer to an end.

(Published originally in November '41 issue of Signal.)

[ November 14, 2003, 07:12 AM: Message edited by: Sergei ]

[Emar]

Thanks for a very descriptive and well done AAR

[Alech]

Nice.

-Alech

[GreenAsJade]

Thanks for this Sergei. It was entertaining and educational.

I haven't actually looked at operations before, and I can see that there are some things that mean you need to "think differently". For example,I was struck by how you could just re-arrange your force positioning between battle.

It would have been nice if PBEMH "view movie" would have worked. Does anyone have any clues about how to make it do it? I would have thought it was perfect for it: all the movie files are there numbered correctly, but F6 and F5 just beeped at me :-(