What do you think about how CM depicts European urban warfare?

[dieseltaylor]

From a memoir. Interesting to see how quickly they could bring down fire.

Combat Command A: Action at Villiers-Fossard

We had no sooner settled down than we were called for a briefing to inform us of the tactics that the Germans would use to oppose us in the hedgerows. They would run telephone wire completely around the perimeter of each of several fields in a row. As they were driven out of a field into the one behind it, they could hook their telephone clips into the wiring and immediately call for mortar fire in the field they had just left. This ability to get mortar and artillery fire almost instantly would prove to be devastating to our infantry and tanks who had just occupied the field.

At the French village of Villiers-Fossard, south and east of Airel on the Vire River, the Germans had penetrated three thousand yards into the 29th Division area. Combat Command A (CCA), which had come in ten days before Combat Command B, was given the mission of capturing Villiers-Fossard and eliminating the German salient. After three years of training, the division was being committed for the first time.

The combat command was organized in three separate task forces, each consisting of a reinforced tank battalion with infantry and artillery support. The attack started on the morning of June 29 with two task forces abreast and one in reserve. The columns on the right and left of the highway each had one bulldozer tank to get through the hedgerows. The initial penetrations moved rapidly but soon ran into heavy small-arms, mortar, and antitank fire from a German reinforced infantry battalion. The two bulldozer tanks were knocked out early in the operation, leaving only explosives to break through the hedgerows.

Once off the beaches, the tankers of the 743rd found themselves in the bocage country of Normandy. While the 743rd used the hedgerow-busting plow fashioned from German beach obstacles with some success, the preferred method was the dynamiting of hedgerows timed to coincide with an armor and infantry attack (p.39). Folkestad differentiates between the tank battalions of an armor division, which were designed to exploit breakthroughs and strike deep into the enemy's rear, and those like the 743rd, whose mission it was to fight alongside the infantry they supported. For the 743rd, this often meant fighting static battles with superior German armor.

[ September 13, 2006, 05:13 PM: Message edited by: dieseltaylor ]