A couple of nationality questions

[Robert Olesen]

I have found that I may have to divide the North African and Italian regions into two each in ROQC - an East (British) and West (American) region. This leads to some questions, however, that might just find an answer here:

Did the Italians fight against the Americans in North Africa?

It seems that the French and Polish fought exclusively with the British in NA. Is this true?

Did the Frensh (and Polish, if applicable) fight with the Americans or the British (or both) in Italy?

I could probably dig this out somewhere myself (and may have to), but my time is limited and any answers I can get here will shorten the time it takes before I can publish a ROQC version for CMAK.

[Firefly]

The Italians became an integral part of Rommel's forces, so they could have fought the Americans, I can't think of any specific instances.

The western Free Polish forces were an integral part of the British Army throughout the war.

The Free French fought both alongside the British and independently (LeClerc's early actions against the Italians). I'm not sure which army they were attached to in Italy, but relations between De Gaulle and Roosevelt were not good for numerous reasons. De Gaulle's relations with the British were far from perfect, but the British did recognise him as the undisputed leader of Free France.

[flamingknives]

The Americans did fight against the Italians in Tunisia on a few occasions - usually just prior to bumping into the Germans.

[Michael Emrys]

I think the French troops in Tunisia were semi-independent, subordinated directly under Alexander as Allied ground forces commander, but I'd have to look that up.

The French troops in Sicily were subordinate to the American 7th. Army. I'm not sure about on mainland Italy, but I have an impression that they were variously under both British and American command.

The French troops in the ETO were under American command. In the latter part of the war they had their own army which was part of the American Sixth Army Group.

Michael

[SgtMuhammed]

Italian troops were part of the southern thrust at Kasserine. Rommel sent several companies of Italian and German infantry to try to take the passes south of Kasserine. U.S. infantry and Rangers spent several days hunting them all down.

When the Axis forces surrendered in Tunisia over half were Italian so one would suppose that there was some contact. Italian troops also fought Americans in Sicily.

[von Lucke]

II Polish Corps (3rd Carpathian Rifle Div, 5th Kresowa Inf Div, 2nd Armored Bde) served with British 8th Army in Italy --- most famously at Cassino.

The French Expeditionary Corps (consisting of five infantry divisions, mostly recruited from the North African colonies), was under US 5th Army command. Again, they are most famous for breaking the Gustav line in May of '44. By July of '44 however, they had all been pulled and sent to France.

[Robert Olesen]

Thanks, that's good stuff.

My problem actually came from the introduction of Raids into the campaign (in case you're interested). They require you to buy some enemy units in the editor, and these should preferebly be the same nationality as the force you'll be fighting. That force is determined randomly by the QB generator, as the rules work now. Hence the question.

The problem is that you must specify the division type with the nationality in a QB, and the job of specifying (in the rules) and automating (in the spreadsheet) this selection is rather large, as there are a large number of possible and impossible combinations for the different dates and regions.

So. I'm going to do a shortcut for now and make these raid targets British or German. This will allow me to - hopefully - publish the first beta of ROQC for CMAK next week. Believe it or not, but several people have actually been asking for it :eek:

[ January 25, 2004, 02:19 AM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]