Perhaps CMxx casualties aren't that out of line..

[tar]

One often has the impression that the casualties suffered in the CM battles are much higher than reality. However, there are certainly some examples of hard fought battles with losses on the CMxx scale.

From a regimental history of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, The March of the Prairie Men by Lt.Col. G.B. Buchanan, M.B.E, describing action in the Forêt de La Londe, August 1944:

The initial plan was for three companies to clear down the forad to the river edge while "C" company cleared the woods on the left flank. The enemy fought hard from concealed positions in the woods but by applying steady pressure and a series of flanking movements, the line was broken and the battalion captured the high gournd...The next task was to swing east through the Forêt de La Londe to the high ground about a mile north of the village of Port du Gravier. "C" Company led the attack at 0300 hours on 28th August, followed in order by "D", "A" and "B" companies.

When two-thirds of the way to the objecive, a railway crossing was encountered. Here under Captain Vic Schubert, "C" Company came under very heavy fire. After an unsuccessful attempt to deal with the fire from the left flank, Captain Schubert took a platoon and some snipers and started a flanking attack on the right. This was the last seen of this group for many days. They suffered casualties and were taken prisoner but were freed a few days later when an independent English Armoured Regiment caught up with the fleeing Germans. The remainder of "C" Company were being subjected to machine gun fire and were ordered to withdraw. Mortar fire caught the withdrawing company and both remaining officers, Lieutenant J.P. Jesson and Lieutenant R.C. Cree were killed. C.S.M. Smith took command and brought the remnants of the company back through "D" Company... There were but 13 men left in "C" Company and these were put in a special platoon in "A" Company.

From their arrival with the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division on 8 July 1944 through the end of August, the South Saskatchewan Regiment (SSR) suffered 742 casualties of all ranks, or close to one full battalion. Although called a "Regiment", the SSR was really a battalion. For the entire war, the SSR suffered 475 killed and 1358 non fatal casualties. Most of these followed D-Day, although about 340 casualties and prisoners during the Dieppe raid. My father-in-law joined the SSR for the Normandy campaigne and was wounded 3 times and returned to the Regiment after recovery all 3 times.

[securityguard]

I always thought that CM modeled the most brutal rare instances of frontline combat. The casualties are abnormal only due to the situation at hand, not because of realism issues. Have people been saying casualty numbers are unrealistic?

Two big factors for high casualties in CM are the players relentless pursuit to win - there's no real fear of loss other than flat out getting defeated. Secondly I would say the scenarios present in CM are the upmost violent, head on clashes that could be seen in war, not freak skirmishes or small disasters. I don't think the simulation is at fault for high casualties though.

[JasonC]

Did bloody messes like typical CM battles happen occasionally? Sure. Were they typical? Not remotely. If they were, the war would have been over in a week...

[Salkin]

Hey ! Nobody told me JasonC was back!

Now where's that autograph notepad ...

I heard about your crushing defeat....no sweat, your still one of the smartest guys around.

//Salkin

Hoping for more free lessons in tactics.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

"Crushing defeat" to which opponent? I didn't hear about that and would be keen to see the AAR if one exists.

Regards

Jim R.

[Malakovski]

Wargames by nature simulate atypical battles. Well matched, hard-fought, balanced confrontations make the best gaming, but in reality you don't want an even fight. You want to crush the enemy with little loss, or if it looks like you're about to be crushed, to retreat with little loss.

So the only relevant question is whether CM models that particular subset of battle well.

[DrD]

Originally posted by securityguard:

I always thought that CM modeled the most brutal rare instances of frontline combat. The casualties are abnormal only due to the situation at hand, not because of realism issues. Have people been saying casualty numbers are unrealistic?

Two big factors for high casualties in CM are the players relentless pursuit to win - there's no real fear of loss other than flat out getting defeated. Secondly I would say the scenarios present in CM are the upmost violent, head on clashes that could be seen in war, not freak skirmishes or small disasters. I don't think the simulation is at fault for high casualties though.

Exactly! That is always the "problem" with wargames, there is literally no tomorrow. If you take the flags and maintain a decent causalty ratio who care if you lose half your force? IRL of course you have to think about the next battle, not to mention the morality of losing so many of your boys.

The only way to "fix" this is to assign much more points for causalties. It has been suggested in the past to make this variable by scenario and by side, so one could simulate a 3:1 attack while maintaining play balance simply by giving the defender alot more points for causalties than the attacker. Thus the attacker would win only if he kept his losses very low AND took the objectives.

The problem with all this, of course, is that's it's not very fun. And many, if not most, battles I've read about would be very boring to play. It was not uncommon for a platoon to be say crossing a hedgerow, and when fired on by a MG, simply go to ground and wait for arty/armor support, sometimes for hours.

Boring!

[Michael Dorosh]

SSR were part of the Second Division, which was notable for its casualty rates. The Black Watch suffered the highest of the nine rifle battalions in the Division (to whom the SSR belonged). My own Regiment, the Calgary Highlanders, suffered similar casualties. (Incidentally, the CO of the South Sasks for a good portion of the NW Europe campaign, Vern Stott, came from the Calgary Highlanders.)

The casualties were highest in Normandy in July and August 1944, again during the Scheldt fighting in October 1944, slackened off considerably in November, December and January, then back up in February and the Rhineland fighting (which you posted about in another thread.)

Bear in mind that strength figures after a given battle are often not indicators of battle losses, as units in First Canadian Army were often considerably understrength to begin with.

Also bear in mind each infantry battalion had an authorized strength of 801 officers and men, but only about 450 of these were in the rifle companies - where most of the casualties were suffered.

SSR did yeoman work for the Division; Foret de la Londe was a tough one - I think that is the action being referred to above?

Point here is that 2nd Div was the "hard luck" outfit of the Canadian Army. Some say they never recovered from Dieppe. A comparison of casualty rates in Third Division is interesting - they landed on D-Day, fought for a month longer than the 2nd Div, but I dimly recall their raw casualty figures for the whole war still being less in some cases than 2nd Division battalions - despite being involved in all the same operations and campaigns (Normandy, Falaise, Channel Ports, Scheldt, Rhineland).

I wonder if I saw your father in law in Estevan two or three summers ago at the SSR reunion? A good time was had by all - many interesting stories, mostly about VD and inspections, none about casualties.

[ March 11, 2005, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[Le Tondu]

I'd say that they're out of line.

I once played a night QB where both sides stayed where they were and didn't move much at all. Each side was hoping to ambush the other side. During the entire battle, not one of my units was even fired upon.

The endgame report comes up and says that I had 5 killed and 7 wounded. Can someone please explain that?

I read somewhere that these casualty reports are randomly generated. If that is true, how can that be kept in CMx2 with so much push for realism these days?

[Noiseman]

Most immediate 'casualties' at the CM level were simply guys running away. IIRC the casualty numbers generated at the end of a CM battle are an abstraction, only showing KIA/WIA. If you were to include in this number the 'live to fight another day-ers' rather than just classifying them as KIA/WIA the numbers make more sense.

[Wartgamer]

Originally posted by Malakovski:

Wargames by nature simulate atypical battles. Well matched, hard-fought, balanced confrontations make the best gaming, but in reality you don't want an even fight. You want to crush the enemy with little loss, or if it looks like you're about to be crushed, to retreat with little loss.

So the only relevant question is whether CM models that particular subset of battle well.

Exactly.

Not only would a botched battle be a loss, it would have a lasting effect on the troops.

I just read a WWII website that showed how one unit's morale was established and 'maintained' at a low level. This includes training deaths, Chickens**t officers covering each others asses, Sadistic NCOs, and total bonehead battlefield command. The worst was that they found themselves out in the open as the sun comes up. German HMGs kill 60+ guys in minutes.

[Wartgamer]

Originally posted by Noiseman:

Most immediate 'casualties' at the CM level were simply guys running away. IIRC the casualty numbers generated at the end of a CM battle are an abstraction, only showing KIA/WIA. If you were to include in this number the 'live to fight another day-ers' rather than just classifying them as KIA/WIA the numbers make more sense.

Also true. That website also mentions the great numbers of stragglers behind the lines being rounded up. In one case, a M5 lt tank platoon that was covering the infantry units advance, abandoned the tanks en masse and ran away!

[securityguard]

Originally posted by Le Tondu:

The endgame report comes up and says that I had 5 killed and 7 wounded. Can someone please explain that?

I read somewhere that these casualty reports are randomly generated. If that is true, how can that be kept in CMx2 with so much push for realism these days?

Someone said before that they were probably people who had ran away or got lost (this abstraction is present in CM) but in my opinion I bet the enemy had a squad who saw another friendly squad and thought it was enemy. They probably ended up exchanging fire on each other, killing and wounding. I've had it happen on a few occasions myself, it's not too rare.

[JasonC]

"Wargames by nature simulate atypical battles. Well matched, hard-fought, balanced confrontations make the best gaming"

I deny it totally. Are all CM games QB MEs? Has anyone ever played an assault? Used the odds aka handicap feature? Played a scenario meant to be remotely accurate?

Moreover, balanced and bloody are two different things. A blockaded statemate in chess is balanced but not bloody. Running over a battalion of green Russian infantry in open steppe with Tigers is bloody but not balanced.

CM is much more obviously bloody than balanced. It's not designed to be balanced. They don't decide hey, Tigers are tough, let's overmodel molotovs to make up for it.

The reason CM is bloodier than the real deal are (1) the troops respond to highly dangerous orders readily, much more consistently than their real counterparts did (2) coordination and control is much easier to maintain as subunits are chopped to pieces (3) players don't care a tenth as much about losses as the most jaded martinet does (4) there is no battle the next day (5) designers cover one side of the field with flags, instead of putting one in each backfield and one in the middle, thus overrating the importance of ground and expecting the moon (6) sides that start winning don't attract ten times the response of those making do etc etc.

None of which has anything to do with accurately simulating particularly pivotal or close battles.

[Other Means]

There's also the often stated fact that casualties in CM are all people at the sharp end. You don't see the mile after mile of tail; Hospitals, transport, ammo runners, arty batteries etc etc. What you see is the raw bloody edge.

So if you read X battalion took 15% casualties you need to bear in mind that up, what, 70% (dependant on country) of the battalion wasn't directly fighting. 15% is half the men actually in combat. I don't know how the poor bastards did it.

[Denwad]

I only seem to take abnormally high losses when I would expect them in reality ( storming a 1919 position over 40m of open ground with a platoon, 1919 routed my platoon )

[JasonC]

Um, if your platoon is already only 40m from an MMG, why don't you just let the sods fire and waste the MMG inside of 2 minutes? Bayonets don't kill anybody except the driver.

[DrD]

I'll wager that some of this will be "fixed" in CMx2.

With 1:1 modeling, we'll see some troops that were previously casaulties individually panic and be hor de combat for the rest of the scenario.

Another source of "casaulties" that could perhaps be modeled was the guys who helped the wounded. In accounts I've read it was common when one man was hit for 2 of his buddies to help carry him out of danger.

[securityguard]

Originally posted by DrD:

I'll wager that some of this will be "fixed" in CMx2.

With 1:1 modeling, we'll see some troops that were previously casaulties individually panic and be hor de combat for the rest of the scenario.

Absolutely. One of the biggest reasons casualties are so apparent is the way morale is handled through squads. It is far too easy for an entire squad to break, then lose men by men as they all run away. 1:1 should prevent a lot of this 'ant like' behaviour. Really 1:1 will be the biggest change for the CM series.

And it can't come soon enough. Yesterday I had a MMG turn an 11 man FJ Squad completely broken - and they didn't even lose one guy! They were rattled for no reason whatsoever, every single guy, and it ruined the entire squads combat effectiveness. 1:1 will be a godsend.

[JonS]

Originally posted by securityguard:

Yesterday I had a MMG turn an 11 man FJ Squad completely broken - and they didn't even lose one guy! They were rattled for no reason whatsoever, every single guy, and it ruined the entire squads combat effectiveness.

LOL

[Wartgamer]

Originally posted by securityguard:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by DrD:

I'll wager that some of this will be "fixed" in CMx2.

With 1:1 modeling, we'll see some troops that were previously casaulties individually panic and be hor de combat for the rest of the scenario.

Absolutely. One of the biggest reasons casualties are so apparent is the way morale is handled through squads. It is far too easy for an entire squad to break, then lose men by men as they all run away. 1:1 should prevent a lot of this 'ant like' behaviour. Really 1:1 will be the biggest change for the CM series.

And it can't come soon enough. Yesterday I had a MMG turn an 11 man FJ Squad completely broken - and they didn't even lose one guy! They were rattled for no reason whatsoever, every single guy, and it ruined the entire squads combat effectiveness. 1:1 will be a godsend. </font>

[Wartgamer]

http://www.coulthart.com/134/kia_stats.htm

These are KIA/DOW (deaths) from a US Infantry Regt on a month by month basis.

An interesting phenom is the drop in Officer deaths compared to enlisted after November.

It also breaks down by where in the org these kills happened. Certainly, being in a front line unit is lethal. Being in a Cannon Company comparatively safe. There are 118 men in a cannon company yet this unit only reports 3 EM killed and no Officers during the whole war.

The 134th Infantry Regiment was a part of the 35th Infantry Division during World War II, along with its sister infantry regiments the 137th and the 320th. From the time the 134th Infantry Regiment landed at Omaha Beach on July 5- July 6, 1944 until they departed for the United States on the Queen Mary after the war's end on September 5, 1945, they liberated or captured 124 towns. In the process the 134th suffered more than 10,200 casualties including over 1,200 soldiers who were killed in action.

[ March 14, 2005, 09:29 AM: Message edited by: Wartgamer ]