CMBB - Scenario Idea

[Skipper]

Anyone wants a Polish scenario? I came across the following document (translation is mine, and I was mainly trying to keep to the original). If you want the original text, ask me.

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Political report by head of Political Directorate 1st Army, Voisko Polskoe on crossing Visla river

To Gen-Lt TELEGIN, 1st Belorussian Front War Council member (Front's top political officer)

During the night of 31.07-1.08 and in following days units of 1 st and 2nd DP (infantry divisions) received the task to ford Visla river. 1st DP had to send across the river 2nd bat. of 2nd PP (infantry regiment), a penal company and a company of 3rd PP, to create and strengthen bridgeheads on Visla's left bank, and give opportunity to deploy further forces.

Same task had to be carried out by 2nd DP - 2 batallions of 4th PP, 1 compny of 6th PP and one company of 5th PP.

Suceeded in crossing: 2nd bat. 2nd PP, penal company, 1st and 2nd bat. of 4th PP, 1st company 6th PP.

This operation has a serious meaning for our units, despite its failure. Despite the fact that crossing parties could not hold on the left bank. Visla was crossed by yong soldier, who in most cases was first time in combat, had no experience under fire, did not know what is a river crossing. During tis operation or soldier got used to enemy shooting, learned to entrench, met germans in a direct fight.

Reasons of the failure are as follows:

Means of crossing were of poor quality, and in insufficient quantity. Divisional engineers failed to perform their task. Boats and rafts built by them were not suitable for crossing Visla, which has very very strong current in this place. Boats and rafts were too heavy and not maneuverable enough (in 3rd PP water carried rafts upto 2 km down the river), poles were too short and heavy. Means of crossing were prepared 1-1.5 km from the river, and time to carry them to the bank was not allowed for, as a result of this 1st and 2nd divisions were late for the beginning of crossing.

Divisional and regimantal recon units did not carry out reconnaissance, so there were no information about the enemy and units were rushed into attack blindly. Our artillery could not destroy enemy fire points (tr: I dont know the right term - any position with an MG or other heavy weapon), although it was shooting accurately. On the opposite bank, troops were landing in small groups, officers did not know operative plan, soldiers did not know their personal task. In 2nd PP these separated groups had no unified command, this led to germans having a simpler task: they easily broke up isolated groups and eliminated them one by one. During operation, there was no adequate commanding of crossing parties from senior officers.

Lack of communications. Wirelines were constantly destroyed by the enemy. Radio communications were underutilized, and flashgun signalization was completely forgotten, although units were saturated with the latter.

Artillery supporting 2nd DP did not have enough ammo to create a firewall in front of 4th PP trenshes. This considerably complicated the situation and caused significant losses.

Enemy artillery was very active, companies of 2nd PP were completely eiminated (by it). Units of 2nd DP were ordered to disengage due to large losses, no possibility to send in reinforcements, besides, the army received a new task.

Mood. (Tr: this is POLITICAL report, so here goes the main part from author's POV).

Soldiers and officers were morally prepared to fight, and wanted it. Organisational mistakes undermined (their) belief in victory. Lack of artillery and aviation, much discussed before the battle, created among soldiers and officers an impression that they are going to certain death. Some were saying "I will not spare my life, but I want to lose it for Motherland's benefit", "I will go, but I know that I am going to a certain death". Depression and apathy could be felt in 3rd PP, where rafts were completely unsuitable, 2 out of 5 sank, 2 were carried downstream. These depressive moods were strengthened by th fact that many platoon commanders and some senior commanders - political deputy commander 2nd bat 2nd PP hor.Goss - went hiding and did not hurry to the crossing. IOne could hear questions like "Where are ou commanders?". Being late ffor crossing and disorganisation undermined confidence in command. Soldier were saying "with such officers we shall lose". At the same time, 2nd PP commander polk. Sepnitsky and his political deputy commander hor. Stampor were all the time at the crossing, bringing up hiding and slow moving soldiers, as well as some officers. Lector of 2nd PP, communist ppor. Yakubovsky inspired troops with personla courage, despite extremely strong enemy fire from all kinds of small arms, mortars and artillery. The first group landed successfully, suppressed with grenades a german workers batallion deployed on the other side and moved forward. News about this helped to brighen the mood of following groups, where soldiers were taking places in boats with enthusiam, saying "Quick, we'll help them" Let's crush the germans".

During the 2nd day, mood was better. Batallions of 4th PP came to the crossing calm and disciplined. In 2nd bat 6th PP in the first day of crossing there was a panic, due to cowardice of batallion's political deputy commander hor. Avitovitsk and deputy company commander Galpern, and in 5th PP senior officers shot 12 soldiers for cowardice and panic. When news were received about failure of 1st DP operation, a gossip about big losses spread in the army and mood darkened.

However, 4th PP soldiers returning from the left bank told about their fughting deeds; and (propaganda) work of political organs liquidated these moods. They returned full of determination to fight, and were telling that artillery was shooting accurately, that many germans were killed, that enemy has heavy losses.

Besides, it should be said that first misfortunes of the operation contributed to spreding an opinion that we are not capable of independent (without Red Army) actions and successfulcombat operations. Many were saying "We need to learn a lot from Red Army, it is very difficult to fight without them".

In combat, our (not used to fighting) soldier behaved with great courage. There were many cases of heroism. Soldier held position to the last moment, until withdrawal order was received. Cases of cowardice took place, but were few.

Many line officers displayed great organisational abilities, fortitude and readiness to sacrifice their life. Capt. Yatskovsky was all the time in command of the 4th PP landing party, and maintained contact with regiment. Deputy commander of 5t batallion behaved heroically and died in combat.

Politicall apparat as a whole in combat was up to the task. There are many examples of heroism and fortitude: ppor. Yakubovsky, ppor. Shubich, hor. Tsukerman and others. Authority of our officer has risen.

Most serious drwaback in political work was not getting orders of the high command to the soldiers. Due to lack of combat experience, political apparat did not properly control building of the crossing means.

At present, thanks to special politico-educational work, moods of depression and apathy were liquidated. Soldier is again ready to carry out combat tasks. Crossing Visla was fr him the first big, difficult, practical combat lesson

Saying of capt Sheptitsky of 2nd DP is characteristical in this regard for most of the soldiers: "We did not know how to fight, and were scared; now we are not scared anymore, learned a lot and managd to use it". This is evidenced by fighting of our tankers, artillerists and infantrymen on the left bank of Visla, on a bridgehead that we have given over to Red Army, which will be duly reported to you, General, in my next report.

Head of Political Directorate 1st Army Voisko Polskoe ppol. Zambrovsky

TsAMO RF, F.233, Op.2380, D.14 L.

85-90 Original

[Skipper]

What, nobody is interested?

NB: 01.08 is also the day when Warsaw uprising has started.

It is also 11 days after 1st Belorussian front (including 1st Army of Voisko Polskoe) has entered pre-war Polish border. This is the final push of operation Bagration, during which 1st Army was held out of the fray until this occasion. Note the lack of artillery shells and reserves.

Quite fascinating stuff, imho.

[Andreas]

I agree it is fascinating, so once I have CMBB in my grubby paws I may give designing that a go. Do you know if material such as the report you translated is easily available in English or German somewhere?

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Skipper:

What, nobody is interested?

Oh we are. It's good read. I'm looking forward to a huge scenario (in CM of the future) where you are reinforcing a critical bridgehead. There is everything on the map. Trucks ariving with engineering equipment from the rear, subject to harrassing artillery. Equipment, men, ammo being ferried over, under long range MG fire and wildly inaccurate harassing arty fire. A baily bridge slowly getting longer, then maybe losing a section which drifts slowly downstream.

Get down on level one view, and follow a Platoon HQ across on a boat (which by now is hooked to a rope-ferry system), get off on the other side and hustle forward to get out off the exposed area on the other bank. Wounded are being ferried back with the boats the other way. Many of the wounded get rewounded or killed going back.

Finally move forward past Battalion HQ, a CO HQ and to a front line platoon where the fighting is HELL I mean HELL with Germans attacking with SMG squads, flamethrower HTs, tanks, mortars, SP guns, and the good guys are just hanging on with bazookas and the odd 57mm AT gun expecting to be reinforced by armor any minute, but you've just seen the status of the crossover, and it's going to be a while. And for the whole 360 turn scenario arty is falling sporadically over the entire area.

I pictured it with the yanks but it was inspired by the piece you enclosed about the Poles.

[Skipper]

Except those that you already know (Glantz etc) - I don't think so. Not the archival stuff, methinks.

By the way, another interesting thing is that "the other task" 1st Army received on 2nd August was related to an unexpectedly strong german counterstrike from the north. Several german divisions were redeployed from Romania to Poland (a move soviet army intelligence missed), and for the next 10 days Rokossovsky (1st Bel.Front CO) was thinking about keeping the lines, rather than crossing anything. This is why bridgeheads taken by 1st Army could not be reinforced.

In september, 1st Polish army and soviet 47th Army made another attempt. This time around, 47th army spearheaded the advance, and once they reached eastern bank of Visla in Warsaw, they've given the front over to 1st Polish. On 13th September, several batallions of st Polish crossed Visla (all the while, cursing Army Krajova for not witholding the uprising until this very day). This attempt also failed, and no 23 September the operation was cancelled, remnants of landing parties returned to the eastern bank.

This did not stop Rokossovsky's attempts to get Warsaw. Another operation was planned on 5th October. On 4th October, however, germans made a counterstrike in the north, and this broke up Rokossovsky's plan.

Warsaw was freed by 1st Polish only on 17th January 1945.

[Skipper]

double post

[ April 02, 2002, 06:07 PM: Message edited by: Skipper ]

[Skipper]

This is what was going on in the north in August-September. What you see here is that in July soviet troops managed to split Army Group Center from Army Group North (Low Baltics), but in early August german counterstrike from Tukums-Dobele line on the left (northern) flank of AG Center managed to stop soviet advance and create a bulge around Riga. In turn, this counterpush did not reach it's ultimate objective (deblocking AG North), and another strike was made from that bulge in early September. On 16 September germans managed to punch a corridor all the way through to AG North, which Red Army closed on 26th - it was too narrow, and did not exist for long enough time.

[ April 02, 2002, 06:09 PM: Message edited by: Skipper ]

[edgars]

Interesting map (and read), thanks.

The 4.10.44 line looks little bit too far to the west thou, Tukums was taken by the Soviet army only after capitulation.