Kampfgruppe Heller: Battle 13, Poland

John D Salt recently sent me the updated draft of his WW2 ruleset, so it was time to finish off the last few battles of my refight of Just Jack's first Kampfgruppe von Klink campaign, set in Poland 1939. This is the refight of Battle 13. A bunch of German recce, infantry and engineer elements are supposed to advance and destroy a Polish pontoon bridge. German intelligence expected light opposition...

The Forces:

Kampfgruppe Heller:

 

Company Command

Motorcycle platoon

Grenadier platoon

1 x Sdkfz 221

1 x Sdkfz 231

2 x Engineer squads

Polish Forces:

Infantry Company Command:

2 Rifle platoons with 7 squads between them

1 x 82mm mortar

2 x .30 machine guns

The Set-Up:

The overall battlefield. The temporary bridge to the top-left. The Poles have some elements near the bridge, including the machine guns, a platoon to the top-right and a platoon deployed centre to bottom left. The Germans are approaching on both sides of the river from the bottom right.

Polish infantry, with a light mortar and anti-tank rifle by the strip of trees (bottom-left), with another squad by the edge of the field. There are further infantrymen at the woods at the centre-top, and at the top of the centre (if you follow me!)

Most of the Polish Platoon guarding this side of the river is by the farmhouse (top), but a squad has been thrown forward into the woods (centre-right)

MMG positions on both sides of the bridge provide the main defence here.

The German motorcyle platoon leads the column on the far bank, the Grenadiers lead the column on the near bank.

The Battle:

The German infantry move into the trees to avoid being spotted; the Polish infantry at the edge of the field see no reason to give away their position just yet.

The Polish infantry in the wood have successfully ambushed the lead German motorcycle squad; the Polish mortars by the farmhouse are resolutely failing to bracket the temporarily stunned Germans.

The Germans recover quickly and put in a nifty bayonet charge (aided not a little by the weight of fire put down by the Sd231 in support!) and chase the Polish infantrymen away.

Two somewhat windy Poles run off at the sight of their comrades running back. What a shame that they are the two with the platoon anti-tank rifle!

The Polish strongpoint now distinctly less strong...

The German infantry clear the woods, scattering a Polish ATR team (at the farm) and a Polish Rifle squad (centre-top)

The Polish riflemen are gunned down before they reach safety, but the ATR team moves out-of-sight to a safer position - meanwhile, the Polish infantry squad at the end of the field (bottom-centre) opens up, severely discomforting the German grenadiers

The Sd231 has moved up to keep the Poles' heads down whilst the now dismounted German motorcyclists and their attached engineers move into the woods

But some very good/lucky shooting by the Polish BAR gunners wipes out the last squad! Unfortunately for the Germans, it was one of the Engineer teams!!

The German Grenadier Platoon has sorted itself out and brought its superior firepower to bear on the Poles who were in the field.

The Germans attack the farmhouse, but the Polish platoon opens up on them whilst crossing

The lead German squad is gunned down; the German platoon weapons try to suppress the Poles

Believing themselves to be safe to advance again, the German engineers now attack the farm

But they are gunned down too! This time by the Poles infantry in the wood to the North of the farmhouse

The Sd221 enfilades the Polish platoon HQ and weapons and destroys and disperses them; meanwhile the German platoon mortar drops some smoke to help their retreat

The German dismounted motorcycle platoon and the Sd231 retreat

The Poles have held the bridge - defeat for KG Heller.

Game Notes:

Great to get this campaign back onto the table and great to have John's updated rules to try out. As is common amongst these games, the differences between the rules used originally by Jack and these rules explain a lot about the outcomes - the Germans really did not have sufficient firepower or protected mobility to carry out this operation with much hope of success, whereas the original rules gave them more of a chance. Plus the Polish infantry did shoot very well at some key moments. But nothing happened which felt surprising in the sense of untoward. Having covered escape routes is really important here, as is having command elements handy. I used the deployment that Jack used originally, but the Poles especially were a bit dispersed, you would want everything within a 100-200m of a platoon commander ideally in this game. I think HE fire has become a bit less important in this version, not that it is less effective, but because the bracketing fire is something which has more explicit process in now (and that can fail). Given the small number of HE weapons present in the campaign, that makes a difference. The ability of light armour to cause panic has been toned down in this version too, which is why the German recce vehicles provided more MG covering fire than assault, which they had done previously. Anyway, a very enjoyable game and glad to get this series on the road again!

Germans are a mixture of Baccus and H&R, Poles a mixture of H&R and Scotia (have some cool new H&R Polish light mortar models, very nice indeed!). Buildings a mixture of Baccus, Leven and Battlescale I think.