Postscript

 It was back to the village of Moditten today, Jimi turned up and we were playing using Bolt Action this time, a different game entirely from Chain of Command. The Germans had to take the crossroads in the town and no Soviet troops could be close enough to contest the objective, a big ask but he did have 250 points more than I did.

I 'hid' some troops in forward positions and left some off table as reserves, Jimi came forward very quickly as he had took transports for all his squads, I opened up on the lead truck and it burst into flames and disembarked its passengers, a good start. With German troops now close to the buildings they spotted a medium machine gun and his assault gun managed to wipe it out before it had a chance to fire, things were now even.

My SMG squad move forward.

SU-76.

With the threat from the StuG to men hiding in buildings I pulled my HMG back into safety while opening up on his halftrack with a squad hiding behind a hedge, the small arms could not knock out the halftrack but they could pin it, which they continued to do so much so that Jimi had a hard time getting it to move. As the German armour moved ever closer to the objective I thought it was time to bring on my SU-76 and the crew immediately hit the StuG, sadly only immobilising the beast, the crew attempted to hit back but missed.

 I kept up pressure on the nearest Jerries in order to drive them off so that I could move my little assault gun out of the arc of fire of the StuG, I had put my only anti-tank asset in a bad place in hindsight as Jimi's infantry also carried some panzerfausts. He now had one squad left on my left so I threw caution to the wind and set a couple of squads to advance along with the Su-76, mortar fire and small arms accounted for one of my squads but my SMG squad massacred the Jerries at close range and my SU was now safe covering the crossroads.

StuG III.

Reluctant halftrack.

Things now really looked good, although Jimi had managed to move his halftrack at last towards the objective and unload his passengers I thought one last push and I would be safe. And of course this is when everything went wrong, all of my squads suffered heavy casualties from the remaining Germans, the immobilised Stug, the mortar and the MG from the halftrack as German command dice came out in one long stream. When I did get a turn my boys failed to hit anything or simply refused to comply with orders. Against the odds Jimi had managed to get a draw, we both had an infantry unit on the objective crossroads, Jimi by design and me by luck.

Two units about to be cut up.

 

The end.

Casualties on both sides have been very heavy and once again I had went forward when I probably should have stayed where I was, but where is the fun in that.

Rob popped in yesterday for a visit to see how I was getting on, he brought me another little Vickers MkVI tankette with a turret designed by mate Stuart, this is beautiful work, the two crew members are superb, he also left me an early war stretcher bearer.