Air Landing Assault

[Grotius]

I had a grand old time trying to take Arnhem bridge in the scenario "Air Landing Assault." This scenario really felt like operation Market-Garden. In this scenario, you land several km NW of Arnhem with 3 or 4 batallions of lightly-armed troops, mostly paratroopers and light artillery. Your objective is to take and hold either the Arnhem road bridge (the main goal) or, as a secondary fallback, the Arnhem rail bridge. You land at 1300 hours or so on day 1; you have to take and hold the bridge until 2200 hours on day 2. I played the British with Painfully Realistic order delay; Germany was played by the AI.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't played this scenario yet, you might want to stop reading now.

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Intel showed just some lightly-armed, substandard infantry and AA units garrisoning the main bridge. I figured I'd take the quickest route into town because the scenario briefing warned me to move fast before German armored reinforcements arrived. But I did guess that opposition might be stiffer than intel suggested, so I decided to abandon any plan to take the rail bridge and focus instead solely on the road bridge.

I ordered the 7th KOSB, 2nd South Staffords and 1st Borders batallions to move into town via the main NW-to-SE road. I also ordered the 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ, which had a bunch of lightly armed infantry and units attached, to swing around to the north and come into town from that direction, in case opposition was stiffer than intel suggested.

Phew, opposition was MUCH stiffer than expected. My units on the main road encountered two or three battalions of elite SS infantry, mechnanized infantry, and armor. My guys tried to stick to orders -- move into town, stat! -- but the SS slowed us down. The batallion swinging around north made better progress, but this path was much slower, so the net effect was that I didn't get to the outskirts of town til late afternoon. By dusk my main force was pinned down in a fierce firefight 3 km NW of the bridge, and my flanking force (still undetected by the enemy) was moving with painful slowneess north of town.

Elements of my main force continued to move southeast as I concentrated artillery fire on that part of the German line, but progress was slow, and my guys grew very tired as the night wore on. My flanking group moved throughout the night, getting into position, and didn't seem to get very tired. But my main force had to reorganize for rest, which was repeatedly interrupted by German mortars and small-arms fire. At dawn, after a fitful night's sleep, I ordered a coordinated push into town, main force from NW, flanking from N. Unfortunately, I forgot to wake up the 1st Borders batallion, which had fought til 3 a.m. and was now sleeping quite nicely in a suburb of Arnhem. I didn't notice this oversight until late morning, and these guys didn't really get back into the action in time. (Confound that order delay!)

By 4 pm in the afternoon -- six hours from my deadline -- my two forces had linked up about half a klick north of the bridge. The Germans meanwhile had fallen back to either side of the bridge, and (as predicted) armored reinforcements arrived to pound my guys. I ordered a final assault on the bridge with every available unit, and I concentrated a massive barrage of artillery and air strikes on the bridge and forces around it. By 5 pm I was two blocks from the bridge. But progress was painfully slow as my units withered under blistering enemy fire. By 8 pm the 7th KOSB made it to the northern edge of the bridge -- but to secure it, I had to clear the bridge of Germans.

By 9:30 pm, with half an hour to go, my guys had fought their way almost halfway across the bridge, and my artillery was shelling the troops on the southern edge constantly. But the elite SS units fought hard. At last, at 9:50 p.m., some of them started to break, and my units were in generally good order as they pushed forward. But as the clock struck 10, Germans were still clinging to the southern edge of the bridge, and General Montgomery notified me that I'd suffered a marginal defeat. He says my next command will be "security in Barbados." Heh.

Anyway, I loved this scenario because it really captured the "feel" of Market-Garden. It was, indeed, a bridge too far. The drop zone was too far from the bridge; intel underestimated the enemy; and paratroopers were too lightly-armed to deal with the heavy infantry and armor of the SS. It's a good setting for playing against the AI, too, because wargame AI tends to be better on defense than offense. The AI did a pretty good job of falling back and focusing on what counted -- defense of the bridge. I do think it was a bit too slow to do so, but its tardiness was matched by my own mistakes.