The village of Villiers Bocage lends its name to a region of Normandy, which shares its style of terrain with parts of the West Country, Dorset and Devon in particular. The way the Bocage area got looks is due, in part, to inheritance back in the Middle Ages. It is believed that William the Conqueror rewarded his Sergeants for their success in defeating Harold by divvying out land for them in Normandy. The father would pass on his land to his descendants who would then split the land up with earth banks onto which hedges would be planted. This led to the patchwork of small fields and pastures that we see today. Over time the hedges grew and were laid throughout the ages so that by the 1940's they were incredibly inter woven and formed considerable barriers to the invading forces. The road network was largely made up of unpaved roads with a few main Arteries between towns like Carentan, St Lo etc, due to a period of heavy rain, the terrain was very wet and muddy making movement more difficult. The Germans used this terrain to seriously hinder the allies once committed. Ambushes could be laid with ease and visibility was very poor, very often the opposing forces could be only yards apart and patrolling units could pass unnoticed even during the day. The main problem was that the allies hadn't included the specific terrain into their strategy and so were to come unstuck when their fast advance from the beachhead became a battle of attrition for both the Allies and Axis armies. American tactics had to be revised to cope with this as casualty rates soared. Allied Armour was especially at risk as when Armour tried to break through the Banks they invariably exposed their belly armour to all and sundry. Very often "Sundry" was armed with an Armour defeating weapon and despatched the hapless tank with ease, so to prevent this the Banks and hedges had to be breached. These hedges could be breached in several ways; the polite way would be to use the gateways provided by the farmers but the Germans were wise to this and so the Allies dropped the idea after a while. The pyrotechnic way was to use demolition charges to blow holes in the hedge and bank and use Combat Bulldozers to clear the banks. Again the Germans got wise to this and learnt to recognise and destroy the Combat Bulldozers at every opportunity, this technique was persevered with by the British. The final way to breach the hedges was by far the most successful. A Sergeant Cullin designed a special attachment for normal tanks that could grouse the bank and hedge roots out of the way without exposing its belly to Herr Sundry. Some British armoured units used this technique as well. By far the sneakiest tactic used by the Germans was to loop each field with telephone wire, this was done so that as a field was abandoned spotters could plug their phones into these and vector in mortars and heavy weapons to fire into the Field as the Allies entered. This of course caused many casualties. Rapid Fire The Rapid-Fire rule set needs some additions for fighting in the Bocage area but these are few and relate mainly to spotting. We play bocage removes 2D6" from tracked/ half tracked vehicles off raod movement, 1D6" from infantry, and wheeled vehicles cannot cross bocage hedge unless they are following a tracked/half track which creates the hole or use a gate (risky!). Cullins devices on a tank reduce the move penalty to 1D4. All bocage is hard cover due to ditches and big earth embankment. This makes bocage fighting tough going without restricting all movement to roads and lanes and hence dull 'traffic jam' games. I'm tempted to introduce house rules to allow engineers with demo charges to clear a 4" stretch of hedge. For buildings, they are hard cover, and we have just started using the occupancy limits from Market Garden, after an entire recon battalion assaulted then crowded into one small cottage! Back to Frontline Vol. 3 Iss. 1 Table of Contents Back to Frontline List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Rolf Hedges This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com