The first turn saw the US forces make a quick advance into the stream and then just as quickly discover two of the platoon snipers who were shadowing their deployment area looking for quick and easy kills. Also in the 1st movement phase, an accidental melee occurred when the US infantry overran a single Sensha Sampei Butai soldier who had hidden himself too close to the US lines in a nearby patch of Jungle. Sensha Sampei must wait for their targets (vehicles, leaders and weapon teams) and will ignore closer threats. An incidental melee occurred because the Sensha Sampei would not disclose his location and James walked his men into where the Sensha Sampei was hiding. All incidental contacts go immediately to melee. He was quickly dispatched by the bayonet (melee is a product of movement and is a combination of brutally close in firing as well as the more traditional bayonet or entrenching tool), but the US forces could not quite figure out why he was carrying all those explosives on his body. The tanks and infantry crossing the ford on the right took intermittent machine gun fire, which killed two men in one squad and sent it streaming to the rear. The fire phase saw the US completely swamp the two hapless platoon snipers in a veritable deluge of bullets. The US, having properly positioned the leaders, continued to advance across the stream in the second movement phase.
Japanese turn one literally started with a bang as the US quickly found out why the Sensha Sampei had so many explosives as the second part of the team ran out of the jungle and threw himself onto the closest M3 Stuart, blowing both it and him into little pieces. As the US neglected to put soldiers on overwatch and had moved their machine gun teams, they could only stare as the scene unfolded before them. The Japanese rounded out the turn by turning loose two of their four Type 92 machineguns loose on the advancing 35th Regiment. Unfortunately the 'woodpeckers' only inflicted one casualty.
On turn two, the US finished wading the stream they had to cross and aggressively pushed forward into the nearby hills were, once they crested both of the center hills, they ran into two squads from Tom's command waiting in ambush. In Combat Command, hidden units are automatically on overwatch, so they can stop the enemy player during any of their movement phases and fire on them with full affect. However, if the hidden units do not take the shot and they are spotted, they lose their chance to fire and may not try to opportunity fire until next turn. Many shots rang out, but the Japanese only succeeding in breaking yet another of James' US squads on the right.
In the US Fire Phase, Dan's US troops on the left punished the ambushers facing them on the left and sent them flying down the hill in disarray. On the US right, James traded shots, but only managed to inflict one casualty in return - not enough for a morale check. The US did not follow up in the Second movement phase as they conferred about how to deal with the new threat.
The Japanese, however, had no such debates or issues. During the Japanese Morale / Support phase, the squad broken by Dan's fire continued to pull away from the fight. It had a choice of trying to rally and function normally, or rally with another special Japanese rule by declaring Kokutai. Kokutai roughly means national character, and for the Japanese, it allows them to rally a squad regardless of casualties. However, from that point on, they must try to close with the closest enemy unit and melee them. They will also get no terrain benefits as they charge forward. The squad chose rally but they failed which meant they continued their retreat. Unfortunately for them, this brought the squad within range of a set up .30 cal team, which instantly added to their misery and chopped them up some more (medium or heavy machine guns that did not move in the previous movement phase are always on overwatch and may fire at any movement). Bent on retribution, the Japanese plastered a blistering mortar barrage on top of the US soldiers occupying the forward slope of the central hill. Several men fell from the mortar stonking, but the rest were held firm by their Lieutenant's morale.
On the US right, Tom used his Gunso to aggressively push his remaining Japanese squad into melee contact with James' troops. Both sides traded blows, but numbers alone (one Japanese squad reduced to 10 men charged almost 35 US troops) quickly had the remainder of the Emperor's finest running away, but only after mauling yet another two squads. To add insult to Japanese injury, the lone, true Japanese sniper shot -- and missed on a roll of '6'. It was to be one of many misses from the sniper during the game today. He had obviously recently cross-trained from the machine gun teams!
Combat Command: Assault on the Gifu! December 1942 - January 22, 1943
Back to MWAN #118 Table of Contents
Back to MWAN List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 2002 Hal Thinglum
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