On 16 May, Leon Mason ran a WWII skirmish game pitting the advancing Russians against defending Germans in Spring / Summer 1945. Russian players were given the task of reaching the other side of the city, clearing a sector for follow-on forces to travel through. The Germans were to simply prevent this. On the above diagram, the Russian platoons are in red, Germans in a dark green and buildings have brick roofs. Wooded areas are in light green. The Russian player has 3 Su-76s (lower left corner) and the German player has a couple heavy guns.

The Germans were hidden at the beginning and the Russians entered the bottom side of the board at locations of their choice. The first couple turns saw only posturing on the Russian side as they prepared for their rushes to cover the open terrain.

As soon as the rush into the open began, the right flank received heavy fire from the German squad entrenched in partially destroyed buildings. The heavy gun on the hill behind the town scored a direct hit and near miss that nearly devastated the Russian right flank. Half the platoon was down, the other half sought cover. The platoon on the left rushed across the open terrain, taking advantage of the cover from the treeline to the front. They advanced in an echelon right formation to maximize firepower to the right in case Germans were entrenched in the brick building.

Once the German heavy gun opened up, the Su-76s began their flanking maneuver. The pillbox on the high ground west of the city was unoccupied, allowing two of the three Russian SPs to take up superb vantage points. The first shots from the Su-76s utterly destroyed the German gun behind the town.

The squad holding the German right flank now found themselves facing an onrushing Russian platoon and two SP Guns. They fired at the lead squad, killing the squad leader and two machine gunners. The Russian platoon commander, through force of will, kept the leaderless squad going, while directing the fire of the other two squads into the building. The Su made short work of scattering Germans, until such time as Sgt Steiner surrendered his squad. From this point on, the Russians proceeded to roll up the German flank and fairly easily cleared a large sector of the town.

Lessons learned - don't expose the flanks. The Russians, headed by Rhett Scott, also included Mark Smith, Peter McCarthy, and finally, me. The German team was headed by Curt Dees and included Patrick Dees, Mike Wagner (Steiner), and Chuck Kennedy (died on turn 3).

Iz Moskvy na Berlin