The battle is covered in Barrie Pitt's Crucible of War, as well as the Official Australian online history. Both make great reading. I made my Big men fictional characters: this was a battle with heroism and tragedy on both sides.
The paper wargames journal on the table in this photograph is as a result of my returning to bad habits! I`ve kept one of these on the go for years and I`m meant to be blogging this sort of thing. Now I`m back in Cyprus I`ll see how I get on, but I used the paper journal to plan these three games.
To create the Italian strongpoint I used light sand coloured felt to represent the trenches. This is the lighter coloured sand dug out and piled around the trenches. The anti-tank ditch is a darker brown colour to represent its depth, as are the dugouts. The main wire at the front of the emplacement was made using strips of cloth from an old ragged tea towel, and the wire perimeter of the outpost itself made from much thinner strips of a stone coloured felt, twisted and looped.
It works for me!
Tenente Alphonso Pachino of the 62nd Italian Infantry division, has two full platoons plus a reserve, as well as MMG and dug in artillery. His men are in trenches, and he has placed himself, with his reserve, in the rear dugout. Most of his forces were spotted automatically since the tanks were almost on top of his trench line. The tanks were also enfilading the trench line. After a "Hussar!" of a dice roll the machine guns from the tanks minced the Italian Infantry.
Major Dundee then lead his own Infantry forward, Australians, elite in close combat. They day was about to get a lot worse for Tenente Pachino. With the Italians losing section after section of Infantry to the bayonets of the Aussies the Tenente lead out his reserve in a bid to stem the rout that seemed imminent.
The Tenente leads out his reserve sections. |
He inspired his gunners to immobilise a Matilda, but its a tank that is quite rightly hard to kill.
Even so the immobilised tank still used its machine guns to spray the reserve as they charged to the rescue. Pretty soon the Aussies came to grips with the Italian reserve, killing two and inflicting four more shock. The Tenente failed his survival roll and his men promptly ran away.
The fighting around the central Italian gun pits grew nasty as the Aussies closed in, although the Italians managed to kill one man and inflict two shock. Not really enough since they lost four men and received four shock points too.
At that point I called it job done. Mick Dundee had proved that he had a bigger knife than the Italians, although to be fair it was the Matilda Tanks of 7RTR that really won this. They focused on the Infantry, and especially on killing that Italian MMG, largely ignoring the danger of the Italian artillery. A risky strategy but it paid off.
Really nice to get back to IABSM. I`m looking forward to the next couple of games. Let's see how Capitane DeNiro does against Mick and his Aussies!
Streuth! That was a fair dinkum little game. Sorry..... that was uncalled for.
ReplyDeleteG`day mate... nah that's all I`ve got in that vernacular. Can you tell what it is yet?
Delete... Too soon?