Panzer Battles Normandy - AAR: Epilogue

“Keep going, don’t stop,”
Lieutenant Colonel Murray Scott
Zuehlke, Mark (2011-11-08). Breakout from Juno: First Canadian Army and the Normandy Campaign, July 4–August 21, 1944 (Canadian Battle) (p. 321). D & M Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The scenario has ended to a draw.

The end game screen showing how elusive victory can be.

Clearly, if we would have taken the south-most objective (Fontenay le Marmion, worth 150 points) we would have won. But given the casualty rates, that would have been a pyrrhic victory.

At the end of the scenario, there is still a lot of fight in both sides. But the amount of German Panther tanks is impressive. I take pride in the performance of my tankers, who knocked out some of the German armor and of my Calgarians holding "The Factory" knocking out 4 Panthers just outside the objective.

By the way, "The Factory" was the name that allied 1944 maps gave to a position that actually was a mining complex. Kudos on the historical research!

My forces ran out of momentum somewhere between turns 6 and 9, the Black Watch being continuously divested of mobility to German trenches seemingly everywhere, and the Calgarians not given enough anti-tank guns and armor. The Calgarians had also the bad luck of being exposed to heavy weapons' fires from west of the Orne River, which in turn forced me to run a vehicle-less show at "The Factory".

The scale of Panzer Battles fits the Normandy Campaign like a glove. The narrow confines of the sectors of many operations and their diverse terrain features accommodate both the platoon/company-sized tactical actions (did you see my shoot and scoot in the previous blog entry?) and higher level (division and corps) grand-tactical maneuvers that Panzer Battles excels at.

The final situation. Victory was within our grasp. 

What a day, what an unlovely day! The angel of death collects life from the farmsteads, from sheds, from slit trenches, from nearby rifles driven into the ground by their bayonets so the butts would show above the wheat, from burning vehicle wrecks, from bodies that would not be found for several months. One can barely imagine the extreme carnage that happened in real life and how "keep going" was done and rarely questioned.

Thanks for John Tiller, David Freer and their crews for allowing me to play through this scenario.

Cheers,