Our second reunion game was one Lenin and I had been thinking about for a while - the German assault on Crete - in 28mm using our combined figure collections. We chose to use the Two Fat Lardies' I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! rules as the game was rather too large for Nuts!
The Germans had an ad hoc formation from the 2nd Fallschimjäger Regiment based around the remnants of the 2nd Company, I Battalion and supported by elements of the Headquarters Company, I Battalion, 9th Company, III Battalion and 13th Company. Their objective was to take Hill 'A' which dominated the airfield. Whilst they were facing remnants of C Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Australian Infantry Regiment supported by elements of 1st Platoon, 1st Australian Machine Gun Company.
Both Lenin and I were playing in the game (largely to take advantage of playing on a larger table than normal - 8 x 6') but decided to let the other players take the lead as we had set the game up. As usualy I played on the German side with Lenin taking the Aussies.
The German plan was to advance up the road on the left flank and secure the farm buildings then move into the woods and secure the other farm at the other end of the table before assaulting the hill itself. Things started to go wrong for them pretty much straight away. They hadn't read the brief fully and so didn't take advantage of the initial bombardment available and then they were spotted whilst still advancing in the open on the road. The Austrailians were dug in on the hill so the ensuing fire fight was somewhat uneven with the Germans pinned in the open gradually taking more and more casualties.
Eventually we managed to take advantage of the limited cover at the base of the hill but our fire was relatively ineffective against their position. With no smoke for the light mortars and assault under heavy fire was going to the very costly and so the attack was stalled pretty much straight away.
Due to some rather poor communication on the German side the blinds advancing down the side of the hill to outflank the Australian position were simply dummies whilst the one behind us in the farm yard turned out to be the third platoon!
Fortunately we were reinforced by a medium mortar and an infantry gun and with their support we started to advance up the hill but it was terribly slow going.
Our plan had been for the morning (real time) to be the evening (game time) and for the afternoon to be the following day. So when lunch (real time) came around the Germans still had not taken the hill. Fortunately for the Germans, the Australians received an order to withdraw (higher command thought they had better intelligence and wanted to consolidate their forces) which allowed the Germans to occupy the hill unopposed. When the Australians realised their mistake the organised a counter attack for the next morning.
During the night the Germans had been reinforced with two medium MGs and an anti-tank rifle team but had run out of ammo for the mortar and had been unable to manhandle the infantry gun up the hill. They reorganised their force into two full strength platoons and started to dig in. The Australians had four understrength platoons with medium MG support and two light tanks for the attack. (At this point I had swapped sides to help with the numbers too)
Unfortunately for the Aussies their troops and armour were almost immediately spotted and came under fire. Even with smoke from the light mortars the attack became heavy going and things began to slow down. One of the light tanks threw a track when crossing the ditch at the edge of the road and the MGs were held up for some reason.
The attack devolved into a rather unequal fire fight and when the second light tanks attempted to move into support it was assaulted by the Germans and caught fire. The only close assault was thrown back by the Germans for little loss on their side and the attack stalled.
The attack then turned into making an orderly withdrawal for the Australians, which proved difficult under the heavy German fire but over half the force managed it.
Whisperin' Al