Battle Report Lite: The Fiasco at Castelbuono

Well, fuck me, not my finest hour! Nor that of the 67th Armored Infantry Regiment…

The Don looks on in disgust

To set the scene somewhat; in anticipation of our upcoming Sicily ’43 Chain of Command campaign my clubmate Daniel and I thought we would have a ‘friendly’ warm up – Yanks vs. Italians. Given the home side are going to be on the back foot for a lot of the campaign we went for a US Army defence using the ‘Attack and Defend’ scenario. Imagine the short edge furthest from the house is South.

If nothing else the table was a triumph with some of Daniel’s beautiful Mediterranean terrain and some weird Warhammer trees standing in for an olive grove

As I was defending I spent the patrol phase doing…well, what exactly? Unluckily I had the large manor house on the far long table edge so decided rather than rush for it I would a) get a nice out-of-the-way Jump Off placed for my 60mm mortar team and b) focus on deploying the bulk of my ‘weight of fire’ troops right in the middle facing East and North to try and whittle down his big infantry deployments as they came in. Nice plan in theory…

Daniel’s very nicely turned out Italians making my life a bloody misery

As you can see in the image above Daniel did exactly what I should have and captured the commanding battlefield feature. He then concentrated fire on the Browning MG teams I deployed early on in the olive grove. Quite early on he flipped the scenario and made me think I needed to counter-attack and get him out.

This one shows the axis of the Italian advance nicely. A few MG remnants of mine fleeing through the trees can be seen in the distance

I had a bit of success against the infantry sections the Italians posted in the walled-off fields to the East but despite blunting a move they were making on the mortar squad it wasn’t decisive.

Mortars are always worth bringing if you ask me. Slightly annoying indirect fire for the enemy and occasionally get a very lucky strike

At this point I was getting a bit desperate with a breaking MG team bugging out and senior leaders having to step in and stop the rot. My mind went down that well worn path when I’m feeling the heat and screamed at me: TANK!

On came the Mighty M5A1 Light Tank

You can guess what happened next. Daniel got an AT gun on the field in a brilliant flanking position and after a few plinks found his mark. With the M5A1 knocked out and my infantry squads being hammered my morale was getting a kicking. A hail-Mary US infantry deployment in the orange orchard was the final straw; I just couldn’t winkle him out of his great positions and after a bit of an unlucky double/triple phase (some controversy about this) the situation was, in the lingo, FUBAR.

The forlorn hope. At least they got to die in one of the nicest bits of homemade scenery I’ve ever seen.

In terms of what I’d do differently next time… pretty much everything? I made three cardinal errors in this game:

1) I failed to prepare without even having looked up the Italian platoon composition or possible support

2) I didn’t seize the dominant feature and use it as a bastion for my defence or deny it to the enemy

3) I brought on a bloody panic-tank!

If nothing else it was a looker. It was a bit green for Sicily but maybe Signore has got good irrigation, OK?

Daniel came with a good plan and he dealt with my actions well. I am not relishing meeting him in the campaign once we have decided on structure be it ladder, map, 4-dimensional matrix or all three. All the above said and done it was a good evening and my performance meant I wasn’t too late home, result.