The Germans and their Italian allies have to take and hold two Australian entrenchments; the Australians have to prevent them from doing so. The Axis has good German morale, very good off-board artillery (OBA), engineers and a platoon of tanks. The Australians also have good morale, plus they have the advantages of wire, minefields and entrenchments. The Italians get a very good leader draw, with one 10-1-2 Capitano who single-handedly kept his troops in the fight and prevented them from surrendering on several occasions.

The Axis have plenty of time, so they move slowly through the minefields and wire with the engineers in the lead. They dig in adjacent to the Australian entrenchments (night visibility of one hex) and try to wear down the defenders with close-range fire and their OBA. Both sides suffer disruptions and demoralizations (some from friendly fire), but recover quickly. The Germans and Italians do lose some units in the exchanges.

In the hour before dawn, one Australian entrenchment has both platoons demoralized by German OBA. The Germans immediately assault with the two good-order platoons that were adjacent, and almost take the hex. The Australians reinforce their trenches and manage to hold on. The Germans initiate an assault on a second entrenchment with tank support. As the sun comes up, Australian anti-tank guns take out half the German tanks with the first shot, survive a couple of turns of German OBA, and then finish off the tanks. (Since the anti-tank guns were entrenched in limiting terrain, I did not let the Germans target them until they opened fire.)

The Italians can't do enough damage to the defenders to make a third assault possible, but they hang tough with the help of their Capitano. Eventually they lose some platoons, and the survivors pull back to less exposed positions. They remain just outside of Direct Fire range in the north, threatening the Australian trenches in that area. The Aussies are force to leave some much-needed troops in the north to prevent the Italians from capturing an objective on the cheap.

The rest of the battle was a slow meatgrinder, with both sides feeding units into the assault hexes. I stopped counting step losses when both sides' Initiative was reduced to zero. The Australians had the major advantage of their entrenchments, but the Germans had more troops and some very good leaders. The battle was very tense, with the Australians barely holding on in several of the turns. Eventually though, the Germans just ran out of troops. The Australians managed to hold all of their entrenchments for the win.