Brett & Vince's C&C Kings Officers 1940-41 Campaign Diary

[vince hughes]

Scenario 3 "BARDIA" - Session 1

Scenario 3 of this 9 scenario kicked off today and it represents a high-moraled (8/8) Australian trench attack under the cover of early morning darkness against lesser moraled Italians (7/6) defending in 5 entrenchments and others dug-in. The Australians are a mainly infantry force with some bren-carriers. The Italisns, apart from infantry have a collection of 4 x AT guns and a bit of artillery.They can also place 7 x AT ditches which they use to sabotage the roads and tracks to negate their movement.

At 0530 hours (turn 1) the Australians entered buttragedy came early. With only a night vision of 1 hex for the first 3 turns, a bren-carrier carrying an HMG platoon drove up the track right into an Italian AT unit. These were despatched in their entirity with an AT shot causing a 3 step loss. Brett may say otherwise, but I think this early shocker put him off his stride for the rest of the session and the Aussie command seemed to be put out of its stride.The rest of the Aussie force entered at full speed in linear formation. Turn 2 was bloodless, but ended quickly. All the Aussies had time to do was redeploy their bren force whilst the infantry stood still in the darkness. At 0600, the Australian units with the Brens took their revenge and eliminated the offendingAT gun from turn 1.

The Australian infantry were now once more advancing toward the Italian hedge-hog trench position, but by 0630, with light slowly creeping in, they suffered 2 steps of INF lost to Italian OBA. OBA was now being 'exchanged' and casualties were being taken. The Italians losing no less than 3 pieces of artillery and an INF step. The Australian firing line that they had formed had taken a further 3 steps themselves. Disruption and some demoralisation was also suffered by both sides.

As we ended turn 9 (of 16) the Australians had suffered 8 steps and the Italians 5 steps. The Australians have the tried and tested Commonwealth firing line ahead of the Italian positions and they continue to pour DF into the enemy tenches and dug-outs. For their part, the Italians continue to cause disorder to frustrate the Australians. This one should finish in the next session.