The Allies approached the strongpoints with caution. They both turned out to be unoccupied. This allowed the Allies time to dash across open ground to grab victory hex 0412. Unfortunatly for the Axis they failed their first THREE activation checks! This forced the Axis units to attack across the causway now that the Allies had posession of the victory hex. Despite having to approach the Allied position over the causway the Axis managed to get adjecent with no step losses, one disruption and no demorializaitons. At first opportunity they assaulted. Unfortunetly for the Axis they could not wait for the disrupted platoon of Gren to recover. They had to assault a soon as possible because the Allied reenforcement platoon had just apppeared and would be up in one turn. The Axis lost one engineer step in the assault. It and the HMG were disrupted. The allies came through with only one reduced platoon being demoralized. The Allies quickly replaced this unit with the fresh Para platoon the had just arrived on the scene in the previous turn. The Allies chose not to counter assault because it was too risky. They had achieved a drawn position against all odds and decided to let the Axis try to pry them out of the village. The Axis tried to do this over the next several turns. They came close to having several Allied units route out of the village but the Allies always passed their morale checks. Only once did the Axis assaults produce a step loss and the Allies passed their morale checks and there was no further effect. On the other hand the Axis lost an additional step in the village fighting, and were never able to bring their full strength to bear on the village. In the end both sides still had units contesting the village hex and the Axis had lost only 2 steps. Draw. This scenario turned topsy turvy when the Axis failed to occupy 0412 because of non activation. Had at least one strongpoint been active it would likly have been enough to slow the Allied advance. In that case the Allies would have been on the outside looking in versus a superior force. So neither side got what it wanted. But both sides got what it needed. Which was avoiding a loss.