This scenario was played over skype in two sessions against Alan Sawyer and represented my 10th and final visit to The Westwall scenario pack.

German defences had to be centred on the town of Putzlohn and the high ground to the north and south of it. There was also an argument for defending the out-lying regions around the town as well, but this would stretch the rather thin coating of defenders to an overly diluted level. Therefore, one Hetzer pln and two grenadier plns were positioned on the northern high ground and its hamlet. A sole Tiger tank pln was dug-in on the southern hills. These would hopefully deter any enemy armoured advance toward Putzlohn. The rest of the defending forces were placed in Putzlohn itself. The plan for defence would be to hold all urban locations whilst slowly giving up the hill positions and extracting a heavy toll on the attackers at the same time. Simple in idea, worrying in prospect !

0930 hours: The American 104th entered from the west in three main elements. One in the centre along the main road. This consisted generally of slow-moving MG’s and mortars, accompanied by some infantry and Sherman tanks. Flanking both sides of these troops were infantry blocks. In all, a regiment of infantry backed by plenty of OBA. The fly in the ointment though was the never-ending mud already experienced from Merzenhausen to Hucheln over the preceding week. (See scenarios 6,7,9 & 10 already AAR’d). This porridge like sludge would grind the infantry attack down in its advance and, without any forward defending Germans, mainly render American MG’s and mortar units worthless as they were so far away from the objective.

For nearly 3 hours, the GI’s were left to struggle forward, virtually unmolested. Both sides jostled for better positions during the advance period and inflicted minimal losses on each other. One German mortar pln was lost in the bombardment of Putzlohn and a US engineer pln lost some men to accurate MG fire from the town when they become stuck in the mud about 600m away. By midday, the Tiger pln gave up its southern hill position to return to Putzlohn and the Hetzers to the north retired into the hamlet to beef up the grenadier platoon there. The American attackers had formed themselves into three distinct groups ahead of Putzlohn. Their experienced Lt.Col led from the centre and they were closing on the town under fire with the loss of 1 step of infantry. Another group veered south to try and stretch the defenders and the third group attempted to advance on the northern heights. Fortunately, for the Germans, American OBA, if not entirely ineffective seemed to prove always something their men could recover from. It did stir the German nest a little but failed to burst it open.

1230 hours (turn 13) seemed to turn the tide palpably towards the Germans. Although Americans had reached the edge of the town, many of them, rather than launch assaults, began to attempt to dig-in to firing positions close-by. Whilst doing this, German fire cut down a few of their number, causing some loss of cohesion. They were still without armour support as the M4’s dared not advance under the guns of nearby German tanks. In all, one platoon and half another were lost either to close in enemy fire or to the first assault that was finally launched. With the centre of the American line engaged so, the northern flank attempted to push ahead towards the hamlet. Here again, an advancing pln was ripped completely to shreds along with its Lieutenant as first the hetzer and grenadiers in the hamlet laced fire into them, followed up by enfilading fire from their flank facing Putzlohn. Furthermore, the small amount of German OBA had zeroed in on the clustered US MG teams that were struggling along the main road in the distance and had caused casualties amongst them.

With casualties mounting, time running out and little prospect of advancing without taking yet more heavy fire, the Americans called off the attack. Not before they had a minor success in Putzlohn though. Their engineers assisted infantry in clearing one street of a whole enemy grenadier pln . But that was too little too late.

Final losses, albeit, quite low for the battle, amounted to 3 German steps and 8 American steps. The Americans had taken about half of the high grounds and were contesting just 2 of the 8 or so urban hexes. This equated to a 33pts to 16.5pts advantage to the Germans.

I really did not expect to win this one due to the scope of area requring defending coupled with the fact that the town of Putzlohn or Eschweiler (whichever one its meant to be) would not be enough points on its own. But once again the mud seemed to confound Alan's plans and hopefully so did some of my defence tactics ? I suspect Alan will be glad not to visit anywhere along the Siegfried line for a while yet ! Although not many casualties in this, I enjoyed the nip & tuck of the battle and ever changing positions of troops to try and retain advantages. A standard '3' rating for me this one and as always, will be keeping an eye out for future shared plays to see how others fare.