Close Combat: The Longest Day Campaign Thread

[ObKrieger]

Counterattack after counterattack is repelled on the morning of June 7th, with this particular engagement occuring between the 29th I.D. and 352. I.D. at Trevieres. The only approaches into town are either via road or an open marsh. There isn't much you can do when you are trying to cross an open field with a couple of tanks waiting for you at the end of it...

[ObKrieger]

Back at Pegasus Bridge, the tankless 6th Airborne mustered up what Vickers, Brens, and 6 pounders they could to defend the Caen Canal. My casualties were low, but the Major in charge of my company was killed. For whatever reason, I have lost countless British and Canadian officers and NCO's during this campaign. It has an adverse effect on morale, but my men are holding steady.

[ObKrieger]

The 21st Panzer Division has finally been pushed out of Caen!

My only regret is that the bastards took my one Sherman Firefly with them. Essentially a Sherman with a British 17 pounder gun mounted on it, the Firefly is one of my favorite tanks of WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Firefly

[ObKrieger]

Yesterday, I moved the 8th Brigade of the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division into the area of Carpiquet Airfield. The Germans have been using the airfield against me, but this morning, the Germans counterattacked.

The opposing force was SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment 25 of the 12. SS "Hitlerjugend". For those of you who know who Otto Funk was, this was the regiment that he served in.

Unfortunately for the 12. SS, this also ended in disaster.

[ObKrieger]

The German counterattack at Bayeux also failed.

The fight was between the British 231st Brigade and the German 30. Schnelle Brigade. Yet again, my company commander was killed.

[ObKrieger]

Look who came out of the woodwork! The remnants of WN 76 came to Bretteville, where they were very easily repelled. There were only a couple dozen of them left, anyway.

That concludes the German counterattack of the morning of June 7th. Casualties as of 0600 hours on June 7th, 1944:

Germany:
734 KIA, 705 Wounded, 12 Tanks, 5 Vehicles, 28 AT Guns
Allies:
230 KIA, 216 Wounded, 19 Tanks, 1 AT Gun

[ObKrieger]

Noon, June 7th, 1944.

Grenadier-Regiment 739 attack Carentan with a vengeance. I had failed to eradicate them entirely during the morning, so when I sent my tanks in to clear them out this afternoon, they had anti-tank weapons waiting for me en masse. They knocked out 3 of my 4 tanks and killed a handful of men from the 4th I.D., and made the capture of Carentan very difficult.

[ObKrieger]

La Cambe, France, June 7th, 1944- 0600

Grenadier-Regiment 914 of the 352. Infanterie Division has been holding defensive positions here since the beginning of the campaign. Earlier this morning, I moved the 15th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division into the area. Ironically, both of these units have soldiers that we are following! We already met Private First Class Cone at Omaha Beach, where he landed among the first wave as an 81mm mortar gunner.

The German we meet now (chosen completely at random, using a series of coin tosses) is Oberschuetze Seldte, a loader in an MG team. He carries a K98 and crews an MG42. He has been waiting for this attack for a full day now. Let's see how the fellow ends up!

[Danmark]

D+1 game time, D+5 real time....... Mo from PA collapses thru lack of sleep. The whole 12th SS Panzer Hitlerjugend passes by as he sleeps by the roadside!!!!

[ObKrieger]

The Battle for La Cambe went well for me. The 15th Regiment secured the entire area with only a few casualties. At one point a panzerfaust immobilized one of my Shermans, but I managed to send a Stuart up the road to help it out. During the process, the commander of the Stuart (Staff Sergeant Carson) killed 5 German soldiers and protected the Sherman from further damage. He earned the Bronze Star.

Private First Class Cone, being a mortar gunner, stayed back while the rest of the unit did most of the work. He earned no kills or awards during the fight, but he managed to stay alive and unscathed using the same strategy that he used on Omaha Beach.

Oberschuetze Seldte was with his MG team in a house on a corner in La Cambe when an American assault team stormed it from behind with grenades. Two of the men in the team were killed, and Seldte and the other assistant were seriously injured. He earned the Verwundetenabzeichen in Gold for his injuries. Before he went down, he took out two men from the U.S. assault team. Had this have been a real situation, Oberschuetze Seldte would likely have never had received his Wound Badge. However, he would have been in American captivity until the end of the war. We can quickly end our track of Oberschuetze Seldte by summarizing that he would have recovered (somewhat) from his wounds, and released from U.S. custody in December of 1945.