Definitely one of those battles where you get to the end and realise that it was not only not as bad as it felt at the time, but not that much actually happened. I mean, mission accomplished etc, but it was pretty straightforward really.

But a solid performance from the Germans.

***

Platoon Patrol 6: German Gebirgsjaeger

Welcome back to Combat Mission Shock Force for the sixth instalment of the Platoon Patrol series. This time we’re taking the German Gebirgsjaeger out. If you want to know more about their platoon TOE, I’ve covered that in a quick guide, which I’ll link down below.

As always, in this scenario our platoon has to locate and destroy a reinforced squad of US Marines, who are going to be in one of five possible locations on our map. We’re also going to be starting in one of six randomly determined entry points. For this run, I rolled a six, so like with the Dutch Light Infantry, we’re starting off in the north-west corner near Objective Alpha.

Before we kick off, it’s probably a good idea to consider how I want to move around with this platoon. Their Fuchs APCs aren’t combat vehicles, they’re basically armoured trucks, so ideally I don’t want to make contact with them. I need to use them to get the dismounts close enough for them to observe and approach potential enemy positions.

Speaking of dismounts, I have mixed the platoon up a little bit before starting off. The GMG team and MG3 are obviously contenders for the platoon base of fire, so I’ve split 2nd Section down and put their B team, with the MG3 into one vehicle with the GMG. That leaves 2A as an assault element I can pair up with the Platoon HQ.

Kick Off

Starting from Entry Point Six means that Objective Alpha is the only real first port of call… and it’s clear. From there I decide to head down towards Charlie and grab a central position. Charlie is also clear.

I’ve left the vehicles at the back of the Charlie orchard, keeping 4th Section and the Base of Fire mounted while 2A probes up to the ditch with 3rd in support. It’s only when 3rd dashes across the road that the enemy open up.

There’s a SMAW team on top of building D1 taking potshots. They manage to wing 3rd’s section leader- a pretty good shot at almost 400m.

So the enemy is at Delta. Again. This is the 4th time they’ve been camped out on that objective and this is only the 6th playthrough of the scenario. I’ve gone back into the editor and checked to see if the Delta AI plan has a higher likelihood of being chosen… it doesn’t, so I guess the randomisation will need more runs to balance out.

Regardless, I’m in pretty much the same position I attacked Delta from with the Dutch Light Infantry. The main difference is that here I’m just making contact and I don’t have the same level of mobility or firepower.

I have to take an infantry-centric approach here. Going straight up the middle is unlikely to end well, we did the left with the Dutch, so I decide to go right. I can send the base of fire into Charlie, getting the GMG on the roof for a better field of fire, and punch the rest of the platoon down the irrigation ditch on the right to close with the Delta compound. Once I’m in close proximity, I can shoot my way onto the objective and start clearing.

Pushing the Ditch

This all takes time. Its 400m from the Charlie ditch to Delta, but I’m not going in a straight line. I have to follow the ditch round or come up from the transports in the orchard, both of which add another couple of hundred metres. At least the irrigation ditches here are not as difficult going as the muddy causeway ditch the Stryker infantry had to slog through, it’s still tiring.

There is some fire going back and forth, but none of it is particularly effective. The D1 SMAW puts some rockets out that go long, but the GMG puts a stop to that with some very accurate fire once it’s set up. It also uses a good third of its ammunition, so I make sure to give it a target arc and retain the ammo for when I really need it.

It’s hard to tell whether this was a mistake. The GMG definitely nailed the actual SMAW gunner, but his buddy retrieves the weapon and remains excessively invested in the firefight. My dismounts have plenty of ammunition, but the range is a bit too long for effective fire with 556. The 762 MG3 is better, but similarly not that great at getting the D1 Marine to keep ducking, even when it’s supplemented by some careful keyholing fire from a few of the Fuchs.

It takes a good fifteen minutes to get my front runners down the ditch as far as the bridge by the watertower- easily time enough, it should be noted, for any half-competent human opponent to figure out exactly what I’m doing and get a machinegun into the ditch to enfilade it.

2A are really functioning as my scouts here- as they move up, the D1 SMAW gunner rears his head again, shoots one of the grenadiers, casually disregards all return fire and blasts 4A with a SMAW as they come up behind 2A. That accounts for 4th’s section leader and leaves my lead elements cowering in the ditch.

Opening up with everything I’ve got eventually solves the problem. A couple of turns later, 4A get their revenge and dome him, but not until I’ve splurged the rest of the GMG’s HE ammunition on his rooftop.

Break-In

The distressing thing is that I’ve only been dealing with one SMAW team so far. They might have been particularly stubborn, but I know there are more Marines out there. With 2A approaching the closest corner of the Delta Compound, I decide to widen my attack a little and send 4th out of the ditch to approach the objective from the front.

Getting out of the ditch is probably a good move this close to the enemy. I don’t want to get trapped in the ditch and there’s plenty of concealment in Delta orchard. With some luck, they might attract some fire and uncover more targets.

They do attract some fire. Marine 556 cuts through the undergrowth and nails two men from 4th. I don’t get a concrete spot out of it, but it looks like it came from the trees on the close corner. This is where I was going to try and break into the compound anyway: having some enemy to smash in the process is a nice bonus.

Again, everyone opens up. The dismounts pour small arms fire and 40mm grenades in, the GMG nails the position with a flurry of airbursts.

2A follow up, and although I’ve got them pre-emptively area firing the wrong spot they quickly spot the surviving Marines and take them out with a shower of hand grenades.

Clearing Delta

That opens the way into Delta. 4th move up to the compound wall without any problems, but as 4A moves up to building D10, the second SMAW team opens up. This is up on the roof of D8 and it fires a rocket through the gap between D1 and D10 to hit 4B. One of the men is lightly wounded, but 4A’s grenadier posts up on the corner next to the keyhole and earns himself a direct hit with another.

Obviously the way forward is to rinse and repeat the break-in: deluge D8 with fire and then close in. But the building is far enough back inside the compound that the GMG and MG3 back at Charlie can’t draw the line of sight they need for area fire. I’ve probably been too slow bringing them up anyway: after shooting up the corner, the GMG is down to 3 rounds of ABHE and the MG3 is really too far back to achieve anything. So I start remounting them with an eye to sending them round to reinforce the rest of the platoon.

Meanwhile, 3rd Section has come up via the ditch to take over the attack. 3A leapfrogs 2A down the line of the wall to take the D8 SMAW in the flank. Their section leader gets shot as they get into position, but they’re able to take the rooftop under fire. 4th moves into D10 to consolidate and cover the centre of the compound, while 3B stacks up beside them as a precursor to taking D9 and getting into a point-blank firing position on D8.

As it pans out, 4th are able to neutralise the SMAW team from D10’s doorway… good news which is immediately balanced out by 3B losing a man to enfilade fire coming down the right compound edge. I’d moved a few bodies through this space before without any problems, now the enemy HQ team has opened up.

Finding the enemy is the hard part here though. Once that’s done I can repeat the same pattern. 2A returns fire down the wall, 3A pushes up to flank and they polish off the Marines with more grenades.

That leaves two enemy fire teams unaccounted for… 4th Section find them when I order them up onto the roof of D10. Naturally they end up finding them the hard way. I’d sent them up because D10 has no windows facing into the compound and they come under fire from some Marines near D6.

There’s a sharp exchange but the Marines get the better of it and the Gebirgsjaeger run downstairs again.

So the next target is D6. 3rd consolidate inside D8, engaging the enemy from there as a base of fire while 2A pushes further right and takes D7. This reveals more Marines right in the far corner of the compound, but it looks like 2A have taken them by surprise and they quickly pin them in place.

That fixes 2A in turn and the base of fire is still on the way, which leaves the platoon HQ as my only manoeuvre element. They dash across the compound into D6 and proceed to finish off the remaining marines.

Endex

A turn or so later, with everything being quiet, I hit the ceasefire button. There are no Marines left, so mission accomplished. The Gebirgsjaeger took 9 casualties in total and when we factor that in to the points system they come out with a score of 833. It’s always worth remembering that all these scores are arbitrary: the platoon still lost 30% of its dismounts, it’s an entire section down and it used all of its GMG ammo.

But, it slots into the leaderboard underneath all of the NATO platoons and above all the Syrian platoons. That figures because it’s one of the lighter NATO units, basically truck-borne light infantry, but it’s still a NATO unit. Another reminder that all the platoons in the series have the same soft factors- so, baseline experience, motivation, leadership etc- the big changes are the organisation, weapons and equipment where the Syrians have a lot of systemic disadvantages.

So success at a cost for the Gebirgsjaeger… I think two things really informed how this one went.

The first is the approach. Coming at Delta from the direction of the Charlie orchard is not a great avenue of attack for a force that fights dismounted. We’re making contact at 400m, which is admittedly has its advantages- it’s usually best to make contact with the enemy at longer ranges because their fire is going to be less effective- but 400m is a long way to attack on foot.

I already had three of my 8 teams forward, which made it hard to disengage, even if the idea of heading back to the Fuchs and trying to manoeuvre onto a better approach had felt like a good move.

Advancing via the ditch was slower than crossing the field and, although the field was only covered by a single SMAW team the platoon could probably have closed with and overwhelmed by fire, I didn’t know that at the time and it’s a hell of a risk to take. There also wasn’t much scope for using the transports to get to a closer jumping off point. Having to attack over 400m was a fixed fundamental problem.

It’s also further than the effective range of almost all of the platoon’s weapons. Yes, the GMG can reach out and hit things at that range, but it has so little ammunition I think you really want to save it for the decisive moment. The MG3 feels like it should perform better too, but firing over open sights from a bipod it’s really supplemental to the rest of the platoon’s firepower, not a core component.

In hindsight, I suspect splitting the cobbled together base of fire section off was probably a poor decision on my part. The GMG was probably fine at that distance, the 2 section B team that hung around with it was probably too far away to be useful and would have had more of an impact sticking with the rest of the platoon.

Either way, the avenue of approach set a tough problem. Putting the base of fire in Charlie was probably a good option because there wasn’t really anywhere closer they could set up. Having to work around that open field meant going left or right, going further up the left would leave them too far removed from the rest of the platoon to support and put them in the low ground where they would be unable to do much of anything, while following the platoon down the ditch would really reduce the safe arcs of fire.

I guess I could have put them up the water tower, but it’s so obvious and exposed it never actually crossed my mind.

For all those problems, I think any unit would have shared the same difficulties in providing fire support on this avenue of attack because there weren’t really any targets to engage.

This is the second factor in the Gebirgsjaeger experience: aside from the initial SMAW contact, the Marines were well concealed, masked from friendly positions in depth and opened fire at very close ranges.

The story of breaking into and clearing the compound is basically a cycle of German teams moving forward, coming under fire and taking one or two casualties before supporting teams built up fire superiority and manoeuvred to destroy the enemy from the flank.

The casualties inflicted by the Marines reflect this: teams racked up one or two kills each before going down, there wasn’t one particular position or group of Marines that had an outsized impact on the battle.

In this kind of don’t-tread-on-me fighting you’re just going to take casualties as the attacker. The ambushing party is going to get the first shots off, those shots are probably going to be effective and if the enemy positions are well concealed, masked, keyholed or otherwise difficult to get line of sight to, it doesn’t really matter how much firepower you have in depth or mounted on distant vehicles.

It’s all about the sharp end and here the Gebirgsjaeger had the organic firepower at team and section level to get the job done, as well as just enough manpower to soak up the inevitable casualties.

Contrasting the Gebirgsjaeger with the Panzergrenadiers is going to be really interesting: the Panzergrenadiers dial down the squad size but turn the firepower up to 11 by swapping the Fuchs for Marder IFVs. They’re in Group 2, which is up next, along with British infantry in Bulldog APCs and Canadians in LAVIIIs: all good choices there. I’ll leave a link to the poll down below when it’s ready so you can vote for which you’d like to see first.

So, that was another interesting run through the Platoon Patrol. Hope you all enjoyed it, not too surprising in the end, but pretty tough on the Germans at the point of contact. If you’d like to see these videos early and support the channel, you can do so via Patreon and Youtube Memberships. Whether you do or not, thanks for watching and I’ll catch you in the next one.