Defence of Genappes October 1914

[pierre the shy]

Once again 26th Cavalry Brigade of the BEF has been thrown into the front line to take part in the "race to the sea" along the northern French/Belgian border. They have been ordered to take under command the 4th (Arsenal Volunteers) Battalion, Loyal North London Regiment which is currently holding the village of Genappes and defend the village against a German cavalry force that has been spotted advancing towards them.

The terrain:


   
The day starts out foggy but this quickly lifts after the start of the the game to reveal the Germans advancing on one flank and holding on the other:



Much to the relief of the 4th Battalion's CO the advanced guard of 26th Brigade, the 19th Lancers, duly arrived to bolster the defences round the village; but are soon spotted and taken under fire by the German Artillery:



The Southern arm of the German force, including the 6 companies of the 19th Jagers and the 3rd Guard MG Battery, advanced round the woods south of Genappes. This flank march was enthusiastically engaged by the British forces with rifle, MG and artillery fire, resulting in heavy casualties amongst both the German MG units, thanks to some fairly amazing dice rolls (I rolled 4 dice and got 4 sixes for one company  ) :



On the other flank the arrival of the 1st Motor MG Battery was instrumental in holding back the other German Cavalry Brigade, which was waiting for their flank march to develop before assualting the village under the cover of the 150mm battery. For these models I did a straightforward conversion by simply taking the Maxim MG from a British Boer War MG carriage (BW 10) and drilling a small hole in the top of the side car of a British WW1 motorcycle combination (BP 54) to mount the MG. So far they are having a very good debut:

 

We will finish the game at our next session in a couple of weeks, things still being fairly evenly poised, though the German cavalry has been taking a fair amount of stick. I set up the scenario so that the artillery only have a limited ammo supply, but after the performance of the 1st MMG battery looks like I should have also included the MG units in that category as well.

Thanks as usual to the Saturday night regulars for their indulgence in allowing me to run 1914 ITLSU games.

For the record in case you are wondering all unit names are fictional, if somewhat similar to actual units.

[Steve J]

Very nice and look forward to more updates as the game progresses

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Great names, great report!

[Westmarcher]

Good story telling. 

[Ithoriel]

Good looking and interesting game. Looking forward to further despatches from the front!

[Leman]

Great looking game.

[d_Guy]

Good story telling. 

Yup! +1 - the best part of wargaming.

Like the "fog" and (as I often mention) all the green! 

[fred.]

Good stuff.

I like the motocycle MG conversions.

[paulr]

It has been an interesting game for the Germans so far, for most of the two sessions played we have been taking it

Now we have finally managed to get to the wood hopefully we can continue to return it with interest

Thanks as usual to the Saturday night regulars for their indulgence in allowing me to run 1914 ITLSU games.

Thanks for coming up with interesting scenarios for us to play

I suspect most people would consider us Irregulars

[Techno]

What everybody else said ! (Apart from Paul.  )

Cheers - Phil.

[Norm]

I like that level of play, it is an interesting action you have going there.

[pierre the shy]

Glad you all liked it.

We have played several games using 26th Brigade as the basis for scenarios since mid 2014 when I first got the 10mm "bug". Most of them have been written up and appear in the Batreps section if you are interested in digging back far enough.

Due to play a version of the Action at Elouges in early August at Call to Arms, the local Wellington gaming convention.

Will report further when we conclude the game in a couple of weeks - we are fortunate that Roy, who usually hosts these games has a table that we can safely leave games set up between sessions. Luckily his cat prefers lying in front of the fire in the winter rather than inspecting the troops on the table - I'd swear that the cat is lying in the exactly the same position in front of the fire every time I go there - life can be so tough if you're a cat    
 

[Leman]

Looking forward to that one.

[pierre the shy]

We concluded our Defence of Genappes game last night (while keeping one eye on the scoreline of the Lions - All Blacks game  ).....I use flickr so you should be able to see the pics still 

The Brigadier decided that attack was the best form of 26th Cavalry Brigade's defence and so deployed the 2nd Hertfordshire Yeomanry and the newly arrived 31st Hussars to attack and clear Genappes Wood since there was no direct threat to the Gooners holding Genappes Village itself.


   
While the right hand squadron of 2nd Hertfordshire Yeomanry's attack was successful in routing their opponents from 22nd Hussars the Germans facing the other squadron were not going to be so easily displaced and pushed them back out of the wood. Next move the first company from 19th Jagers arrived and also pushed the right hand squadron back out of the wood. Meanwhile 31st Hussars, facing the rest of the German 22nd Hussars, was absolutely decimated by close range fire as they attempted to enter Genappes Wood.



After several turns it became obvious that the German forces holding Genappes Wood were too powerful to be dislodged by the 3 now much weakened regiments of 26th Cavalry Brigade. Although aware of the need to order the cancellation of the attack and withdrawal to the south west Brigade HQ was not able to issue fresh orders for a long time (the second tea break card came up before Brigade HQ's for 3 turns in a row  ). While we still held Genappes village the casualties on the 3 cavalry regiments meant that the best the British could achieve was a losing draw under the victory conditions so we called it and managed to get home fairly early for once. Here's a overview at the end of the game:



Well everyone enjoyed the game, though I didn't expect the Germans to concentrate on taking Genappes Wood when designing the scenario.....in designing future scenarios I must remember to expect the unexpected i guess. Oh well just goes to prove that just because you design a scenario you should not expect to always emerge victorious 

[paulr]

It was a very interesting scenario and a very enjoyable game

When the Germans drew up our plans we were concerned with flanking fire from both Hill 61 and Genappes Wood if we directly attacked Genappes village. Also the bridges over the canal were within effective MG range of the village so attacking directly across the canal was not an attractive option.

We looked at demonstrating against the wood while frontally attacking the village... then we noticed that the wood and fields gave us a route to approach the village from the flank and rear with some cover

We took significant casualties getting to the wood, including two MG squadrons! If the British cavalry had defended the two lots of fields and the western village I suspect we would have had a hard time pressing forward

The order of the cards certainly didn't help the 31st Hussars