Aha, found it. Gorgeous game. Wish I'd been there!

Quote from: holdfast on 13 March 2016, 08:04:31 PM
I am late to this discussion, but I wonder why anyone, let alone a Frenchman, would try to dig a shell scrape with his mess tin or bayonet when he had a solid 4 foot wall already made. The other advantage of using the existing walls is that you do not offer a view of newly turned chalk to the Prussians. So the Prussians think that the French line ends before St Privat, because the turned soil ends there.
When we played it we had a 16 feet by 5 feet table so using 'To the last gaiter button' we could play the whole frontage from the Mance Ravine to way north of Roncourt. We put the first 3 French corps out on the table at the start but we did not put the 6th Corps out. The impetuous Prussian player commanding the Guard, who was in his late 20s so had neither the time nor the inclination to research what actually happened, concluded that by attacking St Privat he would be able to turn the French flank. It does need some umpires and hidden unit markers to achieve this but our outcome was eerily similar to the reality.
I seem to recall that Henry Hyde took a lot of photos that may well still be on his website.

When I was there in 2004 with RH we walked the entire frontage of 6th corps, the village only accounts for a short stretch of the line albeit a strong one. You can't put an entire corps in a village. As I recall the line stretched leftwards along an unmetaled farm track, through StP and then to the right toeards Roncourt. That they didn't entrench either of the open parts of the line was partly due to the absence of engineers (and who needs them   ) also Canrobert who's 'Beau Sabreur' nature wasn't at one with the realities of the day, while his corps was being demolished he rode up to one hard pressed unit and shouted something fatuous like' Where else should a Frenchman be but here today' blah blah. Scrapes would be preferable to nothing, the Prussian guns couldn't 'drop' their shells (no howitzers) and in all likelihood would have suffered from overshooting, this was a lesson not learned until well into WWI. A scrape is better than nothing, with effort and a couple of hours the position could have been greatly improved. If Canrobert had moved the exposed part of his line further back to the crest, better still.

I seem to recall that the wicked Prusskies had air burst shells so that most of the French who were prone in shell scrapes got wounded in the back. While if you are standing up you present a far smaller target. Not just wicked Prusskies but wicked Prussky gunners, the very worst sort as we all know.

Noooooooooooooooooooo, no air burst capability.



Later: While if you are standing up you present a far smaller target  -  you're winding me up aren't you !