History in a screenshot: Campaign Series The Road To Bastogne

First off merry Christmas everyone. While not the first blog post I have made around the holidays (thanks to a friend of mine my blogging content goes way back) this is surely the most important to me. In honor of the holidays I give you some history focusing on the Battle of Bulge and wish a happy holidays to all of our veterans and currently serving military personnel.

This screenshot relates well to the historical battle. I recently fought the Road to Bastogne scenario as the Germans in the Campaign Series game West Front. The Americans were in charge of blocking and stalling an overwhelming force of German armor and this scenario held true to fashion.

Mageret, 8km E of Bastogne, Belgium: The German counterattack through the Ardennes on 16 December 1944, came as a total surprise to the Allies and shattered the American First Army's front lines. With the 28th Infantry Division overrun, the US VIII corps rushed its armored divisions forward to set up "road blocks" to delay the German juggernaut and buy time for the scattered defenders to regroup and for reinforcements to arrive. One such blocking force consisted of elements from Colonel Gilbreth's CCR/9th Armored Division, survivors of the 110th RGT/28 Infantry Division, and Team Cherry/10th Armored at Longvilly.

This scenario featured a lot of armor and two German divisions closing in on the Americans from both directions. The Americans would be forced to fight their way back down the road where a hungry German unit was waiting on them. This scenario was a turkey shoot as the Germans yet I still managed to take a lot of casualties. When the battle was said and done the screen was a heap of wrecked armor, potholes and broken down vehicles. One thing I like about this game is after a huge battle you can see a lot of damage on the screen and this episode was no exception. In the screenshot you can see the Germans advancing right to left forcing the Americans into another German unit on the far right and the smoking armor wrecks in between. Straight below is an overhead shot of the actual battle area.

I will certainly try this one as the Americans and try to give the Germans what for and see if I can do better than the AI. In the meantime bundle up and have a good holiday. Not sure if I will be blogging much but I will try to update Twitter and Facebook as much as possible.