Hürtgen Forest with Five Men at Kursk

I have painted four companies in 15mm during Summer to play Five Core Company Command from Nordic Weasel, but this is my first foray into WWII in this scale and I still need a lot of stuff to paint. Below you can see two houses and two tanks I have just finished, but I have to paint many more plus AT guns for both sides that I have not ordered yet, more infantry and an incoming DBA army that I will paint as soon as I receive it, so I do not think I will be ready to play Company Command until Christmas.

Then I remembered that I also bought Five Men at Kursk from Ivan, and that I tried it just once with my son, and after that I forgot it. As this ruleset is squad level, I decided to play it in the meantime with my 1/72 collection before I sell it. Yes, I am also moving into 15mm in WWII and getting rid of everything else.

I needed scenarios for squad level action or even better, a campaign to play while I am painting 15mm, and then I thought I could continue with the one I started from Nuts! by Two Hour Wargames, The Big Hurt in the Hürtgen Forest by Darby Heckles. I had played only the first scenario, and decided to continue from that point, so today I am playing it, Western Union. I am using this campaign for Nuts! plus its PEF system for enemy encounters, and Five Men at Kursk for combat.

So this is the SITUATION (taken from the supplement).

"September 18th , 1944 - Between Roetgen and Lammersdorf, Germany.

Earlier this morning we lost communication with several outposts. Fearing the worst, a patrol was sent out to check on the situation, and contact was reestablished. Everything was fine, but the landline to the positions has been damaged or cut. Night is fast approaching, and we need to have a good line to them in case they are probed or need support, so we’re sending out a repair team.

The patrol thinks that there might be Germans patrols probing the area too, so we’re sending you along to protect the repair team. Keep them alive, and get the job done."

US forces deploy in the bottom left corner. The black wire is from my phone and the thinner one I could find. There should be 3 PEFs on the table but there is only 2 because I saved the lieutenant in the first mission, in which I had to KIA and several WIA. As I did not feel reading Nuts! rules about recovering wounded and I just played with 10 men from the original squad of 12. The grass squares represent hight grass that gives concealment, but I did not have enough, and all the bottom left and right corners are supposed to be covered in that.

I divided my forces into three groups; six of them including the squad leader and also key guy (+1 in rally), the two men team to repair the line, and the rest of my squad with the BAR. As they did not have enemies in sight, I could activate them in groups.

The two German PEFs turned into a MG team and the worst possible result from the chart, a Puma! I had to read all the rules about tanks as I did not expect any, and neither my men as they did not bring any anti tank weapon!

The Puma fired but missed and only one men resulted Nervous. Blue tokens represent Nervous, yellow ones are Scared and Brown ones Down. My first KIA resulted from MG firing.

I was in deep shit but then I thought my mission was to fix the line and not to kill the vehicle, so we run into the woods and get out of sight of the enemy vehicle. Reactive fire from my men on the other side of the forest suppressed the enemy MG. The tank moved on the flank trying to spot all the infantry that had disappeared behind the woods.

The repair crew fixed the military telephone line, but all the line needed to be checked so it was not over yet! 

A hero tried to assault the Puma with hand grenades but went down.

Germans received another MG team as reinforcements. 

Americans also received half a squad as reinforcement but sadly no AT weapon. The new squad race forwards in a Scurry action and then hug the dirt and disappeared into the tall grass. Another valiant tried to assault the tank as there were the only chance to damage or finish it, but he was also down.

I tried a third time in the following turn and had success! Sadly, I did not take any more pictures but my troops killed both German MG and could check the whole telephone line. The mission was a success.