Wargames Weekend: The Mussy-la-Ville Road

Once again we managed to arrange another slot for Lenin to visit for the weekend. This time we added an additional day in order to get a couple more games in.

Our first was a return to our occasional WW1 campaign from Rommel's Route to Verdun, the Skirmish Campaigns booklet, with Lenin taking the part of Rommel. This time it was the Mussy-la-Ville Road scenario, which is based on a brief reference by Rommel in his book, Infantry Attacks. The action took place on the Outskirts of Bleid on 22 August 1914 at 0715 hours.

After advancing west from Hill 325, Lt. Rommel stopped his platoon in cover in a field and took a scouting group ahead. Making use of cover and the foggy conditions, they passed one farm and found their way close to the Mussy-la-Ville road. As the scouting team approached they spotted a couple of French squads relaxing along the road. Rommel decided to attack rather than wait to bring up the rest of his platoon.

Rommel slowly advanced through the fog, just catching snippets of conversation from the French troops ahead. He and his men worked their way up between the path and a field to a convenient hedge-line. At this point he split his men. One group was to work their way along the hedge-line towards the road whilst Rommel took the others up past the barn in the direction of the houses.

The barn turned out to be unoccupied and so Rommel calmly advanced to the rear of the first house. At this point the other German group spotted some French troops up ahead, standing around smoking and talking, and decided to open fire. One French soldier sent down straight away and the others were taken aback. Meanwhile Rommel used the confusion to rush around the other side of the house and surprise the French.

Two more French soldiers were hit in the hail of fire from Rommel's men and a couple more decided to take to their heels. With the remainder confused and being shot at from both sides Rommel charged into them. The fight was over quickly with the last French soldier being taken prisoner. But another French section appeared out of the fog to Rommel's rear; however, he simply turned his men and opened fire once again putting paid to that threat. Having only lost a single man in the encounter Rommel took his prisoner and returned to his unit.

With the variable attachments available in the Skirmish Campaigns system (which aids re-playability), Lenin began the game with three more men than Rommel actually had on the day. That said he was still significantly outnumbered by the French and only had the fog and the element of surprise to help him balance things out. In the end he did slightly better than Rommel did historically.