Firestorm: Stripes

On their way towards Hamburg, the Marines hardly ever rested. They were fresh, aggressive troops, that would cut the Soviet lines from Hamburg to Hannover. It was this aggressiveness that gave them an edge in combat and fostered the company commander’s decision to launch a night attack out of a recently liberated village.
Meanwhile, an East German Panzerbattalion, recently taken out of the main front to rest and repair, was guarding the main force's rear, that the Marines had decided on hitting. Just as the Marines, the Volksarmee had to make do without first-rate equipment, and just like the Marines, the East Germans made up for lacking gear in professionalism and aggressiveness.

The Marines' own Force Recon scouted ahead and found a promising approach for 1st Platoon to exploit. Their main objective, securing the far side of a Landstraße, was within their immediate reach.

Ever cautious, the commander of 1. Kp. immediately reported, what he believed to be enemy movement and got his battered company, reduced to half strength from the recent fights, ready for combat.

The Marine commander and his 2iC charged down their right flank. The main thrust directed at the highway on their left flank consisted of a platoon of four M60A1 tanks and was led through the darkness by the HMMVW scout element. To put more pressure on the enemy, the company HQ would attack the secondary objective, barely defended by only one tank.

Advancing carefully under the cloak of darkness, the marines held their fire, to not give away their positions until they had taken up the perfect positions to destroy their opponent in one fell strike. They cautiously approached the objective, with one tank flanking across the hilltop.
The company commander of 1. Kompanie would not be quite as patient. He requested attack helicopter support and pressed forward into the dark. Despite their IR searchlights, the East German tanks had a hard time finding the enemy. However, the two lead tanks of the company opened fire at the first sign of enemy movement. The shots went wide and the Marines continued their advance, now having a very good idea of their enemy’s location.
Splitting their fire, the Mi-24s forced the HMMVW with the TOW launcher to bail out and fired a Falanga missile at the only tank in their field of fire. As with their comrades on the ground, though, the shot went wide and crashed harmlessly into the ground at a safe distance from the intended target.

Despite all the patience the Marines had shown until now, the prospect of encircling and gutting an entire company of T-72s led to a fateful error in communication, which in turn greatly reduced the efficiency of their fire. There was some confusion over the intended positioning and target allocation. Two shells hit their mark and the first two enemies went up in flames. The next two shots however inflicted no permanent damage and missed the tightly compressed vital systems within the enemy tanks.
Their commander on the other flank kept charging down the flank, shooting at his direct opponent and his T-72M tank securing the objective.
With two M60A1s in the East German commander’s flank and only two out of five vehicles operational in the only tank company in the field, things looked grim for the people’s army.

Punctual as Germans tend to be, the reserves poured in. Two companies, one on each flank, joined their comrades in the battle and made quick work of all enemy tanks on either flank. They had set their coloumns in march as soon as they heard the reports of a possible attack and had even found the time to coordinate their reinforcement with each other, to balance out the frontline.
The HMMVW scouts had no choice but to disengage as quickly as they could and return to friendly lines. Where were the Marines’ reinforcements?
In a rather unglorious turn of events, 2nd Platoon had been delayed and only arrived as dawn already broke. Nonetheless, they followed in their commander’s tracks and had their minds set on revenge for the loss of his and the 2iC’s tanks.

On the opposite side of the battlefield the East Germans mirrored the Marines’ ferocious advance and rushed forward taking out whatever target presented itself to them. One of the Sgt. Yorck AA tanks was unlucky enough to be picked up by the 1st company that had been in the fight the longest and was promptly engaged and knocked out. The other vehicle’s commander knew, that the Marines depended on the rest of the AA unit covering them and decided to complete the mission.

More HMMVWs and LAVs came in from the reserve, but would have a hard time facing two companies of MBTs. The overwhelming odds wore down their nerves, leading the TOW equipped HMMVWs to miss their shots and the LAVs to not fire at all. With surprising speed the German tanks were on top of them and let loose with every available “dashka” at their disposal. Even the helicopters were called in once more and took out the last of the enemy vehicles.

As the two German tank companies secured the objective on their flank, the Marines pushed down hard on theirs. They swiftly knocked out 6 tanks and rushed onward to secure the objective. This would win the Marines the game, if they could beat their East German counterparts to doing the same thing on the other flank.

However, they had to break off and disengage as news came in over the net, that their left flank hat collapsed completely and the East Germans were now threatening the village and remaining support assets, ready to push even further if not contained.

It was a nerve-wrecking, fun game, although a bit random at times. In the beginning nothing seemed to work for either side: The T-72s rolled only 8”/20cm night visibility, the M60s managed to fail two out of four 2+ firepower tests, the Marines’ AA fire proved entirely ineffective, however the Hinds barely got a HMMVW bailed out and the Marine HQ tanks failed all four of their shots into the East German commander’s flank.
The German reserves won the game. The two companies in reserve not only arrived at the same time, they also randomly arrived at the left and right flanks, exactly where needed. This took a heavy toll on my opponent’s morale, though of course he kept pushing and almost would have made it, after his reserve tank platoon took out all T-72s with zero losses, if it had not been for his other weak flank. In the end, the Germans were a tad faster at securing their objective.
In hindsight my opponent came to the conclusion, that he shouldn’t have pushed quite as hard in the beginning as he did and rather should’ve stayed back and used the TI-equipped TOWs to better effect. On the other hand, it’s doubtful targets would have presented themselves, had there not been a push into the weakly defended east German lines. A bit less luck with reserves on Pact side and a bit more luck on HATOs would have turned the tide.
It was our first “true” game of Team Yankee (apart from training games and a short but intense 6mm phase, before we switched to 15mm). Coming from FoW and ‘Nam everything seemed so incredibly deadly, it was tough for us.

So, there, the first report of hopefully many to come!