BattleReports.com - Starcraft strategy, reports, replays. Strategy reports for Warcraft 3, Civilization, and more!

Welcome to the largest collection of Starcraft battle reports on the internet. Join the ranks of famous reporters by writing about your Starcraft games. We also gladly accept reports and tournaments of other types of games.

Supply Line

Ryan Riese, a sergeant, drove trucks for the Army. He wasn't a combat infantryman; he was assigned to the quartermaster transport company. Riese ferried anything from medical supplies to ammunition to food to fuel for tanks from division supply dumps to the frontline command posts.
He drove as far away as Omaha, several kilometers behind friendly lines, to within a few hundred meters of some German with a panzerfaust. In the two weeks he'd been operating in Normandy, he hadn't seen a single German, though he'd seen several dead ones and more than enough "dead" trucks - the trucks themselves weren't dead, just the crews - to make him wary when he was on the road.
A quartermaster assisted the truck crews in unloading the supplies, crates packed with .30 ammunition belts, .30 magazines, mortar shells, grenades, and medical supplies, K-rations, chewing gum. He kept a clipboard with him, marking items off, making notes, writing-off those supplies that were to be issued immediately.
"I hate to see this go," the quartermaster muttered, nodding at the crates packed with mortar shells and Garand magazines and cases of machine gun rounds, "but the boys at the front eat up so much in a day."
"Thanks, buddy," a medic told Riese, taking a case of ammunition from the truck bed and loading it onto a jeep. "You're a life-saver."
And the medic took the ammo back to A Company so they could kill Germans.
1st Battalion's supply depot was generally close by the battalion aid station, and so Riese would usually drive past it before stopping to unload. There had always been casualties in the aid station - the fighting in Normandy, he heard from a friend in A Company, was brutal and a daily struggle - but recently there were more bandaged men lying inside the apartment, the aidmen were growing more irritated, and the stretchers were bloodier.
"Hey," he asked two stern riflemen, both corporals, "What's happening out there? It looks like you guys are getting killed."
"Big offensive," Cook responded, "Germans have gotten reinforcements, last-minute arrivals. Things are heating up."
In truth, things had more than heated up - the 352nd's defense was now bolstered by elements of the 266th and 353rd Divisions, forming Kampfgruppe Heintz. Not only this, but the 29th had begun to face-off against elements of the 3rd Fallschirmjager Division, the esteemed paratroopers of the Wehrmacht. The Germans were counter-attacking with much more energy, and, perhaps most critically, their resistance had been stiffened by more armor. German tanks and assault guns had frequently stopped the American tank columns in the sunken lanes, forcing the infantry to deal with them without their own Shermans to assist them.
One shot, the lead tank was burning, no more than a smoking roadblock, the other Shermans behind it back-logged and trapped like so much dumb cattle. Another shot, and A Company was running for cover, the German tank roaring after them and drowning them in MG-42 fire.
"Get after that panzer," an infantrymen would call into the phone, "It's right there."
"We can't see it," would come the reply. "Dougan's the only one that saw it and he's not talking."
Dougan's tank was also not moving, because Dougan and his crew were painted against the inside of the Sherman.
And eventually, Wescott would take a handful of men with a bazooka and rifle grenades and a radio, and they'd ambush the panzer or call down artillery onto it. Or they would walk into an ambush themselves, set-up by German submachine gunners.
But the Germans were steadily losing ground, no matter how hard they fought to hold. Once A Company had established contact with the main body of German defenders using patrol groups, forward observers - those that had survived, or those that had come into the company recently - called in artillery fire, and for perhaps five or ten or fifteen minutes, the Germans opposite A Company would be suffocated by a sudden beating by 105mm or 155mm high-explosive.
Then A Company would move forward to root the Germans out, only sometimes the Germans didn't root out, and then the artillery would have to be called again. When they did root out, they would simply delay A Company's advance long enough for the hedgerow behind to be secured, and then someone could be heard shouting that the fucking bastards were shooting from the next bush.
That was the story of the advance on St. Lo that Truttman and Cook shared with Riese.
"The battalion commander," Truttman said as they were leaving, "told us on the first day of the offensive that this would decide the war. He said that we'd have to fight hard and there would be losses, but in the end we'd beat the Germans and the war would be over. But he said the same thing about the invasion and all it came down to was cleaning up the beach and the villages behind it and getting killed by snipers. It's the same thing now, only the snipers are smarter and they've got machine guns and tanks behind them. There's no difference between this offensive and the one we fought off the beaches."
Wayne might have said the same. He still reported to his battalion CO that A Company was "severely under-strength," they were still in hedgerow country, and the Germans still resisted very stubbornly.
"That the ammo?" Wayne asked as the jeep from battalion motored into the road nearby his company. "Let's get it distributed."
Wayne knew that the supply line functioned as the company's lifeline. Without it the men would simply not be able to fight. They wouldn't have food, though in some cases that didn't matter because at times on the frontline there was not a chance to eat. They wouldn't have medical supplies with which to apply first-aid to their wounded. And most importantly, they needed the ammunition to continue fighting.
"The first thing you learn out here, on the frontline," Cook didactically told the replacement assisting him in unloading the .30 from their tin boxes in the crat, "is that man has not come very far in his period of existence. We've made things like rifles and vehicles that fly, but the fact is we're still using them to kill each other. When you kill a man out here you're not doing it so the French can be free of German occupation, you're doing it because he had a Schmeisser pointed at you before you put one in him. Really, it's about survival after a while. The only difference between us and animals is we've got science."
"You are scaring that kid," Wescott told the corporal, "and you are going to stop."
And while Cook philosophized over a couple bullets, that handful of rounds was exactly what many German formations, including Marcks's kompanie, lacked.
Even though Marcks's 1. Kompanie, caught in the confusion of Seventh Army's scramble to re-organize and reinforce the rapidly deteriorating front, had found itself assimilated into the ranks of the powerful 3rd Fallschirmjager Division, ammunition levels remained low.
"Major," Marcks had reported to the battalion officer, "we have orders to hold our positions, but in order to hold our positions we require ammunition with which to resist against American attack."
"It bereaves me to inform you, Leutnant, that your kompanie is not the only unit fighting the Americans," the officer had coldly reprimanded him. "There are three others who must make do with the same ammunition rations as yours; there is simply not enough to bring all units up to optimum levels."
The major had then informed Marcks of the general situation; undoubtedly the fallschirmjagers would eventually be forced to organize a line of resistance along the ridges that over-looked the Bayeaux-St.-Lo highway.
"However," he added, "we have no permission to withdraw because higher headquarters have issued orders to stand fast."
The major had then told Marcks he had to visit the other battalions, and, after returning his salute, was driving off down the road in his staff car.
Marcks had remembered once when he had spoken with Geissler about the wooden-headedness of their senior commanders. Hitler himself refused to acknowledge that the war was lost; he constantly assured his soldiers of Germany that new and better weapons were arriving to reap their salvation. But whenever a Tiger tank came onto the line or a V-1 soared ahead, there was little change in the amount of German dead and wounded and how much ground was lost per day.
Army-level commanders issued orders to battalions reduced to a handful of men, as though they were still capable of carrying-out battalion-level operations. In combat, the Americans ground them down to pieces, but it was the senior commanders who bled the Germans to death without a hope of success.
It seemed that death was the fate of any German soldier caught in the cauldron of Normandy.
Geissler had always been a strict leader, and an even stricter follower. He did whatever was ordered of him to the best of his ability. For Marcks, however, the situation had deteriorated and with the Americans advancing with armored support, he doubted that even Geissler's ingenuity and drive would have been able to hold until higher headquarters had issued their orders - which would have probably been directions to counter-attack.
So Marcks made a decision.
"We're heading south, tell the men to pack-up."
His senior NCO passed the order around, and Marcks told his best corporal to secure a road to a defensible village, where atleast the kompanie would have some cover. The hedgerows were defensible, but once men stood up to move, they were invariably shot down; a village offered protected lanes of lateral movement to reinforce crisis points. And, more importantly, forty men could defend a few houses and stone walls easier than a stretch of hedgerow in an orchard.
But when Marcks's sergeant came to the fallschirmjager artillery observer and assault gun crew attached to his command, they refused. "We've got orders, Fischer. We hold until someone says otherwise."
"But you're going to die out here," the sergeant told them. "We're leaving, we can't stay. Not if the Americans are coming through again. And they'll have more tanks this time, they always do."
"So we'll die." They shrugged, a gallant gesture in the face of fate, and Fischer shook his head in resignation. "But we're fallschirmjager. We're not retreating."
When Fischer informed Marcks that the paratoopers refused to abandon their positions, he shrugged his shoulders. "They're not our men. I've got tactical command over them but it's their decision."
Honor; that's what the issue was with them. Marcks had never enjoyed the aristocracy-dominated attitudes that painted the idea of war as a cadet. When it was impossible to carry the wounded to safety because there were as many casualties as there were able bodies, honor no longer had meaning. Then it was time for practicality, and in the face of a renewed American attack with no ammunition, the practical thing to do was walk away.
"Don't worry about it," Kempf told the artillery observer, grinning hatefully. "You'll make it in the history books for sure."
"Fuck the history books," one of the assault gun crew shot back.
"That's right," Marcks told him, helping a machine gunner with his equipment. "Fuck the history books. You're doing this for duty."
Ahead of them, a handful of Shermans motored into A Company's position, sandbags tied down to their turrets. They had all just come back from the mechanic shops, fitted with steel prongs which would allow them to push through some hedgerows and drill holes for explosives in those too large to run over. The tank crews passed out cigarettes to the A Company troops, tossing packs to the privates and corporals and a few sergeants. Behind them, Riese's trucks headed back towards their depot, where they would pick up another supply load to stock up 1st Battalion's stores.
And 1. Kompanie marched south, shuffling stiffly onto an empty road lined with nothing but dead horses and empty carts.

03