28 June 1944
Richard Partridge of Southend Wargames Club & Rayleigh Wargames Group
THE BLOODING OF THE BULL - OPERATION EPSOM,
28 June 1944
Richard Partridge of Southend Wargames Club & Rayleigh Wargames Group
Making the decision
If people go to wargames shows to check out the new books and figures, what do they look for in the demonstration and participation games that are on display? Our joint clubs take the view that it is not enough to put on a 'club night' game, but rather to put on something that either shows of an interesting set of rules, or an unusual period. Our intention is always to use the game as a catalyst for a talk about any aspect of the game, in the hope that visitors leave the show thinking about and maybe challenging the way they thought about the period before.
So, having said that, why did we decide to concentrate on Hill 112 in late June and early July 1944 as our demonstration game for 2004? And, why did we decide to do it in 1/285 scale to Mein Panzer rules? Answering the second question is the easiest, so let's start there.
At about the same time as we received our invitation to Salute 2004, we were playing a very absorbing MP game in which victory shifted from one side to the other, and final success only came in the last move. The post game discussion centred on the way in which the rules favoured a well thought out battle plan where units played to their strengths and disguised their weaknesses. Surprisingly, these rules are not as well known in this country, although fairly widespread in the US; we therefore thought that it might be nice to show them off.
Having made that decision, the next one was what battle we should take to best demonstrate them? We knew it had to be somewhere in Normandy, as those were the forces we had already built up. We knew that the battlefield itself had to be relatively self contained as the basic unit size was one infantry base to a squad, and one model to one vehicle. The game also had to be one that either side could win, so that ruled out a lot of Montgomery's attacks that were presaged by a bombardment and left a ruined landscape behind. After a little research, Hill 112 seemed to be the one battle that seemed to fit the bill; indeed, for a little extra work, the same terrain could host two distinct scenarios. The first was the end of Operation Epsom on 28-29 June 1944, and the second was Operation Jupiter, the attack by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division on 10-11 July.
Background
Having failed to capture the city of Caen on D-Day, General Montgomery, the land forces commander of the Allied invasion force, was forced to look at alternative ways of breaking out deeper into France.
These threats served to distract German attention from the American sector in the west, and meant that any reinforcements were used to defend Caen. By continuing to keep this pressure the German High Command in Normandy were unable to extract their precious panzer divisions for their own offensive.
By the middle of June, Montgomery decided to attack west of the city, where he hoped the defences were weaker in the hope of getting over both the Odon and the Orne. Unfortunately, his VIII Corps were delayed in their build up by the Great Storm, and this allowed the 12th SS Panzer Division - Hitler Jugend - to make their own preparations. Although there was a heavy preliminary bombardment from some 1,000 guns when Operation Epsom began on 26 June, 15th Scottish Division was only able to get into, but not through the German positions. Indeed, the 12th SS were able to restrict the attack to only one major road, which rapidly became congested.
On the 27 June, the reserves took over the attack, but it was only in the early evening that the 2/Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders filtered through the now weakened defences and captured the Tormauville bridge. Soon afterwards, a squadron of the 23 Hussars, of 11th Armoured Division, crossed over to the south bank of the Odon and moved onto the northern slopes of Hill 112. Additional elements were ordered south, until by dawn of the 28th most of the Black Bull Division was concentrated in the small bridgehead.
The time had now come for Monty's forces to try to force the crossing of the Orne, just a few miles further on, and the start of our demonstration game.
Making the Terrain
Having made the decision about what we were going to demonstrate, the next was to start the research on the battle itself and the terrain. A websearch helped get things into context, whilst a trawl through library books (both personal and public) showed that the action was very much a footnote or sidebar to Epsom itself.
Luckily, we found that Tim Saunders had contributed a volume on Hill 112 to Pen and Sword's Battleground Europe series (ISBN 0850527376), and three copies were quickly ordered, received, and read. We had been fully prepared to obtain copies of the relevant modern 25,000 scale maps but Saunders provided us with the information that the Dorsetshire Regimental Museum had copies of the 1944 War Office map as issued to the 43rd Division available. Another order was placed and the result was everything we expected - contours, road layouts, built-up areas and, for the Jupiter game, all known German positions.
Having got the map, two of our more computer literate members spent a weekend painstakingly scanning the map in order to blow it up to the same ground scale as MP(!). Once this was done, the map was then re-constituted on the floor of Roger Sidwell's conservatory so that we could make an assessment of the amount of insulation sheeting involved. Taking into account the need for building up contours, some 20 four foot by six foot sheets were ordered from a local firm, Essex Insulation.
The next step was to take the sheets and, using the map templates, draw the streams and rivers on the lowest level and each individual contour. Once this was done, the latter were cut out, and the edges chamfered using a Surform™ so that the rises were gradual. It was during this stage that we realised that we had to take a liberty with the game scale: by keeping the vertical scale constant with the horizontal one, Hill 112 was almost unnoticeable. We therefore had to exaggerate height by a factor of 2. If you have seen the game you probably won't notice anything, and even getting down to ground level all you'll see is a slight hill above you.
If you try cutting and Surforming at home, you will need to be very careful. The process throws up lots of 'dust' that can quickly be trod all around the house. Keep doors and windows shut to stop any sort of breeze and clean up every few hours. Even with all these precautions, Roger's cats seemed to attract the stuff and he was still finding bits weeks later! We have included a couple of pictures of the terrain in its rough state.
When the terrain had been cut out each block (we built it in blocks to make transporting it easier) was stuck together using industrial strength white glue and set out in Dave Wood's garage, where he keeps his 12 foot by 6 foot wargaming table. The cars stay outside in all weathers - he has his priorities right. The whole model was painted with a base coat and sealant.
Detailing
With such a large area to cover, flocking took on a life of its own. We decided to use Woodland Scenic material as a basis, but because ground cover is never just one colour we pooled every spare bag we had. The darkest hue was used along the rivers and streams, then gradually lightened as the terrain got higher, ensuring that each shade was feathered into the others. The overall intention was to give a sense of perspective and depth. Our local model railway shop must have wondered what had hit him, as we cleared out his stock twice when we were doing this, the second time after he had only just re-stocked after the first!
Aerial photographs, memoirs and descriptions helped us to work out where there were crops growing, and again helped break up solid areas of grassland. These were put in place using either corn flocking or by sticking down solid blocks of Woodland Scenic's tree material. The waste flocking that fell off as we worked was collected into a box and the mixture used to represent rough pasture.
The map we were using showed that there were a large number of woods and orchards, but we had to decide how we were going to be able to differentiate between the two, especially as orchards were likely to be easily passable to vehicles - within reason! - whilst woods wouldn't be. The trees themselves came from both K& M as well as a specialist architectural model shop in the City (of London). Eventually, we decided to show orchards by orderly, widely spaced, rows, and woods with scattered trees placed in underbrush formed from the tree material.
There were very few made-up roads in the area, and these were built up by using tarmac flock. Because these looked quite stark, the surface was lightly dry-brushed with white paint to tone it down. I suggested that we should put road marking down, but no one could find either photographic evidence of what they should be or, perhaps more importantly, a copy of the 1944 French Highway Code. The ubiquitous tree material was cut into thin strips and stuck down alongside the roads as hedges. Telegraph poles were placed along what we felt was likely to be the main road, and thin cotton (normally used as rigging material for Napoleonic ships) stuck between them.
What our map, and the aerial photos, did show was that there were a large number of tracks criss-crossing the entire area, either joining the small farms to the roads, or linking up the fields. We felt the best way to represent these was by taking the rounded end of a paint brush and just dragging it through the scatter material until the original base coat showed through. Again a dry dusting of a lighter colour helped bring out the details.
Water features were constructed in the usual way by painting in the bed colour and then filling it in with Woodland Scenic water material.
Almost without exception, the villages and small towns were made up of GHQ buildings. There were two reasons for this, the first being that it was easier to buy ready-mades rather than scratchbuild, and the second because they were in scale and would not over power the rest of the model. It is, I think, too easy to make buildings look too clean for the battlefield, so the models were painted and then heavily dry dusted to tone them down and to ensure that they did not stand out from the rest of the terrain.
Researching the battle
At the same time as this was all going on, another group was spending time trying to work out what units we had to build up. For the British this was easy, as Montgomery always insisted on his forces fighting in their original formations, although the armoured divisions were to break down into battlegroups before a month had passed.
For the defenders it was more difficult, for not only had the Epsom forces broken their way through the German lines, but 12th SS Panzer Division was already fighting in battlegroups before the battle began. Michael Reynold's Steel Inferno - 1 SS Panzer Corps in Normandy and JJ How's Hill 112 - Cornerstone of Normandy Campaign offer glimpses, but what we ended up with was something that felt right and which we could defend if challenged.
One thing we did have problems over was what happened to the Luftwaffe Flak Battery that was ordered to the summit of Hill 112 on the day before the battle, especially as there was no evidence of destroyed or captured guns from any British eyewitness accounts. Our assumption is that once the British attack actually got rolling, they limbered up and fell back to a back stop position where they could bring fire to bear on any Ronson foolhardy enough to cross the ridge line.
The Forces
The 11th Armoured Division was formed in November 1940, soon after the threat of invasion had disappeared. It was the second (of three) to be trained by Percy Hobart, although Epsom was to be its baptism of fire under 'Pip' Roberts.
"Pip" Roberts
The three armoured regiments were 23 Hussars, 3 Royal Tank Regiments and the 2nd Fife and Forfar Yeomanry; the motor battalion was 8 Rifle Brigade (ex- 2 London Rifle Brigade). The Lorried Infantry Brigade consisted of 3 Monmouthshire, 4 Kings Shropshire Light Infantry and 1 Herefordshire, whilst the Armoured Reconnaissance unit was the 2nd Northamptonshire Yeomanry. Two artillery regiments, one anti-tank regiment and one anti-aircraft regiment formed the rest of the division.
The 12th SS Panzer Division was of more recent formation, having been founded by a Fuhrer Order in June 1943. The intention was to use one of the untapped resources available to Hitler, the members of the Hitler Youth. The bulk of the new division was thus formed from youngsters born in the first half of 1926 - they would have been about eighteen when committed to action. Whilst not the children of popular myth, they were substantially younger than the British and Canadian soldiers they fought against in Normandy. Although only in action since 7 June, they had the advantage of being commanded by a solid corps of SS veterans from the Russian campaign. As a result, the division rapidly gained a reputation as a hard fighting formation, but one that also attracted odium for a series of battlefield atrocities against prisoners.
The combat units were the 12 SS Panzer Regiment with one battalion of Panthers and one of Panzer IVs, the 25 and 26 SS Panzer-Grenadier Regiments, each of three battalions, the three battalions of the 12 SS Panzer Artillery Regiment, and the reconnaissance and pioneer regiments.
It has been difficult to find out exactly which elements were present on Hill 112 on the 28th, but we have been able to identify a Luftwaffe Flak battery of 88mm guns as being under the division's command. There was at least one, and perhaps a second, company from II/12 SS Panzer Regiment, whilst the 7th Werfer Regiment with some fifty (!) nebelwerfers was able to provide fire support.
The Game
So far, we have displayed the Epsom game twice, and the Jupiter add-on once, when it won the Best of Show at Battlegroup South in July.
The Epsom game plays out almost exactly like it did in 1944, which suggests that either the rules work, or that the club can't think of any alternative plan. However, we have been more than gratified with the comments we have received from visitors, and from reviews posted on various websites, and most especially from John's glowing endorsement posted here. Please accept our most sincere thanks to one and all. The games last outing will take place at the SELWG show in October, after which it will be used for club games and cannibalised for other games.
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