Flames of War '39 Tourney (2) at the Whiz

My next game was against Paul and his Soviet Strelskly Battalion in the Fighting withdrawal missions, how Soviets got to North Africa? I do not care to speculate.

 Did he say battalion looks more like a brigade possibly a (small) division too me!  Paul has two batteries each of 12 cannon each!  I felt I needed to win quick or I would not win at all. Paul's troops are confident conscripts so they would be easy to hit but in a prolonged fight that may artillery tubs would grind down my think skinned tanks

 So using as much cover as I could I advanced on the objective on the right guns blazing.  I managed to pin both the infantry and the 76mm Russian guns. Even so Paul started whittling down one of my Lietch Panzer Platoons.

 Paul's Bombardment of my Panzer IVs was not success full and the advance continued.

 On turn two I was able to strip the artillery from the top of the Wadi  and close assaulted the infantry in front of my objective. I had planned to simply attack and fall back but...

 Paul's counter attack was very successful landing 5 hits (he needed a 5+ to hit!)

 As he bailed one of my tanks I felt I had to stay by it and keep attacking as long as I could...

 Over several 'rounds' of dramatic close combat I slowly ground down the soviets  Killing most of them... until finally the broke off. I was lucky Paul got a lot of hits but I made all my saves.

Turn 3 I was able to eliminate the rest of the infantry company in front of me with MG fire and the lone survivor of my first Lietch Panzer platoon got the honor of capturing the objective.