After Action Report 01

Rene Van der Assem - CO Guards Armoured Division

Well that was that.
A great day, even better game and some very stressfull and tense moments.

As part of the Guards Armour team I must say that apart from the startup problems we encountered since our logsplayers went missing (presumably in the oil drums and food crates), we had a great run.
Sorting out our logs was a bit of a problem but as soon as this was fixed we actually had some more time to walk around and get a feel with the other formations and their intentions.

It was also a day of mixed results. Our first attack went pretty much as expected altough we were not able to push as far as we had planned. Some German Artillery Battallion found it neccessary to
surrender which of course was a big hold up for our advance:-).

Next couple of turns things got worse however. Due to some geographical problems (basically the shitty dutch terrain with all its slootjes, we were crawling along at snailspace. This turned out to be a big problem a bit later on when a sizable German counterattack from Veldhoven towards Eindhoven hit our flank and pretty much left part of 32 brigade and our divisional troops in shambles. I am happy to
admit that I was relieved beyond anything to hear that the Germans had not advanced beyond the woods thereby probably having made a crucial mistake. It allowed us to extract and rest all these troops pretty much on the road towards Zon. I am absolutely certain that if they had made a breakthrough assault the Guards Armoured would have been out of the battle !!!!!

However this situation forced us to rest our troops who had been fighting for 1,5 day now and which was pretty much noticable in their performance (no comments from para please After reorganising the
Division and beating back the german formation that at first threatened to diminish our division the dicision was made that in spite of Corps orders to defeat that German division we were going to
make sure we would be able to reach Arnhem. So after consulting with Horrocks he agreed to our idea and we went as fast as we could towards Uden make a left Hook around it and sweep across the
Ravenstein railbridge.

We did reach the outskirts of Arnhem but we will never know if we were on time altough I do think (personally) that Airborne was still in a good enough position to hold out for 1/2 day for us to reinforce
the biggest perimeter in Arnhem with armour and infantry.

In hindsight I think we can easily say that if we could have done anything different it was the fact that we stayed 1/2 day too long in the Best/Zon area to give our troops some much needed rest from the
first fighting. This would probably have allowed us to quicker deal with Ravenstein and reinforce the Airborne boys in Arnhem.

All in all a very good day.

René van den Assem
(AKA Allan Adair)
Who likes to thank the whole GA team for the great effort despite the startup problems :-)))