La Croix Blondel - The Plan. 12 June 1944

It's 1 week after D-Day and you're lucky to be alive.  Your unit has been in almost constant contact with German forces and your men are starting to show the strain.  Local counter attacks have been fierce and the Germans are making you pay for each field and hedgerow.  Yesterday afternoon your men caught a lucky break.  A German collapse here prompted nervous calls from Brigade and Division to seize the town and crossroads to your front ASAP.  German defense was spirited but eventually gave out.  

Intel reports sightings of armor, track, and troop columns headed in this direction.  The artillery and fly-boys will have this afternoon to whittle them down, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out they're going to throw everything they've got at this crossroads town.  It's key to the whole sector.  You know it.  Your men know it.  They'll come right before dawn, at twilight....

Your ad-hoc Battalion grouping has 3 powerful units.  A mechanized infantry company in halftracks and a tank platoon in support, a tank company with a mech infantry platoon attached, and a tank destroyer company with a tank platoon in attached for support.

Additionally you have your forward observer, and a battery of dedicated artillery that brigade has allotted.  You may even have a sortie of fighter bombers to help knock out German armor.

Team Armor, the tank heavy team, is covering the south.  The mech infantry platoon attached is defending the flank along the road leading to the southeast.  Their armor, and the tank destroyers are tied in, sited on the best tank country you've seen so far in Europe.

To the North, Team Mech, your infantry heavy team, is defending the town of La Croix Blondel.  Their halftracks will provide fire support and their attached armor will be anchoring the town's western flank as well.

Not much time to dig in, however your artillery did manage to register and your FAO is in a church steeple watching for infantry or armor to the north.  This is the least amount of open ground their infantry would have to cross.  It makes sense to put your artillery there.  The FAC is waiting for his planes to arrive.

Recon is out sniffing for big German cats.  They always worry you.  If the Germans don't get them, it's a good possibility your own tank guns could.  Those scouts are crazy.

I'll review the German plan after the battle!  Huzzah!