Battle Of the Bulge

[kanowarrior]

Ozena Valley. I will be going one day, Saturday only. This is the last battle at this location unless the sale of the property falls out of escrow.

The allies will have armor at the event. I'll be bringing my jeep and my ground mount .50 cal. Need gunners.

So far I have going:

Myself
Jere Hyde
Brian Kinoshita (tentative)
Alan Douglas (tentative)
Taisho
Chad Mullen (tentative)

[kanowarrior]

Attending the battle were:

SSgt Kano
Pvt Hyde
Pvt Coleman
Pvt Mullen

For the first time we were completely mobile and functioned as a recon unit. Again I saw the need to concentrate on keeping the unit together. When one or two become separated or do not keep up with the unit we no longer become a functioning force.

The weather was good. Nice and sunny all day Saturday. The wind was cold and brisk. Having the Reyes Creek Bar & Grill right down the road from the camps and a nice inexpensive hot meal ready and waiting was a great thing. The first night the 2nd ID drove the Stuart to the Grill and the owner and local community were highly enthusiatic. The bar had a bigger crowd the next night hoping it would come back.

We did not fight in Snail Valley but up on the mesa. Snail Valley is our planned future battle site but needs to be improved before we can use it. Tony the land owner promised to look into fixing the road in the valley so we can get down there in the future. There are some great usable areas there but some of it needs to be cleared out as there is heavy brush in the area.

For the first time in a long time the Allies outnumbered the Germans and we had armor support with the Stuart tank and a half track. As well there were at least five or six jeeps and two or three of those were used tactically. The Germans had no transport but did have an AT gun that got several good shots in that day.

The Germans started out on the offensive and quickly focused on the armor. However the Allies quickly took the offensive and kept the Germans on the run for a good part of the day eventually pushing them off the mesa and back down into the valley where the Axis camps were.

Overall it was a very good battle. Lots of pitched fighting and despite the heavy brush, there was room for the vehicles to operate. The Armor made their own roads and I managed to get my jeep off road into some unexpected places in a couple battles giving our troops support with the .50 cal.