Desired scans : Rank and File supplements Harpoon 3 & 4 supplements Force on Force supplements Hind Commander At Close Quarters War and Conquest Modern Spearhead The Face Of Battle General d'Armee (TFL version) Swordpoint
Joseph King
January the 9th in military history:
475 – Byzantine Emperor Zeno is forced to flee his capital at Constantinople, and his general, Basiliscus gains control of the empire. 1127 – Jin–Song Wars: Invading Jurchen soldiers from the Jin dynasty besiege and sack Bianjing (Kaifeng), ending the Northern Song dynasty. 1760 – Ahmad Shah Durrani defeats the Marathas in the Battle of Barari Ghat. 1792 – Treaty of Jassy between the Russian and Ottoman Empires is signed. 1799 – British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger introduces an income tax of two shillings to the pound to raise funds for Great Britain's war effort in the Napoleonic Wars. 1806 – Lord Nelson receives a state funeral and is interred in St Paul's Cathedral. 1861 – American Civil War: "Star of the West" incident occurs near Charleston, South Carolina. 1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Fort Hindman begins in Arkansas. 1916 – World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli concludes with an Ottoman Empire victory when the last Allied forces are evacuated from the peninsula. 1917 – World War I: The Battle of Rafa is fought near the Egyptian border with Palestine. 1918 – Battle of Bear Valley: The last battle of the American Indian Wars. 1921 – Greco-Turkish War: The First Battle of İnönü, the first battle of the war, begins near Eskişehir in Anatolia. 1923 – Lithuanian residents of the Memel Territory rebel against the League of Nations' decision to leave the area as a mandated region under French control. 1941 – World War II: First flight of the Avro Lancaster. 1945 – World War II: The Sixth United States Army begins the invasion of Lingayen Gulf. 1964 – Martyrs' Day: Several Panamanians try to raise the Panamanian flag on the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone, leading to fighting between U.S. military and Panamanian civilians. 1996 – First Chechen War: Chechen separatists launch a raid against the airfield a hospital in the city of Kizlyar in neighboring Dagestan.
Bentley Butler
It is 101 years since the Battle of Rafa, the third and final battle to complete the recapture of the Sinai Peninsula by British forces during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War. The Desert Column of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) attacked an entrenched Ottoman Army garrison at El Magruntein to the south of Rafa, close to the frontier between the Sultanate of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, to the north and east of Sheikh Zowaiid. The attack marked the beginning of fighting in the Ottoman territory of Palestine.
In the wake of their defensive stand at Romani in August 1915, British Commonwealth forces under General Sir Archibald Murray began pushing across the Sinai Peninsula. Due to the harsh desert terrain, the pace of the advance was governed by the construction of a railroad and water pipeline to support the troops. Reaching El Arish, mounted forces under Major General Sir Henry Chauvel captured Turkish fortifications at Magdhaba on December 23rd. Eager to complete the conquest of the Sinai, Murray sought to force the Turks out of Rafa, near the Egyptian Sinai-Palestine border. On January 8, 1916, Murray assigned this task to Chauvel's Anzac Mounted Division.
The commander of the Desert Mounted Column, Lieutenant General Philip Chetwode, rode with Chauvel's men to oversee the assault. Near Rafa, the Turks had constructed a defensive position at El Magruntein, anchored on a rise known as Hill 255. Building four redoubts, they placed one atop the hill and the others to the west, south, and east. These were dubbed redoubts A, B, and C.
Approaching Rafa on the morning of January 9 with the 1st & 3rd Australian Light Horse Brigades, the 5th Yeomanry Brigade, the New Zealand Light Horse Brigade, and three battalions of the Imperial Camel Corps, Chetwode worked to isolate the garrison by cutting the telegraph lines to Gaza.
Anthony Myers
Sending the New Zealanders around to the south, he ordered them to approach the outpost from the east and north, while the Yeomanry Brigade moved in from the west. At 7:00 AM, British horse artillery batteries opened fire on the Turkish redoubts.
Shortly after the shelling commenced, a group of Turks attempted to escape towards Gaza, but were intercepted and captured by the New Zealanders. Moving forward, the British advanced on foot, with Chetwode initially holding two brigades in reserve (3rd Light Horse & 5th Yeomanry). These were soon committed to the battle, as his men surrounded the Turkish fortifications. Advancing across open ground, the assault quickly bogged down as the Turks were able to maintain a high rate of fire. By early to mid-afternoon supplies of ammunition began to run low. Although Chauvel called for further effort, the mistake of leaving the ammunition vehicles behind proved costly, as the attack wavered.
As the Australian Mounted Division formed the bulk of the mounted troops in the theater, neither Chetwode nor Chauvel was willing to sustain heavy casualties, particularly as they both believed that the Turks would soon abandon Rafa of their own accord. Alerted to the approach of a Turkish relief force, the two commanders began making plans to fall back to El Arish. As evening approached and the withdraw orders written, several of Chauvel's brigades launched final efforts against the Turks. Charging from the north, three New Zealand regiments attacked the main redoubt on Hill 255.
This was supported by assaults on Redoubt B by the Camel Corps and Redoubt C by the 1st Light Horse Brigade. All three attacks reached the enemy fortifications and succeeded in overcoming the Turkish opposition. Overwhelmed, the Turks began surrendering and all of Rafa was taken in short order.
Lucas Hughes
During the fighting the Desert Column suffered three times the losses previously endured at Magdhaba. The 487 casualties included 124 New Zealanders: 71 killed, 415 wounded and one missing. Chetwode reported to the commander of Eastern Force, Lieutenant General Charles Macpherson Dobell, that the work of all troops engaged had been excellent, and the part played by the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade had been outstanding.
Against this, the mainly Ottoman prisoners, which included some German machine-gunners, totalled between 1,472 and 1,635, with 162 of them wounded. About 200 Ottoman soldiers were killed on the battlefield.
The Sinai/Palestine theatre doesn't get a lot of attention in World War One wargaming, which is a shame because it has a lot to offer. Manoeuvre plays a huge role, and exotic units like the different cavalry forces as well as armoured cars are in abundance. The Ottomans, with German support, can mount a determined defence and the Allied player needs to exploit their mobility to get around this. Aircraft and artillery come to play a vital role during the campaign, added combined arms elements later on.
Crooked Dice do a 28mm Hitler (and Blondie!) for their Danger 5 range, but I'm not sure if it's the thing you'd want
One of the things I loved about the Ken Burns series was how it addressed this 'black legend' as you aptly put it ARVN veterans really got the worst of it: even though they had a bitter homecoming at least US/Aus/NZ veterans were going back to their country; ARVN guys had no country They were drafted into an army they didn't respect, to fight against their brothers, while commanded by sleazy officers who sold their rations on the black market, and led by a government that didn't give a damn about them, and after it was all over they spent years in "re-education" camps, had their graves bulldozed and their memory expunged from the record - and to top it all off were forever made the scapegoats for failure
Nathaniel Wilson
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Xavier Perez
Trying to retrieve a downed plane/pilot is totally a great scenario idea When Theodore Eicke was shot down between the lines in 1943 there was a determined effort to recover his body, on the scale of a small raid There's also classic pilot rescue missions like the ones in Vietnam, or the tales of WW1 pilots making their way back to their lines through no-mans-land
Robert Phillips
>and to top it all off were forever made the scapegoats for failure
To be fair, wasn't ARVN often legitimately useless or terrible at their job?
