Saturday, 20 December 2025

Fox & The Rat: Day 4 Every Object Counts

With the 8th Army assault stalled on the coast Capt. Rohrstock was determined to press home the advantage of the lightning victory the day before and fully breakthrough the enemy lines. 


Looking through his binoculars he could see the ground he needed to capture and in the distance the colonial defenders rushing forwards to try and stop him. Once more the Stukas had been called up to wreak havoc in the enemy lines but he had not expected the enemy to be able to muster an artillery bombardment in return. Whilst this mostly went astray he was aghast to see the truck pulling their precious anti-tank gun do up in flames with the crew mostly bailing out alive.


With the preliminary bombardments over, both sides picked themselves up and advanced towards the enemy. This was mostly made up of cautious advances by the infantry on foot until Rohrstock unleashed the 3rd section in their Sdkfz 251. Guns blazing it rushed the central objective under the very noses of the enemy and disgorged it's passengers. The initial target was a Sikh mortar section which had unwisely crested a nearby sand-dune and it was quickly reduced to a single crewman. The men of the 3rd section also unleashed heavy fire into the advancing Sikh infantry, cutting a number of them down.




This boldness brought about an immediate reaction from the enemy as a Humber armoured car rushed down the road and opened fire on the 251, fortunately the shot was wide of the mark. This in turn signalled the time for the Panzer II attached to the attack to venture forth. The first shot from it's auto-cannon was wild and off target but the second struck home with deadly effect, causing the Humber to burst into flames.


During this armoured battle the infantry fight had continued in the centre with the Sikh's coming off the worst under accurate fire from the DAK 3rd section. The Sikh's had also made an effort to bring their own anti-tank gun forwards and into action. It also shot at the 251, and again the shot was wide.


Not wishing to give the 6pdr another shot at him the 251 sped forwards whilst it was reloading and opened fire on the crew to cut some of them down. Their was a brief assault by some Sikh infantry on the 251 but this was driven off with no damage done.


By this time the Sikh attack had largely bogged down but they did launch on last ditch assault on the central objective but whilst this caused a couple of casualties on one team the Indians had no support so had to withdraw. This allowed a different DAK team to retake the objective whilst the LMG team of 3rd section shot the Sikh's down.



With night falling and no chance of rescuing a victory the Sikh's decided to withdraw from the field of combat leaving it to Capt. Rohrstock and his men to celebrate another decisive victory.






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