Official HFQ Snippet #10

Charybdis wrote:

Frankjg wrote:This was one sweet snippet.

The church forces and allies are going to be in shock when the Charisian corps appears out of the winter weather. Hope the healers are ready for the increase in shock victims and heart attacks that are about to happen.

People are going to go ballastic when they discover the state of the winter warfare gear that the Charisian army has that they cannot match.

Good to see Green Valley not overdoing his tech advantage. Still letting his people do the job they are trained for and getting that info their way.

Can not wait to see what happens.

Can someone arrange another OOPSIE edition to be leaked again? Too Bad we have to wait till this time next year for the book to come out.

It is the proud boast of the US Military that "We own the night!" and here we see the ICA creating the boast of "We own the Cold!"

Another thing to think about is what happens to disrupted troops when they are forcibly displaced from winter quarters! There is almost no more fearsome foe that General Winter and he shows no mercy in these circumstances. Napoleon and Hitler both discovered how devastating winter maneuvers are for unprepared troops and even the ones who make it back to friendly lines will be of little help for a long time! Napoleon had 400k+ troops at the Polish border at mid-Summer of 1812 and the return 6 months later had 5 digit counts although those losses would include POWs and deserters.

80% of Napoleon's losses were due to Typhus.

He started with nearly 600,000.

He only had 95,000 when he occupied Moscow, before the snows started - 25,000 were abandoned there as too ill to move when he started back a month later.

20,000 more were abandoned or dead by Smolensk.

Only 30,000 made it back alive and they never served again - unfit for duty after surviving a Typhus epidemic...

Hi Montrose Toast,

Good job on the stats with Napoleon... I'm wondering, have you ever seen any stats on what percentage of those men were French as opposed to "associated allied" troops?

Don

PeterZ wrote:You may be right about the winter amphib assault, Lyonheart. That isn't what I was referring to. Recall that Brigadier Taisyn (sp?) wanted to send mortars up into the foothills to cover an assault along the Western bank of Wyvern Lake. BGV was confident that it would work to get behind Wyrshym's lines on the North shore of Wyvern Lake. If that assault can work in the Fall, it can work better in the Winter. This assumes enough arctic gear to equip enough troops to make that assault.

I suspect there is.

lyonheart wrote:Hi PeterZ,

I concur with Randomiser.

Given the amount of ice on the lake at the moment, a winter amphibious assault is a little more difficult than you think.

You might consider looking up successful winter [ie snow and ice] amphibious assaults before you so blithely take such for granted.

A late spring assault after the ice has melted is far more likely to be considered by the officers risking their men [NTM their own lives], that is when General Mud has taken over the weather.

The Lake Wyvern garrison is fixed holding the north shore, separate from Wyrshym at Guarnak, so they both can be attacked and destroyed in detail, if the weather holds for BGV.

So the 'southern' alliance force could probably move faster on the lake than land during the mud season, especially with some help from steam tugs.

L

Don't forget that part of the assault plan involved using "the canal barges loaded with additional mortars and field guns to land troops behind Wryshym's entrenchments" that they had dragged up onto the lake with much labour. I guess that they wont be available in winter - iced in?

I wonder how thick that ice gets... Three feet of ice and you may well be able to send your attack force across on foot!

Don

Depends on what is on top of the ice. If it is just bare ice good luck assaulting a fortified position across it without your winter combat trained troops. It would be a disaster, the troops could dig in there would be no cover(white uniforms would help but not be enough), and running on ice is a 'bad idea'. However if there was snow deep enough on the lake then possible. since the snow would give traction and cover for advancing troops. It would still be a bad idea without the winter combat trained troops Green Valley has.

Hi All,

I reread the posts for this thread, and there are some aspects that I don’t see.

We don’t have a date for when ice turns to mud, but MTAT, April Ch III, page 77 indicates that the thaw occurs in the Gray Wall Mountains around April 20. We have some COGA troop movement information in the following sections:
MTAT April XVII Page 226
MTAT June III Page 403
MTAT June III Page 409
MTAT June IX Page 440-441

Basically COGA troops transport had been held up in 896, because 1) The movement hadn’t been coordinated with Allayn Maigwair, and 2) because canal sabotage had to be repaired. Nevertheless, Bishop Milatant Bahrnabai’s army reached Guarnak before the end of June.

By August 896, COGA was repairing the damage of the canal raid as was described in the following sections:
LAMA August II Page 83
LAMA August II Page 85

The plan in August is to have the canal system operational by the end of March if they can work through November and February, and by mid-April if they can’t.

COGA knew in September that BGV had taken Allyntyn, and the priority that they put on reinforcing the Army of Sylmahn would be based on their expectation of the time that it took BGV to bring his army into contact with the Army of Sylmahn. In other words, I would expect supplies and troops to start pouring into Guarnak as soon as the canal system is operational.

Another thing that is missing is BGVs thoughts on the Guarnak-Sylmahn Canal in reference to the missing logistical planning of Brigadier Traigair’s proposal.
LAMA August III Page 95

I think that the advanced troops that BGV are with are tasked to 1) clear the road to Guarnak, and 2) to secure all canal locks and pumps on the New Northland Canal. I expect BGVs main force to hit the Army of Sylmahn just before they can be reinforced. I expect BGV to move east with supplies from the Guarnak-Sylmahn Canal, until the army is in position to receive supplies from the New Northland Canal. I expect BGV to keep driving, hopefully to meet COGA forces that aren’t dug in.

I expect BGV to be reequipped with M96s and breech loading artillery before he makes contact with the army from Harchong.

And that is probably further than any campaign plan could be expected remain intact.

James

Hmmm...
we've had some spirited discussions about what BGV should, or should not, do. I don't believe anything has been said about the other 2/3 of his corp he left behind in Allyntyn. Probably because we have no indication at all from RFC.
Will they be mushing along on snowshoes, several days behind the winter warfare specialists? Will they be bringing the Corp's dismantled artillery with them, towed by another herd of caribou and snow dragons? Or will they be sitting in Allyntyn building a monstrous re-supply column while they await the thaw? Or something else?

Question for the mountain and warfare types. Would the passing of 25,000 pair of snowshoes make the highway passable for lesser equipped individuals?

EdThomas wrote:Hmmm...
Will they be mushing along on snowshoes, several days behind the winter warfare specialists? Will they be bringing the Corp's dismantled artillery with them, towed by another herd of caribou and snow dragons? Or will they be sitting in Allyntyn building a monstrous re-supply column while they await the thaw? Or something else?

\

Hi Ed,
When I said "clear the road", I wasn't referring to the snow and ice. Here is a quote from snippet 9.

The Royal Chisholmian Army had made a point of acclimating all of its units to winter marches, but only about a third of the entire army had been trained in actual winter war fighting, which was a much more demanding regimen.

James

Hi James,
Didn't mean to imply that at all. I'm curious about what effect hundreds or thousands of snowshoes would have on snow on a highway. My snowshoeing has been mostly on trails cleared for cross country skiing (until the ranger catches us ) with only a bit of bushwhacking.

My guess would be that most of the winter training marches were "administrative" with the actual war training being much more demanding, "tactical" manuevers.

Hi Montrose Toast,

Unfortunately, thanks to Pasquale's teachings and edicts etc, disease isn't the killer it was on earth at the same tech level.

Napoleon's horses were starving by the thousands before he got to Smolensk, not from the Russian government policy so much than the usual fodder limits of the land west, and the impossibility of bringing enough food and forage forward absent steam tugs towing barges etc.

If only Fulton had stayed in France and perfected steam tugs for canals and rivers.

L

Montrose Toast wrote:*quote="Charybdis"*[quote="Frankjg"]This was one sweet snippet.

The church forces and allies are going to be in shock when the Charisian corps appears out of the winter weather. Hope the healers are ready for the increase in shock victims and heart attacks that are about to happen.

People are going to go ballastic when they discover the state of the winter warfare gear that the Charisian army has that they cannot match.

Good to see Green Valley not overdoing his tech advantage. Still letting his people do the job they are trained for and getting that info their way.

Can not wait to see what happens.

Can someone arrange another OOPSIE edition to be leaked again? Too Bad we have to wait till this time next year for the book to come out.

It is the proud boast of the US Military that "We own the night!" and here we see the ICA creating the boast of "We own the Cold!"

Another thing to think about is what happens to disrupted troops when they are forcibly displaced from winter quarters! There is almost no more fearsome foe that General Winter and he shows no mercy in these circumstances. Napoleon and Hitler both discovered how devastating winter maneuvers are for unprepared troops and even the ones who make it back to friendly lines will be of little help for a long time! Napoleon had 400k+ troops at the Polish border at mid-Summer of 1812 and the return 6 months later had 5 digit counts although those losses would include POWs and deserters.*quote*

80% of Napoleon's losses were due to Typhus.

He started with nearly 600,000.

He only had 95,000 when he occupied Moscow, before the snows started - 25,000 were abandoned there as too ill to move when he started back a month later.

20,000 more were abandoned or dead by Smolensk.

Only 30,000 made it back alive and they never served again - unfit for duty after surviving a Typhus epidemic...[/quote]