Wouldn't it be grand if someone took the time to abstract these most interesting kinds of after-action reports and assemble them all in a nice War College Article as examples for the more likely battles, situations and campaigns.
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by caberdanier</i>
<br />Gents,
Based on comments on another thread on this board, here's a brief history of the Corinth Campaign Col Bill Keys and I are finishing up at the moment.
Battle One Rosecrans at Iuka
Bill decided to take the historical option and attack Murphy's isolated brigade at Iuka. I took a chance and reinforced Iuka with both Hamilton's and Stanley's divisions. Initially I withdrew my small cav units into the woods on my left, left murphy guarding the creek on the clear path to the town and Fuller's brigade to his left. I thought that Hamilton's division would be pounding down the road at any moment and could fill in to Fuller's left. The shorter ranged guns, mostly Napoleons were set on the rise behind the creek and before the town. I'd left the 11th Missouri (just about my only A quality unit) and a 12 lb howitzer section guarding the road and rail bridge crossing into town. The rifled guns were put on the big hills behind the town in theory out of reach of most rebel guns.
Bill attacked with Little's Division as soon he could march them into contact. Armstrong's cav remained seperated and aggressively probed my western flank (where the hell was Hamilton and Rosecrans?). His initial attack met a stone wall with Gates closing on the bridges east of town and Hebert trying to go through where the woods start and the creek ends. This exposed both brigades to plunging fire from the Napoleons just outside of town. I used up arty ammo at a prodigeous rate (you can't take it with you, as the saying goes) and his casualties started to climb. Unfortunately so did my troops fatigue level.
Hamilton finally showed up slightly more than two hours late, marched down the road and took his place next to Fuller's overextended line. At this point I thought I had a maor victory in my sights. He was not yet positioned where I wanted him when he met Maury's division deployed and coming the other way.
At this point, the 11th Missouri routed as did two other key regiments and found myself with the classic Union broken line. I stitched together a line of sorts, mostly disrupted units, limbered the short ranged arty and started falling back to the northwest. The intent was to pivot on my fresh division whcih was under pressure from Bill's fresh division (good plan huh?). I also launched my small cavalry units into Bill's rear where they captured several officers (Price, Armstrong and Little!) and a couple of artillery units. (Bill was doing the rebel full court press at the time.) It wasn't enough to stop Bill's troops from sweeping into the town and claiming their victory at a high price in casualties and leader losses.
Total losses for this fight were USA 1650 infantry, 100 cav, 1 gun, no leaders; CSA 2400 infantry, 1000 cav, 12 guns, 4 leaders.
Battle Two Iuka revisited
I didn't want my forces split up so I chose to attack Iuka directly from the west. Bill defended with both (now weakened) divisions to the northwest of town. Bill had his artillery set up on the broad ridge covering a beautiful 1000 yard wide field of fire. Little's division was to the right and Maury's to the left.
I sent two of the five division available to Grant on a wide flanking move that crashed into Bill's exposed right flank and caused him to pull all the available infantry from Little's division to stop it. I then sent forward three brigades against his left flank to occupy Maury's attention. With the reserves distracted I was able to creep close enough to launch a massive charge at his now unprotected artillery units in the center.
At this point Bill's units started to retreat towards the town. The amazing resilience and pursuit ability of Union troops came to the fore once again and I was satisfied with my major victory when Bill placed a PBEM termination bid. Little's division had been thumped a second time and I had captured 28 guns. My casualties were acceptable with a large number coming from the demonstration against Maury's division.
Battle Three Ripley
After the two fights at Iuka I didn't think it likely that Bill would attack Corinth without reinforcements. To prevent a distracting cavalry raid I decided to attack him pre-emptively at Ripley from the north. My intent was to cause more casualties than I lost and to prevent him from taking in any offensive action against Corinth this strategic phase.
I was able to get the long range Union artillery set up on the ridges north of town and put the Union infantry at the foot of the ridge in front of them. I didn't advance into Ripley because I didn't think I could take it without massive casualties. Bill wasn't about to enter the artillery kill zone I set up so and the battle ended a draw with about 1000 infantry casualties on each side. Additionally Bill lost about 400 cav from Jackson's brigade.
Battle Four Corinth
Because we were now at the end of October, Corinth had a complete abatis surrounding it. The forts were complete and I had badly attritioned his artillery corps in the preceding battles. He had been reinforced by Breckinridge's division but this only made up his losses. I decided to defend from within the inner defenses at Corinth to take the most advantage of my interior lines, my superior artillery and the completed fortifications. Bill attacked from the Northwest into the heart of my defenses.
The result was a rebel bloodbath. I'd spent my time during Bill's approach march constructing breastworks to strengthen the fortifications. Bill never really penetrated the abatis and was forced to fight against units that were uphill, behind embankments and breastworks without artillery support. We fought most of this battle at a range of about three hexes where my superior artillery and rifles were most effective. He lost about 7000 trying to penetrate my works. I lost about 1000.
After 64 turns Bill resigned at this field and his army is now retreating to Davis Bridge.
Battle Five Davis Bridge
This battle is still under way and it looks like it'll be a ding dong fight along the Boneyard road where it T's at the south. I have troops at the top of that hill and his army is forming to attack them in order to get to the southern bridge.
I hope you, the reader, find this as entertaining as we the players have found this campaign.
Sincerely,
Chuck Berdanier
Col, 2/1/IX, AoO
Chuck Berdanier
Col, 2/1/IX, AoO
National Light Infantry
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Colonel Tom Ciampa
2nd Bgde,1st Cav
XIV Corps, AoC
Games: TS/BG: AN, BR, CH, GB, SH - HPS: AT, CTH, GB, OZK, SH, VK