Bob v. Peter, October, 1944

It's foggy. My men have to attack uphill into the teeth of Peter's German defense. My only chance of victory is to either penetrate his lines and race up the hill before he can stop me, or force him to surrender. The terrain is heavily wooded.

I broke my company into two sections--one under Sergeant White, one under Captain Stiner. White had a platoon with medium machineguns to act as my base of fire. Stiner's two platoons remained in a covered and concealed attack position to await LD time.

Peter set up a competent defense. He arranged a double belted minefield that blocked the avenue of approach to my right front. To my left front he had a platoon in reverse slope (so that my base of fire could not shoot at it). Echeloned back behind all that he had a fire group with his officer. They had one heavy machinegun and two lights.

I decided to make a move toward the minefield, hoping to bust through it before he could bring effective fire on my men. Sergeant White's platoon managed to stumble into wire and mines in their base of fire position, but no harm was done. Stiner's platoons approached the minefields, but they had made very slow progress through the woods, and time was running out.

Meanwhile, Peter moved his fire group over to intercept my attempt through the mines. At this point, I began calling down effective artillery fire whenever I could spot a target. I then decided to maneuver Stiner's guys back to the left, hoping to flank the minefields and scoot past the disrupted defenders in reverse slope.

Everything bogged down. I had good results from my artillery and machineguns, and I killed lots of Germans. But I couldn't get any momentum to get through his defenses, and the day ended with me scarcely halfway toward my objective.

Another big victory for Peter.