Battle of Arbington

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Continuator
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Battle of Arbington

Post by Continuator »

I.

After the cross country advance of the National Protection Army, Jingdaoese panzers crossed from the Phelixian Theme into the Theme of Vey, the most densely populated part of the country defended by the largest of the Home Guard armies, the 700,000 strong Army of Vey.

A day after the Jingdaoese air raids on Vey targeting civilian food distribution centres, the Army of Vey began to move into its forward positions to meet the advancing Jingdaoese Panzers.

[spoiler]Image[/spoiler]Order of Battle for the Army of Vey


The 4th Home Guard Army was assigned the task of securing the strategic town of Arbington which sat astride the road eastwards to Ad Pontes and would open up the interior of the Theme of Vey to the invaders.

On the left flank of the 4th HG Army was the 5th Home Guard Army whilst on the right was the 8th. The 7th HG Army was assigned to the right flank of the 8th with the intention of keeping the lines of communications open with the River Army which was regrouping at Elaion after the Battle of Ridge 71. The 6th HG Army meanwhile was held in reserve at Vey, whilst the Basileusean Army moved into the city to take over garrison duties.

The main striking force of the 4th HG Army was the 3rd HG Corps, comprised of five infantry divisions, into which had been funnelled most of the equipment and war material donated by the ESB Group, it was also reinforced with an Independent Armoured Brigade formed around one hundred land cruisers, Constancian cross-country exploration vehicles, modified by Marcellus Paixhans and the ESB into heavily armed infantry support tanks, supported by a fleet of around 1,900 commandeered SUVs and gun trucks providing force mobility and a consignment of 120 improvised rocket launchers to provide indirect fire support.

Each Division of the 3rd Corps had an ESB supervised anti-tank regiment assigned and as the corps cut through to the town of Arbington, forcing refugees and deserters off the roads lest they be crushed under the tracks of the speeding land cruisers, these regiments peeled off from their parent divisions and began to commandeer the residential and commercial buildings that would form their defensive strong points.

The infantry divisions themselves, the 79th, 112th, 127th, 128th and the 132nd, pushed beyond the town into the orchards and plantations of the surrounding countryside, entrenching and setting up firing positions dispersed amongst the hedgerows and ditches that marked the divide between the reclaimed lands of the Theme and the desert wilderness beyond, that extended all the way south and east to the borders of the Kingdom itself. Each Division's Heavy Weapons Tagma took pains to situate their concealed machine gun nests in such a way as to ensure interlocking fields of fire, whilst the fire teams of the Rifle Tagmas settled into their individual foxholes and sent out section strength patrols to reconnoitre the lie of the land and to liberally scatter IEDs amongst the farm roads and herders tracks of the countryside.

Each divisional headquarters held in reserve the 6 mortar batteries assigned to their command, and had teams of civilians and deserters rounded up to dig mortar pits and entrenchments in the town itself. Women, children and the elderly, once they had contributed what they could to this labour, were dismissed and told to walk overland towards Northwich. As for the remaining men, after one in ten of the deserters were shot as an example to the others, the remainder were formed into auxiliary fire-fighting detachments, issued with gas masks, shovels and water buckets and told to be ready to assist the 3rd Corp's engineers in whatever tasks they might require.

Arbington then represented a commanding salient, held by the 3rd Corps whilst the remaining corps of the 4th Army, from east to west, the 5th, the 6th and the 7th HG Corps, fanned out to deploy a line of pickets extending along the front, connecting the salient with the armies to the east and west.
Last edited by Continuator on Thu Jun 02, 2016 7:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Continuator
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Re: Battle of Arbington

Post by Continuator »

II.


As the Jingdaoese blitzkrieg into the Theme of Vey began to gather pace, so too did their supply lines extend. With the reappearance of the Raven strike aircraft over Constancian air space for the first time since the suicide air strikes on Portus Felix, the slower Constancian aircraft and helicopters, shifting between roads and improvised runways in fields, were henceforth restricted to night-time flying and kept under camouflaged tarps during the daytime.

Flying from dirt roads and relying on mapreading for navigation (radio silence being strictly enforced), the remaining Cessna aircraft operated as night intruders, harassing the enemy by dropping small bombs and grenades. These operations, whilst not always achieving that much, by virtue of the small bomb loads carried, did nevertheless act as an abrasive on the nerves of the Jingdaoese and their barbarian collaborators.

A favourite target was Jingdaoese supply depots, tented encampments and the lorry parks of the vehicles keeping the Jingdaoese panzers fuelled, fed and armed. In addition to their light payloads of fragmentation bombs and re-purposed mortar rounds many pilots had their co-pilot navigators carry panniers of hand grenades in the cockpit which they could then toss out as they flew low over enemy troop concentrations. When hitting fuel dumps, pilots would resort to the simple expedient of tilting the aircraft and dropping a flaming petrol bomb onto the stacked gasoline drums presenting themselves below.

The night harassment attacks usually were carried out against selected targets chosen by the local resistance cells or picked after being overflown by commercial drone or microlight and identified as a target of opportunity. The pattern of these attacks were randomised as much as possible to make it difficult for enemy air defences to predict where or when the low-flying hedge or dune hopping aircraft might appear next. Certainly once a sortie was launched, the stretch of road or field it was launched from was swiftly abandoned, the aircraft returning instead to a pre-arranged b-site from whence they would relocate after re-fuelling to the c-site where they would be concealed during the day until repeating the exercise against another sector on the following night.

The helicopters meanwhile, aside from carrying out the occasional tip-and-run barrel bombing attack on Portus Felix, were held back and underwent conversion into air-mobile machine gun platforms.

III.


Meanwhile, in the east, faced across the Styx by the remnants of the Imperial Constancian 'Volunteers' and assets stripped from the 4th Legion, the Army of Eura began to thin out its lines and withdraw back to Ad Pontes, once again the luckless survivors of the regular Constancian Army were being left as a rear-guard.

Tactics also were changing, instead of trying to attack across the river and risk being pummelled by massed artillery, the Home Guard were forming into small guerrilla bands, even as their units were withdrawing northwards to join the looming battle for Vey.

Crossing over by coracle by night, small raiding parties would seek to gain the western bank of the river, quietly knife to death any patrolling sentries they might encounter, and infiltrate into the Phelixian Theme to plant bombs and conduct assassinations amongst the rear-echelon formations of the Jingdaoese Army.
Last edited by Continuator on Thu Jun 02, 2016 7:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Basileusa Cleo
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Re: Battle of Abington

Post by Basileusa Cleo »

(OOC: :yay: )
Basileusa Megaliótate Cleo
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(Co-Ruler)


Déspoina of the Basileusian town of Petros

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Strategos Metaxas
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Re: Battle of Arbington

Post by Strategos Metaxas »

IV.


Forewarned by resistance scouts that the Jingdaoese panzers were on their final push towards Vey, Metaxas put the entire army group onto alert on the 4th of June. In an atmosphere of high tension the Home Guard stood to with their weapons. Ammunition stocks were checked, weapons examined, maps pored over. For the last time, officers took their men through the methods learnt on Ridge 71 and at the Styx for stalking the NPA panzers. Like a litany, the weak points of the Panzer were recited. The ESB advisor, Marcellus Paixhans, had demanded that the Constancians learn these lessons by rote until they knew them better than the Lord's Prayer itself. This was more than adequately fulfilled. Although still critically bereft of artillery, air support, heavy weapons and armour, the Home Guard was far removed from the hastily mobilised and amateurish militia that had first assembled at the beginning of May.

The heightened sense of anticipation that all their preparation had brought, was rendered the more uncomfortable by the heavy, sultry heat which hung like a pall over the whole region, not even relieved by the occasional rain squall rising off Lake Erik. The past few days had seen intense aerial activity, with the Jingdaoese Imperial Navy's air arm launching air raids during the day and the depleted Constancian Air Forces retaliating at night, both targeted the others lines of supply and communication. All the signs pointed to the imminent arrival of the legions of Jingdao before Arbington. Strategos Apokapes, the commander of the 3rd Home Guard Corps, awaited any indication as to where the hammer blow would fall.

On the evening of the 5th of June, Apokapes obtained what he needed. A patrol had come across a team of Jingdaoese sappers clearing IEDs from a path leading across the irrigated fields of Arbington. One of the prisoners turned out to be a colonel of the NPA and, under interrogation, he had much to say as, one by one, his fingers and toes were surgically removed. The man's tongue and a transcript of his confession was sent by motorcycle courier to Metaxas in person, who read the report and fed the tongue to his pet Euran sablehaired wolfhound.

It would appear that the 1st NPA Army would strike from the west, rolling up the flanks of the 8th and 7th Home Guard Armies, and sweeping round to the rear of Arbington while the 3rd HG Corp, and the 4th HG Army in consequence, would be fixed in place by a frontal assault from the 2nd NPA Army, meanwhile the 3rd and 4th NPA Armies would drive through Coele-Eura and smash the left flank of the Army of Vey, bypassing Arbington altogether and driving onto seize Vey and Northwich.


Moreover it transpired that the attack would begin at 0330 hours the following morning, that of the 6th of June. Apokapes gave orders for the rocket launcher, hell cannon and mortar units in the 4th HG Army sector to open fire on the Jingdaoese forward positions, which they did at 0220 hours.

To the assembling Jingdaoese units, this completely unexpected hurricane of Constancian fire raised the disturbing possibility that the barrage was the precursor to a pre-emptive spoiling attack. For more than 15 minutes the barrage ranged across the Jingdaoese forming up areas, causing considerable disruption in the assembly positions and delyaing the Jingdaoese attack for an hour.

At 0430 the Jingdaoese artillery of the 2nd NPA Army opened up against the Constancian positions and by 0500 the forward observerers of the 4th HG Army reported heavy attacks against their front supported by panzers acting in the role of infantry support. Overhead, Ravens peeled off, plummeting earthwards to fire off their rockets and cannon at known Constancian psotitions. By 0530 the Jingdaoese had committed along the entire 25 mile front of the Arbington salient. Within an hour the strength of the Constancian forward defences had become apparent and the Jingdaoese infantry had been forced to take shelter behind their panzers or in ditches, where some had fallen prey to concealed poison-tipped stakes, whilst their commanders called up artillery or air strikes to blast out the machine-gun nests and concealed snipers that the Constancians had put in the way of their advance.

It was not going to be a quick victory.

V.


When news of the enemy's plan had fallen onto Autokrator Metaxas' lap, along with a bloodied severed tongue, which he had flung, in disgust, onto the floor only for it to be hungrily devoured by his pet dog, he had seen all too clearly the threat posed by the enemy plan to his dispositions. He had hoped to have been able to attack from the flanks while the Jingdaoese battered away at Arbington, to encircle and destroy the enemy expeditionary force in one terrible battle. Instead he was threatend with envelopment and destruction himself. There was nothing for it, he would have to back peddle. During the night, frantic orders were passed along the line to all armies save for the 4th, they would have to back peddle, leaving only the lightly defended pickets of their forward position and allow the enemy to roll forward along their axis of advance. Then they would have to improvise, this would have to be a battle of movement.

To stay still would be to die.
Andreas Metaxas | Mesazōn of Constancia | Exkoubitorōn Theos

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Jonas
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Re: Battle of Arbington

Post by Jonas »

We should really end this war. Could you draw up some peace agreement while we are changing our country in a beautiful garden?
Important characters:
Frederik Alfons des Vinandy-Paravel, King of Batavia
Joseph Bartholomeus des Vinandy-Windsor, Prince-Regent of Batavia
Jin San, Diwang of Jingdao, Duke of Kildare

Continuator
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Re: Battle of Arbington

Post by Continuator »

Jonas wrote:We should really end this war. Could you draw up some peace agreement while we are changing our country in a beautiful garden?
Convince Rasmus to row back on reducing Jingdao-Kildare to a blank slate while you're indulging in your other project, and we'll put something together. :wink:

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Jonas
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Re: Battle of Arbington

Post by Jonas »

Thorgils Tarjeisson wrote:
Jonas wrote:We should really end this war. Could you draw up some peace agreement while we are changing our country in a beautiful garden?
Convince Rasmus to row back on reducing Jingdao-Kildare to a blank slate while you're indulging in your other project, and we'll put something together. :wink:
Hmm, an uninteresting proposal which I will not even consider. :wink:
Important characters:
Frederik Alfons des Vinandy-Paravel, King of Batavia
Joseph Bartholomeus des Vinandy-Windsor, Prince-Regent of Batavia
Jin San, Diwang of Jingdao, Duke of Kildare

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Ivo Angus
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Re: Battle of Arbington

Post by Ivo Angus »

Jingdao surrenders out of fear we might invade their glorious garden ;)

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Jonas
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Re: Battle of Arbington

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Ivo Angus wrote:Jingdao surrenders out of fear we might invade their glorious garden ;)
Seems more like it. We wouldn't want our precious flowers and specimens getting hurt. :wink:
Important characters:
Frederik Alfons des Vinandy-Paravel, King of Batavia
Joseph Bartholomeus des Vinandy-Windsor, Prince-Regent of Batavia
Jin San, Diwang of Jingdao, Duke of Kildare

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Haderik Widukind
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Re: Battle of Arbington

Post by Haderik Widukind »

I'm inclined to just ignore that this ever happened.
Imperial Chancellor of the Jingdaoese Empire
Fidus Achates of His Imperial Majesty

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Jonas
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Re: Battle of Arbington

Post by Jonas »

Haderik Widukind wrote:I'm inclined to just ignore that this ever happened.
There was no war on Micras.

Image
Important characters:
Frederik Alfons des Vinandy-Paravel, King of Batavia
Joseph Bartholomeus des Vinandy-Windsor, Prince-Regent of Batavia
Jin San, Diwang of Jingdao, Duke of Kildare

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