Beyond Normandy:
The Poor, Bloody Infantry
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
March 2012

The British Army that returned to northwestern Europe in June 1944 came lavishly equipped with tanks and artillery. But when the time came to take and hold ground, like every other army of the Second World War it depended on its least glamorous branch to get the job done.

The 4th Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry advance
on Hill 112, 10 July 1944. By day’s end, nine of
10 men would be casualties.

In Beyond Normandy the British foot soldier is more powerful than in the previous games featuring British infantry, Afrika Korps and Desert Rats. To distinguish the pieces, the new type is called RIF (rifle) instead of INF (infantry) as in the desert games.

A British rifle platoon of 1944 had 37 men with a 2-inch mortar and three Bren light machine guns. Three platoons made up a rifle company. The company commander (a major in the British Army, unlike the captains commanding companies in other armies) had three PIAT anti-tank projectors to issue at his discretion, and a company staff of 15 men (most of them carrying submachine guns). In game terms, their firepower is spread over the three platoons and there is no separate playing piece for the headquarters staff. Platoons in North Africa did not have the fairly useless mortar, and seven fewer men.

British platoons are somewhat smaller than their German or American counterparts, accounting for their slightly lower firepower. But a British battalion had four rifle companies rather than the three in the other armies, or 12 rifle platoons instead of 9.

A visitor inspects the 4th Somersets
just prior to D-Day. This battalion
would also suffer grievously for Hill 112.

Man-for-man, the British went into battle with less automatic weaponry than the Germans. The men carried the standard short-magazine Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifle, with section leaders and some headquarters personnel armed with Sten submachine guns. The Bren was a good light machine gun, the Lee-Enfield a superb weapon of its type but other armies had adopted or were moving toward semi-automatic assault rifles, which Britain would not issue until 1956.

The PIAT had less range than the German Panzerfaust and Panzerschrek anti-tank rocket launchers or the American bazooka, but had its own advantages. The PIAT projector resembled an overgrown child’s toy more than anything else, throwing its bomb with a combination of small propellant charge and a powerful spring. Tommies could rarely hit anything with it, but it provided a morale boost to have something capable to damaging a tank. On the positive side, the PIAT did not have the back-blast of the other armies’ rocket-based weaponry, and so would not give away a position with a jet of exhaust gas or endanger the firer when unleashed from an enclosed space.

British organization did not provide any dedicated manpower for the PIAT: When the company commander issued one, some unlucky Tommy would have to lug the weapon in addition to his normal load.

On paper a British infantry battalion had no machine gun platoons, these being gathered into separate battalions of their own. In practice, one or two platoons each with four Vickers heavy machine guns usually would be attached, and this is how the battalions usually operate in Beyond Normandy. The machine gun platoons have more firepower than the 1940 to 1942 HMG units of the desert games, so we re-named them WPN or “weapon” platoons here to avoid confusion.

The battalion did include a support company with a mortar platoon with 3-inch mortars, an anti-tank platoon of six 6-pounder anti-tank guns, and a pioneer platoon (which we labelled SAP for “sapper” to distinguish it from the less capable ENG or “engineer” platoons in the desert games).

43rd “Wessex” Division’s memorial on Hill 112.

British battalions did not operate very flexibly with other formations, and this is reflected in Beyond Normandy. For the first time, we have formation rules, and there are sufficient pieces for four British infantry battalions. Unit density is much higher in this game than in most previous ones, so the difficulty of operating more than one command structure in a tight space is modelled very simply and elegantly. The RIF, WPN, SAP and six-pounder unit “boxes” are colored to distinguish them. A leader can’t easily activate units from a different battalion, and as battalions take losses, their morale can suffer. Britain is running out of young men, and the army is sensitive to high levels of combat losses.

This doen’t mean the men are unwilling: Morale is usually good for the British battalions, and their leadership is acceptable considering that these units have not seen combat since 1940 if at all for the most part. They are a match for the combat-hardened Waffen SS.

Click here to take the bloody infantry to war in Beyond Normandy!