Carpathian Brigade: A Preview
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
September 2013

And so we have Panzer Grenadier: Carpathian Brigade. It’s a pretty good product, and I’m pleased with the outcome. Developer John Stafford did a fine job making my early-morning ravings make sense, and did some cleanup of long-standing special rules that was sorely needed.

There are 11 scenarios, because something this good doesn’t just go to 10! Actually I just counted wrong somehow and didn’t want to throw out the eleventh one. Here’s what you get for your $10.99:

Scenario One
Italian Feint
27 October 1941

The Polish Carpathian Brigade arrived in Tobruk in August and took over a stretch of the front previously held by an Australian brigade and an Indian cavalry regiment. Sharp patrol actions followed, but no full-scale assaults. In the early morning hours of 26 October the Poles captured a Libyan sneaking through their lines. The man claimed to be an Italian spy, and said the Italians planned a major assault the next morning.

Conclusion

The Libyan “agent” spun a tale that convinced the Poles, but when the hour of the supposed assault came, nothing happened. The Poles stood by their arms for the next several days and stepped up their patrolling to even more aggressive levels, but the Italians remained in their own positions. Italian patrols fought the Polish troops, but no major attack ever came.

Design Notes

The 37mm piece from White Eagles represents actual Polish-made 37mm anti-tank guns found in the Tobruk weapons depot. The Poles decided these had been captured by the Germans in 1939, given to the Italians and shipped to North Africa. More likely these were guns manufactured “off the books” before the war and quietly sold aboard – a very common practice in pre-war Poland.

Scenario Two
A Very Nice Change
20–21 November 1941

With Allied troops approaching the Tobruk fortress, headquarters ordered the garrison to break out and link up with them. The plan involved troops of the British 70th Infantry Division assaulting on the eastern edge of the Tobruk perimeter while the Poles made a demonstration on the western flank. The Poles leapt to the attack as though the outcome of the entire war rested on the result. “It makes a nice change for the boys,” the brigade’s chief of staff mused. “A very nice change indeed.”

Conclusion

Polish enthusiasm carried them into the Italian entrenchments, and fierce close-quarters fighting broke out all along the line. Ordered to make the attack with a single company, accompanied by platoon-sized probes, brigade commander Colonel Stanislaw Kopanski sent most of his unit into action. The Poles won a satisfying victory over the Italians (despite officially not being at war with Italy), but no one on the Axis side was fooled by the demonstration and the British assault met fearsome resistance.

Design Notes

This time it’s the Poles on the attack, attempting to take Italian entrenchments in a dawn assault with only a slight numerical advantage. But morale is on the side of the Poles, as is the case in every scenario in this set.

Scenario Three
Breakout and Pursuit
23 November 1941

With the British breakout bogged down and New Zealand troops pushing resolutely closer to the Tobruk perimeter, staff officers discussed whether an attack by the Poles might succeed in linking up with the relieving forces. A second corridor, 70th Division suggested, would allow fresh troops into the fortress and would present the Axis besiegers with multiple challenges. Perhaps tank support would help the Poles smash their way through the Italian lines?

Conclusion

While 70th Division strongly supported the plan, XIII Corps rejected the idea. “I do not consider it has the reasonable chance of success we should offer it,” General Alfred Godwin-Austen of the relieving force replied, “… until we are ourselves firmly established.” The Tobruk staff repeated their recommendation for several days, but corps command repeated their opposition. The Poles remained in their positions.

Design Notes

The Poles get to attack with tank support, a handful of Matildas in this case. The Carpathian Brigade saw a great deal of combat at Tobruk, but almost all of it consisted of patrol actions and small-scale skirmishes that aren’t interesting at the scale of Panzer Grenadier. So even though this attack did not actually jump off, it gets included to let the Polish player combine tanks with his elite infantry.

Scenario Four
Fraternal Assistance
3 December 1941

While the Poles awaited permission to strike at the besiegers, the British breakout effort had come under repeated counterattacks. New Zealand troops who’d broken into the perimeter helped greatly. Casting about for further reinforcements, the garrison command ordered the Poles to send some of their artillery to the threatened sector to bolster front-line anti-tank defenses. The reinforcement came in the nick of time, as the Germans collected several exhausted forces for a three-pronged attack on Ed Duda, the only point on the crucial Trigh Capuzzo road now held by the Allies. It had to be re-taken to clear the roadway.

Conclusion

The German column from 21st Panzer Division, built around 8th Machine Gun Battalion, drove up close to the Allied lines and set up a battery of 88mm guns. The British quickly organized a counter-attack to seize the guns, but the 88’s shot up 15 Matildas as they waddled forward and drove off their accompanying infantry. But the Polish gunners, manning Polish-made 100mm guns sold to Italy before the war and found in a depot in Tobruk, in turn destroyed the Germans’ tank support. This paved the way for a British infantry assault to finally overrun and capture the 88mm battery. The attack on Ed Duda had failed.

Design Notes

This is a “leftover” scenario that I sketched out years ago when I designed Desert Rats, but didn’t include there because of the Polish contingent. There are only a handful of Polish pieces needed for this scenario so I probably could have found a way to squeeze them in, but as with most Panzer Grenadier boxed games the counters were finalized well before the scenarios were complete. It’s a fun scenario with both sides attacking, with tanks.

Scenario Five
On the Attack
9 December 1941

Axis forces abandoned the siege of Tobruk on the night of 7 December. The garrison spent the next day securing its communications to the east, and on the following morning began a general pursuit of the withdrawing enemy. The Poles launched an attack on Medauar Hill, a strategic height that dominated their section of the perimeter. As long as the Italians held it, they could safely pull back without much interference from Allied ground forces.

Conclusion

The Polish assault went in with great enthusiasm, something sorely lacking on the Italian side whose troops suspected, rightly as things turned out, that their motorized German comrades-in-arms planned to leave them behind in the Axis retreat. After defying the Allies since April, Medauar Hill fell quickly, yielding hundreds of prisoners and a large haul of weaponry.

Design Notes

The Poles are breaking out of Tobruk, and the Italians aren’t all that worried about stopping them. It’s an uphill struggle for the Poles, with the Italians on the high ground and backed by artillery. Polish morale will make the difference this time, if you can get your legionnaires into the Italian lines.

Scenario Six
The White Knoll
10 December 1941

As the Poles began their breakout from the Tobruk perimeter, word filtered down to the front lines that the United States had declared war on Germany and Italy. Pursuit of the fleeing Axis went forward even more enthusiastically, and the Polish cavalry regiment attached to the Carpathian Brigade now proved its worth. At Acroma west of Tobruk, a hilltop overlooked the junction of the coastal road leading to the small port of Derna and the “bypass road” constructed by the Axis besiegers around the Tobruk perimeter.

Conclusion

The Poles took the Italians by surprise, swiftly overrunning their hilltop positions. Hundreds of prisoners fell into Polish hands, as well as many artillery pieces and vehicles plus other supplies. The Axis hopes of stemming the Allied advance now crumbled; with Acroma fallen the Germans and Italians would have to pull back to the Gazala line and hope to hold on there.

Design Notes

This one’s superficially a lot like Scenario Five, at least in the Italian initial set up. The Polish force is much smaller this time but far more mobile – all the infantry are riding in Bren carriers, and they’ll need to use this speed to strike quickly and keep the Italians from getting their artillery off the hill and off the map.

Scenario Seven
Gazala Line
15 December 1941

Reunited, the Polish brigade rolled up to the Gazala line right behind the 2nd New Zealand Division. The Kiwis had been skirmishing with German and Italian troops, and had determined that the Axis planned to make a stand on the Gazala line, one of the few defensible positions in Cyrenaica. The Poles joined the New Zealanders for a rapid assault on the hills before the Gazala position, in hopes of carrying past the ridge line and breaking the Axis with one blow.

Conclusion

Second New Zealand Division planned the attack at the most unlikely time of the day, in mid-afternoon when fighting traditionally quieted down in the desert. The Poles and Maoris caught the enemy by surprise and gained the hilltops, but failed to push the Italians completely off them. The Kiwi headquarters had hoped that with the addition of an extra brigade to their order of battle they could “push right through to the Gazala line,” but that would take some more hard fighting.

Design Notes

Poles and Maoris fighting side-by-side – can there by any better kind of scenario? The objective’s a ridge line held by less-than-enthusiastic Italian infantry, but they do hold the high ground. This is another scenario sketched out during the Desert Rats design phase.

Scenario Eight
Continued Assault
16 December 1941

Relatively fresh compared to the New Zealand troops who’d seen such heavy action during Operation Crusader, the Poles now spearheaded the division’s assault on the Axis Gazala position. While the Maoris continued to attack to the northwest against the Pavia Division, suffering heavy casualties, the Poles turned to the west to strike positions of the Trento Motorized Division. The Allies hoped to separate the Axis mobile forces from the Italian infantry divisions, and force the infantry back against the sea.

Conclusion

The Poles drove steadily westward along the Gabr-er-Reghem ridge line; the Italians gave ground but did not break, maintaining the Gazala line. However, the capture of three miles gave the Poles a deep salient into the Axis positions, threatening the flanks of the Pavia Division to the north and the Trieste Division to the south.

Design Notes

The Italian opposition gets tougher this time, but now the Poles are attacking along the ridge instead of up its side. Once again that high Polish morale is going to tempt the Polish play into closing for assault combat, but the Poles are very sensitive to high casualties — there’s no ready pool of replacements for the brigade.

Scenario Nine
Night of the Bayonets
16-17 December 1941

Troops of the Trieste Division had found and occupied some extensive concrete emplacements built along the Gazala Line earlier in the war. When the Poles outflanked them to the north, the Italians proved reluctant to give up these well-built positions. Once full darkness came, the Poles, much more at ease in night combat than their British, Australian or New Zealand allies, fixed bayonets and moved out to eject the Italians.

Conclusion

The Poles went forward in a silent bayonet attack, taking the Italians from the flank while their attention was fixated on the New Zealanders to their front. Trieste was a much better unit than the Italian infantry the Poles had met before, and its troops recovered quickly from their shock to engage the Poles in a fierce nighttime close-quarters fight. They withdrew from the fortifications in good order, taking all of their wounded, prisoners and equipment, and when the Allies went forward at dawn they found the defensive works completely abandoned.

Design Notes

This is a very different scenario, and should be the most popular in the set (well, it would be if I were playing them instead of writing them). It’s a night action, with the Poles and New Zealanders on opposite sides of the map and the Italians caught between.

Scenario Ten
Rescue at Mekili
26 January 1942

Soon enough, the German-Italian forces rallied and drove the over-extended Allies back out of Cyrenaica. The Polish Carpathian Brigade, guarding the Gazala airfield, rushed forward to protect the old Italian fort at Mekili as a rallying point for the British and Indian troops retreating from the west. The Poles arrived on the morning of the 26th without their artillery regiment, which had already been pulled back from the front to form a cadre for new units of the II Polish Corps. The Polish infantry dug in to await the approaching Afrika Korps and its famed leader, said to be leading the advance in person.

Conclusion

Polish soldiers de-trucked at Mekili eager to defeat the famed Desert Fox in battle, but ended up being disappointed. The drive on Mekili turned out to be a ruse spread by Rommel as disinformation. Rommel was indeed leading in person, but he and the battle group only feinted toward Mekili before turning swiftly toward British-occupied Benghazi. Meeting little resistance there, the Afrika Korps captured the port intact as well as huge stockpiles of supplies. The Poles held onto the fort until 3 February when it became obvious that the Germans weren’t coming. The brigade pulled back to Gazala for a few weeks and on 17 March headed for Palestine for re-organization as the 3rd Carpathian Infantry Division.

Design Notes

Rommel himself makes an appearance, which meant that this scenario had to be included, too, even though the Desert Fox did not actually show up to fight the Poles. The Poles lack artillery support but do have some tanks thanks to British stragglers.

Scenario Eleven
Poles at Alamein
October 1942

Organized in Palestine during April 1942, the 2nd Warsaw Armored Brigade moved into Iraq in September to join the occupying army there. Their armor consisted of a motley collection of tanks including a number of captured Italian M13/40 machines. The brigade included cadre from the pre-war Warsaw Armored Brigade as well as veterans of other units, including the Carpathian Brigade. As Montgomery and Rommel moved toward the crescendo at Alamein, bringing the Poles back in as reinforcements was an option.

Conclusion

Polish tankers would have to wait until 1943 to see action, when the brigade joined II Corps in Italy. During the Battle of Alamein the Poles were available, but still equipped with second-line equipment and they remained in the Iraq garrison. But they could have drawn Shermans and gone to the front in 1942 — they certainly had the training and experience. And that allows us to include a tank battle, something Panzer Grenadier fans always enjoy.

Design Notes

When I wrote this scenario, I had somehow confused two of the actions on the Gazala Line and thought I only had nine scenarios sketched out. Cassino has all of these Sherman tanks and looking at them, it seemed a shame not to use them in the desert. By the time I realized there were 10 actual Carpathian Brigade scenarios, this one was already done so I included it anyway as some sort of bonus scenario.

Panzer Grenadier: Carpathian Brigade is available now. Order yours TODAY!