D-Day Flashback - Wargame refight of LeHamel 2005

I've been looking at some magnificent renditions of D-Day wargaming recently and it cast my mind back to when my little group did something similar.
I used to collect 1944 British and Germans around the turn of the century as we discovered "Rapid Fire!" rules in about 1996 and just progressed with them till the second edition came along in about 2005/06. I looked back in the Cheltenham Greatfield Wargames Club magazine "The Greatfield Galloper" Winter 2005 edition and found an account of how I staged the assault on the LeHamel sector of the British beaches.

I organised and umpired and we had two players per side. It was based on the scenario in the "Rapid Fire!" D-Day campaign book, and if you want to read the account I published at the time, with the orders of battle please check out this link to my Downloads sidebar LeHamel refight article from GG12 Dec 2005

We played on my old sandtable which was only 7 feet x 5 feet and most of the buildings and defences are scratch built. I spent a fair bit of time kit bashing to come up with cheap and cheerful versions of the 79th Armoured Division's "funny" armoured vehicles and a few appear in the photos. All items are notionally "20mm" from a variety of manufacturers.

No point giving any detailed captions, I'm just enjoying the nostalgia of a game from 14 years ago, and also remembering a fantastic 3 day guided tour of the Normandy battlefields with my son in 2003 which aided my modelling. Apologies for the quality of the old photographs.

mostly scratch built cardboard landing craft

flail tank clears a path of mines

German defence works - infantry - and sunken AT gun and mortar pit....

..........about to open up as infantry disembark from the landing craft

A good view of the various "funnies"

Bridge laying tank with petard mortar mounts the sea wall

Typhoon attacks 105mm battery

British tanks quickly advance through German infantry

flame throwing tank about to fire on a difficult strongpoint

British infantry use hedges to cover their advance inland

A "tobruk" machine gun nest overlooks the beach

By the end of the game the British tanks which had "broken though" became toast

In our refight the British players got bogged down and did not manage to achicve their objectives in the time allowed.

Omaha beach landing craft from a new modeller

When I started blogging about our rather eccentric Waterloo project last Autumn little did I know that only two miles up the road my progress was being watched.......... Mark Freeman had just embarked on his "mid-life crisis" to recreate the fun of youthful modelling and was enjoying collecting 1/72 scale plastic Waterloo figures and making a diorama of parts of Waterloo in lots of manageable-sized sections.  He was looking to my blog for inspiration and modelling tips and got in touch with me. Over  the intervening months I've enjoyed his company and considerable enthusiasm and am gently encouraging him to try his hand at wargaming. His Waterloo model is coming on nicely but Mark is already exhibiting that common wargamerly trait of "butterfly" concentration. Not long ago he started modelling World War Two...again I gave him a bit of advice and  before I really noticed he'd come up with a camera phone snapshot of his one-off model inspired by the Omaha beach landings on 6th June 1944.  I was so impressed I got him round for a more considered photo shoot in my lounge.
Here is one view and for many more photos and Mark's own words please see the Pages side bar at the right for the Mark Freeman Guest Page

Allied World War Two Tanks and Equipment now on EBay

Thanks to all those who have visited, bid on, or are watching the German support weapons and vehicle models I put on EBay a few days ago and featured in my previous posting, here's a link world-war-two-20mm-german-support.  Thanks also to all the purchasers of the German tanks, Normandy landing special equipment and the infantry battalions sold in earlier weeks. Some items have produced amazing prices (to me anyway) and others I've been surprised have only reached the basic starting price. The moral is, if you are looking for some 20mm or 1/72 scale toys for your World War Two battles, you might get a real bargain.

This posting is really to advertise that tonight I have put on another 20 auction lots. This covers all my Allied (mainly British) tanks, self propelled guns, armoured cars, towed artillery, jeeps, bren carriers, half tracks, etc and they can be found by searching on seller 7073chrisg for "20mm World War Two.......... 

Postage is a nuisance as Royal Mail charge one price - £2.70, for First Class small packets up to 750 gms in the UK. Since most of my items are only about 150-250 gms it's not good value for money on a single item, but, on the brighter side, if you win several bids it is not likely to cost you any more in postage. Obviously rates are different for overseas destinations and rise in smaller increments.

Anyway, getting rid of my collection does give me the opportunity for some nostalgic looking back at photographs of some of the World War Two games on the sand table. Here are a few of them, in particular concentrating on the British equipment now for sale.
First, three pictures from our refight of the "Rapid Fire" Mount Ormel scenario

And to finish, some photos from my rendition of the Kampfgruppe Oppeln 

counter attack on the afternoon of D-Day

If you love these little Humber Armoured Cars as much as I did you can buy them - here is the link
British recce vehicles on EBay