Today was a fantastic day in Narvik. I went to see a plateau I've read a lot about in texts about the assault on the mountain above the town.
A company of the Foreign Legion and a Norwegian battalion came across the fjord, supported by land and naval artillery.
They went over a tunnel roof, but their slow advance was stopped at this little open ground. Blue circle is the allied position. Red is German.
The drawing in the previous post is from the other side of the open ground that you can see in my photo.
As you can see, the allies crested a wooded ridge, and were surprised by a German counter attack supported by fire from a ridge a couple of hundred metres above,
Here you can see the ridge the German MGs would have been positioned. Perfect overhead fire onto the allies.
The allied position was defensible, despite the good German base of fire. I has a lot of overgrown boulders and is far from flat. Here you can see the German MG position from the allied side.
As you can see, there are a lot of trees, but thankfully my dad joined me, and could...
Tell me that since his youth, the treeline has risen a lot, probably because of the change in climate.
He noted that the pines, or whatever they're called in English, are young. 82 years ago, there would have been very very few of them this high above sea level, this far north.
Which means that the mountain would mostly be covered in short birch, which wouldn't have had their leaves in late May 1940.
This means that the plateau would have been more open then than you can see in the photos.
Getting this part of the battle right is crucial in my campaign for #ChainofCommand.
Woods would block line of sight, but only up to a point. Ridges, boulders and slight changes in elevation can hide entire sections, if not platoons.
No need to make rules for this. It's all in the core game system, but modelling it on the table is tough.
Seeing the ground was amazing, and it really was how I'd imagined it, if only more full of rises and falls in the terrain.
If you're interested, the allies finally managed to dislodge the German positions by a Norwegian lmg team and a couple of snipers flanking the German left, enfilading them.
Then the fighting continued, with more German counter attacks with SMGs and handgrenades up the mountain.
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