The Hasselt Salient

The attack on Hasselt Salient was cause for celebration for the Allied side. Division XXO Nobipure wrote a great AAR from his perspective. Thank you to Nobipure for permission to post this AAR.

He wrote, "AAR written from my perspective as Map XO during the breakout around Hasselt.

Prelude:

I logged in today to play a bit on my day off, and as I logged in I noticed there were HC asking to be relieved as Map OIC. Zippo6 quickly stepped up and I offered to XO, Air and Navy following shortly as they logged in. We began in a pretty good position and a quick scan of the map showed that most FB's were Allied in our main areas of concern. The sides were balanced when I logged in, so it looked like the recipe for some intense battles.

Priority one:

There was already an AO on Hasselt, but not a lot going on. 2 of the 3 FB's were Allied, so Zippo decided to make that attack our P1. With links from Genk, Bilzen, and Tongeren, the tough attack seemed possible with good coordination and teamwork. The players were already rallying up to get into town, we just needed to get everyone on the same page and it would take us on to victory. With the help of an Allied squad the last fb (Bilzen-Hasselt) went Allied and the MSP's rolled in to surround the town. Great coordination between the players and HC made the last push on the town very successful, and the Axis started pulling Brigades from the 33rd Inf Div around Waremme up to support, leaving the vital river-front towns around Ramet for the taking. The players responded well by holding the St. Truiden depot and allowing the infantry to move in and overrun the city.

Opportunities taken:

After the fall of Hasselt, major opportunities for the Allies were evident, and Zippo jumped right on the best approach by declaring Paal and Diest the dual Allied P1. 33id was very attrited from the defense of Hasselt, and supported by a Naval brigade they only held out in Paal for about 30 minutes. The liberation of Paal was followed in short order by the liberation of Diest, securing a two-town wide breakout right towards Brussels/Antwerp.

Immediate rewards:

As of this AAR, the Axis northern push has fallen back to stop our advance, breaking all of their recent gains in the North allowing us to capture towns up to Eindhoven and threaten to cutoff the Naval stronghold in Nijmegen. Regardless of how far this breakout pushes, the fact that in a few hours the Allies have nullified several days of hard-fought Northern advances by the Axis will mark this event as a great day of gains for the Allied cause.

Congratulations:

In closing, I wish I had more names to personally thank for making this work out to the degree it has, but as I said this is from my point of view as Map XO, so I was quite busy! The HC filling the roles of the map as listed certainly deserve appreciation, but as always the players getting the job done down in the trenches deserve the most thanks by far! Of particular note was the fact that a lot of people seemed to be taking it upon themselves to do the less than glorifying tasks of fb defense, resupply, MSP driving, etc. without any real direction, they just found a way to help and did it. Very nice!

My personal thanks also goes to catfive, who maintained constant communications with the players and HC during the turning point in Hasselt. He did a fine job in the overall attack but his coordination in the North was fabulous. His special way of 'motivating' the players when things go a little off-cue helped immensly in achieving success in this operation."