The Commonwealth of Chrisdom

[7.62]

The Brown Trousers are in two basic groups.
One in the city the other in the very North along the border with Yer Bouti.

City.
In and around the city they have a dozen or so MBT's all old, plenty of wheeled APC, lots of ATGW, 120mm mortars. Few manpad and even less SAM's SA-9.
Almost unlimited RPG and home made Katyusha.
20-25,000 AK47's handed out with more on the way.
In the last few days they have more volunteers than the have weapons.
They are fighting on home ground with local support.

Northern Group.
Secret for now.

[MechCommander]

Outside T.zeina
A large force of Canadians has gathered in the Northern outpost to launch a second attempt on removing the militants from the area, the M557s will not follow the first wave as to prevent enemy fire from taking it out. the first waves mission is to capture the nearest block on the edge of T.zeina to be used as a beachhead for the rest of the forces to move in a sweep the area house by house. the RCN Warships and aircraft will provide fire support if the forces are getting bogged down by BT Gunfire.

The first wave will consist of
7,000 Infantry
100 LAV IIIs
80 M151 MUTTS
no Sherman Badgers will be deployed in this wave.

[7.62]

With the city in almost complete darkness the small arms fire starts.
Once again the snipers start up but only on clear good shots, the masses fire everywhere.
Some fires are set and the roadblocks are a little higher but on seeing the approaching armour and mass of K-nuks the populaces moves back two blocks to prepared defences.

They have to abandon the clinic which was only just set up.



The Katyusha's start firing at the port area again and also the Northern beach outpost.
This time they are being fired from all areas of the city.

***EDIT*** These 4 little blocks total about 208 small buildings. Lets say with average three rooms each. That's 624.

Each room could be empty or have, 1- a bad guy with a gun, 2- home owner with a big knife, 3- booby trap, or 1,2, and 3.
I hope you have trained your guys hard in "FISH & CHIPS" this will get messy.
It could take awhile , or maybe not.

[MechCommander]

When the Katyusha's began firing on the port and outpost, there positions where reveled by Royal Canadian Navy jets flying overhead and started to strafe them with rockets and cannons in a precision attack to knock them out of action.

While on the ground the Canadians took over the outer edges of the T,zeina area including the clinic, so far so good, the infantry began to dive for cover from the sniper and small arms fire, LAV IIIs spray 25mm cannon shells to discourage BT snipers, Canadian infantry man readied several flash bang grenades from there under slung launchers, and fired into the masses of BT troops blinding and disorienting them long enough for the Canadian infantry to charge right in and forced them to retreat, the objective has been meet the first wave then established a forward base of operations on the outermost blocks of T. Zeina, the second wave will be a Stealthy Helicopter Assault to drop off Canadian troops behind BT positions while they are distracted by the first wave.

The Second wave consists of
18 Sea Apaches
12 CH-146 Griffons
120 Infantry.

[7.62]

Once the Katyusta's are fired there is just a cheap ramp left, D10 wire is used as a command wire so the crew is at a distance to start with.
They are fired from open fields, schools, middle of the street etc. The BT have hundreds ready.They will keep coming all night.


If you are prepared to take the losses room and house clearing (which would be considerable and time consuming)
I will give you the 4 small blocks as a start.
120mm mortar fire is now dropping on the approach to the built up area anyone out side is in danger.

The heli drop is a great idea but you can not really get behind the BT. They are IN the city. It is their home, they have no place to go and are staying put anyway.
ZU-23-2 are all over the city and are deadly to the helis.

[7.62]

After hours of deadly close quarter fighting the fatigue is starting to take it's toll.
About 10% of the homes did contain small but nasty booby traps, several hundred BT fighters lay in wait in cupboards, walls even ceilings. They fought to the last.

After all this the K-nuks can call a few blocks of T.Zeina their turf now.
Paying a very heavy price they bunker down for the night. They have won!
By three in the morning the raging mob a further block away starts to fall quiet if not peaceful.



04.15 a terrifying scream breaks the air followed by gun fire, then another scream and more shooting and another and another.

The night of the long knives has begun. This will go down in K-nuk history. The fully story will never be completely known.







They are everywhere, the horror, the horror.

[MechCommander]

Maple Leaf Landing
The Canadian Command staff celebrated a victory over the Brown Trousers after the take over of several blocks in the T.zeina area, work will be done in fortifying there new holdings and removing these "Long Knives" from the premises, before pressing deeper into the neighborhood. this might be Canada's finest hour.

Back home the Canadian Goverment after hearing of this sucess has sent a letter to Maple leaf landing asking them to send people home due to the numbers being a little too excessive for such a operation

The total number of Canadians in Mauritania now after the reduction is

45,000 infantry
300 vehicles
100 aircraft
And 10 warships.

[7.62]

The city, T.Zeina area.
The K-nuks (I can not write Canadian) still hold their new part of the city.

Mech, just to clarify my last post. At 04.15 the Night of the long knives is a counter attack by the Brown Trousers on your battle weary troops in the small couple of blocks you have spent the evening/night fighting over. Your first wave guys have been up for well over 36 hours and feel like crap.

At 04.15 five hundred fresh BT’s creep up out from the tunnel systems.
They are not professionals like the K-nuks but they are all well motivated and you are in the their houses going through their stuff, wife's underwear, stamp collections etc. They are mad at the K-nuks.
Some have AK’s, some pistols, some machetes others hammers.
Of the ones with AK’s most could not hit the correct end of a rifle range but at 3-5 meters they will normally connect. Grenades and RPG are used by the better trained. Any armour in the streets is attacked from the soft spots.

You must admit that the attack comes as a bit of a surprise for the K-nuks. It is not from the general front but from the back, the sides and in between them (well people do start to shoot at you from the front too just for good measure).
They are just among you.
The K-nuk do have the advantage in sheer numbers and could keep feeding in extra units.
These units must move in under 120mm mortar fire which opens up again.
So lets be generous and say you can halt the counter attack after losing 300 each side.
You still basically hold the ground but now you have to go back and clear every home and room again just to be on the safe side.
Needless to say the command and control of this retake is difficult. Is that the BT’s in the next room causing a ruckus or is it SGT beaver from C company ? They sound the same.
By morning there may have been a few blue on blue in the last couple of hours. That is on top of the retaking casualties. Say another 200 each.
So you have wiped out the first BT counter attack, well done.
Just a bit of sniping from down the road but you are making progress.
All that aside the K-nuk keep pressing onward and by 09.47 with the extra units moving in they can safely say the blocks are clear and under control.

Then there are the tunnels.
(Give me a moment I need to write this one down).

Then there are the tunnels.

(K-nuk SGT) Looks down at the small hole in floor. "Right Smith, get down there and sort them out".
(Pte Smith) "Doh" slowly climbs down the poorly made ladder that's on the side.
BANG.
(K-nuk SGT) "Jenkins, go see what happened to Smith."
(Pte Jenkins) "What about a grenade first SGT?"
(K-nuk SGT) "OK but we are down to the last three after last night". Pulls pin "Fire in the hole" muffled BUMPH.
(Pte Jenkins) Quickly climbs down. Ten seconds later BANG.
(K-nuk SGT) "Jenkins?"........... nothing... "Right we need to know which way the tunnel goes so we can fire back. Truedom, get down there , see whats going on".
(Pte Truedom) " I can't SGT it;s my balance, I have a medical chit" pulls paper note from pocket. "See it says no heights or ladders."
(K-nuk SGT) Grabs it from the Pte "Signed by the the Doc, mmmm Major, OK that is legit" looks around "Miller jump down to the floor of the tunnel, tell us which way it heads.
(Pte Miller) "Why does Truedom always get out of it?" mummbles to self. Jumps down hole.
"I made it SGT, I made it the tunnel runs North from here, I can see a" BANG.
(K-nuk SGT) "Mmmm North, OK Johnson' looks around "Where did Johnson go?"
(Cpl Tooling) "Said he had to go out sidefor a jimmy SGT".

Two hours later the Sergeant is found in the street and gets a mention in dispatches. Cpl Tooling calls HQ we are going to need some engineers here, ones with special training or something.
All the survivors like Cpl Tooling and are sworn to secrecy.

[MechCommander]

T.zeina Canadian block
The first wave has been ordered to halt the advance and rest for awhile, while reinforcements arrive to clear out the houses one by one of any BT forces, lobbing Frag or HE Grenades through windows to flush them out, while engineers seal up the hidden tunnels with explosives to prevent another surprise attack by the militants, the Command staff of the forces arrive in a M557 to the safest part of the block to establish there forward base of operations.

[panzergator]

You have combat guys with a GD DOCTOR'S NOTE... OMG! Go HOME! Come back when you have a real ARMY instead of a collection of wusses who move around in an urban combat areas in a COMMAND POST VEHICLE! READ A BOOK, for Pete's SAKE! Where in hell did Canada get SEVEN DIVISIONS to send to pick on a tiny little country? And why?

[panzergator]

The maximum effective range of an excuse is ZERO, regardless of your location, and a commander is responsible for everything his unit does or fails to do. You SENT'EM there. That makes you responsible. They weren't ready. You are responsible for that, too.

This is a hard business. No doctor's notes, yellow stress cards, or excuses. Live or die, Bub. Do as you are told.

Course of action One: Withdraw to Canada. Organize and train your army. Determine your national interest and derive from it your national strategy. Determine how to carry out your national strategy through a combination of diplomacy and military action. Employ your units within their capabilities AND LIMITATIONS! Military action SHOULD be a LAST RESORT! Those soldiers are YOUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS, not chess pieces.

There are no reasonable alternative courses of action.

Dabble in small unit action until you figure things out. We all had to start at the bottom, too.

Read Utility of Force, by Gen Rupert Smith. Read Mounted Combat in Vietnam by Gen. Donn Starry. Read a couple books about combat in Iraq. Get a feel for what goes on on the ground from those who have been there. Read about how combat in the open is different from that in urban areas. Ever heard of Sun Tzu? Indirect approach?

Start small. Most of us agreed we had to actually OWN the GHQ units we employ in our imagi-nation actions, SPECIFICALLY to keep things reasonable.

Or don't...

[panzergator]

Oh. You said you had 95,000 troops in, which is about 7 divisions. Read "The Guns at Last Light," by Rick Atkinson. Find out what it took to get FIVE divisions ashore on D-Day.

[MechCommander]

It's 45,000 Canadian troops In Mauritania now, the rest where sent home under the orders of the Canadian Government since the taking of parts of the T.zeina area from the Brown Trousers, there are plans in the works once the troops are well rested will resume the offensive aginest these darn militants, our next objective is to locate and destroy the Brown trousers Worshops that are building there homemade rocket launchers to cut them off from there source of artillery and to track down the local Radio station BT is using to coordenating there offensives and put them off air. once the mission in Mauritania is done we will return to Canada.

[panzergator]

So said the United States in Vietnam and Iraq. Turned out it wasn't so simple.

[7.62]

Mech, Don't listen to anyone, I think you have broken the will of the Brown Trousers to fight.
They are falling back another two blocks and a lot of the mob has had to move in with their in-laws in the Ksar area (since their own homes got a make over).

The main thing is to learn a little bit each time. Like the M577.

" the Command staff of the forces arrive in a M557 to the safest part of the block to establish there forward base of operations."

It is only as safe as you make it.
When you close off the entrances to the tunnels you do not know what else is down there and how there are connected. There may be that Katyusha workshops you are looking for.
To be safe in the urban area you need to think in 3D as you move. You want the airspace, the buildings and what they may be sitting on top of.


From the last page.



Notice the 3 x AML and the Type 69-11 MBT at the top underground (I left one AML out so it can be seen in the covered photo too), poor photo but it is there so I'm going to use them.
Their mission is to take out your forward base of operations and as many key people as they can. Last M577 I promise I won't take another one.
Loaded and ready to go the crews and 25 Martyrs of the brown corduroy trousers drive up the ramp, smash out of the hide in a race around the city block, The tank at the front of the charge.
The main gun is fired to remove anything in the way of them getting to the objective, The M577.

They make it to the safest area you had and come head long onto the CP.

LETS ROLL A DICE........

Toronto Raptors win the BT's have at her.
The other guys win you pull one out of the bag and are safe.