D-Day Dusk - Part 3: The Assault!

In this series of three blogs we have been following the  grunts of the 4th US Infantry Division as they make their way on the afternoon of D-Day from UTAH beach to link up with the 505th Parachute Infantry at St-Mere-Eglise. They have bumped the German defenses of the 919th Grenadier Regiment in and around Ecoqueneauville:
D-Day Dusk - Part 1: Push to St-Mere-Eglise - Prep and Deploy!
D-Day Dusk - Part 2: Advance to Contact!

We rejoin the action with the Germans having turn four, with some tough questions requiring answers: Will the remaining StuGs be able to deploy properly and gain revenge? Well - sort of...

Will the German infantry observer, hitherto a silent observer skulking in the town, be able to use the 120mm mortars to protect the machine gunners from the yanks on the flank? No - the mortars had higher priority tasking as the US 1st Platoon provided a tempting target on approaching the depth objective out on the US left flank:

Will the US be able to start calling down fire on the dreaded Nebs and get things moving again? 

Well yes and no - they were targeted by both 105 Field Guns and the M7s, and duly pinned, although no casualties were caused.

But the Nebelwerfer battery unpinned itself and unleashed another devastating salvo on 3 Platoon, who, in the beaten zone anyway, had started across the road...

Meanwhile, the armoured firefight between the StuGs and PaKs...

and M10s continued...

with the thinly armoured M10s coming off far worse...until eventually both platoons were destroyed or driven off...but not without taking some StuGs down with them...

So, when it came down to it, it would be down to the humble dogface infantry of the Fightin' 4th to take one or other of the objectives...loyally supported of course by the Priests and 105s of the 42nd and 44th Field Artillery Battalions...

who were doing a pretty good job of whittling away the MGs and PaKs around the objective so that it was time to put in an assault - 2 Plt was up, after fire from the survivors of 3 Plt had pinned the MGs and the Arty had pinned the PaKs...

Defensive fire was still brutal, cutting down 3 teams, but not pinning the assault....

Incredibly, all four US assault dice rolled 1s! The German SFMG platoon rallied to the counter attack but also failed to cause any hits. Finally the second US assault wiped out both surviving German teams...

With the PaKs rmaining pinned, the Germans had to wipe out the US infantry near the objective to not lose the game....

Enough of the US infantry survived the barrage of StuG fire to claim the objective!

Game over - a US win - but truly the Longest Day...