ASLComp LUGA Leningrad: Everyman Edition

IVANOVSKOYE, RUSSIA, 15 July 1941: The men of Kampfgruppe Raus awoke to the crumping of bombs from waves of enemy aircraft, trying to destroy the bridges and German troop concentrations. The efforts of the previous day paid off,  and the Red Army Air Force found little in the way of targets. The Germans were now dug in, and their tanks hidden in the woods. As enemy aircraft approached the bridges they were met with a hailstorm of flak from 88mm and 20mm pieces, set up near the bridges. Undaunted, the air attacks were followed up with a wave of infantry, marching out of the forest to the west. More Russian infantry and tanks approached along the road, from the west. Without artillery support these attacks were met with a wall of machine-gun fire from the German dug in at the edge of the woods. German shells crashed into the horde of conscripts as their commissars waving pistols tried to urge them to make more suicidal attacks. The shells also hit the swarm of tanks along with the guns set up in Ivanovskoye. A counter-attack by a panzer company quickly restored the line and this first attack on the bridge head ended in a Russian defeat with 18 tanks left smashed and burning and hundreds of men dead. But the ordeal for Kampfgruppe Raus had just begun as two additional Proletariat divisions and a brigade of tanks were on the march to the Luga.

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