After-Action Report; Rensselaer "Narva"
April 6-8, 2001

From: pkellar@bellsouth.net

Subject: Rensselaer "Narva" AAR

I just wanted to thank everyone who attended "Battle of Narva" this past weekend at Rensselaer... without you, there would have been nothing! I have yet to sit down and get exact tallies on the attendance, but it looks as though we had a roughly 50/50 turnout of Russians to Axis, about 50-60 per side. This was a VERY welcome surprise versus last year's 25:110 (Russians to Germans)!! That alone made my morning Saturday. As a side note, I find it very encouraging that GD saw almost the exact same turnout at Street as well! Maybe Russian front reenacting is taking off afterall. Special thanks to Tim Emmenegger (36th MRD) for helping to coordinate such a great turnout.

The night scenarios Friday went quite well despite a reluctancy of the Russians to participate in greater numbers; the 1st scenario was close, but a draw (the Russians ended up burning their objective, a White scout car, and lost the orders pouch they were supposed to retrieve). The second, "Find Rudel" was smaller-scale, but was unsuccessful on both ends: the Stuka ace and his gunner were never found! They instead ended up taking a Russian position and making it back to the German lines without help of the dead German scouts.

We got off to a delayed start Saturday (as per Murphy's law), but everyone got into position by 0930; not too late. We Germans had to shift our battle strategy a bit, but it still played well with how we layed out the Russian positions through the woods. The Germans ended up taking the northern first objective (a large MG position atop a mound and mortar pit) 1/2-hour ahead of schedule. Our ultimate objective was to push the Russians clear out of the long wooded groves in the center of the vast openness, all the way to the "canal"... we ended up shifting the northern battle groups back into the larger one for one massive attack since the Panzergrenadiers in the southern group were having trouble taking and holding their objective. The Russians in that grove had quite extensive obstacles in the way of mines, wire, and multiple 1-man fighting holes. After 3 or 4 "Urrah's" and many several of the Reich's halftracks littering the road through the woods, everyone was out of ammo and/or steam. We then decided to make use of the Uber-kool BA-10 turret we set up as an MG position... it took 2 "Urrah's" to break through and recapture the elusive Russian sniper, Rachel. We had to use her as a human shield for the final assault, but it didn't help... the Red menace overran us that time!

Cool toys that showed up: 2 PaK-36's (one on each side), one WC51 (used as Russian), one 1937 Ford truck, one Opel Blitz, one motorcycle combo, and a Maxim, DP, and 2 82mm mortars on the Red side of things.

Overall, a QUITE successful Russian front event; we will definitely be planning more. However, I must bring up some BAD NEWS. We had a few things happen that we simply cannot repeat next time:

1. Lots of trash left over in a couple of the German and Russian positions/camps. Greg Smith & I spent until sundown Sunday picking things up, and we would have been out of there much sooner had there been less trash.
2. Many of the Russian positions simply got out of hand. Part of this is my fault; I wasn't able to go around and personally supervise all the digging-in. What the rules on the website said were "Wire and other obstacles MUST BE APPROVED before setting up", while there were no additional, specific regulations.... again, my fault. I should have specified BARBLESS wire (thought I did); someone put some of this up in front of the 8th Guards position. We went over all this Sunday with Neal (site owner), and he would prefer us to keep everything as non-obtrusive as possible from now on.... we need to find a happy medium between a realistic defensive position and keeping the woods in better shape. The barbed wire must come down for sure, unfortunately.
3. "Duckblind Syndrome": I'm not sure why, but a lot of reenactors gravitate towards building "duckblind" defensive positions. This started in a few of the Russian positions this past weekend. Please, when you're making a position, think about how a real attack might happen... look around at how the terrain is laid out, what sort of natural cover there is, and make use of that. Barring that, make your fighting holes low and non-obtrusive instead of piling up gobs of branches, erecting a canopy frame out of limbs, and using 2x4's as trench armor!!! Also, there were a lot of modern plastic sandbags used.... these will have to be removed. I realize that there was not much time for a lot of the Russians to do much more with the positions, but we need to back up and try something else with some of these.
4. Stolen "dummy" uniform: We had one German dead-dude in a wool uniform in front of the 8th Guards' positions that is missing a uniform! When my battlegroup swept through that area Saturday afternoon, I personally saw the uniform on the body, but Sunday it was gone. I know it was a hole-ridden, mangy set of Feldgrau wools, but PLEASE, these are props that we can't easily replace, and can still be used again and again in the future. If anyone reading this has the uniform or knows who did it, any help would greatly be appreciated.

OK, enough yelling at folks.... again, most of that positions stuff is my fault, but soon I'll be posting definitive rules and guidelines on how do do it right. Thievery.... well, that's another issue. But aside from all that, I think we had about the most successful event we've had at Rensselaer, and we didn't even have to have a tank! If anyone has comments or suggestions about the event, feel free to shoot them to me. I'll soon be posting pics and a more involved battle AAR on the Rensselaer website; if you have any cool pics, feel free to send those too!

Danke,

Phil Keller (the guy with the big shiny "E" on his collar this weekend)
German coordinator, Rensselaer