"This is it. There is only us between the airfield and the Japs. If we don't hold, we will lose Guadalcanal."
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Battlefield Location: Guadalcanal, 1942 Conditions: Clear Time of Day: Night
Japanese Order of Battle American Order of Battle |
Morale All Japanese units are Veteran. All American units are Qualified.
Terrain and Setup Use the map provided to guide the setup of the map. The dominant feature of the landscape is "Bloody Ridge," which should bisect the play area roughly at the halfway point and cover the entire American side. The ridge is grassy and should be considered Rough terrain. The Japanese side of the map should be randomly scattered with patches of Jungle and Rough terrain. The "edge" of the ridge (represented by an elevated surface on a relief map or a line drawn on a hex map) should be considered a 30-Degree Slope as described on the GK terrain tables, and crossing it should present the requisite hindrance. The American player may set up his forces anywhere on the ridge, and may place as many as he likes in hull-down positions. The Japanese player may stage his forces anywhere on his side of the map at least 10 MU back from the edge of the ridge.
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The men of the 1st Marine Division have weathered life on Guadalcanal for more than a month. They have received infusions of new supplies and equipment since the Battle of the Ilu River, but the island itself has revealed a hellish array of afflictions and pestilence lurking beneath its lovely exterior. "Day by day," General Vandegrift has written in his diary, "I watched my marines deteriorate in the flesh. Although lean marines are better than fat marines, these troops were becoming too lean."
Malaria, dysentery, dengue, and wretched exotic fevers have wasted many of the soldiers tensely watching the damp, sullen jungles for the next sign of Japanese activity. They will soon have all the signs they want- a fresh force of Japanese troops, larger than the last, has been landed under the command of Major General Kiyotake Kawaguchi. Kawaguchi's force has split into three elements, and the main axis of their attack is meant to fall along a low ridge about a mile south of Henderson Field, the prize at the center of the American position.
General Vandegrift and his staff have correctly guessed the Japanese plan, and the 1st Marine Raider Battalion under the command of Lt. Col. Merritt "Red Mike" Edson is dug in on that slope, waiting to receive the charge. Both sides are desperate- the Americans are spread thin and suffering from disease, while the Japanese have too little food to sustain themselves if they can't break through and capture the American stockpile. Shortly after nine o'clock on the night of September 12, the eruption of Japanese artillery fire heralds the coming of the Battle for Bloody Ridge.
This scenario is High Mission Priority for both sides.
The Japanese objective is to drive the U.S. Marines off the ridge. If every American unit on the ridge is destroyed, captured, or made to flee, the way will be open for an attack on Henderson field. There is no profit for the Americans in falling back, and no profit for the Japanese in retreating, so the battle for the ridge is all or nothing for all concerned.
The Japanese will open the assault with a preparatory bombardment. Once the American units have been placed on the ridge but before the first Turn, roll a single die for every American unit. On a result of 6, that unit suffers the effects of an airburst or a nearby explosion. Make a x2 attack on that unit at a random (roll 1d6) Margin of Success.
Four Japanese rifle squads are equipped with new and untested rocket packs hurriedly modified from designs for underwater torpedo engines. Each rocket pack may be fired twice before burning up all of its fuel. Each burst allows a rocket unit to move 3 MU regardless of the territory beneath them, though upon landing they must make a Dangerous Terrain Test against a threshold of 5 (due to the crudeness of the packs and the danger of landing at night). While in the air, rocket units are invulnerable to snap-fire or any other attacks.
American dug in as the game begins are considered to have15 points of protection due to the Rough terrain. Dug-in American units receive a +1 bonus to Morale rolls.
Don't forget the Japanese option to make Banzai attacks, as detailed on page 82 of the Gear Krieg rulebook.
The American guns are each prepared with a supply of 15 canister shells for use against the Japanese. These shells do not suffer a -2 attack penalty when used against infantry units.
The American player has the option at any time of calling in a single massive drop of flares and Star Shells to temporarily illuminate the battlefield. The American player should state that he is doing this, and at the beginning of the next Turn, all penalties for night fighting will be removed. "Daylight" conditions will persist for a total of four complete Turns before darkness falls once again.
Random Reserves
Each side is given a reserve platoon that will appear randomly (if at all) during the battle. At the beginning of each Turn, both players should roll a single die. If any roll is a 6, that player should then place their reserve units within 5 MU of their map edge and move them normally that Turn.
Japanese Reserves
American Reserves
This scenario, like all of my growing family of Guadalcanal/New Guinea scenarios, draws heavily from Rafael Steinberg's Island Fighting (Time-Life Books, 1978) for its source material. Certain liberties have of course been taken with the chronology and set-up of the battle. Other than the addition of war walkers and rocket packs, wink wink.
The battles for the islands of the South Pacific have a strange and compelling thread of contrast running throughout them, framed as they are by the natural grandeur of those dark waters and the rugged emerald jungles jutting defiantly out of them. Sitting here in comfort, sixty years later, paging through these stories hunting and pecking for scenario material, it stirs me to see the photographs of soldiers both alive and dead bringing the tiny intrusion of human concerns to an ancient and entirely uncaring landscape. I dream at night of how the sun must have felt through those moisture-soaked canopies of jungle, and of how those blood-warm waters must have felt to the men who slipped beneath them, and I truly wonder whether I would have been capable of enduring it, or how I would have felt in my last moments, dying so far away from home. Like the desert war, the Pacific war truly brings to mind Antoine de Saint-Exupery's admonition to remember that "...men fill small space in the earth's immensity."
