After deciding to go through town, you got to work quickly. The rump battery would be set up on the hills over town to provide overwatch, while the motorcycle section would be in charge of running field telephone wire on and over the road network with a backup line to the artillery battery that would cross the river on a small footbridge the men spotted.
Things went pretty easily until you hit the town, at which point you discovered the enemy had a listening post there. Thankfully you discovered this with dismounts from B Company, who cut the enemy's telephone wire and quickly got to work digging them out. While expensive in terms of grenades, it turned out that they only had a section on duty there that was mostly holed up in a bar. The other side of the bridge was defended by a machine-gun team, though, which cost you a truck before the anti-air section sprayed the building down. With that position silenced, you got everyone packed up and moving without too much trouble. The next major speedbump was getting the column of battle sorted out so that A Company could be in position for their semifrontal attack while B, C, and D companies got themselves ready. C and D would be leading the charge, so to speak, while B company would take the flank to make sure their lack of assault vehicles didn't hurt them too much.
The actual assault was a shitshow. C company ended up leading off nearly twenty minutes too early, and as a result took concentrated fire from the entire enemy line for a not insignificant amount of time before B and D companies started attacking. A company, your entire armor force, ended up half-stalled on the side of the hill because the few enemy heavy machine guns were able to keep the W-8 drivers suppressed, thus forcing the SkW-1 to hang back or it would get flanked by mobile anti-tank teams. Despite this, several of the W-8s were taken out by anti-tank rifles and Molotovs, while the SkW-1 was stuck on the side of the hill. Once B and D companies finally started getting the advance evened out so C wasn't taking piles of enfilade fire, though, fate bit you right in the ass and C company started drawing artillery fire.
Rocket artillery fire.
Fortunately, C company understood the best way to deal with this problem was to madly blitz forward until they started crashing into defensive earthworks before ejecting their soldiers in angry swarms of submachinegun blizzards. D company followed suit shortly after, while B company pulled an end-run around the hill to reach the woods and take out aid rocket artillery, only loosing two trucks to bad driving on the hill and unplanned rollovers as a consequence. With the earthworks secured, surrenders started happening en masse, and more importantly you could reliably move your headquarters up to the church in Faloise. About the time you got set up, word came in from Divisional Headquarters.
The word was ugly. The Heavy Armored Car Infantry battalion had been repulsed by a unit of foot infantry that had been pretty well dug-in at Jumel with hollow charge rocket propelled weapons. In worse news, the mountain artillery batteries had both been fairly badly beaten, with the enemy's heavy howitzers remaining nearly untouched and the wheeled artillery being mutually driven from the field. You were the only unit that managed to cross the river, and as such it was being decided to swing the battle south and try to utilize your breakthrough. With the Armored Car Motorized battalion bringing up your rear, you were ordered to attempt to push towards Essentaux while the heavier-armed unit held Jumel. Supply units would, theoretically, be coming in on your tail to offer resupply, but practically all you needed was fuel as the men had been looting the bodies of the enemy faster than you could countermand it.
The resulting battlefield autopsy of the unit was rather grim. You'd been fighting rank militia if evidence showed, with a number of old single-shot trapdoor rifles and five-round rotary guns showed, along with a mismatch of ammunitions being passed around. You still captured fifteen machine guns, though, and one barely-operational five-tube 14cm rocket launcher. Ammunition supply for the captured weapons was terrible, however, with barely thirty rounds per gun and three thousand for each machine gun.
No matter what the division wanted you to do, you needed a short breather to compose your unit. C company had been the worst for constructive losses, loosing six out of their nine assault vehicles, two armored cars, and 45 of 110 men as casualties. A company wasn't much better, with all of their W-5 tanks being disabled, leaving them with the SkW-1, two Np-2s, and four W-7s. B company had only lost three trucks and 26 casualties, mostly from the two rollovers with few fatalities. D company was the best off for both personal loss and vehicle loss, loosing two assault vehicles and 18 men. Casualties among the support units were thankfully low, with the worst damages being a Kettenkrad lost to a rocket that flew long. Thanks to your backup supplies, you manage to get all the remaining units mounted, even if C company has been mostly reduced to being crammed in ex-supply trucks. While you were bringing the artillery up, airborne scouting brought you a useful message packet: and by useful you meant completely useless.
According to the air scouting, forces were in motion on the main highway, mostly unarmored trucks, and the heavy armored assets were already in Fleurs-sur-Nove. The enemy wheeled artillery had broken and headed for the valley by Chaussoy as well. Your wireless sets also let you know that the armored battalion was going to try pushing through Reincourt themselves, with the leg infantry as a supporting element. You needed a plan, though, because the excrement was about to hit the rotary wind impeller really damn fast if you weren't careful. You had options, though. First and foremost, there was forting up on the hill. You had some artillery and a decent number of heavy weapons, but your individual fighting soldiers would be crippled for effectiveness until they tried to storm your position, and worse it would make you look like a chicken. You could also try and divide and conquer, since it seemed like the enemy was a close copy of your own organization except with more trucks and tanks and less assault carriers. If you judged right, you could run up, set ambushes, and murder them. If you guessed wrong, though, you'd be open for a defeat in detail. Finally, you could choose to attack one force or the other, and absolutely crush it with the risk that the other would catch you or the follow-up units behind you in the back. War was risky buisness, but if you could break them now and keep this hole open, the battle was likely to be won.
VOTES
[] Fort up here, and use the hill to break them as they come. You've got the machine guns and AT gear to pull it off, you think.
[] Divide and conquer: you've got most of your dudes, and assault carriers can topple their trucks any day of the week. More importantly, ambush positions level the field.
[] Take your whole force and crush them entirely.
-[] Go after armor
-[] Go after infantry.
[] Write-in (Detail which units go where)