Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
The point about the Danes is a good one, however I believe that can be explained fairly simply.
The Danes were held in reserve by the XI Corps and were therefore further west at the time the Corp came under threat of being cut off. The bulk of the Corp was in fact spread out over a very wide area - the 5th ID down to the southeast, 8th disappeared over the eastern horizon and the 2nd Marines stretched over the Vistula delta.
If you follow my assessment of the offensive, the entire Corps was short on fuel due to loss of shipping capacity in the Baltic (this loss of shipping also helps explain why the Corps can't be evacuated by sea).
The Danes however were probably the link unit between the US/Canadians and the Germans. They were able to squeeze back into Germany before the route was cut by the advancing Pact forces - the remainder of the Corp too crippled by the fuel shortage to move fast enough (and the Marines still spread across numerous rivers).
Although crippled by the lack of fuel, the XI Corps still posed enough of a challenge defensively to deter the Pact forces from pressing against their enclave in an attempt to push them into the sea - the XI Corp still possessed much of the ammunition, food and other stores gathered over the preceeding months, even years for their intended offensive operations.
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It makes sense, and I'm tempted to buy in, but, who are these advancing Pact forces? Where did they go? Why aren't they still between the remainder of XI Corps (the "trapped" bits) and Bremerhaven when OMEGA gets under way. There's nothing listed in that area in
Going Home. If there are no enemy forces between their cantonments and Bremerhaven, why can't the elements of XI Corps just walk west? Several units in Germany are listed as legging it towards the evac point, so it's not unprecendented. A fuel shortage explains, in large part, the ultimate failure of the Summer XI Corps offensive but it doesn't explain the failure of XI Corps to evacuate northern Poland in the fall. The fuel issue, at the time Omega is unveiled, is kind of moot. Like I said before, if XI Corps is out of gas, why wouldn't it just scuttle its tanks in place and hoof it?
If the answer is enemy forces to the west, where are they? If they're not strong enough to merit a mention in any of the canonical sources, then they shouldn't be much of an obstacle to a powerful NATO Corps.
If the widely scattered 2nd MarDiv can reassemble and return to its cantonment by the time the OMEGA orders come down- fuel shortages and everything- why can't it continue west? There are hostile Pact forces at several points along the Baltic Coast and elements of the 2nd MarDiv would presumably had to have fought through a couple of those as well to reassemble at its fall cantonment. If they could do that, why couldn't the entire XI Corps break out to the west?
I really wish we could get an original developers explanation for why XI Corps stays behind in Poland.