Antietam : Sixth Corps at the Dunker Church Part 2 Battle Overview and Orders

Following my previous post the battle was completed last evening. It has proved to be both epic and enjoyable, in fact totally absorbing for several days. This means I haven’t been able to do justice to the game in one post so it is going to be spread across three separate posts. This post will give an overview of the battle as it unfolded and a sense of the orders issued and challenges the two generals were facing through the game.

Thought it would be interesting for people to see the initial information the two generals were given at the start, together with their orders of course they had a map of their initial deployment and their individual OB.

Initial Orders

Brigadier William General Smith you are part of the 6th Corps at Antietam. Following heavy fighting in the morning you have been ordered forward to capture high ground around the Dunker Church.

Orders From General McClellan are as follows :
Your primary objective is to capture the high ground to the NWest of the small white church and if possible establish an artillery battery on the hill. Your secondary objective is to clear the west woods from rebels they have been badly mauled during the morning and have pulled back into the woods to regroup if you hit them quickly they may not have time to regroup. I will support your attack with the 3rd Brigade who will march to support you from the NEast advancing along the Smoketown Road. You should expect them in approximately 1 hour. You will also be supported by BG Brooks 2nd Brigade who will advance to support your left flank from the the East and are likely to arrive up the sunken road again in about 1 hour. I have also sent you what spare artillery i  have available. Batteries A&C United States Army.

Please issue your initial orders to General Irwin’s Brigade when Brooks and Torbert arrive they will immediately come under your command. General Smith please remember we must finish the Rebels as quickly as possible and you have 4 hours to drive them from the woods and high ground. The US artillery will arrive shortly on the smoketown road so please advise them where to deploy. Please also let me know where YOU will be positioned should your subordinates need to send you information or updates.

Situation report your scouts have produced you a map of the area with the current disposition of General Irwin’s 3rd Brigade, they have become dispersed. General Irwin is with the 49th NY. Scouts have reported rebel infantry to the SE beyond the Church and you can see Artillery on high ground in the distance beyond a prominent cornfield. It is believed any other rebels may be reforming in the woods themselves. General McClellan

Then to the Confederate Commander :

You are playing as Brigadier General John G Walker under General Longstreet, Army of Northern Virginia. Your Brigade and a number of other parts of brigades have been mauled during the morning fighting around the Hagerstown road and the east Woods. You have pulled back into the West Woods to regroup. THe Union forces appear to be massing for an assault although you can only see dispersed units of Infantry at the moment, they appear to be from the 6th Corps. They will no doubt throw more troops into the assault.

Orders from General Longstreet. General take command of all available troops in the vicinity of the West woods, you will see from your OB that this comprises a number of mixed infantry brigades but they are good southern fighters so you wont have any trouble. Your primary objective is to hold the High ground to the North West of the small church. Your secondary objective is to continue to hold all ground to the West of the Hagerstown Pike.If possible the High ground to the East of the Hagerstown Pike would make an excellent Artillery position if that could be captured too.

Situation report, we have scouted the ground in front of us and drawn the attached sketch map which shows the current disposition of your direct reports. You should issue initial orders to all those reports on the battlefield. Gen Anderson has been ordered to support you and he will arrive from the south in about 2 hours. General Hays will join you from further back in the woods in about 1 hour if you can advise him where he should arrive and deploy. You should also confirm where you will position yourself so that subordinate commands can update you on the battle and seek any updated orders. General Longstreet.

How the battle unfolded

I took an overview photo after each hour or roughly 3 turns and I have tried to label them up to give a sense of how the battle developed.

The initial deployment looking directly south, Confederates regrouping in the woods. The Union forces of Irwin’s brigade dispersed and uncoordinated at the start.

Not surprisingly the Confederate forces who are already mainly on the table get the better of the first few turns, in fact only the 33rd NY make any progress al the other Union units in Irwin’s brigade are initially routed. Battery F is redeployed to the high ground. The 33rd are seeking to flank the enemy to the North.The Confederates have created a fairly strong line of defence. At this point after one hour of game play Torberts New Jerssey Brigade arrives on the Smoketown road. The 4th NJ being deployed to support the 33rd NY. Their artillery is sent to the small hill the rest of the brigade predictably moves down the Smoketown road. Walkers brigade in the distance has moved up to the Hagerstown road fence and Cobb’s Infantry has moved up to take the stone wall in the far distance.

Another hour of play (three turns) the 33rd have been thrown back, Armistead and Hays Infantry have been ordered to attempt to clear the artillery of the hill so advance on the left, they are close to their objective but he 4th New Jersey arrive and get the better of a short exchange of fire. One of the cannons is knocked out.At this point the Union assault by Torbert is faltering, the 2nd NJ are turned back, they later rally and the rest come under intense fire from the woods, Laws Brigade on the hill close to the Dunker Church still has a cannon at this stage. Brook’s Vermont Brigade arrives up the sunken road, small units but veteran troops, they are immediately hit by artillery fire but manage to start deploying. Walkers Brigade pulls back this was in hindsight too defensive from the Confederate General but he had limited information as to the size of the assaulting force. Hood’sInfantry is ordered forward to plug a gap and in the distance Andersons Brigade arrives up the Hagerstown Pike.

By 15:00 both forces are thinning out with very limited reserves. Really the battle could have gone either way at this stage. The confederate left flank wavers but then manages to rally. They are right at the limit and somehow the 4th NJ is able to withstand the fire concentrated on it and continues to use into the woods, threatening to turn the flank. Torbert has managed to rally all his units and get them into position for what is likely to be the final assault/attempt on the main objective. Somewhere around here the last cannon in the west woods was blown up, so at this stage the union had the distinct advantage of being able to bring two cannon in to supporting the attack. Beyond the Dunker church the fighting has been equally fierce. Hand to hand at the church and at the stonewall. 

The final position at around 15:40 although the Confederates have won the battle beyond the Dunker Church and defeated the bulk of Brook’s Brigade they have no troops within easy distance to support the defence of the high ground.Anderson has been pushed back as has Cobb’s Infantry from the stone wall so there is still a threat from Union troops in the far distance. The main assault by the New Jersey Brigade is thrown in supported by the two cannons on the high ground. This is sufficient to send the majority of the defenders running back.Only Laws brigade I think the 4th Alabama Infantry are still in any order, in fact they have been magnificent holding the line all afternoon. The 4th New Jersey are still continuing to advance down the right and ther are no more confederates to stop them at this stage as Armistead’s and Hay’s Infantry are too weak to withstand the attack. At this point i deemed a withdraw by the remaining Confederate forces was needed, drawing off their artillery in good order. They have lost the ground but the Union have paid very heavily for it !. 

Given the objectives both sides were given definitely a Union victory but they have really failed to capitalise and Brook’s and Irwin’s brigades are effectively blown. A good part of aWalkers brigade and at least the 4th Alabama are still fighting as is much of the Rebel artillery.

I thought for those keen enough it might be interesting to see some of the orders issued by the two generals. I set few limits on what they could do write, initially focussing orders around brigade but i then encouraged them if they wanted to order individual regiments. There was an added command challenge (as if that was needed) that using my bolt action rules they couldn’t necessarily command all their forces. A maximum of 12 units each turn. If they didn’t I would prioritise depending on their orders what was able to activate.

Both generals used maps and written orders here is the developing plan from the Confederate general, attempting to map out the enemy from the dispatches and information he received from his subordinates. I will give an example below.of the info i was sending out.

Here are the initial orders from the Union general

Fair to say the Union general did lose track at one point of his forces and i had to remind him to go back through the dispatches quite carefully and map the location of his forces, remember i was also sending occasional but limited photo evidence the telescope view from the previous post etc. The idea being they would have to pull together all the evidence from the reports, the photos to get a clear picture of what was going on. I hope I gave just enough information to track things ?

The above map was where the union general thought his troops were around 15:00 , i have actually mapped them below ! It did make me chuckle that some units were completely out of place and i did give quite a few hint in the reports to correct this but.........the 7th Maine were ordered to assault the guns on the hill unfortunately they were no where near tat point on the field ! Are the Fog of war.

I said i would share an example of the battle reports i was sending to the two generals.

This i think was the 15:00 update to the Confederate general im not sure if they spotted it but i deliberately mixed between Brigade and Commanding Officer names, so if they didn’t check their OB they would be in a mess. Sometimes reports would be from individual regiments, sometimes brigades. Sometime officers would mention regiments near them sometime not and they would be int eh same order either. I made them work for each scrap of info.

Sir i have gather reports from as many officers as i could find but a number of regiments are in disarray.

Colonel Law - sir we remain solid on the High ground behind the church as ordered. The Yankies seem to be massing for a final assault ! I have infantry but our artillery has been knocked out by counter battery fire from across the road. There is still artillery firing at us. I was hoping to bring Hoods brigade up to support me but he has vanished !

BG Anderson - yeehaaahhh the boys are in desperate hand to hand fighting on the edge of the field, we are getting the better of it ad if those bastards in Cobb’sBrigade don’t run we might hold out.

Colonel Hodges (Armisteads) - have been pushed back into the woods there were just too many of them. Where did Hays go yellow bellies got no fight in them ? I have managed to rally the boys but we are too few to hold this flank if they push again we will break.

Hays Brigade - i was unable to locate Brigadier Hays ?

Ltc MacRae - hot stuff here but have rallied with the support of Anderson he came just in time......

BG Ransom - we are holding our position in the woods west of the Hagerstown Pike, but are getting thinned out, think we might have seen Hays ...yellow bellies running past us. Artillery fire on us has reduced but we are still taking it from the hill opposite. I Think they are coming again, there’s not so many of them but I’m not sure we can hold. I am worried about my left flank ....can Armistead Hold ?

Independent Artillery King William and Orange Virginia - have continued to pour fire all afternoon the boys need some target practice but eventually they will hit something !

Colonel Hall - holding the line between the cornfield and the church as ordered. The 3rd Arkansas had had enough and fled but Hood’s boys have just arrived and filled the gap by the church think we can hold them here, there aren’t so many. If we could turn this flank we would have them running all the way back to Washington ! Yeehah !

What looks like another assault being prepared across the Hagerstown Pike !

They received i think three sets of these and a couple of small additional updates as well as some doctored photos like the ones below.

Summary and Conclusions - We’re to start ?

Firstly thanks to Martin and Steve two of my regular gaming Buddies for putting up with this chaos

It has been tremendous fun putting on the game and i think they enjoyed it too, totally absorbing for me from setting the OB right through the game over several evenings and now the writing up ....did somebody say there was a pandemic ? 

The FOG worked it could have been less but i wanted something challenging that made them work the info was there if they spent the time analysing. Like all things second time round they would be much more prepared and might pay more attention to their reports ?

The game itself and the scenario is thanks to Brad Butkovich so I should mention his Antietam Scenario book again well worth the money.

Of course this was really only a great excuse to get my ACW collection out on the table, it didn’t feel at any point like a solo game, more like i was a dispassionate observer, the only problem was I couldn’t share each moment of fun with the generals as that would have taken way too long,, there were many many example of this , when the 4th New Jersey about to crush Armisteads dwindling brigade rolled a double 6 and failed to assault. And when at a desperate time the 4th Alabama needing 5’s to hit and rolling 8 dice hit 7 times ! Every turn something happened which had me cheering to myself in the dungeon.

I will of course be doing something like this again, it really was great fun and I have learnt a few things but don’t want to share those as it might give future Commanders an advantage.

So that’s it .............of course for those who really just want to look at pretty shots of ACW battles that is going to be the third post in the set I took way too many photos.

Matt