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Argonne - 1918 [Mission]

August & Beren Hamilton present, 'Argonne - 1918'.

On the morning of the 2nd of October the American 77th Division began it's advance into the Argonne forest. While the neighboring Entente units within the advance would become stalled, the 308th infantry under the command of Charles W. Whittlesey would soon find themselves completely surrounded...
While the 308th was securing Hill 198, a massive German counterattack would occur against a majority of the Entente lines - pushing them back. The men of the 308th entrenched themselves in place and began sending runners out towards the last known positions of friendly lines with the hopes of regaining contact. No runners ever returned.

For the next 5 days the 554 men of the 308th would be widdled down to just 194 as they endured attack after attack. The tenacity of the Germans was not all that the 308th had to worry about - a severe miscommunication between Major Whittlesey and Command on the exact coordinates of their positions caused the positions to recieve a barrage of their own friendly artillery.

Miraculously the sole remaining carrier pigeon, named Cher Ami, would survive extreme circumstances and succesfully delivered a message to cease the barrage. As the German attacks grew in ferocity, so to did the resiliance of Whittlesey's men. As the German attacks continued on, they relayed messages to the 308th asking them to surrender. Major Whittlesey's own notation in his operations report read simply, "NO REPLY TO THE DEMAND TO SURRENDER SEEMED NECESSARY".

The pocket would not be relieved easily. Large scale attempts by other units of the 77th division to break the encirclement would come to halts and cost dire manpower. It was not until the 8th that a relief force guided by Private Abraham Krotoshinksy finally linked up with Whittlesey and his remaining men - Thus ending the story of the "Lost Battalion". Major Whittlesey, Captain George G. McMurty & Captain Nelson M. Holdermnan each recieved the Medal of Honor for their selfless actions.

*Update:Removed a mistakenly placed prop+minor tweaks to spawn timings during encirclement*

{Objective}
As the 308th Infantry secure a position on the crest of Hill 198 and hold out against all odds, or counterattack as the German 'Das Wurttembergische' and annihilate the US Battalion.

This mission is a compressed yet highly immersive telling of the "Lost Battalion". I have taken influence from many actions which occurred throughout the entire Meuse-Argonne offensive and sought out to create a scenario which could include as much variety as possible (while still being very very immersive!)

This was one of my most exhaustive missions yet! It took around 40-50 hours over the span of 3 weeks to complete. Most of that time was used placing the many props and elements that can be found within the forest & trenches; countless dead trees that cannot fall down (Please devs completely rethink trees falling down, your vanilla forests will never look immersive if designed to compensate for the clutter that the trees create when hit with gunfire. Trees lose their branches instead of getting sliced down in most cases even with artillery fire...) . The forest floor is saturated heavily with craters, stumps, and fallen logs that are placed so that "hitting the deck" actually feels more useful. I've used techniques learned from previous missions and from Nutella the Hun to make trenches vastly more deadly than ever before. Some trenchworks even include expansions made up of trench siding and cliffrock assets. There is always an abundance of resources for the player, sometimes you may even come across the leftover tidings of lost German patrols...
It is here that I must confess that this may be my last mission - I hope that things may change, but we'll see. The hardest thing to come across are *Perfect* maps. Maps that perfectly blend reality with ER2, and the reality is there are only so few of these maps and I am not interested in mapping really much after Smolensk Stalemate. If a map came out that fit an Italian front mission at the same standard as these, then I would jump on the opportunity!

{Equipment}
The US infantry is armed historically: largely wielding 1917 Enfields, 1903 Springfields (usually about 1 guy a squad to give historic variety), Chauchats, 1911s, hand-grenades, and the occasional trench gun (IRL there were only around less than 50 that ever entered service and they were a complete failure due to paper ammunition failures.) [FT-17 Player-only included during the introduction, for now...] {Bonus: During the final defense there is a spawn that allows for the deployment of a captured 'Wex' Flamethrower!}

The German infantry receive a whole selection of late war goodies: MG08s, MP18s, Minenwerfers, Wechselapparats, ect... Within this mission you will see all weapons used offensively and defensively by BOTH sides.
As to not spoil all the fun I will not mention other hidden goodies and roles I have included and wish for the community to enjoy this mission like a surprise gift!

*Time is set to evening as it is necessary to use oldschool map design methods to hide all the areas that I did not cover with trees. You can change the time to whatever you'd like within the Camera mode. Scripting is strictly artillery always thanks to m'Lord @Jaybee!! I apologies that this mission requires all DLC, I could possibly bring the mission down to just Stalingrad, but the map requires all the rest.