"Worst battlefield" Topic

I suppose there are not any good ones but I have been reading about the two battles that took place in The Wilderness in the ACW.
Visibility, direction, lack of artillery support, forest fire: does it get worse?

Kokoda.

link

Defintely anywhere in the SW Pacific – Kokoda, Buna-Gona, Guadalcanal, etc. You have many if the same problems as The WIlderness but add malaria, jungle rot, and torrential rains.

Fighting in the Alps during winter in WWI probably would not have been a good thing. I agree about the Pacific SW in WWII. Not a nice place to fight.

Thanks,

John

Not just SW Pacific – Kokoda/Buna.

Cheers
Mark

Whilst I agree about the Pacific you have to mention Stalingrad.

Sahara also tends to have a fair share of challenges.

Northern Finland/Norway during WW2

Any battlefield that I actually have ot fight on.

Anything involving the combination of machine guns and generals born before the invention of the magazine rifle.

Western Front or the Isonzo front during WWI. Rain, mud, cold….

Hurtgen Forest?

Actually, I have always thought that a Murmansk Convoy would be the epitome of misery.

I find arctic, desert and jungle terrain all have their charms. Why do we insist on fighting wars in these places anyway?

mjc

This list will be long and depressing. Two more to add the Siachen Glacier and the Falkland Islands.

The Somme would get me down.

The open sea against a ship with bigger guns.

I'll have to look for the name of the island, it is near Cape Glouchester (WWII). In addition to the jungle and all that goes with it, there was only one fresh water source. A dead, rotting soldier lay at one side of the small pool and soldiers filled their canteen form the opposite side until combat action disturbed the corpse and completely fouled the pool.
A friends father fought up at Attu, it also should rate highly.

Here is the link, it is Noemfoor Island, Oh, it also include canabalism.

link

Kohima and Imphal would have to rank up there as well as Peleliu and Tarawa.

No doubt there were battlefields with worse terrain…but the Chickamauga battlefield was so heavily wooded that Union commander Rosecranz pulled an entire division out of the center of his battle line, opening a dangerous gap, without realizing he had done it. He couldn't see what he had done. This caused the collapse and rout of the Union army when a Confederate corps, purely by accident, stormed into the gap.

In space, nobody can hear you scream…

New Georgia in WWII nothing but jungle, hills, rain and mud.

The Somme wasn't too bad (terrain wise) until the autumn rain set in, then it was a bit grim.

Third Ypres was hell on earth, torrental rain and the bottomless mud of a reclaimed swamp. Even the pillboxes sank into the mud.

The Stalingrad pocket wasn't a bundle of laughs either.

The Sivash sea. For land operations.

In the jungle, in the rain, where two map sheets meet….

G^is
JohnG

Gallipoli

How about a place with hot volcanic ash (almost impassable for vehicles) instead of soil, no cover to speak of, and the enemy commands the only high ground, which is a dormant volcano riddled with caves?

Iwo Jima.

Any modern city.