The Siege of Helsreach – Peninsular War

The Peninsular Campaign: Defence of River Helsreach

A key moment in the war, the Siege of Helsreach was a demonstration of the will of the Imperial populace to resist the ork invasion – however costly. It was also a salutary lesson for the Imperial defenders that, reinforcements or not, both the advantage and the initiative remained firmly in the grasping hands of the orks.

Two main stages marked the siege – the first the isolation of the peninsula and assault across the river; the second the doomed defence of Hive Helsreach itself.

'General Rannsturm gave the Army back its soul – and I'll never forget him for it.'
@the_steel_legion

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Hive Helsreach

A surviving Recon sentinel from the Second Army Group's 225th Regiment patrol's the Imperial picket lines south of the River Helsreach.
@225thsteellegion

Helsreach is the oldest settlement on Armageddon, established by the first shuttle-loads of Imperial colonists as they arrived on the dusty grasslands of what is now Armageddon Secundus. An unprepossessing monument, built in the now-dated Imperial Brutalist style, marks the unlikely heart of Helsreach. Known as Point Zero, the monument marks the supposed spot where shovel first touched dirt in raising the first human building on Armageddon. 

In the modern era, Helsreach has swollen to a vast Hive devoted primarily to promethium refinement and trade. Occupying a vast portion of the peninsula that juts from the southern tip of the continent of Armageddon Secundus, Helsreach has easy access to the planet’s oceans, and the bulk of its populace toils in the vast docks, refineries and attendant industries. 

The Hive lies in the crook of the peninsula, connected to the mainland by one primary bridge over the Helsreach River.

To most of the invading orks, Helsreach likely appeared distant and an unprepossessing target. To Ghazghkull's keen gaze, however, its strategic promises were clear. Firstly, the hive was – and remains – linked to the southern Deadlands in the form of a pipeline that runs beneath the vast Tempest Ocean, giving near-unlimited access fuel for the orks while denying it to the humans. 

Secondly, the Krynnan Canal, an arterial supply for the Hive, would allow the orks easy movement of supplies between the Boiling Sea and Tempest Ocean without having to sail all around the western end of the main Armageddon landmass, or extend the already-attenuated overland routes. 

In addition to its nautical benefits, Hives Helsreach and Infernus – by now surrendered to and under the control of the Goffs – were linked by Hel's Highway, a vast motorway that drew a route parallel to the Stygies River. Roughly halfway to Infernus along the road lies the Infernus South Forge Complex, which had produced Chimeras and vast amount of ordnance for export before it was ruined by the Goffs. Besides the loot and acclaim inherent in successfully conquering Helsreach Hive, victory there would ensure that the orks had a solid base to start rebuilding and recovering their forces – essential to a long-term campaign.

Evil Suns mob, part of Waa-Wazrokk. Highly decorative back banners were common amongst this horde. 
@giokahnni

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Peninsula encircled

Warboss Bighedd's 'Uge Mob was a representative example of the Evil Suns' forces ranged against Helsreach – like most of the Ork Hordes of Waa-Ghazghkull, they were dominated by the clan of the Warboss, but included groupings of other clans – creating alloyed strength.
@graham_s_gilchrist

The Evil Suns had broken through the Imperial lines some way west, and had driven the shaken Imperial forces back. By this stage in the war, the Goffs and Evil Suns tribes had all but destroyed the Steel Legion in the south, with the 1st, 2nd and 7th Army Groups non-combat effective, along with the 2nd Rough Rider Brigade and 1st Tank Division. 

All had been roundly defeated in largely ineffective actions aimed at delaying the oncoming orks with little strategic vision beyond holding. The Steel Legion were ill-suited both in temperament and training to such static defence.

Captain Kurthen 'Danger' Diocles, pictured alongside with other 1st Army Group survivors. He and his Company ended up isolated on the wrong side of the Helsreach River after the fall back from Infernus. Temporarily seconded into the 6th Army Group by General Rannsturm, he was given command of one of the numerous 'picket-bunkers' in the diffuse defensive front.
@thirteenthickcoats

For their part, the Evil Suns had also begun to suffer. From the eighteen strategic Army Groups identified by the Imperials at the commencement of the campaign, just eight of their Army Groups remained, the rest shattered or perforce combined. 

To the dismay of Helsreach, this was to prove more than sufficient for Warboss Wazrokk.

Wazrokk – who would come to be known as the ‘Scourge of Helsreach’ owing to his actions in this campaign – commanded one of the huge primarily infantry-based army groups designated as ‘Hordes’. His forces were amongst the first to cross the Stygies, and formed the heart of the force that diverted southwards to cut off and eventually consume the hive. 

Canny as well as cruel, it was Wazrokk who convinced the other Warbosses in the region – amongst them Vroomfang's Scorchas, the Sorefoot Sloggaz and Ugulmak's Red Skull Tramplaz to follow him. This force comprised nearly half of the surviving Evil Suns in Armageddon Secundus – notably the (relatively) slower, harder-hitting armies, as the others had raced eastwards.

One of the Evil Suns Nobz from Warboss Wazrokk's personal retinue.
@argaastes

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Ranged against them was all the south of Armageddon Secundus could then muster – the Firesweep 6th Army Group, along with the stragglers and survivors of the Palidus Line: odd scratch-companies of irregulars, and a few isolated Companies or Regiments from the broken 2nd and 7th Army Groups. 

Commissar Randall's Irregulars – or Randall's Rat Pack to the men of the 6th. Commissar Randall became famous during the shifting and highly mobile warfare on the Helsreach Peninsula; gathering scattered Underhive Gangers, Steel Legion survivors, Ash Waste Nomads and even former PDF and Hive Watchmen and welding them into an effective resistance force.
@krugsix6six

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Reinforcements, it seems, had come too late for Helsreach. It is rumoured that Chapter Master Calgar and Captain Mir’san of the Salamanders had drafted a strategy to relieve the region, but that the cost of defending Helsreach was ultimately deemed secondary to the survival of the world. Such is the bleak arithmetic of planetary warfare.

Thus straitened, to defend the Peninsula was a tall order – famously referenced in General Kurov's memoirs as:

'[A] task of monumental scale buttressed with little hope; and one to which I was aggrieved to place upon the shoulders of my personal friend, knowing that it was all but impossible.'

With the Firesweep's own General believed lost behind enemy lines, command of the Army Group was transferred to the senior officer in the region, General Rannsturm. Rannsturm was an experienced and capable General, not only well-versed in the theories of warfare, but a veteran of numerous off-world campaigns – including two alongside Legio Metalica, for which he had been decorated.

General Volkitt Rannsturm
@__brokentoys__

Unusually, he was not a native of Armageddon, but rather from one of the nearby systems. Ruis lies a short void-hop from Armageddon, and the output of its Agriworlds helping to succour the planet. Rannsturm had been unusual in settling in Helsreach upon transferring to serve as an aide-de-camp to General Kurov – a decision doubtless attributable to his  marriage to a fellow veteran of the Steel Legion a short time after the transfer. 

While the task of foiling the ork assault was all but hopeless, he brought his unusual ideas and martial innovation to bear with drive and verve, preventing a collapse in morale amongst the shaken Steel Legion forces under his command.

It was largely thanks to his strategy of ‘divide and resist’ that the 6th were able to prevent the orks from crossing over the eponymous Helsreach river to the peninsula for more than three weeks. With more than a dozen substantial crossing points to cover, Rannsturm elected to destroy all but the primary bridge, and establish mobile defences on the remaining fords.

His outsider’s view – and the desperate circumstances in which he had been handed command following the collapse of the Palidus Line – allowed him to bypass general Imperial Guard orthodoxy. Rannsturm was thus notable for being the first Imperial General in the campaign to re-focus on the Steel Legion’s strengths: speed and responsiveness. 

Rather than letting the Evil Suns dictate the pace of battle by creating static defences, the reinforced 6th Army Group provided a porous front along the length of the Helsreach, daring Wazrokk to send over forces in dribs and drabs that could then be attacked on the move as they – inevitably – made straight for Helsreach.

While this approach was successful for small groups of the greenskins, the Gargants simply could not cross the river. Even the orks could see that they were too slow and too easy to target by the nimble 6th Army; and those few dribs and drabs that did slip through were no threat to the great guns of Helsreach.

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The strategy thus initially met with great success, but Wazrokk proved equal to the challenge. Sacrificing Blacktoof's Speed Freeks in a speedy feint down Hell's Highway, he simultaneously threw the elite Shreddaz of Zag across the River Helsreach in the east, a relatively mountainous area where the River narrowed and flowed sluggishly, as the bulk moved underground.

Member of Blacktoof's Speed Freeks. The Army Group was near-pulverised in the attack over Hell's Highway, but their losses proved crucial to allowing the Evil Suns to finally break across the river in sufficient numbers to establish a proper foothold.
@eds_workshop

These two Evil Suns forces were shattered during their blitzkrieg advance, and their survivors quickly folded into other strategic groupings by the Imperials – but the combination of speed and power they proved too much for the defending Imperials. 

The river was lost, and with it, the slim hope of surviving until reinforcements could arrive. Reluctantly, Rannsturm ordered his forces to fall back towards the Hive itself. 

52nd Infantry Company Command – an unusual example of a Rhino-mounted command unit. Helsreach's warehouses and stockpiles were put to full use in its defence.
@johnpaints

Running battles erupted almost as soon as the order was given, as Wazrokk smelt blood. Even as they attempted to disengage, the Steel Legion columns began to come under fire from probing ork outriders, and the disciplined retreat threatened to collapse into all-out rout more than once in the long days that it took for the Firesweep to come under the protective umbrella of the Hive's guns.

Evil Suns deffkoptas – like the example pictured – were instrumental to Wazrokk's advance. They kept the Steel Legion on the back foot, and even the resourceful Rannsturm proved unable to find a counter-strategy to the Evil Suns' mastery of open-plains warfare.
@ork.bot

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The siege and fall of Helsreach is detailed in this article.