Note that even that old Q&A, although strongly suggesting hex A is legal (where does it come from and why did it take so long to make its way into this thread) is still not clear.There is an old Q&A that addresses this, which I believe is addressed by the above cited sentence:
A10.51 If a DM broken unit that must rout is within six MF of the nearest woods/building, must it attempt to reach the woods/building in a single RtPh?A. Yes, unless it uses Low Crawl, but it need not take the shortest route (in hexes/MF) to do so. Even if it uses Low Crawl, however, it must still do so toward that woods/building (i.e., at no time may it increase the hex range between itself and that woods/building, and must end that RtPh closer to it than it was at the start of the phase). [An92; An95w; An96; Mw]But of course, reasonable people will forever disagree about the rout rules. They are poorly structured and confusingly written! Cheers!
It can easily be argued that the first sentence of the answer is not referring to the unit using low crawl when it says that it need not that the shortest rout. Also the second sentence isn't explicitly stating that a LC unit is exempted from using the shortest path in MF.
That being said that Q&A would have been enough to convince me. However, I also asked Perry and got an answer from him. When using Low crawl, a unit is not required to use the shortest path in MF.
That still leaves the weird situation where if the only way to reach a rout destination is by moving away from it (in range of hexes), a unit will be allowed to rout normally, but will not be able to Low Crawl. Weird, but not the weirdest thing in the rules by far.
