“I’m A Wargamer”

I spent a week in early August at Connections 2019 hosted by the Army War College and held at the nearby Army Heritage and Educational Center (AHEC) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.  The AHEC facility is easier to access with less disruption to the AWC’s primary mission.  One of the most important things I have learned over several years attending Connections is that I am a wargamer.  And in that regard I can claim both Amateur and Professional status.  (I’m also a ‘systems thinker’ which Volko Ruhnke explained at a previous Connections.)

Why am I a wargamer?

Chess was and is too abstract and too far removed from any identifiable battlefield to hold my interest.  Wargames present varied terrain, asymmetric forces, and potential insights into war, warfare, military and political history, technology, and the people who bring all of these things together.  Wargames offer the historian or any player the opportunity to better understand the warfighter – and offer the warfighter a deeper understanding of military history and of their profession.  As with boardgames in general, playing wargames also offers personal lessons from playing the games – the exercise of foresight and planning; how to cope with plans that go awry (as they usually do); and how to be both a good loser and a good winner as chance picks them.  It is perhaps worth noting that most 19^th Century Kriegsspiels included remarks upon how players should conduct themselves during a game.

The title “wargamer” can be used with negative connotations, as a friend at the Center for Naval Analysis (aka CNA) used it during a conversation early in our acquaintance.  As I described my wargaming history – “You’re a WARGAMER!” he exclaimed – suggesting that I couldn’t be relied upon to enter into his world.  I noted that, yes, I was a ‘wargamer’ but I was the kind of wargamer who marched the Army of the Potomac off of the board in AH’s Gettysburg to see if I could pull off a safe withdrawal when victory was clearly out of reach. 

 

My grandmother shelled out four hard earned dollars in response to my pleading and bought me that first wargame – the 1961 hex version of Gettysburg by Avalon Hill.  Just the discovery that such a thing as a wargame existed was a revelation for a military history mad young boy.   I soon gathered a small circle of like-minded friends in Junior High School and we waited eagerly for what was at first an annual single new game released by Avalon Hill.  We would quickly agree on which of us would buy it and add to our collective game library.  Later, we were introduced to SPI – Simulations Publications Incorporated and Strategy and Tactics – the magazine with a wargame in it – known to grognards even at that young age as “S&T”.

We eventually branched out into miniatures gaming using the classic Tractics II rules, Roskopf model tanks, and Airfix figures.  Another friend introduced us to the world of wargame conventions at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin where GenCon was born in Horticultural Hall.  There we primarily focused on Napoleonic miniatures battles playing with the Napoleonique rules.

Joining the State Department career as a Foreign Service Officer, I found opportunities to explore a whole new level of wargaming.  I was always willing to participate, if otherwise available, in NATO exercises, Continuity of Government exercises, State-DOD exercises, etc.  As a member of the Army National Guard, trained as an Armored Scout /Observer , I participated in field exercises and maneuvers.  After retirement from the Department of State, I worked for about a decade as a Subject Matter Expert , Scenario Scripter, and Role Player/Role Play Manager.  Joining NSDM – the National Security Decision Making Game, I found myself drawing on my professional experience as we guided players through the dark days of the Cold War and the often equally daunting crises of the contemporary era or even a future international situation.  I have also spent a lot of time researching the history of wargames and wargaming, with special interest in the 19th Century ‘kriegsspiels’ adopted by a number of armies in Europe as well as the US Army.  This accumulated on-the-job training led me to Connections, which brings together wargamers, game and simulation designers, etc., from government, industry, private sector, and the hobby world.

If you, too, might be a wargamer or are just curious, you can read about what we did at this year’s Connections 2019 in Carlisle.  In 2020, Connections will be held August 4-7, 2020 at Quantico, Virginia.  You can also learn about other Connections conferences in the UK, Netherlands, Australia, and elsewhere at https://paxsims.wordpress.com/

  

Steinbeck's Short but Effective Novel of The Resistance - The Moon is Down

I admit that I am not a great fan of the 20^th Century American novel, though it turns out in retrospect  that my educational exposure to Steinbeck included The Pearl, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and Cannery Row.  In more recent years I have come to appreciate his non-fiction work and especially his journalistic reports during World War Two, collected in Once There Was a War.

This Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition of John Steinbeck’s World War Two resistance novel includes a very informative 18 page introduction by Donald V. Coers, Professor of English and scholar of Steinbeck’s body of work.  Also included are more than three pages of suggested further reading.

This introduction recounts how Steinbeck worked with the U.S. Office of Coordinator of Information and “Wild” Bill Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to support the Allied war effort.  Steinbeck’s work in that regard brought him into contact with displaced citizens and refugees from a number of European nations then under Nazi occupation.

In late 1941, Steinbeck conceived the idea for a short novel about the experience of being invaded and occupied.  Reworking a first draft that was set in America, he published this final version as The Moon is Down in March, 1942.  It was soon staged on Broadway and in 1943 a film version premiered.  Critical reaction was varied and often quite strongly negative.  However, according to Professor Coer’s account, this short novel was well received in the afore-mentioned communities of wartime exiles.  Their positive response led to the text being smuggled into Occupied Europe.  In Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and eventually China, clandestinely translated, printed or mimeographed editions were distributed by underground resistance organizations and became a strong element in pro-Allied propaganda campaigns.  Nazi occupation forces banned the book (even in Germany) but copies were actually for sale in several countries as a fund-raising effort by the resistance.

The story itself is told simply in neat, clean prose.  The events of invasion, occupation, etc., are narrated without benefit of Hollywood style drama.  Neither the occupied nor the occupiers are ever identified by nationality or geographic location.  The action is set almost entirely in and around a small simple town, with the sea on one side and farmland surrounding it on land.  The reader is introduced by name to the individual citizens and soldiers interacting in this small drama, but we are offered no information about the larger world and larger war beyond the victory of the occupiers.  The story is thus embodied at a very personal scale as each individual is presented with choices and makes decisions about how to react in this new situation.

I think Steinbeck’s choices in this work explain why it had such a popular response in so many different occupied countries.  It is a story in many ways still relevant today in a world still marred by armed violence that crosses borders and reaches even into peoples’ homes.

A Worthwhile First Visit to the National Military Park Guilford Courthouse

I’ve started breaking up longer car trips to include overnight stops and a visit to favorite bookstores, new museums, battlefields, etc.  I recently was able to visit GuilfordCourthouse National Military Park, preserving a significant portion of the battlefield in modern Greensboro, North Carolina.  The Park has a Visitor’s Center with parking near the entrance.  The Center presents some exhibits related to the battle including a reproduction British Army ‘grasshopper’ gun and a very nice collection of artwork on the battle by Don Troiani. A roughly 30 minute long film is shown in the Visitor’s Center theatre every hour and there is a shorter 10 minute program animating the battlefield maps to illustrate the course of the battle.

 

 

The largest battle of the American Revolution fought in the Carolinas, Guilford Courthouse offers many interesting aspects of warfare of the period from tactics to logistics, from command to the factors that support of breakdown an individual soldier’s morale.  The outlines of the battle itself as fought by both sides may be familiar to fans of the film “The Patriot” which drew upon elements of this battle and The Cowpens for its fictional major battle. 

 

The park today is mostly wooded just as this area was at the time of the battle and covers about 250 acres of the original battlefield with suburbia butting up against it on every side. The areas occupied by the flanks of both armies, however, are now in the adjacent cemetery, county park, or neighboring subdivisions.  The Military Park also straddles a local commuter route, Old Battleground Road, but there are traffic signals to get you across it to the other part of the battlefield.  The park has been very much adopted by local runners, walkers, cyclists, and dog walkers which at least suggests local support for its continued preservation (and a need for caution if you drive or bicycle during your visit.)

Brochures and cd-audio guides available in the Visitor’s Center shop will direct you along a 2.25 mile long self-guided tour featuring 8 stops each with one or more placards relating to the people and events of interest at that stop.  These stops are linked to the park-wide system of paved walking trails which, while rough in spots, appear wheelchair accessible (you might want to contact the Park staff before visiting to make sure this is still true).  A wider grass pathway through the park follows the original trace of the Great Salisbury Wagon Road (Historic New Garden Road) which brought the armies together at this spot.   Also indicated is an approximate area location for the long lost Guilford Courthouse building which gave its name to the battlefield.

The main part of the battle lasted about two hours and I easily spent that much time in the Visitor’s Center, its Shop, and in driving the auto tour, walking to all of the related markers and sites at each stop.  Frankly, I could happily spend most of a day here pursuing a more detailed and slower paced examination of the battle from beginning to end.

The area in which Cornwallis assembled and formed the British Army for battle is actually outside the park, although a part of that assembly area is preserved in the nearby Hoskins Farmstead/Colonial Heritage Center property.  The first of the three American lines crosses the modern New Garden Road just inside the National Military Park before you reach the Visitor’s Center.  Its right (north) wing extended into the modern suburbs and the extreme left (south) wing likewise stretched out beyond its side of the park.

From the Visitor’s Center, you can walk the greenway that marks the path of the original Salisbury Wagon Road used by both armies or begin the walking/biking/auto tour (as I did by car for reasons of time).  The greenway/Wagon Road route offers a sense of what the wooded battlefield was like for both armies and takes you across the center of the first two American lines.  The self-guided tour road/path takes you across the left wing of the first two American lines and then to the leftmost edge of the third and final American line.

From the 3^rd stop of the tour, a path takes you to the Nathanael Greene Monument at the approximate center of the second American line and near the path of the old wagon road.  This 2^nd line of Virginians offered more prolonged resistance to the advancing British but eventually the 2^nd Line too was broken and the pieces withdrew in different directions through the wooded terrain.   During the battle itself Greene appears to have spent most of his time with his third strongest battle line anticipating the climactic moment of engagement for both sides.

That 3rd American battle line had about twice the distance between itself and the 2nd line as there was between the first two lines.  None of them were close enough to offer effective support to each other, although this also meant each line was less likely to be dragged into the fight at the previous line.  Instead, they constituted independent and increasingly difficult obstacles placed in the path of the British through wooded and difficult terrain.  From stop No 6 on the guided trail, you can walk to the area held by the Maryland Regiment where it clashed with the British Guards and grenadiers.  There is also a cavalry monument on the field though given the numbers I would consider it more to have been a ‘mounted action’ between elements of cavalry on both sides rather than the classic clash of sabers charge.

The Maryland Regiment was of particular interest since my former Maryland Army National Guard unit claimed the legacy of the Marylanders of the Revolution.  Here at Guilford Courthouse, the 1^st Maryland clashed with the British Brigade of Guards.  The Guards, the Marylanders, and Colonel Washington’s horse were all a part of a melee on the American left where two American guns were the target of the Guards’ attentions.  Volleys were exchanged and each side charged the other in a complex action as the Guards had to address the Marylanders in one direction and the mounted Americans in another.  All those engaged were veterans and fought like it.  It was during these actions that the British guns reportedly fired into the brawling mass inflicting casualties on both sides, though the legend that this was done at the order of Cornwallis is challenged in a number of accounts.

The now worn American Army with many of its units scattered under British pressure faced a tired and worn British Army.  Green was able to mount an effective rear guard as the rest of the army began its retreat to a former camp of the army some 15 miles away.  The Americans had lost the battle but Greene imposed such a price for the victory that instead of pursuing the British Army began a withdrawal that would ultimately end in surrender at Yorktown, Virginia.  Nathanael Greene would describe the two hour battle as “long, obstinate, and bloody” probably based upon the intensity of those two hours of almost continuous, intense combat.