The Civil Wars of Early Wargaming

The History of Wargaming Project has accrued one of the largest archives of private correspondence from the early days of hobby wargaming 1960-1990. As I continue to collate and digitise the material, I find myself feeling bewildered how wargaming ever managed to survive long enough to become the minority, but well-known and established hobby it is today. It is known by those interested in the development of the hobby, that there were major clashes such as Tony Bath v Don Featherstone, Fred Jane v RN, magazine editor X with Y, American A with American B, etc. Many of the key personalities in early wargaming were at war with each other for intellectual supremacy and hobby domination. They were rude, vitriolic, harsh and unreasonable.

I now realised why Don Featherstone kept his distance from WD and some innovations in the hobby; they would have consumed his time and energy and Don’s key contribution to the hobby of books would have been heavily impacted.

Paddy Griffith was a key innovator in wargaming and military history who inspired many to develop new and interesting ways of wargaming. Paddy launched WD in response to the demise of Don Featherstone’s Wargamer’s Newsletter (Don as was bribed to cease publication, but that is another story). However, Paddy was then on the receiving end of a regular diatribe from random people around the world. Many were just seeking his advice or accessing his vast knowledge based in his head (as this was before Google and the Internet), but some were venting their anger and he was just caught in the cross fire. I am amazed he was so tolerant of their correspondence.

John Davis was a key instigator of large games. He took Don Featherstone’s efforts and made them workable command post type exercises. This was along with Paddy, David Candler and others. In 1981 John Davis ran a mega game on Crete and Paddy then received many complimentary letters about the game, but many less complimentary.

I am still not quite sure why Paddy became the focus for these controversies and I am equally perplexed why he spent hundreds of hours typing his letters in response to them. I am certain that the time he devoted to these less productive correspondences significantly impacted on the amount of time he had to make his major and lasting contributions to wargaming and military history.  

If anyone thinks I am exaggerating about the letter driven civil wars of wargaming, here is an example of a letter sent to Paddy about the Crete mega game that was led by John Davis.

“This is not a critique but a bitch against some of the things that I felt were wrong in the mini-campaign played on Sunday 15 September.  As a member of the German planning staff I was involved in the campaign for a number of weeks prior to the game itself.  We were congratulated on the planning papers produced but I feel that this was only to be expected as we had an experienced group of players writing the overall plan and the tactical assault plans, Pete Merritt laboured under particularly difficult circumstances having to change his plan at the last minute.  It became obvious however that many of the Umpires had not read, or had not had the time to read, these papers in detail and this continued on the day as a number of orders/plans were not implemented properly by the Umpires, the best case being the deaf, dumb, blind and invisible Italian submarine which was a result of two misread orders.

We built a certain level of detail into our orders and these did not seem to come out at the time the Umpires did their calculations, this was a problem particularly felt by our Air player, Mike Horah, who commented that it did not seem to matter whether he put in an 80 aircraft strike or 8 groups of 10 aircraft, I will not elaborate on this point but there is a difference when the aircraft are sent in as a 'cab rank’ for continuous aircover and the ground players are not informed of their availability.  There seemed to be a total lack of understanding of airborne operations on the part of the Umpires and this was particularly noticeable in the scatter of battalions during the assault operations. 
During 1005 sorties flown by the transports on the two assault operations only 1 aircraft was shot down and two damaged which would indicate very light opposition to the actual drop and yet 2 Bn's, 1 on each lift, were dropped directly onto airfields, which are clearly defined and not their drop zones, and 1 complete Bn. was dropped in the sea. We pointed out to the Umpires that all our drops were in daylight but we still lost a complete Bn. during a frenzied period of aquatic sport.

This lack of understanding also reared its ugly head amongst our opponents when at the debrief one of them, who shall remain nameless but works at RMA Sandhurst, stated that it would take para's 6 hours to organise on the ground (if this is true why were so many para units used during W.W.II?) and he had been led to believe that 6 to 1 odds were required to eject his men from prepared positions (when most para attacks in reality were against the odds and a high proportion of them successful).  If I had been told this prior to the game I would have had serious reservations about going to Crete.  I could expand on these points, and many more, but this must not turn into a book of the game of the plan of …

This is beginning to sound like sour grapes but in fact we won, I think.  In conclusion, I must apologise to one of our juniors, at one point I received a message timed 0950 am from one Umpire and this was followed by his arrival as the runner for another Umpire to tell me it was 2000, he was then forced to retreat pursued by a stream of abuse.  I apologise and thank him and the other juniors for their endeavours through the day.

These lessons are that Umpire teams must be properly prepared, briefed and organised, they must co-ordinate their work and be seen to be working smoothly.  Also, it is an asset if they understand the subject/problem under consideration and have at least an equal knowledge to the players so that they can reason out a situation and subsequently justify the result from a position of relative security.  I do not believe that Umpire decisions should be justified by statements similar to "I'm the Umpire here, so tough".   Also, from what I heard at the debrief it sounded as though the Umpires used dice to an alarming extent.”

Featherstone Wargames Through Ages volume 2 1420-1783

A reprint of another old book.

With a foreword by Paul Le Long (Solo Wargamers Association) and edited by John Curry (me), the reprint is part of my on going mission to comprehensively document key developments in wargaming. 

Wargames through the Ages was first published to fill a gap in literature of the hobby of wargaming. It was a one volume summary of what was loosely called the Horse and Musket period.  Each chapter assesses the techniques and fighting methods of the opposing forces and indeed, the battel descriptions are often sufficiently colourful to inspire reconstruction.  In discussing how this can best be simulated on a table-top battlefield the author gives comprehensive information as to contemporary styles of warfare which provides a basis for the formulation of rules. Thus, the role of the book is to suggest rudimentary ideas that will stimulate the reader into experimenting until he has perfected and polished them into soundly constructed rules that suit both his temperament and his personal conception of warfare. There are two more books following closely behind this one.

New books

I finally got around to doing a new edition of Donald Featherstone's classic book war game. This was the book that did more to launch modern wargaming than any other. I have learnt a lot about editing over the last few years, so I was pleased to have found the time to revisit one of my earliest books.

Donald Featherstone's tank battle series is nearly finished. I have now published volume 3 which is about battles on the Western Front 1944-45. Bruce Quarrie's book is still a classic.

The third book this month is about collecting 1/32 scale figures for the Alamo. Toy soldiers are an essential part of our hobby and I decided to take the opportunity to include 5 books on this area in the project. The Alamo book is the 2nd book about toy soldiers, and the next will be on Airfix.

My next three books are on early naval wargames, Phil Dunn's World War rules (the rules that he used to fight global wargames) and a new book by Charlie Wesencraft. Actually, the latter was lost and now its found.So I am aiming it to get to print in the shortest possible time. Of course, I may get distracted and another book could jump the publishing queue.

Don Featherstone, passed away.

Don was one of the founding fathers of modern hobby and professional gaming. His contribution was vast.

Last year a young person came to my trade stand and explained to me that Don Featherstone did not exist. He was brand name. When I valiantly tried to explain that one man had really written all those wargaming, physiotherapy and military history books, he simply dismissed me by saying 'They did not even have word processors then'.

There is more to say, but not today. I worked with him closely over the last ten years editing new editions of his books and helping him getting new Featherstone books to print.

Operation Warboard and Wargaming Commando Operations

I have just published two more books.

Operation Warboard- wargaming WWII in 20-25mm. I traced the co-author as his mother spoke in the House of Lords and the Guardian newspaper was kind enough to put me in touch with her literary agent.

The next book is volume 2 of Lost Tales, Donald Featherstone's Wargaming Commando Operations. This book was never published and the three copies of the partial manuscript were sold in Reading. As it was only 25 years ago, it was  simple matter to track down the owners (in their old peoples homes)... The book is a reasonable recreation of the lost book. An extract from the  foreword by Stuart Asquith is below.

"I find this latest work from Don quite fascinating; really it is three books in one. The first part looks at the British Commandos of the Second World, with an overview history of these troops, along with comments on their training and equipment. Don then relates a couple of the operations carried out by the Commandos – Operation Cauldron 1942 and the assault on Flushing in 1944. This part closes with thoughts on the lessons learned from Commando operations.

 

Next Don offers previously unpublished rules and scenarios for war gaming Commando operations on the table top. This section also includes the raid on St. Nazaire which for me brought back particularly interesting memories of a war game conducted several times where, to simulate the limited visibility conditions, the only illumination came from the players’ hand held torches.

The third section offers Don’s reflections and observations on a number of topics such his combat experiences with the 51^st Tank Regiment in Italy during the Second World War, his recollections on war gaming 1927-2010 – which, in the opinion of this writer is well worth the purchase price of the book on its own - his visits to many battlefields, being in the media and thoughts on the late (great) Paddy Griffith.

For me, as noted earlier, this is all fascinating stuff. Don was at the fore front of the war gaming hobby from its onset in the mid to late 1960s into the early 1970s, and in my opinion this is very much a position he that he still occupies.

Donald Featherstone  may nowadays be of advancing years, but the glint in the eye and the cheeky grin are still very much in evidence and the brain is still sharp – take him on in a war game at your peril!

I have no reservations about commending this book whole heartedly to the reader; the only problem you will find is being able to put it down.

Nice one Don!"

Two more new wargaming books are close behind these two.