All posts by james

James has a keen interest in military history, backed with experience as a TA reservist and a 17th century re-enactor. He has designed and run several face to face social games and is the editor of MilMud, the journal of the CLWG game design group. He is currently working on a book on the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution.
Ars Magica, games, roleplaying

The library of Triamore: Mundane tractatus

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http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/thelemur/ars/triamore/Covenant/mundane_tractatus.html

Last night I joined in with Simon Cornelius’s Ars Magica campaign. My character is a female Mage (aka Maga) called Lumen, she’s a younger daughter of a French baron in the early thirteenth century. Blond, blue-eyed and slightly elfin like, the picture I have in my head of what she looks like is of the actress Laura Harris.

Lumen is current a visitor to the Triamore Covenant and brought some books with her in exchange for being allowed access to their library. She appears to be in her early thirties and has not yet settled down and got her own lab yet. Her primary interest is in learning her arts better by reading up, followed by a little practise. She prefers Spring and Summer and gets a little sad in the winter time, being a sunshine sort of person.

Apart from socialising a little with the mages of the Covenant at meal times she spent most of the time in the library reading a book called “The Four Humours” which taught her a fair amount about Corpus.

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games, megagames

Master of Europe 3

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The megagame of the 1813 campaign in Europe was played at Anerley Town Hall on Saturday 7th November 2009. My role was as General Blucher, the senior Prussian Military Commander and also the Commander of the joint Prussian-Russian Army of Silesia.

We started off during the ceasefire period of August 1813, with my army in the furthest South East section of the map, in Reichenbach, near Breslau, in what I think is now Poland. The other member of my team was Mike Young, playing a Russian General. Our orders were to stay put until a general plan of action had been agreed. The initial army council of war having failed to set an objective other than to defeat Napoleon.

We were up against Marshal Ney’s army, which was immediately to our front across a river. We also had some distance between us and Ney’s Army, about 1 turn’s worth of tactical marching. However the first turn still had the ceasefire in effect.

A quick conflab with my staff officer sorted out the Army of Silesia’s plan. We weren’t going to wait for a plan before we started operations. We were going to take the war to the French and see how far West we could get, fighting French armies on the way. We decided to operate two parallel columns of about equal strength along parallel roads taking us due West to the Elbe near Dresden and then North-West on the Eastern bank of the Elbe (because we expected the Army of Bohemia to our South to be operating into the west Bank of the Elbe towards Leipzig).

Having decided what we wanted as army boundaries we then informed both the Army of Poland (to our North and in the process of forming) and also the Army of Bohemia (commanded and co-located with Prince Schwarzenberg, the overall C-in-C of the allied armies).

That done orders were written for our army columns to move non-tactically. One column of mainly Russians would move directly up the main roads into contact with the French armies. The other column, with mostly Prussians and under my direct command, took a southerly route and force marched to attempt to cut off the French army from its source of supplies. These manoeuvres were successfully completed without breaking the terms of the ceasefire or alerting the French to the outflanking.

The moment the ceasefire ended we were on the move. The Prussian column moved northward and successfully cut off the French from their supplies (evidenced by reports of having captured many French supply waggons). The other column knocked on the front door and the French retired in front of them. We encircled MacDonald’s corps and another by the end of the second turn, and forced Marshal Ney’s HQ & a third corps to retire as well.

We then attempted to fight a battle against the two French corps from both sides as the fog closed in. The result was a very confusing action in the fog during which the two French Corps managed to slip away over a river and through some woods. (Rob, my liaison umpire, told me that we had been incredibly unlucky as he had rolled a 0 on the d10. Any other result would have been a clear allied victory). None the less, we had attacked the French, held the battlefield while they retreated and so claimed this as a victory!

We followed closely on the heels of the French army, and several times I issued orders for battle at first light to find that the French had already started their retreat. Harrying them to the West I finally decided to forced march to bring them to battle, which resulted in another Prussian victory around turn 6. Unfortunately I didn’t make notes of the place where this battle was fought and don’t have a copy of the map to refer to, but it was about 60km North-East of Dresden.

It was at this point that the Army of Bohemia started to get in my way. Despite an exchange of several letters where I made it clear what progress we were making and insisting that their plan was flawed and unnecessary they had persisted in their drive due North from their start point (rather than North-West as I had suggested). They had decided that they wanted to take Ney’s Army in the rear (which I had already done before they told me that they wanted to do it).   

What happened next was that my Army was prevented from moving West by a column of the army of Bohemia that I had corresponded with in the immediate previous turn as I saw it close to my line of march. The commander had deliberately ignored my correspondence and move down the road I had claimed as my line of advance (which had been sanctioned by the C-in-C).

I was bloody furious about this and shouted at the players concerned, threatening to attack any army that was in my way. In part this had some good effects, but it stalled us moving west for two turns, and limited my area of operations significantly as the Army of Bohemia de facto claimed a chunk of the Eastern bank of the Elbe as their own operating area (leaving the Western bank more or less clear apart from a couple of corps that stuck close to the river and took some of the crossings from the west).

At the same time Berlin got taken by the French and set on fire (not entirely sure by whom). I was then instructed by the King of Prussia to do what I could to liberate Berlin. he also gave instructions to the Guard Corps and the Reserve Cavalry to join my Army along with the Prussian II Corps.

At the same time Marshal Ney’s Army had turned North, and one of my two columns had pursued him. We fought a third battle at a city with a river to the east (where the allied Army of Poland was waiting just across the river). I took the city and my engineers repaired the bridges over the river. The Army of Poland then took the initiative and surged west following Ney’s Army. I had a fruitful liaison meeting with the Army of Poland while the two Army Commanders were co-located and we agreed some boundaries and a strategy.

My Northern column turned South again and marched back to the rest of the army, some 80-100 Km due North of Dresden. Rumours of Napoleon’s Guard were arriving, along with reliable reports of lots of French troops. Uncharacteristically I ordered my army to dig in around the town while we concentrated. This was just as well. Ney attacked us supported by the French Guard Artillery. Following an Arty duel our Artillery Corps destroyed the French Guard Artillery. Ney’s Army was bloodily repulsed, but only because the Prussian Guards and Reserve Cavalry had been committed. This resulted in the Cavalry being destroyed (it only had 1 strength point) and the Guard down to 50% off original strength.

The next turn Ney came back, but this time my entire Army was present and I had rotated two very battered Russian Corps out of the front line and replaced them with the Prussian I Corps. At the same time Napoleon was attacked by the army of Poland 20km to our North. The French lost both battles. 

This, I decided, was the time to attack. The fresh Prussian II Corps arrived and we moved North with bayonets fixed, the order “Advance implacably & kill the French” duly issued. In the course of the next two turns pursuit we killed four French Corps, plus the Old Guard. The surviving Prussians equipped themselves with bearskins and then moved back South to clear the road for the Army of Poland.

We found ourselves with no avenue of advance, surrounded by friends. So we started south again in pursuit of some French stragglers that were moving for Dresden in the hope of getting across the Elbe there. However the Army of Bohemia had taken both Dresden and all the nearby crossings.

Another about turn ensued and we went back to the North and got in contact with Napoleon’s army just east of Wittenberg (about 40km or so). Although by this time Napoleon was no longer with the Army. We were on the direct Southern flank of the Army of Poland again and this limited our flexibility and ability to go anywhere. Our only option that allowed free movement was attacking into the French who almost a

lways retired in front of us
.

On approaching Wittemberg we met the local armed forces outside the town. They were claiming neutrality and I offered them the opportunity to join the alliance against Napoleon. They were at least partly convinced by my proffered arguments that we’d fought with Napoleon in 1812, but could see that he was now a spent force and that us Germans ought to band together to get rid of the foreigners interfering in how we enjoyed our sovereignty.

At that point the game ended, which was just as well as we’d been thoroughly boxed in by our supposed allies. 

The only trouble we had was from our friends, the enemy were most accommodating…

CLWG, design, games, WW2

Preparing For War – Onside Report

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British evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk
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Rather than run a conversational design session at the November meeting I decided to try and do something that was at least vaguely playable. My reasoning was that I’d been somewhat frustrated at the conference with discussions of games that looked like they could actually have been played, and I’d felt that perhaps by playing it we could have tested whether or not the perceived problems were actually real.

Anyway, I did a sort of role-playing game about re-constructing an infantry company after the evacuation from Dunkirk. John Rutherford was the first person to arrive (after me) and so I cast him as the first officer to report to the village in Devon I’d decided to put the company in. Chosen only because the OS map of Devon/Dorset was the first to hand when I was collecting materials for the game, they might equally have ended up in Scotland! John’s character, 2/Lt Robson was a recently commissioned officer who had been sent to France within days of being commissioned and then evacuated a few weeks later.

On arrival in the village by train 2/Lt Robson discovered that he wasn’t expected, and nor was his company! He set about contacting the local policeman, the vicar, chair of the parish council and other notables in the village.

Staying overnight in the village pub he established that the company could be billeted on the Mill when it arrived. Within a day the remainder of the company arrived by train under command of the Major (Jim Wallman). Shortly afterwards Lt Hanse (Mukul) and 2/Lt Duff (Dave Boundy) reported for duty. The company was swiftly sorted out into platoons and sections, on the basis of sharing out the experienced men and the good NCOs as well as those with dodgier records.

The first few weeks were played out in organising the company, the accommodation, acquiring weapons, worrying about area of operations, responsibility for guarding bridges etc and also getting everyone to do lots of drill. Having worked all this out and got to the beginning of September I moved to monthly turns where the OC set the training priority and each month I asked for volunteers for Officer training (and later on Commandos) as well as setting some small incident for resolution, e.g. scrounging a coal lorry, or the Christmas do. If I was going to run this game properly I’d do some more research on some of these things and ensure that the players had some better background. As it was I was making it all up as I went along, including the mechanisms, so it was in areas no doubt thinner than it ought to have been, and probably quite ahistorical.

On the whole we managed to pass four and a half hours playing the game before I drew it to a halt so that we could have some discussion. For me the main point is that there is a game in all of this as there are many decisions to be made. Largely it is a building/development game in its purest sense, although what you are building/developing in this case are your soldiers. Probably the best way to improve the game would be to make a small card for each soldier which could be updatable with their stats, rank etc. That would simplify record keeping as the platoon commanders can just keep those in front of them organised into sections etc. The platoon commanders could also have a mechanism for developing people which would give them some decisions about how to improve their platoon, and also about how to interpret the OC’s training priorities.

We had some discussion at the end about leadership styles and now these should affect the development of a platoon/company. This certainly needs further thought, and I think it could be a good way to develop things, but I’m not sure exactly how it ought to impact on the game mechanisms.

If I do get further thoughts from people then I will do something on this.

One thing I am conscious of was not having a well thought out mechanism for exercises, partly this was because I didn’t think we had enough time to break into a proper wargame. My inclination would be to play this sort of game as a campaign, and play each exercise as a largely kriegspieled wargame using the figure resolution of the combat mechanisms (which I did prepare, but didn’t use and I think I’ll need to re-do in the light of the outcome of the session).

On another point, we semi-randomly picked 6th Battalion DLI to be the battalion that we were part of. A quick look at google afterwards showed that 6 DLI were a territorial battalion and went to France with 50th Northumbrian Divison in early 1940 and then were evacuated through Dunkirk, they went to North Africa in April 1941 (when we finished our game) and then fought through the rest of the North Africa campaign, Sicily & Italy. They came back to the UK at the end of 1943 and were in the assault troops on Gold Beach on 6th June 1944. Probably one of the few battalions to have been at the sharp end all the way through the war.

Here is the spreadsheet (Open Document Format) that I used to speed things up during play (although this will be printed onto cards before I next try this game). Company Roster.ods

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CLWG, design, games

CLWG Design Conference 2009 Reports

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Onside Report – WW2
Mechanisms

I lead a discussion on
whether an operational research article could be used to produce some
mechanisms for running a WW2 wargame with resolution (i.e. smallest
unit represented) at somewhere between platoon and battalion.

The article1
in question was first published back in 1987, so quite venerable. I
came across a photocopy of it tucked into an old copy of British Army
Training News from the saem time period. I have subsequently found
PDFs of a slightly different version of it, along with a follow-up
article looking at urban combat.



Offside Report – Come
One Come Eorl

Andrew Hadley brought
back the Scottish component of this game for another try having
modified some of the mechanisms from the previous playtest. We didn’t
really play the game as we spent a lot of time talking about the
mechanisms and it sorting out in all the players’ heads what it was
all about, why the mechanisms worked the way they did and what we
were supposed to do.

For me there is clearly
a very good political/military game that should make an excellent
megagame, but it was clear from the session that we had that some
people are going to struggle with the game as it currently stands.
There needs to be some more elegant mechanisms around calculating
income, especially where there are sub-kings etc. It might also be
possible to dispense with influence completely as a separate token
and just make it part of game play, the title cards could just allow
certain activities to be done.

Without the benefit of
playing more than one turn of the game it appeared to me that the
sole use of influence was to get political actions done in the
‘parliament’ phase of the game. Obviously there needs to be a limit
to the number of actions that the High King can introduce, and this
limit should change as power is centralised (or de-centralised).
Bearing in mind that each title allows a player a vote (so players
tend to have multiple votes) then the influence of the High-King is
naturally limited by needing to keep at least some of the players on
side. But if they are the only person that can propose
actions/decisions then that gives them some leverage also. However
this doesn’t quite work if you want to be able to build up influence
over a period of time or if you want to trade it between nations.

Overall I’d like to
just play the game for a bit and then try and de-construct it to give
feedback. One of the things that I sometimes find frustrating is that
we talk too much about the mechanics, the briefings etc when we ought
just to be trying the game out. The talking means that the game
doesn’t actually get played as a game, which means that I don’t think
that we get to test it properly. Only by giving things a reasonable
chance are we going to see the second and third order effects that
the combination of rules, player decisions and luck have on the
outcomes, and whether this is an acceptable game. Sure there is
validity in discussion and working through things in slow time, but
we do need to be clear (i.e. the game presenter should say what they
want) when putting on sessions on whether we want to try mechanisms
or whether we want a design discussion. As participants we need to
respect the session presenter’s wishes and do our best to make it
work that way, even if we think it is fundamentally broken. It
doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t tell the presenter what we think
during the session, but we should try and work round our issues.


Agincourt Logistics

Jim has been
commissioned by the Royal Logistics Corps museum to produce a
training exercise for recent recruits to give them some understanding
of the history of logistics and how the predecessors of the RLC were
involved in moving and supplying armies. The scenario given was
fairly straightforward from our perspective, but would certainly
offer the opportunity for someone unfamiliar with logs planning some
challenge. There was a finite limit (20) on the total number of units
to be taken (including the pack horses) which drove some decisions
about force composition (although not size for us as we’d take up to
the maximum with extra pack horses and supplies).

The choice was between
knights (needing food & fodder), archers (food & arrows),
pioneers (food, fodder & maybe pioneer stores), the siege train
(two fodder and food) and pack horses (fodder). Each of the pack
horses could carry 12 units of supplies and there was a choice
between food, arrows, fodder, pioneer stores, and tents. There were
multiple solutions to the problem, which is always good, and some of
them got very complex (particularly Jerry’s optimised reducing
horses).

The game met the design
constraints as far as CLWG players went, and in fact we seemed to
have been too generously supplied with pack horses as we had arrows
left after we’d killed all the French, however both times one of the
units of knights was left behind (which was probably a correct
decision as the archers did 95% of the killing). However it is
entirely reasonable that another group might take 3 knights with them
which would add to the logistics burden and force some harder
decisions about load mixes. The first group to do it also had to
starve the soldiers because they were delayed en route, although if
they’d had a different mix (another day’s worth of food instead of
some arrows) then they might also have been fine. Both of us
immediately discounted artillery and tents reasoning that that they
weren’t needed on a forced march and would just slow things down.

My intention is to try
this on some of my work colleagues (they’re all business analysts
with little understanding of military history). I think it will be
interesting to see how they approach it.

Second Life

I had a shot of playing
with second life in the Sunday morning session. Overall I was pretty
impressed with the engine and what you can do in it. However it was
also clear that it is for people with large monitors and hefty
graphics cards. My little 10″ netbook only just gets to sneak in on
the ‘low graphics’ setting (despite being brand new).

There is a chance that
I’ll stick a better graphics card in one of the computers at home
which has a larger screen, but since I tend to buy desktops second
hand I’m not too sure whether or not this is something I’ll get round
to soon. However I will probably have a go at one of the CLWG second
life gunboat sessions sometime in the not too distant future. All
depends on whether or not family commitments allow a couple of hours
on the computer.

Minions of Evil

Brian Cameron started
off a design discussion about how we might create a game out of being
the evil players. He had observed that traditionally the heroes are
reactive and that the evil geniuses have a plan which they want to
execute to achieve some narrow aim, e.g. world domination, or
accumulation of riches.

We talked around a lot
of ideas, largely there seemed to loads of opportunity to create a
sufficiently detailed background to set a game in, whether
comic-book evil genius, some relatively real world evil (e.g.
corporations, mafia etc), an illuminati style game or even something
set historically. There was a general consensus that whatever the
scenario each evil genius should have some sort of fatal flaw that
would lead to their downfall and that there ought to be a specific
(but possibly unidentified to the players) nemesis.

One of the ideas that I
was quite taken by though was the idea of trading off how far you
were willing to go to achieve a rational objective for additional
character flaws and irrational objectives. This fitted into another
idea of evil merely being a matter of perspective. The example quoted
was Magneto from the X-Men who is fighting for mutant rights, which
if you are an oppressed mutant might well seem like a heroic
perspective. A more real example was Churchill, who ordered the
sinking of an allied fleet and also invaded a neutral country. For me
the morally grey area would make an interesting game as it would
allow the players’ choices to determine whether or not they were
truly evil or simply misunderstood. Also I tend to prefer complex
half-tones to black and white. There is probably some scope for a
game about corporations which covers this ground.

Players would represent
key investors in a corporate portfolio on a global basis. In their
individual player briefings they would have some objectives (possibly
self set at the beginning of the game) to determine what they were
looking for as a rational outcome. Examples might be: control of
media; political influence; vast riches; domination of a particular
market. There would then be a trade off between legal and moral
constraints (or otherwise) and the starting resources. The fewer
constraints you had the easier it would be to operate in certain
areas, but at higher risk from government institutions.

1David
Rowlands, Degradation in Combat

Books, games, History, WW2

St.Valery: The Impossible Odds by Bill Innes

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This is a collection of first hand accounts, mainly posthumously published from three men who were ordinary soldiers in the 51st Highland Division in 1940. None of them were officers (although one was commissioned after his escape and return home). The main part of the book is a personal account originally published in Gaelic and subsequently translated into english as “A Cameron Never Can Yield”. This forms just over half the book and tells the story from the start of the German attack on 10 May 1940 through surrender at St Valery on 12th June 1940, escape on the march into Germany and then life in Marseilles in the winter of 1940-41 followed by a winter crossing of the Pyrenees and time spent in Spanish prison camps before returning to the UK. The other two stories are relatively similar, although neither of the men managed to return back to the UK and they both had different experiences in their prisoner of war camps and work details. All three of them had a horrendously rough time of it, which seems to be the norm for these early POWs (and the later ones too).

Even though I’ve read everything I can get my hands on about the 51st Highland Division and also lots of personal accounts of both combat and POW life this book was different. Each of the accounts started with a potted history of the person and what they had done before the start of the war, and then ended with what they did after demobilisation. That provided a bit of context, but the most refreshing thing about it was that it was about private soldiers and not officers, which is unusual. Most of the books are written by officers (if first-hand accounts) or by those that would have been had they not become history professors. This puts a different slant on life and makes for a whole different side to the story.

Also, unlike other stories of the 51st Highland Divsion in 1940, it didn’t end on 12th June at St Valery, in fact that was where most of the story started.

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Books, History, Scottish, WW2

The Battle for France didn't end at Dunkirk

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The title of Saul David‘s “Churchill’s Sacrifice of the Highland Division” is possibly erroneous, the book doesn’t come out for what happened to the 51st Highland Division in June 1940 as being a political gesture of allied solidarity on the part of Churchill.

It is certainly the fullest account of the 1940 campaign of the 51st Highland Division, expanding hugely on Eric Linklater‘s HMSO publication in 1942 (which perforce had to be limited for security reasons). The Highland Division was in the Maginot Line attached to the French Army when the German assault started on 10th May 1940 and so wasn’t with the rest of the BEF. By the time the ferocity and direction of the German plan was understood by the French & British High Commands most of the German Army was between the 51st Highland Division and the BEF; so there was no real decision to sacrifice them on the part of Churchill. Saul David makes this readily understandable in his narrative, although he does highlight some of the points where a clear directive to withdraw them could have made a difference.  However these would have to have been ordered by French Generals as the Division was part of the French IX Corps and under their command.

What is remarkable is that the Division only surrendered when surrounded and out of ammunition nearly a fortnight after the Dunkirk evacuations were complete.

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alternative, Books

Blue Fires, Gary Hyland

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“Gary Hyland owns a successful company that produces original
sculptures. He has a long-held fascination for the Nazis’ development
of new technologies during the Second World War.”

Do I need to add any more?

Synopsis

This is one series of speculations about how the nazis might have invented (and built prototype) flying discs at the end of the second world war. There are parts that come across as well researched, particularly when describing the problems of the nazi era for scientists. However there is absolutely no evidence cited for what is contained in the book and even where it introduces things as speculative it then goes on later to treat them as if they were hard fact.

However it does have a high entertainment value. That and I discovered that someone has rcently built a small flying disc out of off the shelf components using the principles outlined in the book as being likely. That said, I still dno’t believe the nazis did it in 1944 and it was further developped by the British, Canadian and American governments in the last 60 years.

From the Back Cover

The extraordinary history of the secret Nazi technologies which were adopted by the Allies after the war

Many theories have been mooted to explain the Roswell incident, most of which involve flying saucers and little green men from Mars. What has never been considered, though, is the odd coincidence that the high-speed, high-flying spherical object which crashed on Roswell bears an uncanny resemblance to some of the extraordinarily futuristic aircraft which were blueprinted in top-secret conditions by Nazi scientists during the Second World War. Blue Fires tells an extraordinary story of cover-ups and conspiracies, and it gives a fascinating alternative version of world history since 1945.

Review

Don’t buy it. I got it for a pound, it was thought provoking and entertaining, but also intensely annoying. If you pay postage I’ll send you my copy instead.

figure, games, History, Scottish, WW2

Battle of the Hills, 21 January 1943

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Seaforth Highlanders
Image via Wikipedia

This is a short article about the advance of the 51st Highland Division in Tunisia in the follow up from El Alamein. I wrote this to be played as a tabletop wargame using Command Decision.

Ground
The coast road between Homs & Corradini in Tunisia. On the right (from the perspective of the British advance) is the sea. The coast road lies a few miles inland at places. There is a steep coastal ridge on the left flank of the battle area with desert to the south. Within all this there are a large number of steep sided, but small, wadis running from the hills to the sea. There are also one or two significant hills that sit astride or on the road.

To quote Captain J.A.F. Watt (OC B Company 5th Seaforths). “At the Assembly Area we met the CO. We were to attack two sharp conical hills we could see faintly outlined against the sky two or three thousand yards away. One of them was farther away than the other and to the left as we looked at them.”

“From what we could make of the maps and what little we could see of the country, it seemed as though the road ran past the right of our objectives. This assumption proved to be wrong. The road in fact curved sharply to the left across the line of our advance, then right again between the hills.” On the right flank a deep wadi blocked the advance of A Company.

Situation
Elements of the German 90th Light Division are dug in forward of two conical hills on either side of the main road 3 miles short of Corradini. Broken ground & wadis lie to their front.

The previous evening 51st Highland Division had been delayed at another hill with a fort atop it (named Edinburgh Castle) on the road between Homs & Corradini. The initial attack failed but an outflanking movement caused the Germans to withdraw well before dark. The initial failure had earned the Divisional Commander a ‘rocket’ from Montgomery and therefore inspired him to issue orders to his subordinates to speed up the rate of advance.

The British are in two main groups. One group (154 Brigade) is marching on foot along the coast to outflank the enemy near Corradini. The second group (spearheaded by Hammerforce) is moving up the main road from Homs to Corradini.

Hammerforce
Commanded by Brigadier Richards (23rd Armoured Brigade).
A Company, 2 Seaforths
A Company, 1/7 Middlesex (MG)
Tank Squadron, 40 RTR
2 Troops, 61 AT Regiment
25lber Battery

5 Seaforths with 40 RTR (Valentines) make assault from 3000 yards (60″). 1 bty 25-pdrs in direct support. The tanks have serious problems moving from the start line because of the terrain.

154 Brigade
Commander – Brigadier Stirling
7th Bn Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders
2nd Bn Seaforth Highlanders
7th Bn Black Watch
Tank Squadron, 40 RTR
25lber Battery, 126 Field Regiment RA

90th Light Division
A mixed battlegroup. No detailed information available, although the British histories report the following, which suggests depleted Regimental strength:

– Germans have MGs & mortars.
– 3 MGs dug in on one hill (Weapons Stand)
– counter attack by infantry & half-track (only 1 – so no model)
– retreat in captured British vehicles with several AT guns and a tank
– heavy 210mm guns
– many 88 mm AT guns (2 stands)
– 12 dual-purpose 20mm guns (3 stands)
– many mortars
– 260 prisoners & 10 guns captured

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Making A Killing, James Ashcroft

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Making a Killing: The Explosive Story of a Hired Gun in Iraq

The author is a former British Infantry officer who subsequently became a private security contractor and worked in Iraq for eighteen months from the end of 2003 to the beginning of 2005. It was co-written with a professional author.

Synopsis

Car bombings are a common form of attack in Ir...
Car bombings are a common form of attack in Iraq during the Coalition occupation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An insider’s account of life as a private security contractor in Iraq. In September 2003 the author arrived in Iraq at the start of an 18-month journey into chaos. In “Making a Killing”, Ashcroft provides a first-hand view of the world of private security where ex-soldiers employed to protect US and British interests can make up to $1000 a day. But he also reveals a new kind of warfare where the rules are still being written. Although hostilities are officially over, the fighting goes on. Scores of US soldiers are dying every day, Coalition Forces are struggling to defend their own bases, let alone bring order and every insurgent killed only recruits a dozen more to fight Western forces.

From the Back Cover

The Lure: $1,000 a day as a hired gun in Iraq

The Reality: For every insurgent killed, a dozen more rise up

In September 2003, James ‘Ash’ Ashcroft, a former British Infantry Captain, arrived in Iraq as a ‘gun for hire’. It was the beginning of an 18-month journey into blood and chaos.

In this action-packed page-turner, Ashcroft reveals the dangers of his adrenalin-fuelled life as a security contractor in Baghdad, where private soldiers outnumber non-US Coalition forces in a war that is slowly being privatised. From blow-by-blow accounts of days under mortar bombardment to revelations about life operating deep within the Iraqi community, Ashcroft shares the real, unsanitised story of the war in Iraq – and its aftermath – direct from the front line.

James Ashcroft is a former British Infantry Captain who served in West Belfast and the former Republic of Yugoslavia. He served as a private security contractor in Iraq from September 2003 until spring 2005.

Review

For me quite close as the author was on the commissioning course I would have been on had I pursued joining the Army and some of the
others I know from the UOTC would have been at Sandhurst with him. Makes it more thought provoking when you know it is a career path that chance turned you away from.

Overall I found it a very readable but there were a few points where I wondered if it was an accurate reflection of what actually happened or the temptation of the publishers to sex up the story to get more sales (as was done with Bravo Two Zero, amongst others). Certainly it isn’t a wholesale celebration of war or of the situation in Iraq, and there has certainly been some thought put into why we were there by the author.

It certainly came across as being written by someone who had been there and who had taken the opportunity to understand what was going on and why it was going on, that in itself is enough to make it worth reading for all those that wonder what is going on. The news doesn’t even come close to giving you the side of the story shown here, and it isn’t entirely positive for those prosecuting the war or attempting to rebuild Iraq or maintaining the peace.

The section towards the end of the book (around pg. 210) where he asks a load of US officers why they are fighting the war is priceless, and
possibly the best discussion of the reasons behind the war and the management of its aftermath. Better to spend time reading this book
than watching the news.

ISBN 0753512343

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Book Review – Field of Fire: Diary of a Gunner Officer by Jack Swaab

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Field of Fire: Diary of a Gunner OfficerField of Fire: Diary of a Gunner Officer by Jack Swaab

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read the hardback version very shortly after it came out. I collect first hand accounts of the WW2 and unit histories of the 51st Highland Division in particular, so this one was a must buy. That said it is one of the best first hand accounts that I have read, and certainly the best from a gunner (it comparies favourably to George Blackburn’s Guns of War series – he was also a Forward Observation Officer).

You can have no doubt about the hardships of war, what the conditions were like for both the gunners on the gun line and the infantry on the front line. The book is very descriptive without becoming flowery and it avoids glossing over some of the less pleasant aspects. Also it tells you about everything, not just the combat and the aftermath, but also of the minor details of daily life.

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