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Books, design, History, WW2

The Stress of Battle – Pt5 Operational Research on WW2 Heroism

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This is the fifth and final part of my extended review of The Stress of Battle by David Rowland. It is such a strong piece of operational research on WW2 heroism that I thought that it would be useful for wargame designers (and players) to understand what the research evidence is for what went on in WW2 battles. This part is on the effects of heroism and combat degradation.

Combat Degradation

Combat degradation is a measure of how less effective weapon systems and individual soldiers are in actual combat when compared to training exercises and range work. A score of 1.0 is equivalent to not being degraded at all. Degradation to 0.3 would mean that it was operating at 30% of its peacetime range effectiveness.

  • the analysis by Rowland’s team broadly matches that done by Wigram in 1943, that there are three classes of effectiveness.
    • About 20% of those involved could be classed as heroes (26% for guns, 9% for tanks).
    • Of the rest, one third were ineffective (either they didn’t engage, or what they did do didn’t have any significant impact) (27% of the total);
    • The remaining two-thirds were about 30% effective (53% of the total);
  • Weapon systems crewed with at least one hero were about five times more effective than those with no heroes;
  • Overall effectiveness of a unit = 0.2+([Heroes/gun]*0.8)
  • Leadership improves combat effectiveness (i.e. more officers/SNCOs present leads to greater effectiveness, which is the reason that tanks are less effective than gun crews).

Impact of Heroism

Rowland and his team compared the effectiveness of the most effective and the partly effective groups in both the historical battles for which there was information and also for the field trials conducted by the British Army in the 1970s & 1980s. What they found was that there was the same variability within the two groups, which was attributed to opportunities to engage. However there was a significant difference between the groups, which was attributed to heroes being more effective.

  • Heroism seems to be a product of genetics, social conditioning and values. Many recipients of gallantry awards had previously been mentioned in despatches, or were decorated again.
    • Comments on citations for subsequent decorations indicate that a second award always required a stronger case than the first award did.
  • Heroes maintain their combat effectiveness in future battles, even if not further awarded.
  • Heroism is more likely at higher ranks (i.e. officers and senior NCOs (Sergeants and above) are more likely to be in the higher performing groups than other ranks).
    • Officers had 1.56 Awards/KIA
    • SNCOs had 0.52 Awards/KIA
    • Other Ranks had 0.10 Awards/KIA
  • Rank may be an effect (promotion coming from heroic behaviour) or a cause (feeling responsible because of higher rank).
  • Crews operate at the level of the highest effective person present.

Probabilities of Heroic Action being recognised

Rank
Infantry
Guns
Senior Officers 30.00% 34.00%
Lieutenants 6.10% 4.20%
All Officers

14.00%

14.00%
Sergeants & Warrant Officers 6.10% 8.40%
Corporals / Bombardiers 2.50% 2.95%
Privates & Equivalent 0.48% 0.73%

NB there is a possibility that the awarding of decorations was unfairly skewed by rank, and that those of lower rank that performed heroically weren’t adequately recognised.

Gurkhas

Gurkha units were noticably different from British unit, and appear to be 60% more effective in inflicting casualties on the enemy and 60% more likely to be decorated. This comes at the price of higher levels of casualties.

Surprise & Shock

The defintion of Surprise is “the achievement of the unexpected in timing, place or direction such that the enemy cannot react properly”. This is distinct from Shock, where soldiers could react, but didn’t.

Again historical analysis was used and battles where surprise and shock were involved were identified. These were then compared with other battles with similar characteristics so that only either Shock or Surprise were different. The two factors being compared individually with a reference set.

Surprise

  • Attack surprise reduces infantry defence effectiveness by 60% at 3:1 attack ratio.
  • Attack surprise may vary with force ratio (being more marked at low ratios and less effective at higher ratios)
  • Surprise for tank vs tank reduces casualties  by a factor of 3 at 1:1 attack ratio for the side achieving surprise.
  • Attacks below 1:1 ratio were successful 65% of the time when surprise was achieved, where attacks at these ratios were never successful without surprise
  • At force ratios above 1:1 surprise is less important to success, although there is still higher levels of success with surprise, just not statistically significant.
    • with surprise force ratio is less important to success (at 1:1 70%, at 3:1 76%)
    • without surprise the probability of success increases in proportion to the force ratio (at 1:1 40%, at 3:1 54%)

Shock

  • Infantry attacks caused shock in about 15% of cases, rising to 50% when combined with surprise and some of the factors below. Three factors were found to have influenced the ability of infantry to inflict shock:
    • Charge distance was usually under 100 metres (limited by weight of kit), where it was longer that was found to be because the enemy had already broken.
    • Visibility was significant, typically shock occurs at night or in poor visibility including where the terrain offers concealment
    • Defence morale was affected by Battle cries, cheers and yells seemed to put defenders off balance.
      • Bayonets played a major role (but not to cause casualties, as a psychological weapon inducing the enemy to surrender or run away).
  • Tank attacks caused shock in about 10% of battles analysed.
    • ‘Invulnerable’ tanks cause shock which can lead to panic, in about 50% of cases
    • Surprise alone caused shock in 27% of the time
    • Surprise + invulnerable tanks gave 70% Shock
    • Surprise + poor visibility gave 85% shock
    • Surprise + all of the above gave 95% shock
  • Air attacks cause shock most often when they are a dive/strafe attack where the aircraft is aimed directly at the target.
  • Typically shock by ground attack reduces defence effectiveness by 65%.

 

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Books, design, WW2

The Stress of Battle – Part 4 – Op Research on Anti-Tank Combat

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IWM caption : El Alamein 1942: British tanks m...
IWM caption : El Alamein 1942: British tanks move up to the battle to engage the German armour after the infantry had cleared gaps in the enemy minefield. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the fourth part of my review of The stress of battle: quantifying human performance in combat by David Rowland, which is an essential piece of Operational Research on WW2 and Cold War combat operations. This part covers the findings on anti-tank combat.

Anti-Tank Combat

Unlike small arms, the effectiveness of weapons used for anti-tank combat has changed considerably over the course of the mid-20th century. From non-specialist gunfire in WW1, to high velocity armour piercing in WW2 and then to Anti-Tank Guided Weapons in the Cold War period. This makes the operational research on anti-tank combat harder to do because the start point needs to be battles where only one kind of AT weapon is in action. Much of the analysis on anti-tank combat starts with the ‘Snipe’ action during the second battle of El Alamein in North Africa where data on each of the guns individually was available.

  • ‘heroic performance’ plays a large factor in the effectiveness of anti-tank guns
  • about a quarter of guns (at most) performed heroically (including those where platoon, company or battalion level officers assisted with firing guns)
Campaign / Battle Heroes Others

No. Guns in combat

Total engagements

Tanks Hit per target per gun engagement

No. Guns in combat

Total engagements

Tanks Hit per target per gun engagement
Greece (1941)

8

8

0.400

38

44

0.054
Alamein (2RB at Snipe)

10

25

0.150

23

27

0.048
Medenine (Queens Bde)

2

7

0.430

22

38

0.027
Medenine (Guards & NZ)

6

9

0.390

14

14

0.120
Total all battles

26

49

0.275

97

123

0.052
  •  rate of fire is proportionate to target availability (i.e. when there are multiple targets crews fire faster)
  • the median point for heroes was 0.3 tank casualties per gun, where for non-heroes it was 0.03 tank casualties per gun
  • tanks are less effective in defence than AT guns alone, or tanks supported by AT Guns
  • AT Guns with tanks apparently kill three times more tanks than the tanks would on their own
  • AT Gun performance is attributed to having a higher concentration of SNCOs and Officers with deployed ATG compared to tanks (about three times as many)
  • heroes were disproportionately represented by SNCOs and Officers (at least in terms of who got the medals), in 75% of cases an SNCO or Officer senior to the gun crew commander was involved
  • Paddy Griffith is quoted on tank casualties that “relatively few appeared to have been caused by enemy tanks”

Overall it shows that the biggest single effect in anti-tank combat was down to leadership. Where gun crews are well lead then they are significantly more effective in battle. This is assuming that the guns in question can have some effect on the tanks that they are shooting at, which was the case in all of the battles examined (including a mix where the guns defended successfully with those where the gun lines were overrun by tanks).

Concluded in Part 5 – Operational Research on Heroism, Shock & Surprise

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Books, design, WW2

The Stress of Battle – Part 3 – Op Research on Terrain Effects

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504th Regiment, 82nd Airborne troops advancing...
504th Regiment, 82nd Airborne troops advancing through snow-covered forest during the Battle of the Bulge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the third part of my extended review of The Stress of Battle by David Rowland. It is such a strong piece of operational research that I thought that it would be useful for wargame designers (and players) to understand what the research evidence is for what went on in WW2 battles.

Fighting in Woods

The data comes from an analysis of 120 battles that took place in woods or forests from the US Civil War to the Korean War. It also applied all the things from the previous research and tried to see how woods differed from combat in other types of terrain.

Woods Open Urban
Attacker casualties per defence MG (at 1:1 force ratio)

0.818

2.07

0.76
Force Ratio Power Relationship

0.418

0.685

0.50
  • Defence is less effective in woods, most likely because limited fields of view mean that the engagement ranges are shorter
  • Combat degradation is greater in woods during night battles
  • Artillery suppression is less effective in woods (presumably because the trees absorb some of the shell splinters)
  • Attack casualties reduce with attacker experience (after ten battles attacker casualties are half of that of inexperienced troops)

Continued in Part 4 – Operational Research on Anti-Tank Combat

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Stress of Battle – Part 2 – Op Research on Urban Battles

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Belgian soldiers during an exercise
Belgian soldiers during an exercise (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is the second part of my review of The stress of battle: quantifying human performance in combat by David Rowland, which is an essential piece of Operational Research on WW2 and Cold War combat operations.

For this part I thought that I would focus on the lessons on urban battles. Rowland and his team used historical analysis on lots of WW2 urban battles and then compared this to a series of field trials using laser attachments to small arms and tank main armaments in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  The approach was to find battles where single variables could be controlled, and then use them to work out what the effect of that variable was on outcomes.

Here’s an interesting table on how attacker casualties vary by odds and the density of defending machine guns. Interestingly, in successful assaults the defender casualties are constant.

Force Ratio Attack Force(100 man Inf Company in Defence) Attack Casualties        (killed and wounded) Defence Casualties (Killed, POW & Wounded)
1 MG / Section 2 MG / Section

1:1

 Infantry Only

16

24

80

3:1

 Infantry Only

27

40

80

1:1

 Heavy Tank Support (no def AT)

3

12

80

3:1

 Heavy Tank Support (no def AT)

5

20

80

1:1

 Trained attack – infantry only

8

12

80

1:1

 Trained attack – Heavy AFV support

2

6

80

The interesting thing for me is that training/experience counts for a lot, halving casualties. Also attacking with the conventional 3:1 odds for success increases the casualties that you suffer, without having any appreciable difference in those inflicted on the enemy (although it does make it more likely for succesful attacks with untrained/inexperienced troops).

English: Cilieni This is a fake village that i...
English: Cilieni This is a fake village that is used for training for fighting in a built up area (FIBUA). The village has been named after the adjacent river, and all the street names are in Welsh, although it is most representative of an East European village. This area is not often open to the public. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Adding armour support makes a huge difference too. Although tanks in urban areas are more vulnerable if they lose their infantry support. However with infantry they significantly reduce attacker casualties.

  • Defence experience gave no detectable benefit to causing casualties, but attack experience does (in urban combat)
  • typically three times as many defenders will surrender (some wounded) as are killed or withdraw, the only sensitivity on this is being completely surrounded (so 20% dead, 60% captured (incl wounded) and 20% withdraw);
  • attack casualties are less affected by force ratio in urban attacks than in open counrtyside;
  • successful defence of urban areas is best achieved by light defence with counter attacks supported by armour

Rubble & Prepared Defences

This another area covered. There is a general increase in attacker casualties by about 50% when defenders are in rubble or prepared defences. The primary effect of rubble though is to slow down rates of advance.

  • Rubble halved the rate of advance compared to undamaged urban areas
  • maximum unopposed advance rates were about 800 metres per hour in urban areas (400m/hr for rubble)
  • Opposition slowed the advance by a factor of 7

An interesting aside on this was the relative effectiveness of different types of German Infantry. Parachute troops and Panzergrenadiers were reckoned to be tougher opponents than normal infantry. However the analysis showed that the extra stubbornness was a factor of the higher than normal allocation of MGs to those troops. The rate of attacker casualties per defence MG wasn’t significantly different.

Continued in Part 3 – Operational Research on Terrain Effects

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Books, design, History, WW2

Book Review – The Stress of Battle by David Rowland (Part 1)

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Real shooting tactical exercises in Smardan sh...
Real shooting tactical exercises in Smardan shooting-range with the 100 mm anti-tank gun M1977. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not exactly a book review, more of a synopsis of a great work of Operational Research by David Rowland. The Stress of Battle: Quantifying Human Performance in Combat is the end result of years of work by David Rowland and his team at the Ministry of Defence. Rowland was the father of historical analysis as a branch of Operational Research.

This particular work looks at a combination of field analysis experiments in the 1980s using lasers, well documented WW2 engagements and a handful of battles from other wars. Almost every page in it is packed with evidence or explanations of the complex methodology used to ensure that you could get controlled results from an otherwise messy and chaotic environment. If you are playing or designing wargames then this is one of the books that you absolutely must have on your book shelves (and have read too).

When I was reading the book I was often underlining or marking sections with post-it flags. In particular I drew the following interesting snippets from the book:

  • Tanks suppress defenders, but you need at least two tanks per defending MG to have any effect;
  • Combat degradation is about a factor of 10 compared to performance on firing ranges
  • Anti-tank guns focus the attention of tanks from suppressing MGs, and the bigger the anti-tank gun the more attention it diverts (unsurprisingly);
  • Fortifications & obstacles (i.e. properly prepared defensive positions) increase defence effectiveness by a factor of 1.65;
  • In defending against a 3:1 attack, the average rifleman will inflict 0.5 casualties on the attackers whereas a MG will inflict 4 casualties;
  • 1 in 8 riflemen will cause 4 casualties, and the other 7 none;
  • MG equivalents for casualty causing are: 9 rifles = 1 MG; 1 medium mortar (81mm) = 3 MG;
  • Combat effectiveness grows with experience, improving the casualty exchange ratio;

This is just a taster of what the book contains. Really worth reading. Not only that it is fantastically well illustrated with loads of graphs, diagrams and pictures from the field exercises to illustrate the points in the text.

Continued in Part 2 – Operational Research on Urban Warfare

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CLWG December 2013 Meeting

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Alexander and I went along to today’s session of Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group in Anerley. Despite the engineering works we still got there in time to take part in both sessions, although we nearly missed Brian Cameron’s Weird War Two.

Weird War Two

Captain Britain
Captain Britain (Photo credit: Rooners Toy Photography)

Captain America was the movie of this game, which has been played many times by CLWG (and others) and it is a regular favourite. All it lacks, according to Alexander, is a Green Lantern character, and perhaps a mention for Bucky on the Captain America card!

We joining in with Jon Casey as the Americans and we more or less quietly stayed out of the way and developed our lightning spitting Tesla Cannons just in time to use them to shoot down the Italian Spaghetti Foo flying saucers. However the Germans had a super soldier programme on the go at the same time as the Japanese helicopter programme. So not looking great for the Allies. That said, Captain Britain was almost unstoppable (which is more than can be said for the US super heroes).

As a mature game there isn’t really much room for improvement with it, although we did play with a couple of rules during the game. This was really a matter of clarity in the rules rather than anything major. One of these was about when heroes were available to defend bases, whether you needed to fight both the hero and the base defence. Seeing as the base defences used the same mechanism as the hero combat we decided that you needed to fight twice, and that your hits carried over between consecutive battles. This made it an advantage in defending your base if it was attacked. Although this didn’t apparently make much difference when the much enhanced Captain Britain attacked the Italian base and won three consecutive combats without suffering a single hit! The other rule we played with was the one granting the ability to reroll the dice once. As played this was re-rolling once for each dice roll, because only once overall made it much weaker than the +1 that most of the other upgrades offered. However being able to re-roll any dice roll once turned out to be over-balancing in the other direction. So a compromise of re-rolling up to two die rolls per combat (which was the first to inflict three hits won) was adopted. This seemed to work, although we only played a few combats after changing the rule.

 

Panzer Pusher

English: IWM caption : 17-pdr anti-tank gun of...
English: IWM caption : 17-pdr anti-tank gun of the 21st Anti-Tank Regiment, Guards Armoured Division, guards the approaches to Nijmegen Bridge. Nederlands: 17-pdr anti-tank gun van het 21e Anti Tank regiment, Guards Armoured Division, bewaken de toegang tot de Waalbrug in Nijmegen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This was an idea from Jim Wallman on something that might be feasible for a wargames show. The game involved using binoculars to identify tank pictures (printed to scale) on tables at the other side of the hall. Once the spotter identified the tank then target orders (using the standard Group, Range, Indication, Target)  were given to the gunner who pointed the anti-tank gun model at the chosen target and then put their hand up to ‘fire’.

Jim had done a fair amount of prep in that there was a list of about 40 tanks each of which had a small and large front image and a large side image printed on card. These were what we were looking at. To make it a little easier he gave us the list of tanks (but without images) so that we had a smaller number of types to choose from.

Overall it was fun, although I personally didn’t know some of the models, and between us we got them all. Some of them I think only because we could chance guessing the ones we didn’t know off the list we’d been given. The gunner aspect got forgotten quite quickly, other than running to collect the ammo from the chair in front of where we all sat. The gun line being fixed meant that the tables with the tanks on moved towards us. This made it slightly more cardboard box simulator ish because we were still and the tanks came onto us. Using the binos also helped this feel, perhaps as a demo game it needs a tin helmet and some snadbags to rest the binos on?

What it did do was remind me of tank duel and think about perhaps trying to get that going with some of Alexander’s friends round our place in the summer (when there will be room to play it on the patio (it needs quite a bit of space to work properly does tank duel).

 

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games, roleplaying

A215 Short Fiction: Daprav – A Creation Myth

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As part of my Creative Writing course I need to write a short story for my next assignment. So rather than racking my brains about it I’ve been going back over stuff I’d written, but not finished, in the past for some inspiration. I also plan to do the exercises in the book to see what that sparks up too. Anyway I was looking through my role-playing archives and went through a fantasy game I used to run where I made up all of the setting myself rather than using a published one (there are about 17k words on this, and on top of that a stack of index cards). I was rather taken by the creation myth I wrote for the primary god in a theocracy.

Daprav

It is important to distinguish between Daprav Himself and the Church, which forms the bulk of his worshippers. Daprav is an active paternalistic God by inclination. He favours wandering amongst his people in disguise, perhaps to keep an eye on them. He is also known for speaking to His prophets in the heart of their soul, although He is not above manifesting should those prophets need a major miracle performing.

The worshippers of Daprav don’t have faith, they have knowledge. The evidence of His existence is a daily phenomenon. His priests work many miracles and are enjoined to look after the flock, tending the ill and feeding the hungry. This is tempered with an injunction on the people to obey the word of Daprav, and by extension of the priesthood.

In the beginning…

Daprav is the creator of the world and all the things in it. He did this a very long time ago and spent many millennia wandering through it revelling in the beauty of his creation. He taught the early men a great deal and established many temples, each bearing slight differences according to the aspects he displayed to the tribe that built the temple. However all men were one in their devotion to Daprav and he was able to ensure that there was no strife.

One day whilst hunting with the Obor Tribe in the great fastness of the Green Forest Daprav came across an enchanted grove. This intrigued Him as He had not enchanted the grove nor had any of the priests that He had empowered with his miracles. Entering the grove He called out to its enchanter. Out from behind a tree stepped a powerful sorceror. Daprav commanded him to speak his name.

“I am known as Hapt and I was born to work magic”.

Others also stepped out from behind other trees numbering thirteen in total. They also spake their names:

“Temed, the giver of gifts” a female holding a box;

“Mistear, an archer of great repute” a slim young woman knocking an arrow to her longbow;

“Miral, the killer of many” an older male with many scars on his body and a huge axe;

“Dado, an enchanter, I created this grove” a bearded man in white robes with a golden sickle;

“Fabrius, also a creator of magics” a youth short in stature and stocky with it;

“Eubulus, a singer of songs and a teller of tales” a young man in patched clothes and holding a set of pipes;

“Aulos, the healer of wounds” a woman wearing white with braided blonde hair;

“Horin, the lover of all” a full-breasted woman with red lips and a jar of wine;

“Mousai, protector of the innocent” a man clad in armour from head to foot;

“Drok, the joker” a mischevious looking youngster dressed all in red;

“Valdese, a brave and gallant warrior” tall, dark and handsome, a man to break the hearts of many a maiden, and to carry off the souls of men in battle;

“Ojibwa, a thief and a damned good one” a medium sized woman with a lithe look to her movements as she stepped out from behind the tree.

“Why have you enchanted this grove? And why are you all here?” Daprav asked.

“We want to be Gods also, and you have the means to make that so.” Answered Hapt who appeared to be their leader. “We are the foremost amongst our kind and desire to share your divinity. Will you give it to us?”.

“No. This cannot be so. You must go from here and forever banish any thought of elevating yourselves to godhood”.

“If you will not co-operate then we shall take it from you.”

And with that the thirteen worked their magic as they had planned. They cast a spell on Daprav the like of such has never before or since been seen. Their careful preparations however went awry. Instead of stealing the Divinity from Daprav they instead put him into an endless slumber. They were able to visit the world as spirits and speak unto the people thereon, but were forever banished as punishment for attempting to make themselves Gods.

Had Daprav not been sent into a deep sleep He would have been able to counter their dealings with the various tribes and prevent the strife that was to come to His perfect creation. Each of the thirteen brought their own gift to the world, and with it some corruption of the people. Over the years the tribes formed their own sects and religions as the memory of Daprav was corrupted and forgotten. In time all living people had forgotten of Daprav’s very existence. However He continued to exist, trapped in the sacred grove.

After about two millennia the growth of the tribes had reduced the Green Forest to a fraction of its former size and brought the grove from the depths to its very edge. He appeared in a dream to His prophet Reatham who was sleeping nearby. Reatham was a hunter and Daprav placed images of plentiful game in his dreams along with clues to the location of the grove. Reatham found his way to the grove and woke Daprav.

After such a long hibernation Daprav was weak and required sustenance to build His strength back to its former glory. However with no followers or temples He could not gain strength from sacrifices. Reatham went out amongst the people and preached to them about the goodness of Daprav. However not all was well with the world. The spirits of the thirteen were still strong and afraid that an awakened Daprav would take revenge on them stirred up the people to act against Daprav’s supporters.

Reatham was killed by an angry mob incited by the spirit of Miral. The mob were persuaded that Reatham was enthralled by an evil spirit that meant to destroy the livelihood of the town. It was all Daprav could do to avoid being torn apart himself. After escaping from the mob He travelled about the world gradually building up strength and itinerant followers one by one. After some time He spoke to Rontium and commanded that he feed the poor and homeless in his district and to tell them that the food came from Daprav.

Strengthened by the prayers of the faithful Daprav was able to regain some of His powers and perform minor miracles. Many of the worshippers didn’t realise that He was the deity and instead thought Him to be a priest of Daprav, so diminished was His power. One believer who saw Him truly was Anley, a lay healer. She helped and healed the sick in His name. This boosted His following still further and in time restored more of His powers.

It was about this time that the worship of Daprav became the main religion in the small town of Balham, now known as Templeton. With the growth of His following He was able to stand up to the spirits of the thirteen and make overt use of His powers to protect Balham. It was about this time that the Duke of the District was persuaded by the spirit of Miral to destroy Balham and kill all of the people living there. He gathered his forces and attacked the town.

Daprav called down a lightening bolt from the heavens and smote the Duke from his saddle. Many of the disheartened troops fled, although many others switched sides and pledged their allegiance to Daprav, including Earl Shabas who vowed his life to the God to atone for his previous wrongs against the people of Daprav. Daprav heard the oath and granted him the name of Sir Waldo with His blessing and the ability to heal the wounds of others simply by laying his hands on the afflicted part. Sir Waldo went on to lead his men to glory in the wars of independence that the Church of Daprav fought with those misguided by the spirits. 

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A215 TMA01 – Night Patrol

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Here is the text I submitted for the Creative Writing assignment. The first and third parts are unaltered. I lightly edited Part 2 based on the feedback received (in net terms I added five words). Part 1 is a freewrite, intended to spark ideas based on a prompt. Part 2 is, in my case, a piece of autobiographical writing (my apologies if anyone recognises the events in question). Part 3 is a reflection on the process of doing the assignment.

Part 1: Freewrite on prompt ‘Walking at Night’

Some of the most fun I ever had was wandering about in the dark. As a teenager I used to play outside at night, walking through the streetlights, with others playing hide and seek in the dark corners. It taught me to move silently and to use shadows to sneak back to the lamp-post we used as the home base. Later I put those skills to a different use wandering British Army training areas armed to the teeth and looking for trouble. Everything was secured so that it wouldn’t rattle, money was left behind, loose bits of equipment tied or taped down using dark green paracord, black electician’s tape or black gaffer tape depending on what it was. When I was done I would jump up and down and shake my body like there was a disco thumping, all the while listening for rattles, squeaks and rustles.

Preparations complete I would go with the other members of the patrol into the dark. The landscape always looks different at night, especially without lights. Crossing a wide open field is very hard, landmarks can usually only be made out a few yards ahead, even in bright moonlight the horizons are a lot closer than in daylight. 

Part 2: Autobiographical writing ‘Night Patrol‘

I’m on point for the patrol. The countryside renders in dark blue and grey, lit by stars and a sliver of moon. The horizon is close, sky and grass blend together less than 100 metres away. Trees stand darkly, visible further out. We move in foot long grass parallel to a track, avoiding waist high patches of thick, jagged gorse.

Each step is slow and deliberate. My left foot moves forwards. Toes gently touch the ground before I place the rest of my foot down. I slowly pass my weight from right leg to left as I scan the vague horizon. I listen carefully. My full attention is to the front, others behind me are watching to the left, right and rear. We move silently and without lights. It’s November in Inverness and the air smells icily fresh. The breeze cools my face. Moving makes me overheat because of the weight I carry, 30 pounds of food, water and ammunition round my waist, my combat jacket laden with chocolate, notebook, torch, knife, whistle and more ammo. I’m wearing multiple layers, t-shirt, shirt, jersey, combat jacket, scarf, woollen hat, helmet and two pairs of gloves. These are unavoidable, we may lie in ambush for hours.

 

Ahead the ground undulates, which means we’re close to the trenches. The spoil is camouflaged with turf, but it stands proud of the surroundings. A barbed wire entanglement resolves itself ten metres in front, the wire only apparent when I can touch it. The patrol commander produces white mine tape from his jacket. He ties some to the wire as we skirt around it. In the gap, I spot a hair thin trip-wire stretching blackly across my path. One end is on the stake holding a corner of the entanglement, the other lost in the dark.

I wave the patrol into cover before carefully placing white tape over the trip-wire. I follow it to find a flare on a post. I want to deactivate the flare, but the patrol commander shakes his head. We mark the trip-wire and pass the patrol over it. A few metres further on I see sandbags atop the nearest hillock. Another silent hand signal and we form a line. Moments later a soldier is highlighted on our skyline. Looking around I observe three other trenches.

I hold a thunderflash prominently for the patrol to see. The commander next to me does the same, and together we pull the strikers. It sounds like a giant match being struck, but doesn’t seem to attract any reaction. I throw mine in a great arc to land near the closest trench. As it leaves my hand I count in my head. I re-take control of my rifle. I get to four. Lightning flashes accompanied by a tremendous bang. The patrol starts shooting. The night air now smells of burnt carbon and fireworks.

There are shouts of “Stand To!”. We’ve taken them by surprise. Return fire pops and crackles all across the position, not just the trenches closest to us. Most don’t appear to know where we are. I can see muzzle flashes of the closer firers. Each shot is accompanied by a blue flash, and I can tell that they aren’t pointed at me. I hear several flares hiss up and burst with a soft pop. A series of short-lived, cold suns brighten the neighbourhood. Sharp, moving shadows subside as they drift downwards on a parachute. Clear fire orders can be heard and the shooting slows slightly.

Surprise over, we leave in reverse order. While I provide covering fire, a comrade runs into the tripwire we marked and gets tangled. Three others bunch round to help. I hear inventive swearing and the flare fizzing. I close one eye to preserve my night vision, they are clearly silhouetted. Before following I find a smoke grenade and pull the pin. I check the breeze, release the lever and lob it to obscure my departure.

Speed is now more important than stealth. I charge past my friends, beyond the flare light, throwing myself onto the ground. I fire a few times until they thunder past me. The commander shouts to regroup at the lone tree. I sprint after them. When I get to the tree there is a feeling of exhilaration. Clouds of steam show how much exercise we’ve done. Behind us there is still shooting. I pull a water bottle from my belt, it is chilled as though from the fridge and it tastes sweet. 

 

Part 3: Reflective commentary

Free writing is new to me, I hadn’t previously written from a prompt. Usually I have an idea for a story, I think about it and then type. The free write shown here is a straight first draft, and I stopped when I got to the requisite word count. It triggered memories of 25+ years ago when I regularly walked in the dark.

I originally tried to write some fiction based on the freewrite. I took a piece that I had written for the online tutorial and tried to see how I could use the techniques learnt in the tutorial. I wrote about 400 words but decided that the link to the freewrite was tenuous. So I decided to try writing what I knew, and wrote an autobiographical piece that directly flowed from the freewrite. While writing it I consciously tried to describe the scene in terms of sight, sound, smell and hearing as per exercise 3.3 in the coursebook. The first draft came out at almost double the required word count, however reading it back I felt that I could edit it to fit.

I posted the first draft of Part 1 & Part 2 on the Forum (Kemp, 2013) in the hope of getting some feedback. There was one response, which made some suggestions which I directly incorporated into a second draft ([REDACTED], 2013). As well as those suggestions I re-ordered some paragraphs to make the narrative flow better, re-wrote it into present tense and removed repetition and superfluous words as per the feedback from the online tutorial. This brought the draft down to just over 800 words, which although on the high end was within the tolerance allowed. I then posted this revised draft on the forum in case there was any further feedback. A few days later I then re-edited to make it shorter, testing each word for necessity.

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CLWG, design, games, Iraq Wars

Games on COIN

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This post is prompted by an excellent post by the guys at On Violence. You should read Capturing Australia! COIN is Boring Pt.3 to which this was my belated comment.

McCormick model of insurgency
McCormick model of insurgency (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My apologies for coming late to this one, I’ve been on leave for a couple of weeks now and being spending time with the family.

I’ve been interested in designing a counter insurgency game since the mid 1990s. The original trigger for my interest were the decolonisation conflicts of the British Empire. This wasn’t a board game, nor a computer game. The group I belong to designs face to face games for multiple participants, a bit like the sort of command post exercises those of us who’ve done some military or civil contingencies time would recognise.

I never ran the decolonisation game that prompted this, it needed 20 players, which was too many for the free venues and too few to make it economic in the hired halls. However there were a number of spin-off games, including a look at the Palestine/Israel insurgency in 1945-48; Malaya in the 1950s and Aden in the early 60s.

By the time I’d looked at those traditional insurgencies we got into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. My most recent attempt, which sort of almost counts as a board game (it has a map, which is really only for flavour) looked at the experience from the point of view of the Afghan farmers, and the drivers that took them to insurgency (or not as the case happens). I ran it twice, both times with someone who served in Afghanistan as one of the players.

I come at all this as a hobbyist. I make the games I’d like to play but cannot find commercially. The same is true of the people that I play with, we form a community of game design activists. (Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group, mainly in the UK). Over the years I’ve played games as both an insurgent and a counter-insurgent. They hold a lot of game play and interest. However a lot of it defies easy mechanisms that you can write down on a few pages than just about anyone can understand.

Part of this is that insurgencies aren’t all the same. What works in dealing with one group might only make things work with another. You need to get inside the culture and methods of the insurgents to defeat them. Or at least that is how I read it. Sometimes it will be unpalatable for modern players to play those games, either because of a close connection with someone hurt by the insurgency, or because current moral standards differ from those of the period or culture concerned.

That said, I think it is possible to write good games about insurgency. They just need to be specifically tailored to the insurgency in question and the players appropriately briefed in advance. You also need players that will roleplay it a little rather than just play to mechanisms.

 

– See more at: http://onviolence.com/?e=739

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