Tag Archives: Military

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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games

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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Books

New Model Army by Adam Roberts

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It has a Fab Concept. However it doesn’t quite work. Some of it is too heavy handed and not well enough researched to be credible.

I bought this book because I liked the premise, a change in the nature of warfare brought about by better information available to the whole army through a wiki style network. It has promise for some very interesting stories, but the author instead wrote a political polemic based on very old fashioned stereotypes and without bothering to do his research.

Accepting that our narrator is probably unreliable, given he is definitely going insane, and the twist that happens at the end (no spoilers) it is clear that we cannot rely on him. However there are bits of his prior experience with the British Army that just don’t work for me (having been in the TA from 1989-1992 and knowing a fair number of current and recently ex-service personnel).

The primary character is supposed to have served in the British Army for a few months before deserting because he didn’t like the extreme discipline. This itself is fair enough, a few months would see a soldier through basic training and into the specialist training for their arm of service. This is the period when the most discipline is imposed. All through the book the success of the new model armies is based on the rigid inflexibility of traditional forces that cannot think for themselves. This is the bit I find most difficult to swallow, even back in the 1980s soldiers were being taught to solve problems and work through gaps in information and orders, especially regulars that were deployed to Northern Ireland. By the current period, with the huge increase in peacekeeping operations and the small insurgencies thinking is a core skill for all ranks, not just senior officers. The stereotype might have been true for the 1950s conscripts, but even then I doubt it.

This is not my only problem with the book though. While it is clear that the author can write decent prose, there is still not a whole lot of thinking going on about the consequences of how the technology changes things. There is some in there, but not enough. For example why didn’t the British Army just turn on massive jammers of the wifi signal when they came up against the NMAs? Also why are the NMA better on a man for man basis when they are largely untrained volunteers up against properly trained soldiers in a veteran army? I can get local superiority allowing them to win battles, but in an exchange of fire I don’t see how wiki info turns people into better shots.

Anyway, the book is riddled with holes and could have been edited into a crisper better book. Unfortunately it wasn’t.

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Books, History, WW2

Allies at Dieppe – 4 Commando and the US Rangers by Will Fowler

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This is an excellent history of a small unit action set in the wider context of the war, and well explained for those not steeped in military history or the second world war.

Lord Lovat, Newhaven, 1942 IWM caption : THE DIEPPE RAID, 19 AUGUST 1942 Lt Col The Lord Lovat, CO of No. 4 Commando, at Newhaven after returning from the raid. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The author starts with setting the background, explaining the grand sweep of the war and the events that lead to the formation of the commandos in mid-1940 and then a high-level overview of the commando training and the early operations so that you understand what commandos are all about, and the strategic context that lead to the assault on Dieppe in late summer 1942.

The build up to the attack is well covered, based heavily on the account by the embedded journalist that accompanied 4 Commando. After that the assault narrative splits into two, one for each of the groups that landed, and based on a mixture of accounts and interviews with various survivors of the operation.

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Books, design, History, WW2

Book Review – To Reason Why, by Denis Forman

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This is more than just an infantry officer’s memoir. Denis Forman was closely involved in the Battle School movement that transformed the British Army’s infantry training during the second world war. He then went on to serve alongside Lionel Wigram (the primary proponent and intellectual leader of the Battle School movement) in Italy. The story is as much about Lionel Wigram as it is about Denis Forman himself.

However one of the stand out pieces for me is the honest treatment of how men deal with battle. The psychological impact and how unreliable things become is often not mentioned in most memoirs, there is an unspoken need not to embarrass anyone, or bring up things better left to lie. This book manages to discuss it without shaming anyone.

Also, the appendices have copies of the reports into the lessons from the Sicily campaign drawn by Lionel Wigram. Not published at the time because they were too controversial they tell an interesting story of how the theory met reality.

More on Denis Forman’s war experiences are available on the web at http://www.war-experience.org/collections/land/alliedbrit/forman/default.asp

Just before the war started Denis Forman graduated from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1939. He was certain that there was going to be a war but didn’t want to commit himself to the Army until it started, so he took a short-term post with a shipping agency to avoid being sent to the Far East to make his fortune (which is where he was being directed by his elders). When war broke out he was in the Netherlands, and he returned to join the Argylls where he was promptly sent off to be an officer cadet.

His description of joining an infantry battalion and his efforts as a subaltern within it are priceless. He honestly shows how desperate the British Army was in the Summer of 1940 and how it was manning (and ‘leading’) its infantry battalions. More than enough to make you wonder about what would have happened if the Germans had invaded (although I like to believe that they probably had some very similar issues).

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Books, History, Scottish, WW2

Black Watch by Tom Renouf – Book Review

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This is a campaign history written by a veteran of 5th Bn Black Watch who later became the secretary of the Highland Division Association. Direct personal accounts, both from the author and other veterans, are used to tell the story of the 51st Highland Division in a very personal way. This book offers some new perspectives on the battles of the 51st, especially those in the final months of the war in which the author was personally involved.

Continue reading Black Watch by Tom Renouf – Book Review →

Books, design, History, WW2

Defeat Into Victory

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IWM caption : THE BRITISH ARMY IN BURMA 1945. ...
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A friend sent me a copy of Field Marshal Bill Slim‘s Defeat Into Victory. It has always been on my list of books I’d like to read, but somehow I’d never quite got round to acquiring a copy. The version I have is a reading copy of the original edition, with fold out maps all through it.

The reading style is very engaging and easy to read, especially if you have the space to fold out the map at the end of the chapter so that you can follow all the places when they appear in the narrative. It was the first time I’d read about the ebb and flow of the war in Burma (even though my grandfather drove a DUKW out there). So I found it very interesting, the nature of warfare was hugely different that both Europe and North Africa (and I suspect even the Pacific Islands). In some respects the war fought in Burma was more like recent modern wars with low troop densities, long logistics tails and a massive reliance on air power.

The other engaging bit about the book was that Slim shows you the development of the army from a road bound Western linear fighting force into an all arms, all round defence, jungle fighting machine. In the beginning the British Army is out of its depth and way beyond the ken of its commanders or troops. The Japanese have infiltration tactics that the British just can’t cope with, and are so stubborn in defence that they cannot be shifted when they gain a hold. The British just dissolve and retreat rapidly out of the way (mostly).

It isn’t just a story of the British Army, as well as colonial forces (Indians and Africans mostly) there is also the alliance warfare aspect of the war. He liaises with Vinegar Joe Stillwell and the Chinese Army too.

Later, the British manage to shorten their lines of communication, build defences and work out how to deal with the Japanese. Once they do, then the tables turn, although it takes much stubborn fighting to shift the enemy. There is a good narrative that explains the constraints the 14th Army was operating under, the logistics challenges and how these were overcome and also the details of the operations. Occasionally there are little personal vignettes of visits to the front, or reports of battles.

One of the things I noted was the commentary on how few prisoners were taken, mostly it was a grim fight to the death by both sides. A typical note on a Japanese attack was that there was one prisoner taken and 600 Japanese bodies recovered from the 14th Army positions.

However, great as all this is, the last section of the book is the best. In the last chapter Slim gives his opinions on why things turned out the way that they did and also on what he draws as lessons for the future. Given that this was written in 1957 he has a lot to say that I think was quite prescient about current operations (and it might also have been right for the post-nuclear exchange as well, but thankfully we’ve avoided that).

The thing I do wonder, is why are all our operational games about the European war? The furthest East we manage is the Russian front, when there is whole load of interesting stuff going on out in the Far East. I suspect I may well return to this when I have some time to sort out another game design.

 

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Books, History, Iraq Wars

The Defense of Jisr Al-Doreaa

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This is an excellent update of an old classic.

Two books in one, the author’s have brought Swinton’s Duffer’s Drift and re-written it for the modern conflicts (which bear more than a passing resemblance to the Boer War). Swinton’s book is in the second half of the volume.  The basis for Duffer”s Drift (if you aren’t familiar with it already) is that a young officer en route to the Boer War has a series of dreams about his first independent command. In each dream it all goes horribly wrong, but on waking he learns some lessons which he then takes with him into the next dream (without remembering the details of the previous dream). Over the course of six dreams he manages to learn enough lessons for a successful outcome.

The scenario is well set out, with appropriate maps and there is a good logical flow through the dream sequences where the young officer progressively learns from the situation. Although the situations and capabilities are not identical, you can easily compare the Boer War situation to its more modern counterpart about a century later. The lessons are broadly similar, and for those interested in how to train young officers or soldiers then it makes a worthwhile read.

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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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