I can remember as a child being fascinated that you could measure the age of a tree by counting the number of rings you saw through its trunk when it was cut down. It didn't take long to occur to me that to do so one had to ensure the demise of the tree. Not a bad realisation for a five year old. I was particularly fascinated by the very idea that in looking at those rings you were looking back in time, and later learning taught me that it is possible to read much about the tree's life and growth, and climatic events, from those rings. Similarly the geology of landforms and the strata that are evident when uplift or erosion occurs all tell a story about aeons long past. It was no wonder I was a Dr Who fan from that very first broadcast in Aotearoa NZ.
So yesterday I had just finished painting another batch of figures, and sat staring at my paint palette. It is (or was) a piece of glass maybe 10-15cm square that my father gave me when I started painting figures and models. I was probably around twelve years old. That piece of glass began at around 5mm thick. It was the thickness that held my gaze. I measured it .. it's now 25mm thick at its thickest.
The current state of my paint palette
A paint pot next to the palette, for scale
It struck me that if I looked at the underside of the palette I was looking at paint that had been laid down over 55 years ago. I was looking back in time. There is blue, and yellow, and green, and white, and grey and.... I can't recall what I might have been painting. Maybe the blue was some Airfix French Napoleonic infantry? Maybe the green was an Airfix M3 Lee/Grant tank?
The underside of the palette
Again, for scale...
Interesting how the mind works, isn't it. Hopefully I have a few more years of painting left in me, although I doubt enough to add another 20mm to the thickness of the palette.
I have found myself increasingly interested in the role of cavalry in World War 1. It's not an arm that we readily associate with the western front beyond 1914, although I think it played more of a part in the more fluid battles of 1918. However it does seem to have played a bigger role on the eastern front, and in the middle east. In the middle east there are useful accounts of actions in which cavalry were often used as mobile infantry able to cover longer distances. Terry Kinloch's book is a fascinating read.
I'm currently on the lookout for reliable sources on the western and eastern fronts in order to read further.
In the meantime I have been painting up some 20mm figures for the period, and the theatres, anticipating some battles to celebrate the 25th anniversary of my WW1 rules of preference: Great War Spearhead. The cavalry figures are from the Strelets range, bought probably 20 years ago, and left to languish in the infamous wargamers' 'lead/plastic pile'. We may fight some eastern front actions, but equally some actions from the Russian Civil War, or the Russo-Polish War.
These are the latest additions, some Strelets 'Terek Cossacks', and 'Don Cossacks'. My basing preference is one mounted and one foot figure per base. It's my way of matching these figures to my mental paradigm about how cavalry were used in the period. It's my 'affectation', if you like.
The assembled Russian cavalry so far.
These figures in front were 'conversions' that I did probably 45 years ago, using Airfix ACW figures, and swapping the heads for those from some Airfix WW1 British Infantry... the things we did, eh?
I'm going to call this one finished, for now anyway: the Victorian Science Fiction Prussian army for HotT (Hordes of the Things).
It is composed of : 3 x airboats 2 x flyers
3 x riders
2 x artillery
6 x warband
8 x shooters
3 x blades (one of which is intended as the general)
2 x hordes
1 x hero
1 x magician
1 x behemoth
The army is based around two boxes of Airfix 20mm WW1 German infantry. These are old molds, and the flash was profuse on some of the figures.
The blade general element on the right
The two most recently completed shooter bases, using some of the many prone figures in the box. I'd run out of kneeling and standing firing figures (although I still have plenty of the infantry carrying the man pack flamethrowers)
I liked the idea of prone riflemen firing while taking fire orders from their NCO who has his head up
The Kaiser's Aerial Navy: 3 airboats, and two flyers
I may see the inspiration for one or two other elements as time goes by. This lot totals 73 points, so for Big Battle games there isn't too much choice.
We all love a good clichē, don't we, and if your interest lies in the First World War, then you have rich pickings. While there has been a lot of revisionist history published since the 1960s that attempts to debunk many of these they still persist, and Rowan Atkinson's representation of the classic WW1 British clichē is one of the best.
I have just finished reading the first volume of what is perhaps the most thorough debunking of some of the myth surrounding world war 1 that I have seen: 'Zero Hour Z Day 1st July 1916', by Jonathan Porter. I was gifted the first two volumes which, upon arrival, came with a courier sticker that declared their net weight at 2.6kg, so these are weighty tomes in both the intellectual and the physical senses.
This first volume analyses the operations of XIII Corps operating between Maricourt and Mametz, on the British right adjoining the French army. XIII Corps has the distinction of being the only Corps to have achieved all of its objectives for 1st July in a battle that has been analysed to the nth degree in the nearly 110 years since. Porter begins with an overview of the situation with Fourth Army and the formulation of its offensive plan. He includes in this preliminary stage an analysis of the geology of the area of operations, an issue that had a significant impact on the Corps' success. He gives a detailed breakdown of the opposing forces, the preparations, the preliminary bombardment (if you want to know how many shrapnel vs HE shells a battery fired, this is your place to go), and a detailed description of that first day of the battle for each battalion, brigade, and division in the corps.
He makes extensive reference to unit war diaries in a way I have not seen done before, even though this primary source material has been available for most of the time that has passed since. These references provide an unprecedented level of detail, and it is here that Porter debunks much of the myth. The narrative is also provided with plenty of colour with Porter's use of fragments from personal diaries and letters, and of course the obligatory official histories.
Porter's almost hour by hour narrative provides an extraordinary level of detail. Such is the detail that even before I had reached his final chapter offering his analysis and interpretation, I had arrived at several conclusions of my own about how the Corps achieved this level of success. Included in my thinking were issues of thorough preparation and rehearsal, innovative use of what in modern parlance we call minor tactics (tactics at section, platoon, and company level),enabled by a high level of trust in the initiative of junior leaders especially, and the emphasis on innovative use of lewis gun and stokes mortar teams. I had not realised how flexibly the 3" stokes mortar batteries had been employed once the battle began.
In discussing these minor tactics for example, in his chapter on 53rd Brigade Porter says:
It would be suicide to advance in extended line so a change of tactic was established. Sections and half sections would advance in short rushes using whatever cover was available - shell craters or hollows. While one section moved, another would provide covering fire. (P 407)
In modern parlance we'd call this 'bounding'.
The issue of the subsurface geology of the battlefield I found fascinating. In the XIIIth Corps area south of Mametz , the soil was "a deep layer of top soil and/or clay and then chalk" whereas north of their area there was a shallow layer of topsoil with underlying hard chalk. The chalk had the effect of protecting deep bunkers, whereas the topsoil and clay does not. Hence many of the deep bunkers dug to protect troops of the German garrison were collapsed or rendered unusable by the preliminary bombardment. An additional effect of this was that the defenders withdrew most of their troops to the third and fourth trench lines, leaving sentries, and some MMGs, to give early warning and hold up any attack until it reached their main defensive line. Combined with the effective wire cutting bombardments, this meant that many units gained quick access to the German first lines. From there, where further attack across the open was halted by small arms and MG fire from the main bodies of troops, bombing parties (specialists armed primarily with mills grenades) proceeded to fight down communication trenches, clearing as they went, in order to then attack the main defences.
In his final analysis Porter ascribes XIII Corps' success to five key factors:
Command and leadership, from the Corp and divisional commanders, right down to platoon and section leaders. Each divisional commander had created a leadership culture that emphasised individual initiative, and repeated and thorough rehearsal meant that every man knew what was expected of him, what he had to do and where he needed to be, so that when successive layers of leadership became casualties, those below were capable of stepping in to fill the void.
Training and rehearsals. Porter shows that XIII Corps units spent on average several more days in rehearsals than units elsewhere in Fourth Army
Special weapons and mining, from the use of mines of up to 5000lbs of explosive to livens flame projectors, gas, and 4" stokes mortars laying planned smoke screens (something I'd not previous been aware of)
Innovative tactics which included specialist teams as described previously, but also in deployment in the attack which mean that reserves were right where they needed to be when needed
Artillery support, which included several batteries of French 220 mm mortars. An essential part of the artillery fire plan had included what proved to be a very effective programme of wire cutting from the many batteries of 18pdrs, and the 2" stokes mortars, and effective counter battery work which reduced the opposing German artillery to near (but not quite) impotence
Porter uses a combination of text, contemporary maps and aerial photographs, and perhaps most helpfully modern day oblique colour photographs to describe and explain the actions of the day down to individual platoons and sections. This combination makes it very easy to understand how action across the battlefield unfolded during the day.
An example of a modern oblique photographic guide to each attack
Despite XIII Corps' success, there was still an awful toll, 6100 officers and ORs were killed or wounded on the day. John Steinbeck said "All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal", and whether 1 man or 100 men, the cost is too much. However when compared with other action in the war, XIII Corps came out of the day comparatively lightly. Porter gives many of the men are given faces, and where known he acknowledges the places of their eventual burial, although the final resting places of too many men remain unknown, to be commemorated only on the enormous Thiepval memorial.
The books are printed on high quality stock which in itself also contributes to their physical weight. My only criticism is that the text would have benefited from a good editor. There are typographical errors and at times awkward sentence construction that a good editor would have picked up (although from my own publication experiences authoring six books I am only too well aware that even professional editors miss things). That should not however put you off purchasing a copy. If you have any interest in the 'real oil' of what went down on that first day of the Somme, this is a damned fine investment. Thank you Mr Porter for an invaluable contribution to the scholarship of the first world war. Now to read the second volume, and apparently there are more to come.
Still pottering with the VSF Prussians for HotT, and I turned my mind to a couple of flyers. In imagining these I thought that perhaps the Prussians had stuck with the mechanical wing approach to one-man flyers rather than trying such things as rocket or jet packs. So I took a look at some da Vinci drawings, and came up with these.
They are based on this figure from the Airfix WW1 Germans.
The wings are made from light card cut to shape, and scored heavily before painting to represent the 'ribs', the articulation if you prefer.
Given the number of 3 point elements I have chosen to make (again reflecting the idea that the Prussians had opted for an airborne navy with airboats, and artillery), I felt the need for some 1 point elements to allow me to balance things up where necessary. Lurkers simply don't 'feel' Prussian to me. However a commenter on a previous post on the HotT iOGroup (thanks Terry) suggested some Landwehr. So, finally a use for the Airfix marching figures, and those 'casualties' as well, in a couple of horde bases.
I think the army is at about 67 points, so not too far to go to reach the 72 point mark for Big Battle.
I've had an idea for an ironclad 'behemoth' for the Prussian VSF army (for Hordes of the Things) for a while now. I'd been inspired by this sort of thing, but wanted to put my own unique 'spin' on it. I ended up with this:
I began my mapping out what mathematicians call a 'net'..
This was then cut from light card
The 'chimney' (after all, it's VSF, steam driven) came from a small piece of card tubing.
The wheels were left over from some colonial British guns
Applique armoured plates were added. The boiler arrangement is more small card tubing, and the 'condenser coils' are old biro springs. Finally a few boxes and hatches were added.
Now, I'm not that happy with it. I don't feel that it captures the aesthetic I was after, the Prussian land ship look that ought to be more sophisticated than this. However it will do for now, and I did enjoy the creative processes. So that gives 61 of the 72 points needed for Big Battle HotT.. getting there. Maybe some Hordes to even out the numbers, and perhaps some more blade.
The last few weeks have been a little light on the 'gaming front, as other aspects of life took precedence. However things have just started to settle back into their more usual rhythm. Last week I took part n another DBA evening at Keith's where 7 of us played a series of DBA games. I was a little too preoccupied to take any photos. You can find Keith's account of the evening here.
This week I took part in the play testing a new scenario for Adrian and Jon's next Volley and Bayonet scenario book: Seneffe, 1674. A wagon load of gold, used as bait by the Prince of Orange in order to bring the French army to battle, must be driven off the board. A very cool scenario, something very different from the usual game as forces entered the board and the battle escalated. The figures are Adrian's beautiful 15mm Dutch and French.
The following evening four of us got together to play some 24 point Hordes of the Things (HotT) games.
Andy's Weird World war 1 Germans and my British
British behemoth attacks German blade
Orc knight (chariot) general about to meet his end at the hands of Murray's Dwarven blade and hero
First outing for the new VSF Prussian, featuring 3 airboats (it was never going to be an easy army to use)
The airboats
Muray's new Ratmen airboat... an inspired piece
Ratmen blades, and sider riders, all old GW figures repurpose for HotT
The stronghold for Murray's Ratmen
All in all, a nice way to ease back into the weekly 'gaming rhythm.
