"Firing into the Brown" #19 - JC memorial game report, Jubilee and stuff..

"So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manoeuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy".

Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King"

Time for another update..

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As promised - a write up on the game - which was short but sweet, I think it safe to say.. 😊

First the field of Mars:

6' x 4' ..  Hessians enter on the road opposite, Franco-American on the road edge nearest.. by the definitions in the rules I am using (the Will McNally AWI rules [clicky]) woods are "open", farm is classed as a 'large building' - able to hold two units.

Forces (following) - as per the last Blog post - British main force in light blue, British reinforcements in red bottom left. American main force red top right, and their reinforcements in pink..  JC himself in green, watching over all ..  😊

..and so on to the game...

Both sides chose to send one brigade "either way"  from the entry point - the only main difference in tactics being that DG retained his forces in column for longer (to make better distance), and I chose to race my lights (the Indians) forward to occupy the farm complex as soon as possible, and I also deployed my artillery sooner (I took the view long range shooting was better than no shooting)...

Couple of turns in and DG appears to be lambasting his troops for their poor performance to date.. 😁

Couple of turns later and my Indians have now occupied the farm, but on the far side have sallied out to give DG's artillery a bloody nose..  in the distance clear evidence of bloody fighting as two of DG's line regiments have routed to the table edge..

Neither side opted to call up reserves on moves 3 or 5, I think both of us were happy with the progress we were making and didn't want to incur the additional points costs..

As it happened however, when points were tallied on move 7 of 8, DG, with four regiments and one of the artillery units routing tipped over the losing points level, and the game was mine.. just..  I think I was a point and a half behind him.

Four of my units shaken (yellow dice)

View from the opposite side (following)..

An excellent - but short - close fought game..

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"You are so crooked, Dickie, that if you swallowed a nail, you would shit a corkscrew". (Mountbatten according to a quote ascribed to Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, the former Chief of the Imperial General Staff 😮)

Just finished Bishop's book on Jubilee, the code name for the Dieppe raid in 1942 - excellent book, well argued, and yet I still remain in slightly mixed minds about what the real purpose of the raid was ..

Bishop's narrative (which is brilliant - well worth a read) would have you believe that Mountbatten was a charismatic but vanity driven commander without any innate military skill who was looking for something he could pin first, his colours to, and secondly the colours of the clandestine organisation he led at that time, to..  He was a man desperately in need of a victory and the approbation that came with it..  along the way there are a cast of characters great and good who weren't going to get in the way of this "mission", until in the end the incredibly 5,000 brave boys of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division were thrown on to beaches where 3,367 were killed, wounded or taken prisoner, a casualty rate of 68 percent....  

A catalogue of disasters..

• Montgomery (to my mind) as one of the early generals in charge of planning eventually washed his hands and sloped his shoulders and went off to the desert without a backward glance, despite clearly having misgivings
• the Canadian commanders were so desperate to get their troops into a fight after years of training and no action, they accepted the plan as given them.
• The Navy wouldn't commit the capital ships that everyone knew were needed to provide the offensive preparatory barrage (and I don't believe that was a wrong decision given what later transpired)
• the cloak of secrecy was such no one would take the chance of getting a spy into Dieppe to actually see what was waiting for them, and if they had they would have seen the depth of preparation the Germans had put in place - not because they were expecting this raid in specific, but as art of their general level of preparedness..

What I remain in mixed minds about is whether the raid really was a preparation for a future D-Day, or whether that was just the justification for the bloodshed that had ensued - that everyone told everyone so many times afterwards that was the prime reason for the raid, that in the end even the men who planned it, believed it..

I think I am in less mixed mind that whether that was the actual purpose or not, one thing that did come out of it was some very, very valuable lessons were learned, that were acted on later in the war in both Normandy, and Italy/Tunisia..

Sobering..  "go, Canada!"..   9/10

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 "Laters", as the young people are want to say...