1983 Retrospective (or something like that)

 As mentioned in the previous post, the descent into A Levels, hunting for a part time job and joining a club for ‘proper’ wargaming began in September and I can reasonably claim that was the point at which the childlike joy of toy soldiers began to fade into ‘serious’. At 60, I look back and wonder if that is why I am now so jaded with the gaming element of the hobby. John Ruddles got it right.

One of the things that amazes me was how I managed to experiment with so much in the first half of the year: Pony Wars, AWI, Zulu Wars, Commando raids… All on a shoestring budget! I think the inventiveness that characterised younger wargamers in the 70s and 80s has been lost. How many wargamers nowadays start off looking at magazine photos and aim for that, buying into whatever ‘system’ and it’s associated figure ranges has the best advertising, rather than chopping up cardboard boxes and raiding bins (especially the bins from Skool woodwork and art rooms - yes, I did do that) for useful bits and bobs. Or spun through a loo roll if they needed a lighthouse.

Perhaps I’m being unfair, but it would be nice to see people struggling with hair roller armies, or trying to create pipe cleaner cavalry for pipe cleaner infantry. I can do both 😉.

My main inspiration in those early years came from films, comics and Commando books. Of course, I was reading ‘proper’ history books and building my library (courtesy of Bryan Forbes’ bookshop) but who wants to do a ‘Dark Age Infantry Slog’ when you can be Gregory Peck and David Niven? This game was a mix of all those influences.

Sadly, the music which powered me through all my experimentation up to September rapidly went downhill, UB40 being the catalyst (can’t stand them!) and the excruciating Flying Pickets giving the year a musical coup de grace. There were a few honourable exceptions - Lionel Richie, Simple Minds, Assembly - but even groups that had come up with earlier belters were scraping the barrel. Compare Let’s Dance to Modern Love: even Bowie was letting us down! Little did I know Queen were limbering up to save the world…

However, worth a mention was the late, great Bonnie Tyler, whose Total Eclipse of the Heart video was filmed up the road from me in what was Holloway Sanitorium! I actually visited there on a skool trip once. Yes, St Ann’s Heath Middle Skool thought a great day out for the kids was a trip to a functioning mental hospital. Mind you, it’s where most of the teachers should have been.

1984 would see an improvement musically, academically and financially over the final months of 1983, and I mostly enjoyed my Friday nights at Staines, although it was clear I was not part of the ‘in crowd’ and I would not make any friendships, lasting or otherwise. From a gaming perspective it did introduce me to different periods and scales but I’m not sure if I spent my years there just going through the motions and doing what I thought was expected of me, because no matter what I played there was always something missing…

It was the smell of French Marigolds as you rummage around to find a paratrooper with a broken leg.

Anyway, a quick visit to the loft and I found these survivors from the raid. Enjoy!

Lloyd, Ravenwood, Marion & Doctor Jones

Written in 1978!

German mobility!

If I look harder I may find some more bits. Note my WSS generals are being prepped…. 

For men of a certain age…

Let me take you back to… August 1983

 The summer of 1983 was probably the warmest and sunniest since 1976. This was ideal for my purposes as I could set everything up and leave it out overnight, giving me a whole day to play and time to savour every event. In many ways, it was the last gasp of toy soldier innocence: in September I would join a club, start A levels and planning for life in the real world. It would also be the last gasp of cracking chart music as UB40’s awful droning kept Madness off the number one slot, Culture Club’s soft poppy nonsense appeared and the year ended with The Flying Pickets destroying Only You with their bing bong bobbly bollocks. This might be worth a full post later…

Anyway, on with the show!

The Plan

The commandos split into three teams: 3 men (including the sniper) would be parachuted into the jungle to set up a block or ambush on the coast road, the main group would land at the port, which would be secured by the local resistance (leaving a signaller to alert the sub for extraction), and head for the radar station. They would enter as stealthily as possible, take anything of interest and blow up the rest before racing back to port.

All the baddies’ reactions would be diced for - nothing was fixed, I would make it up as I went along, using Recon’s figure skills where I could. After all, I wanted a few surprises! If all went well, it would be a boring game: but the dice gods were not going to let that happen…

This is roughly the makeup of the teams. Sadly, I did not keep all the stats or write a battle report, so this is all from memory. All the commandos and resistance had names, but I can only remember a few.

Team 1: Captain, Lieutenant, RAF Sergeant (Howard), Radar Expert (my Australian officer conversion to Indiana Jones!) with the remainder mostly Australians with one US infantryman (following the US involvement in Take or Destroy. He was named Lloyd, after Jim Lloyd, a character in Centennial which I wrote on his base in 1978!). There was also RSM Peacock, the Matchbox 8th Army Bren gunner who looked like Jack Watson.

Team 2: Sergeant, OR, Sniper (Shepherd) - all Australians.

Team 3: The resistance and Signaller (Thomas).

Act 1: No Plan Survives…

Although the mission started on time and there was perfect coordination between the sub and paras, the parachute landing was chaotic, with the three paper discs going all over the shop and Shepherd breaking his leg on landing, so one down already (very Dirty Dozen)! The others were widely separated, but they eventually managed to work their way to the road. There was a much bigger problem, though: the DAK spotted the parachutes and quickly arranged a force to investigate.

The Italian reaction was… stay in bed.

The main group landed successfully to find only two resistance fighters that answered the call: Ravenwood and Marion (you can see the heavy influence of Raiders on my teenage years!). The captain judged this would not be enough to guard the port, so along with Signaller Thomas one man was left (any more would weaken Team 1 too much). But that should have been enough as was no sign of the DAK and Team 2 was OK, wasn’t it?

Team 1 quickly set off for the radar station, while the DAK assembled a strong search team for what they thought was just bailed aircrew. This force was a Hanomag, a Kubelwagon for the Kapitan and sergeant (Airfix, the sergeant being a DAK grenade thrower that Paddy the moggy had chewed the grenade hand off!) and a Bedford, all fully loaded. There was also a Stalwart but the dice said no.

Team 3 set about fortifying the port as much as possible, fortuitously including a roadblock. At this point, there was still no sign of the enemy, but I thought that would be the most sensible course of action. With Team 2 still scrambling about the French Marigolds, it would prove a good call.

Act 2: Ambush!

The DAK quickly motored down the coast road, reaching the barricade without incident. The hanomag passengers dismounted to clear the obstruction, but luck was with the commandos this time as the DAK Kapitan failed to smell a rat and dismount his remaining troops. Suddenly, Team 2 arrived and all hell broke loose, with both teams pouring fire into the hanomag group, catching them in a crossfire. Despite the good start, the armoured support soon told and the hanomag’s MG blasted the defenders with accurate fire. 

Now, the action remains a bit of a blur, but the commandos were getting the worst of it. Despite lower skill ratings, the ‘quick casualty’ method I used for the baddies was to D6: 1 = no effect, 2,3 = pinned and 4+ out of the fight. While this was easy to manage it meant they had a 50% chance of surviving and doing further damage, while the commandos could be weakened by wounds.

When Team 2’s sergeant saw the DAK dismounting the Bedford, he knew he had to act, so a heroic action was needed… He charged the hanomag, tossed a grenade to kill the crew (4+ all round, I think!) and turned the rear machine gun on the Bedford, scattering the DAK. Sadly, he missed the KW which had driven off road and a blast from the MG killed him outright.

It was now a matter of mopping up. The remaining commandos and resistance were either dead or seriously wounded, but they had halved the DAK and the Hanomag was burning and blocking the road. The Kapitan now realised there was more than downed aircrew and the radar station was at risk, but it took the DAK some time to clear the obstacles and that all helped Team 1.

The Italians slept through it all…. Mostly.

Act 3: Charge!

Team 1 made good time to the checkpoint and managed to stealthily ‘remove’ the guards with some ease, but the sentry on the main gate was either eagle-eyed or heard the port battle, because he raised the alarm and sleepy Italians stumbled out of their barracks to take up their posts. At this point, the commando captain realised there was no other option than a rapid and violent attack, so with Peacock leading the charge they stormed the gate and made short work of the unfortunate Italians with only a couple of light wounds to show for it. Peacock took two commandos to the rear where the colonial troops completely ignored their officer and charged up the mound to retake the station. Peacock & Co made short work of them, including their brave officer who fought on alone until cut down by a Tommy gun burst. As Jones and Howard went to work on the radar, the prisoners (yes, I gave the pinned Italians the chance to surrender) were locked in their barracks and Lloyd volunteered to slow down the vehicles that could be heard revving their way cross-country to get round the still burning hanomag.

Lloyd was confident his Garand had range and rate of fire to make a nuisance of himself if he hid in the rocks. He also took a 2” mortar (the nib and cartridge of a Parker Replay pen which, when the nib was held back and released, would spring forward about 4 feet!).

It was now obvious there was trouble at t’radar, so the Kapitan sped forward in the KW with the Bedford following close behind with the handless sergeant. Lloyd waited until they were in range and fired the 2”: it landed straight in the front passenger seat of the KW, killing everybody aboard! In true James Coburn style, Lloyd cursed his luck: he was aiming at the Bedford.

The DAK sergeant, thanking his lucky stars he changed his ride, ignored the KW wreckage and sped onwards, the DAK passengers shooting at Lloyd, wildly but close enough to keep his head down.

Act 4: Finale

Now the game was in the balance. There were not enough DAK to retake the station but not enough commandos to blast through the DAK, so if the DAK played it smart they could corral the commandos long enough for me to make an umpire decision on the result (considering there was another Stalwart’s worth of DAK available!). But I had reckoned without Peacock, who with a sharp burst of fire killed the Bedford’s driver causing it to crash. Again, the commandos reacted quickly and rushed down the mound, using fire and movement and Peacock’s covering fire to keep the DAK down. The DAK could only respond with a few pot shots, so the sergeant and two surviving men ran to the nearest cover (I think it was my heel print in the spoil heap) where they were safe but unable to influence events. Or so I thought…

Charges successfully placed, the surviving commandos withdrew, but as Peacock turned to leave the last DAK rifleman took a chance and fired off a shot at extreme range. Peacock fell dead, a fluke headshot.

Soon after, a large explosion shattered the radar hut (no Italian prisoner were harmed) and the surviving commandos returned to the port. They found Thomas wounded in the Airfix Strongpoint and I judged he was fit enough to signal the submarine so ended the game there.

Epilogue

This sort of game could never be reproduced on a table or played anything other than solo. The nature of the garden gives the kind of terrain no table can provide and the solo element allows a single vision that can easily be tempered by the Recon system, flexible thinking and dice. It’s obviously not something that can be thrown together in an evening; it involved a lot of planning, but the end result was worth it. If I had my time again I would love to have a crack at a John Ruddles garden, but time, age and my crumbling knees are against me.

But while I could, I did. And I will never forget it.

 Please note the numbers on the counters are only a vague indication of strength!

Let me take you back to… July 1983

 Almost 43 years to the day, in fact!

Somehow, we managed to go on holiday again. I’m assuming as college finished early, like Minime’s has, that we were able to tuck an extra one in before the Skool holiday ripoff period started. Whatever and however, we ended up in a rather nice bungalow in Ilfracombe, Devon (Willow Close, to be precise!). My sister was far too old for family holidays and had managed to duck out. Frankly, so was I, but a week with my parents was preferable to a week of sisterly tyranny, so I went with mum & dad. To head off any potential surliness my parents told me I could do what I wanted (within reason) so long as they knew where I was. Which was fair enough, but limiting when I didn’t have my bike! Nevertheless, I spent a pleasant week dossing, sponging, listening to music and figuring out the most impressive game ever.

Recon was the catalyst. It was meant to be D&D in Vietnam (or Africa, as you could be a merc), which I tried on the college club with no success. But it did have legs as a conventional skirmish game, so I married it up with Once Upon a Time in the West (only the casualty calculator - I’m not mad, they were equally unplayable) and tried out a few moves with some card counters. What I had was something approaching a cinematic experience: I could create characters and use the D&D elements to make them achieve feats of derring-do. And I was in the mood for a commando raid…

My dad brought this back from work earlier in the year, after it had been read by most of the engineers in W E Sykes (yes - my father was a toolmaker!). It was about a commando raid on the coast of North Africa just before El Alamein. It is a fabulous book, but I had to reduce it a bit from a battalion-size action to half a platoon. My scenario was based in the Aegean (guess what film I was also inspired by) where the hun was building an advanced radar station which could seriously disrupt supplies to the Yugoslavian Partizans (bet you didn’t guess it was the sequel!). A small force of allied commandos would land by submarine, meet the local resistance, and destroy the station before it became active.

My room became a flurry of activity, as I diced for characters, made maps of the garden - yes, it could only be done with 1/32 figures in the back garden! - and worked out a plan that would never hold water militarily but would create memorable incidents. And the fact I remember so much so clearly over forty years later, when now I can’t remember where I put my glasses 5 minutes ago, shows I succeeded.

 Next time: more pictures, maps and, if my knees allow me up in the loft, figures.

And not forgetting…

Let me take you back to…. January 1983…. And then to April 1983

 Ok, I’ve bounced backwards and forwards using my heat pump Time Machine (hence the unreliability), but this is a brief interlude before I begin work on the ‘big thing’ of ‘83. There might be another one, but this will do for now.

I must say I’m still a sucker for the shiny cover and paper.

To be more accurate, 7 January (because it was the same day The Fourth Arm started on BBC1). Dad was on 6-2 shift and I finished early from college so off we went to Wickes/Aldershot. With my eye on these shiny rules, I popped into Concorde Models and rifled through the large white drawers at the back of the shop. They stocked a useful supply of wargaming stuff, mostly Skytrex and Minifigs from memory, and on this occasion I left with some Skytrex modern tanks and the Osprey Zulu War book (which I still have). You can see how much I had on the go this year.

I soon managed to paint the tanks up and had a couple of test games but cash flow (more cash spread…), and my success with Pony Wars, had me resorting to card strips to fight my mini-campaign. This was the replacement for my second Pony Wars outing and took place in our conservatory (on the same rickety dining table) to the strains of Let’s Dance during the Easter holidays.

The scenario was a small British Battlegroup holding off Red Forces (of the Purple Moon, if you ever read Frontline UK in Bullet) in an unnamed British protectorate. The British were based roughly on what was used in the Falklands (scary to think it was less than a year earlier) and the Reds/Purple Moon were what my Jane’s Armoured Fighting Vehicles book said the Argentines had, so M47s (gorgeous!), Shorlands, LVTP7s etc.

It sort of went OK, and I managed to get a couple of games out of it but I honestly have no idea how anybody ever managed to finish a game with anything more than a reinforced company! Fair enough, I was new to the rules (and a bit thick) but goodie gumdrops it took ages! If only at the time I had a copy of the simplified modern rules that appeared a few months later in Miniature Wargames, things would have been so different.

Anyway, it all went the way of the plucky British and the decidedly oriental-looking foreign hordes were sent packing. No dodgy human rights lawyers around, obviously.*

With that particular boat floated, I parked the rules and my small collection of tanks and set my mind to Newbury rules and cutting card shields for my pipe cleaner Zulus. But that article in the April 1983 Military Modelling on Cowpens looked rather interesting…

*Especially those who have Ukrainian male models setting fire to their old stuff.