The following article is essentially a reprint of my account of the 1994 Christopher Duffy Tour that may be found in the June 1994 issue of Historical Gamer magazine. HG is edited and published by SYWA member Bill Biles. Since Bill was kind enough to let me rerun the article in the journal, I thought it only fitting to give his fine magazine a free plug.

Origins of the Duffy Tour

I first met Christopher Duffy in 1992 when HMGS Midwest invited him to speak at one of the military history seminars at GENCON in Milwaukee. As editor and publisher of this journal, I had the honor of meeting Professor Duffy in Chicago and giving him a tour of the city prior to taking him to GENCON. Approximately thirty SYW enthusiasts turned out for a dinner in his honor and we all found him to have a warm and engaging personality coupled with that dry, subtle sense of humor for which the British are so famous. I think that the seeds for the tour were planted then.

The following year (1993) Duffy returned to the U.S. to lecture about Frederick the Great and Borodino at the Historicon wargame convention in Lancaster, PA. It was there that he announced his plans to take a group of SYW enthusiasts to such battlefield sites as Lobositz, Kolin and Prague in the Czech Republic; and Hochkirch, Maxen, Torgau and Freiburg in the former East Germany territories. Given that Frederick fought all of his battles in Saxony, Silesia and Bohemia, Frederican battlefields have generally not been accessible to your average western tourist. A few adventuresome travelers, such as Professor Duffy, had visited these sites in then-communist Eastern Europe, but it took the reunification of Germany and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe (1989) to make these places viable tourist destinations.

The Lay of the Land in Eastern Europe

I had long wanted to visit Berlin and Prague, but given the difficulties of travel in Eastern Europe, including a relative lack of quality tourist facilities (car rentals, restaurants and hotels) I never would have attempted such a tour on my own. So when Professor Duffy approached me with the idea of an Alte Fritz Tour my eager response was, "when do we leave?" Mind you, it has been nearly five years since the fall of communism and the opening up of Eastern Europe and it has taken this long for Germany to establish a are minimum of necessary infrastructure and tourist amenities.

Aside from Prague, which is a very beautiful western-style city, the Czech Republic appears rather worn out and in need of some cosmetic work. There seems to be a general lack of retail-type stores and few Czechs speak English. It pays to have some kind of guide if you visit areas outside of Prague.

Germany, by contrast, is in the midst of a massive construction boom as the Bonn government attempts to repair, upgrade and improve an infrastructure in eastern Germany that has been neglected for fifty years. Everywhere you look, buildings are being renovated, roads are being improved, and Soviet/GDR military structures are being torn down at a rapid clip. Here one sees more evidence of retail stores (chain stores) and new restaurants and hotels. My impression is that travel in eastern Germany is very feasible and given another five years, the infrastructure gap between the two halves of the country will be closed and you will not be able to tell the difference between either half. Enough of that ; let's talk battlefields and wargaming.

Logistics

Briefly, the Alte Fritz tour, as Duffy called it, was divided into three phases: battlefield sites in (1) the Czech Republic and (2) Saxony, and (3) a final stop in Potsdam to visit Frederick's palace of Sans Souci.

Most of the American contingent arrived in Berlin on Saturday, the day before the tour began, in order to adjust to jet lag and to see some of this famous 'Cold War' city. I spent my first afternoon in Berlin visiting 'Checkpoint Charlie' and strolling down the Unter Den Linden and on through the Brandenburg Gate. I am happy to report that every square inch of the Berlin Wall has been torn down and if you are willing to part with a few Deutsch Marks (DM) a street vendor will be happy to sell you a little plastic bag of debris that alledgedly comes from the Wall. I can just envision these people spray painting sheets of concrete, then busting it up into little bits, down in some dark little basement, then bagging the crumbles into plastic bags and flinging them at unsuspecting tourists. One can also purchase tons of Soviet and GDR militaria items such as hats, pins rank badges, coats, etc. One enterprising street vendor was selling 1 Ruble coins for 4 DM!

I returned to the hotel to sample the local Pilsener brew with some of the lads on the tour. We figured that the other Americans, many who had arrived on various and different flights from the U.S., would start filtering in, and that the hotel watering hole would be the best place to find them.

First to arrive were Paul Petri, Jim Mitchell and Brian Vizek, via Paris, and they regaled us with some tales of their adventures, over a Pilsener of course. Then Michael Becher strolled in and told us about all the wonderful SYW uniforms that were on display at the Zug Haus (armory), and I was beginning to feel as though I had really missed something. But then something occurred that could top Michael's discovery, in terms of excitement: SYW BOOKS!

Ken Bunger, Dan Fogelman, Steve Carpenter, and Mike Schundler discovered the infamous Berliner Zinnfiguren store in the Charlottenburg sector of the city. The Germans are quite partial to "flats", which are literally two-sided, flat wargame/diarama figures in 25mm scale. The mere presence of wargame figures would normally be enough to set this group into a buying frenzy, but it was the presence of that other treasure, books, that really had the members of the tour salivating. Understand, we are not talking about your average, run-of-the-mill SYW book in German; nay nay, these were colorful books with lots and lots of pretty pictures and uniform plates. Everyone, particularly the British contingent, was dying to see this treasure trove of SYW books at the end of the tour.

Messieurs Bunger and Fogelman purchased so many books that we dubbed them Der Grosse Buchen Koenig (the great book king, Ken) and Der Buchen Erbprinz ( the heir apparent prince of books, Dan). The bookstore owner's eyes nearly popped out of his head when Ken informed him that there were thirty more big spenders on the same tour. Herr Bookmeister gratiously offered to open his shop in the evening, one week hence, when the tour returned to Berlin. More on that later.

Following In The Footsteps of Alte Fritz

Tour Introduction
The Tour Begins
Battles: Lobositz, Meissen, and Others
Battles: Hochkirch, Torgau, and Last Day