If wargamers are finding very high attrition rates during their campaigns, then
dividing the casualties up into different classes will alleviate some potential
problems. Permanently removing each casualty of a battle from the campaign will
rapidly deplete a wargames army. Some allowance can be made for wounded men
to recover, and this is where hospitals fit in. Hospitals can only help the wounded
men, however, if the wounded men are transported to them.
Saxon Surgeon (left) and under surgeon - 1796. White waistcoat and breeches, black facings and gold buttons(gold brandenburgs for the surgeon).
Dealing with wounded and hospitals during a campaign will add more realism to logistics, while at the same time, it will add strategic considerations which can play to one's advantage in the acquisition of territory or the destruction of enemy concentrations.
One method of organizing the wounded is to break them up into four arbitrary groups. For example;
- A. Walking wounded. These are assumed to have taken themselves to
the hospital. They can rejoin their units in one week.
B. Those able to resume their places in their units after two weeks
C. Those able to resume their places in their units after one month.
D. Those who are permanently disabled or killed.
Rank and file will simply be divided up, but dice will be thrown for the officers to see which category they fall into.
Men who are wounded and expected to rejoin their units must be taken to a hospital. The logistics of this can take place after the wargame battle. Category B requires one helper apiece, and C requires two helpers apiece. Only enlisted men and medical personnel may normally be employed in this role. As an example, a group of 24 rank and file suffers 7 casualties. They are divided thus; 2 in A, 2 in B, 2 in C, and 1 in D. Seventeen men are left to carry the men off the field, and 2 x 1+2 x 2, or six men altogether are required, thus it can be accomplished. The above requires only a little paperwork, and is of little trouble since most people tally up their losses after a game, anyhow.
A simple rule can be made; if there is a flying hospital within 3,000 yards, no men need be detached to transport the wounded, but if the nearest hospital is beyond 3,000 yards, the appropriate number of men must be detached from either the same unit or a friendly one, and these men may then not take part in an immediate pursuit of a fleeing enemy.
There may be some instances when combatants will not reach a field hospital within one day. For every day that a body of wounded is not delivered to a hospital, they will move down one category apiece, i.e., A becomes B, B becomes C, etc. Also, wounded troops must be kept in hospital until their one week or two week, or one month period is over, otherwise they will be considered drifters, indefinately disabled, or otherwise unaccounted for.
If an army is fleeing from a lost field, transporting the wounded becomes difficult. Any men wounded beyond the carrying capacity of the remaining men in the unit to which they belong will be left behind and fall into the enemy's hands. In a fleeing army, men from one regiment may not help those of another due to increasing levels of panic. If a hospital is captured, then all of the patients within will also be considered captured.
Hospitals can be given specific capacities of wounded that they can handle. If these are overrun after an individual battle, new hospitals must be brought up before the wounded start becoming worse off. If the carrying capacity for a campaign is becoming overrun, then the appropriate number of campaigning points will have to be used to establish new hospitals or one will risk excessive attrition rates. For common troop ratios of 1: 10 or 1:20, a 600 bed general hospital would be able to accommodate 30-60 type B and C wounded and an indefinite number of type A's. The capacity of a flying hospital would depend on many variables beyond the amount of beds, and can best be ascertained by a wargamer after campaigning experience with his or her type of armies and rules.
My own army includes the surgeon of the general staff, along with his medicine- chest-carrying horse. This surgeon always accompanies the comander-in-chief into battle in order to decrease his chances of falling into category D in the unfortunate event that he may be hit. This is done by reducing the odds of a D listing by 1/2 when the surgeon is present. The staff surgeon has also assisted other nearby generals and aide-de-camps who were hit. This type of individual treatment versus general types of aide requires that the surgeon figure remains adjacent to the afflicted figure for at least five full turns.
For campaigning purposes, hospitals are considered to move at the same rate as supply trains. In a table-top encounter, if-it looks as if a flying hospital will have to move, it should take a minimum of six complete turns to load the wounded into their carts. They should proceed, it would seem, at a pace not surpassing 2/3 speed of foot artillery.
Sometimes agreements considering the treatment of the wounded were drawn up between nations, and this can be reflected in a wargame campaign. The Frankfort cartel of 1743 between England and France, for example, ensured that the hospitals of both sides were immune from attack, and that the wounded of both sides would be well taken care of. As we have seen at Fontenoy, however, this cartel was not always carried out. Not even a pretence to a convention existed between France and Prussia during the Seven Years War, and it can go without saying, in any war ever fought with Turkey.
For our miniature armies, wounded left behind on the field by a fleeing foe will take up any spare capacity in the capturer's hospital. However, if an enemy hospital is captured, the carrying points of that unit may be utilized by the capturer, if it is not already full. These rules reflect the readiness of most medical men from both sides to treat the wounded of all nationalities in the majority of eighteenth century wars, cartels and DeSaxes not withstanding. Healed prisoners of the table- top should be sent to P.O.W. camps during a campaign and may be utilized in prisoner exchanges or as members of construction battalions.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
[1] Walton, C81. History of the British Standing Army 1909
Hospitals for Your 18th C. Army
[2] Monro, Donald An Account of the Diseases Which Were
Most Frequent in the BrMsh Military Hospitals in Germany from Jan 1761 to the return of the troops to England in March 1763. Note on first page,London 1764
[3] Income was much lower for military doctors than for
civilian ones. Only those not interested in money or unable to display enough skill to suit paying
customers would be attracted to military medicine.
[4] Among famous military surgeons of the eighteenth
century, John Hunter was pro secondary and Larrey was pro primary.
[5] Cantlie A History of the Army Medical Department, pg.
66, Churchill Livingston, Edingburgh 1974
[6] Garrison, Lt. Col. Fielding Notes on the History of Military
Medicine, pg. 141, Association of Military Surgeons, Washington 1922
[7] Cantlie op. cit. (5) pg. 67
[8] Ibid, pg. 88
[9] Garrison op. cit. (6) pg. 150
[10] Monro op. cit. (3) pg. 362
[11] Cantlie op. cit. (5) pg. 83
[12] lbid pg. 49
Slide captioned "French surgeons, 1786" is taken from Histoire de La Medecine aux armees,
Tome 1 de l'Antiquite a'la Revolution by the comite d'histoire du Servic de sante. C. Lavaurellele, Paris
1982 slide captioned "Saxon oversurgeon and undersurgeon, 1791" is taken from Die Kurfurstlich-
Sachsische Armee um 1791 as painted by Frieederich Johann Christian Reinhold and reprinted b the Militarverlag der Deutschen Demokratischen Republic, East Berlin 1990
Both paintings are uncopyrighted.
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