Introduction

I realy enjoy Jason Long's "Counterbattery" articles, which are full of interesting ideas and insights, but I found myself shaking my head at a few of the things he wrote in TEM #42. He might not be wrong, but he got me thinking about some counterarguments. I'd like to talk about the French versus the Soviet armies, game mechanics, and the National Training Center... well, sort of.

Vive la France!

First off, I am not so sure the Soviets and French were as far apart as Jason maintains. Relative to the French doctrine of 1940... weren't all armies struggling with the implications and contradictions of positional versus mobile warfare as late as 1939-1940? It seems to me a lot of Germans weren't convinced (remember Guderian's complaints about Kluge's outlook, circa 1941), and let's not forget that the Russian attack on Finland in 1939-1940 (thanks again, Gary Stagliano' wherever you are-- great game 1) was not exactly a textbook blitzkrieg . I get the impression that Jason and a lot of other people tend to have a mental snapshot of thirty days of French performance vice four years of Russian performance and conclude that the French collapse was inevitable and that the Russians were superior in all respects. Hmmmm... makes me wonder why Marshal Tuckachevskiy spent all that time with the French in the thirties, before Stalin lost his head and swiped so many others.

In Alistair Home's book To Lose a Battle: France 1940, there is an interesting passage on page 654:

"... But although in many ways their doctrine of war may initially have been as faulty as the French, the Russians would be able to make a retreat equivalent to a French withdrawal from Sedan across the Pyrenees and down to Saragossa, before launching any major counter-offensive. What might even Gamelin and Weygand have achieved, had they but disposed of such space over which to manoeuvre and behind which to form fresh armies?"

I guess what I am really tying to say is that while their confusion may have taken different forms, and their political systems may have operated under differing advantages and disadvantages while trying to fend off potentially mortal assaults, to me the fundamental difference between two equally brave, potentially powerful armies was that the Soviets had time and space in which to learn the lessons and replace the weak and the dead, but the French quite simply never had a chance to discover their Rokossovsky's and Tolbukhin's.

I believe that Lattre de Tassigny, Juin, and Monte Cassino showed a side of French battle prowess they never had a chance to develop in 1940. Yep, they would have found a way to launch the great and devastating offensives of 1944, given opportunity, or to sum up with one last quote, from Home again (pg 644):

"Can it be that France has had her day like Athens, Rome, Spain or Portugal in the past? Is it Germany's turn now? NO. Our virtues and culture, which only twenty years ago proved so strong and full of life, have not been killed by a mere handful of politicians."

Chit-Chat

I understand Jason's opposition to my idea of using game markers to simulate a diminishing confusion among the French and Soviets in the opening hum of each invasion. It bugs me, too. But the reason I chose that approach over an across-the-board reduction in combat or movement capability for each army is that such treatment is simply too broad-brush for my individual taste. Hey, if you take points from everybody, where do you leave room for such individual feats as Prioux's great and bloody stand at Gembloux or the Soviet determination in the Ukraine in June and July 1941?

Also, why should the Germans have unrealistic foreknowledge of yet another weakness in an opposing force? We already have truly stunning intelligence services on both sides, why not use markers or chits in some random fashion to demonstrate the C3I weaknesses of both armies without giving the Germans pre-game prescience for higher body counts?

Simply put, I think the diminishing use of scatter, pin and rout markers, in varying amounts and with different results in East and West is at least a workable way to show two armies trying their best to learn enough about war to avoid being destroyed to the last man.

Closing Cannonade

The last thing I wanted to talk about is Jason's discussion of ZOC costs, during which he maintains that his heavy experience at the National Training Center convinces him that disengagement is far easier than engagement in mobile warfare. Well, I certainly can't gainsay his small unit tactical training-in all my ten years in the service, I spent only about a month in the field-but what makes me wonder is that in account after account at the Grand Tactical Level, people like Manstein and Longstreet and Grant and Rommel talk as though it is all too easy to commit a force against an opponent, but that making a clean break at the corps level in just about any conflict is a tricky business.

I am sure Jason is right about two platoons holding up a battalion, and I only have books to give me a picture of this problem, but it seems to me that even our own field manuals talk about retrograde movements as if they are pretty tense and intricate operations, and when you throw in having to change lines of communication or supply routes or axes of advance while under enemy fire... I just have to believe that pulling out of a mud-sucking ZOC is harder than waltzing into one.

Oh yeah. Before I quit jabbering altogether, I was intrigued by Jason's remarks relative to supply. I agree with him, and am reminded of a wargame I played in 1993... darned if I can remember what it was called, but it depicted the final collapse of Germany at the corps or army level. Anyway, the Soviet player was supplied with just a couple of so-called "Shock" or "Main Effort" chits each turn (I know... here I go again with another pain-in-the-neck game marker).

But what if we rationed "Breakthrough" chits to each army, based generally on their supply performance (for example, none at all for the Germans during the low- ammo period right after CASE WHITE) and the rule was this: If you have a chit, everybody within fifteen hexes (or 10, 20?) can attack, if all other rules permit; but if no such chit is present, then a stack may still attack, but for two (or 3, 5?) hexes on each side of this local attack, no other stacks may attack.

This is far from a rigidly-written rule, but the concept seems sound: it would permit localized assaults, which everybody could do, but restrict an army from making a main effort across 200 miles of front turn after turn. Anybody got a reaction to this idea?

Sign-Off

Well, I have to go. I don't have any gunners nearby, just a couple of irascible kids and two goofy kittens. But shouldn't they be working? You! Do something about those dishes in the sink...