Welcome Back! Oh, that's me who's back... Let me start by saying that I've spent the last month on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. Wearing my Marine Corps Captain's bars, I was forward deployed in support of the Commander in Chief, US Central Command for operations to reduce Saddam Husayn's ability to produce & maintain bio/chem weapons. After spending the month of February in the Middle East, peace broke out everywhere and for some unknown reason, the UN Secretary General believes his negotiations with a mass-murderer will be different than everyone else's. When the agreement is violated, Kofi Annan better be the first one calling for strikes... With my deployment to the Middle East, the modern era of command and control is vastly different from that of history. A Unified Commander, allocated tens of thousands of forces spread across a million square miles (to include vertical spacing from helicopters to fighters to the U-2 to Satellites), had complete control at all times. His staff of about 1100 folks never left Tampa, Florida. I had the privilege of going forward as part of a twelve-man crew in direct support of the Commander in Chief. That was it. Twelve men and lots of phone lines and data lines. This is U.S. command and control in the 1990's. I operated as the CINCs Intelligence Officer forward. We did lose communication for only a couple minutes on a couple different occasions, but that was it. I was in constant contact with the Director of Intelligence, a Brigadier General in Tampa and conveyed his thoughts/wishes to the CINC. I fielded all questions directly from the CINC. Overall, it was a very gratifying experience. And since inquiring minds want to know, the answer is yes, we were very, very close to shooting up the bad man's country (although maybe not as close as Kennedy was to shooting at the Soviet Union in '62). While I was in Bahrain, my "friends" back in Tampa faxed a copy of my orders to me. Yes, it is confirmed, I'm going to Seoul for a year to support peace on the peninsula. While I'm there, expect at least a couple of articles/scenarios on the Korean war to show up in these pages. Never fear! The Gauntlet goes on. As demonstrated with our command and control from Florida to Bahrain, we can do something similar on a much smaller scale thanks to the world wide web. I'll either ftp Mark's file from his webspace in the UK or we'll just do as we have been, that is e-mailing the files as zipped attachments. I hope that I've been able to provide Mark with at least 1/10th of what he's sent me. Needless to say, Mark is the brains of this outfit. I'm taller and more blonde (and younger). Recon is shaping up nicely thanks to a lot of work by the gamemasters and HMGS South powers. It's going to be a busy weekend with a lot going on. The MacDill Airfest is going at the same time, so if you get out during the late morning or the afternoon, you should be able to see the streaks in the sky that announce who's currently flying. I'll make sure to have an Airfest schedule available just in case you can't visually recognize aircraft at 15 miles. Once the show is up and running (as the convention director, I must make sure all is on line), I hope I can break free and take Hal with me down to the military only walk-thru of the air-show on Friday afternoon. Most aircraft will come flying in on Friday morning/afternoon and will be on display almost immediately. While I was gone, my partner in Scotland, Mark Hannam sent me a CD with a number of recently finished products on there. The Cross of Iron and A Few Good Men at Arms are just a couple new releases from Gauntlet Publications (in the UK) and from Craig Martelle (me) in the US. Mathew Sparkes and Mark have outdone themselves with the latest two releases. If anyone wants to review these latest releases, let me know. I'll send a couple copies out to the first couple willing folks. The Gauntlet is taking off! After so many good words from Hal in MWAN 92, what can I say? I hope that The Gauntlet will continue to be viewed as a nice complement to MWAN. With me in Korea, The Gauntlet will still have a full color cover and insert pages as required. This is a short editorial this time as I haven't had much time for projects with me being deployed for the big chunk of time between Gauntlet 10 and 11 publication dates. But here's a quick blurb on where I am. I received the Red October Factory from Scenic Effects, look for the review in this issue. I also took advantage of the MWAN subscriber 25% discount for Wargames Foundry ACW figures. Yes, I sent a check to the Guernsey boys for $400 big ones (I'm talking 28mm here). This will give me more than plenty for the optimal 10-12 squads of one-to-one skirmish for HG Walls' Brother Against Brother. I also bought about 90 Foundry Wild West figures - looking to expand there. I also had a SYW Prussian Army painted in my absence. Maybe I'll pick up some pirates at Recon - I really must expand there as well. Maybe some 3-musketeers, too... Lots to see in this issue so don't waste time here! and by the way, good luck on those morale rolls! Back to The Gauntlet No. 11 Table of Contents Back to The Gauntlet List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 by Craig Martelle Publications This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com