Fellow Historians: An inauspicious title, but I have done absolutely no gaming since the last issue and have simply become a historian for the summer, although I must say, my only light reading I've done has been the last two issues of MWAN (93 and 94). Hal, you are a hero and without you, I'd be in the doldrums of reading GQ and Cosmopolitan...well, maybe not, there's always MAGWEB! Here's what I've been doing for the last few months. I went to Anti-Terrorism school so when terrorists blew up our embassies in Africa, I was the information passer and force protection awareness man for all Marines on the Korean Peninsula. Things got quite interesting and still are. I'll keep you updated, but now is not a great time for a U.S. service-member to be stationed overseas. No, you don't have to be afraid, just aware. Then there was the largest exercise of the year in Korea. The annual exercise Ulchi Focus Lens is a command post exercise designed to train the senior staff of the Combined Forces Command to fight a war on the peninsula. It came out very well and the Flag Officers defined their roles and how they have to conduct business in order to integrate Korean, U.S. and other coalition forces in a fight against the north Koreans. I worked out of CP Tango, which is a command post bunker outside of Seoul. Dug out of rock, the airflow was stale, the walls confining. It is completely self-contained and can support a complete warfighting staff for an extended period of time. After two weeks there, I think the "extended time" part might drive people insane. Imagine if you will being boxed in on all sides, narrow corridors, and high CO2 levels. Fatigue became a factor after only a short time. Tempers ran short (except in the Marine area where we simply would not allow anyone to get spun up). This only confirms that we never want to get into another war in Korea. I will be getting some pictures of the terrain up by the DMZ into the next issue. Mountainous and wooded with few passable roads and limited line of sight. War in Korea would be an infantry affair and infantry battles are bloody and desperate. Artillery would be called in over extended ranges to unobserved targets and as everyone knows, the only thing more accurate than enemy artillery fire is friendly fire falling on your pos. In wargame matters, my thanks to Greg Padilla for sending me his copy of Limeys and Slimeys - super rules set. If anyone has a current address for the copyright holder, please let me know and I'll contact him to see if we can get Limeys and Slimeys into these pages. So many good people out there can get so much from this set of rules, plus, I'll take any chance to reinvigorate a period like Age of Sail and Pirates! I'll continue my search for the publisher and see what we can work out. I received a few publications in the mail besides MWAN. For one, Robert Haworth sent me an Army of Professionals, AWI Scenarios for Busy People. Right on the money, Robert! Read my review under my Product Review series. I also received the latest Lone Warrior, North American Edition from Richard Barbuto. Another fine effort there and my best to all the contributing authors. Then there's the various regional HMGS newsletters. My compliments to HMGS Great Lakes on their latest super effort. Heart of America put out theirs on line! For those of us on line, we really appreciate this version. For HAHMGS, it saves you on mailing costs. Good for everyone all the way around. What does the future hold for Gauntlet Publications? Well, Mark has finished Pusan to Panmunjom, a Wargamer's Guide to the Korean War. Superb effort and by the time this hits the street, it'll be ready for American gamers. For those fans of Cross of Iron, Peter Pig is coming out with a line of new figures based on the Cross of Iron rules! Good work Mark in making this happen. Panzerknacker will be ready when the mail from the UK brings me the digital version of this little jewel. Along with that is Congo Commando, a new effort by Mark based on the Bakonga Incident which as you'll remember was in The Gauntlet U.S. #11. There seems to be a lot of interest in this one and I can't wait to get it on the street, but I'm strapped into the mail system because it's too large to transfer over the net. I'll keep you all informed as Gauntlet Publications expands its offerings. For advertising, I plan to release the January issue before Christmas (I will get it out at the beginning of December). Issue #14 is also the issue where most advertisers will be renewing their ads so you should see some good sales and I'll double the ad space so each one page ad will fill two pages for the Christmas issue because I want to provide Gauntlet readers with historical miniature gaming materials and this is the best way I know how. Call it a Christmas gift from the Gauntlet U.S. to both the advertisers and faithful readers. Thanks for the conclusion of one great year and the lead off for many more to come!!! Back to The Gauntlet No. 13 Table of Contents Back to The Gauntlet List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 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