"Playing with toy soldiers." No matter how you look at it, many regard our hobby as childish. Of course reading 90% of the rule sets out there today puts the lie to that thought, but the image remains. The early literature of the hobby reinforced that perception, as even H. G. Wells' "Little Wars" reads as if it were written for young people. "Shambattle," which I wrote about last time, is explicitly a children's book. This installment reviews several items from the periphery of war gaming literature which also tend to reinforce this view -- two articles referring to children and the hobby and two children's books in which playing with toy soldiers is their theme. While playing with toy soldiers is seen as a child's activity in all of them, the reactions to that play are very different.

The earliest piece I've found is "The Tin Army of the Republic, or, A Kindergarten of War," by William Howe Downes, from 1888. It describes eight-year-old Walter's use of toy soldiers to learn about the Civil War. Indeed, much of its thirty-eight pages is a brief chronicle of that war with descriptions of its battles and leaders, as well as of Walter's recreations of those events. Throughout are drawings of his battlefield structures, made of blocks, books and strips of cloth, along with his soldiers, often not completely whole when they come out of their jumbled boxes. The book concludes with a handy glossary to tell the young reader "What the Hard Words Mean." While there is no hint of any rule set in use during his battles, by the completion of his studies, Walter has come to the point where he can set up "ideal battles, and fight them out to their logical conclusions ." (29) Sounds like a reasonable definition of war gaming to me.

"The Tin Army of the Republic" tells us "that war is a cruel and sad thing,...but [Walter] thinks that there are times when there is nothing left to be done but to fight." Studying the Civil War this way has taught him "to admire the courage, the patience, the endurance and unselfishness of the good soldier," virtues as useful in peace as in war. And his gaming helps to prepare him for a time when "the nation will need the aid of the boys who are now playing at mimic war with tin soldiers." (32)

The next two pieces would contest the positive connotation of that conclusion. Both come from the inter-war period, during the Depression, and reflect the strong pacifist strain that existed then. These short articles see playing with toy soldiers, or playing at war for that matter, as destructive activities likely to lead to warmongering adults. "Toy Soldiers and Real Wars" uses Winston Churchill's own example as a demonstration of this "truth." It quotes "one of the world's leading warmakers" from his biographical "My Early Life," describing his childish war gaming with his 1,500 toy soldiers, "all of one size, all British....They turned the course of my life." (37)

According to this socialist/pacifist journal this provides clear evidence that playing with toy soldiers can "tickle Junior's imagination and give him a killer's thrill." (36)

"War Toys and War" is a piece extracted from "Your Child Faces War" and encourages "mothers to organize by neighborhood groups and resolve together to give their children no toys suggesting war or killing." The author recommends musical instruments, toy fire engines and checkers as "embodying noise, excitement and maneuver" otherwise found in "warlike play." Supporting his thesis that war isn't a naturally attractive topic for amusement, he cites evidence from the 1936 American Toy Fair where less than 1% of the displayed items were war related. An exhibition of painting done by 5 to 13 year old boys and girls who "chose their own subject matter" resulting in few military scenes adds further support to his argument. My own experience might suggest that "chose their own subject matter" is a relatively squishy reality, but use your own judgment.

I don't know how successful these campaigns against playing with toy soldiers were; the reality of the Depression may have made the point somewhat moot. Nonetheless, the attitude was real, and, as these are the only two articles I found in the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature from this era that dealt with toy soldiers, it may have been the more vociferous, if not the predominant, one. Probably, as with most things, people generally didn't care much one way or the other.

We come full circle by 1942, when "A Green Field for Courage" was published. Here's a book whose focus is playing with toy soldiers as a constructive activity, no ifs ands or buts! Like Walter in Tin Army, Robin Ward is a determined war gamer, indeed, one might suggest that he's a bit obsessive about it, but we'll be kind and simply suggest that here's a boy who found his vocation early in life.

We discover early in the novel that six year old Robin's attitude regarding his soldiers is unusual, at least if you're looking from outside the hobby. He has only one boy about his own age in his neighborhood to play with. Not a very nice boy, but one who'd do in a pinch, except that Jimmy, for that's his name, "thought that soldiers were toys. Just plain toys like everything else -- which is not quite so, of course." (13) And so, at this point in our chronicle "toy soldiers" become just plain "soldiers," in deference to our hero.

Robin, or General Robin, I should say, and his troops were responsible for the defense of their country, which was made up of the row house they lived in with General Robin's father, the President, and his mother, the Vice President. With only a patch of dirt around the tree out front for his soldiers to train in, Robin's great dream was for a big place for them to conduct real maneuvers.

In the meantime, General Robin took great care of his soldiers, seeing to their needs, keeping them in top condition and studying war with his father every night so that he could properly lead them in battle, if that was necessary. With much scrimping and saving the family is able to buy a little car and take a month's vacation at a cottage left to his father by his grandmother. Robin's dream has come true, for there's a great field attached to the cottage, just the place for his soldiers to really learn their trade! All month his troops train and fight war games, improving their craft and readying themselves for the defense of their country. By the time they return to the city they are the best trained small army General Robin can prepare, or imagine.

All would be well if the story ended here, but it would be an awfully short story, and so, with our appetites barely satisfied, we're glad to read on. For such a small family, the Ward's manage to need a lot of medical care, as each in turn falls gravely ill, stretching the family's finances to the brink of disaster. General Robin's field has to be sold, and, just to twist the knife a bit, the grandsons of the real life General who lives next door, and now owns the field, are spoiled snobs who aren't interested in playing with our hero. However, General Robin keeps his hopes up for he saw, that the boys played as he did, according to real rules. They didn't go around saying "Bang!" or "Poof!" or "You're dead!"...Everything moved, fired, and operated according to what it was, and its size.

Soldiers were no mere toys to them, either. Just like Robin, and in dead earnest, they maneuvered, trained their men, drilled, deployed, built fortifications, practiced firing and communicated with one another in the manner of true Generals. (119)

Unfortunately, we never learn much about the particulars of the rules Robin and the MacDowells use. We know that their guns actually fire, as H. G. Wells' did, that they aren't supposed to use the enemy's expended ammunition to return fire and that realism is their goal. We also know that, whatever their rules may be, they're able to keep five boys enthralled form morning to dusk. Ah, well, some of life's mysteries will never be solved.

The one big difference between the armies of General Robin and the Generals MacDowell was that the latter had over 600 soldiers while Robin's army was limited to under 75. The MacDowells finally attack Robin's country, and after a hard fought battle, in which hundreds of the MacDowell troops fall victim to Robin's superior generalship, their numbers prove decisive and they manage to capture the small piece of ground left for Robin to deploy his troops on. In the process they kill, or capture, all of his troops except his five man Home Guard. Of course, things work out in the end, and, also of course, I'm not going to spoil the ending, but the tale is summed up nicely by the real General MacDowell when he tells Robin's father, "Some day that kid of yours is going to grow up. Some day he may be called upon to fight for this country of ours. And if he does -- 'God help the enemy!'" (203)

So we end, fifty-six years along our path, back where we began, finding that playing with toy soldiers, sorry General Robin, just plain soldiers is a way to learn about ourselves and life, and death. We find, as we read about Walter and Robin, that our soldiers can help us to learn about history and geography, as well as about courage and honor and, especially if you're like Robin, the very real tragedies of war. I suspect that war gaming is much better at teaching the latter than playing with musical instruments, toy fire engines or checkers will ever be.

Bibliography:

Cooney, Carroll Trowbridge. "A Green Field for Courage." Howell, Soskin. NY, 1942.
Crawford, Nelson Antrim. War Toys and War from "Your Child Faces War."
Coward-McCann. Rep. in "Literary Digest," 4 Sept. 1937, p. 23.
Downes, William Howe, "The Tin Army of the Republic, or, A Kindergarten of War." Cassino. Boston 1888.
"Toy Soldiers and Real War." The World Tomorrow. Feb. 1931, p. 36-7.

More Roots of Wargaming

Robert Louis Stevenson
H.G. Wells
Shambattle
Children and Toy Soldiers
Links Between Military Miniature Collecting and Gaming
Jack Scruby
1962
Table Top Talk Magazine
Naval Wargames Part 1
Naval Wargames Part 2
Air Wargames
Horse and Musket I
Napoleon Rides Again
Featherstone Again