The one thing I have noticed about armored warfare scenarios at most conventions is a love of immobility. Do we dash across Poland? No, we take a week struggling for a block in Stalingrad. Do we dash through the Ardennes and across France? No, we sit among the hedgerows in France as pillboxes. Do we…? No, we don’t do that either.

It is embarrassing to see infantry cover more ground and move quicker than the tank. A horse drawn cannon could move quicker, or possibly an unlimbered cannon just being man-handled.

Tanks can move. Hence, it’s terrible tactics to buy a tank, only to use it as a pillbox. The Russian T-34 with its Christie suspension is was the epitome, in its day, of sleek lines and speed. To park it on a battlefield, so that someone can plant geraniums on it, is failing to use its mobility.

It was Heinz Guderian who once said that the engine can be just as big a weapon as the main gun. The very concept of the tank was that of a mechanism that could cross no-man’s-land (the crossing of which involved movement), and then breakthrough across open country (involving even more movement).

I believe we’re all familiar with Montgomery’s Folly—Operation Market Garden—where an armored thrust by the British 30th Corps was supposed to dash across Holland, over roads and bridges captured by 2 American and 1 British Airborne Divisions. They dashed with more caution than haste. The result was the virtual anhilation of the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnheim, and the failure to cross the Rhine River—which was the entire goal of the operation. The result was an operation that was 99% successful, and therefore a 100% failure.

Anyway, movement is more exciting than sitting still, in my humble opinion.