Guillaume Daudin was acting as our representative and kindly met the two American couples as they arrived at Charles de Gaulle on August 18th. I arrived on the 20th, made some phone calls and then rested that afternoon: some of the last quiet moments I would have until I was back home. We had a great meal at Procope, the oldest continuously operating cafe in the world, founded in 1680. (The cafe is at 13, rue de l'ancienne comédie Paris VI.) The dinner was organized by Luc Olivier, of the Academie du Wargame. (Luc is moving to Montreal this autumn.) There were eighteen people in attendance: Guillaume DAUDIN; our tour participants Steve VANDERWAAL, Michele BAULEY, Larry LINGLE, Virginia LINGLE, Kevin ZUCKER, Hervé SENUT (?), Théophile MONNIER (Histoire & Collections), Didier ROUY, J.-Ph. IMBACH, Fred BEY, Pascal DA SILVA, and Luc OLIVIER L'Académie du Wargame is an informal organization of French grognards. To become a member, you must write a big study about a wargame which is published in "Vieille Garde," the Bulletin of the Académie. Markus arrived the next day, and we checked out the game store. In the evening we met Nicolas Pilarts and a few of his friends and went and danced our asses off. When we left the club at 3 a.m., drenched with sweat, there was a huge line of people waiting to get in. The place was packed. The next day we found the relay station that is depicted in the study folder, due to the assistance of M. Rouy who scouted the location and then accompanied us. The actual bridge has been moved off the main road, into a park on the east side of the main route. Feeling adventuresome, we changed our itinerary to go to Montereau, where the bridge was important to Napoleon in 1814, and we had a wonderful lunch outdoors. M. Daudin also accompanied us on this day. We decided to check the 1814 battlefields of Champaubert and Montmiral. The folks in the little village of Baye didn't even know that the battle took place amongst their houses. They thought the battle of "Champaubert" was fought *at* Champaubert. ... Shipping ahead a few days, it was time for us to meet two more members of our party at the walled-farm of Gemioncourt. We had received the following despatch some days before our departure: Thank you for your kind letter. I'm sorry not to obey your command to assist at all the campaign within your Grand Quartier Général, as I have to work sometimes. But I can join you the 23rd after 15.00 ; please let me know when and where I'll find your estafettes or aide de camp. Moreover, Philippe Devigne, our club's secretary, has now a gamestore in Wavre. He's intending to offer (to all of you, please let know how much escadrons you are) a drink (belgian beer!!) in Wavre the 23rd after "le couvrefeu". He'll send you a fax about this. A bientôt - Jean-François Wustefeld... So we drove into the farm and found Jean-François (who lives in Namur) and also Jarek Andruszkiewicz, who organized our 1998 Tour and drove all the way from Poland. (Not to mention the great St. Bernard who insisted we stop inside to speak to his owner.) Meanwhile, I sent Jean-François on ahead to Ligny, to tell our local guide, Patrick Maes, that we would be late. M. Maes gave us a great guided tour of the Ligny battlefield, with special reference to the southern side of the battlefield. Our local guides in Wavre, Andre-Charles Sonmereyn, and at La Belle Alliance, M. Jean-Philippe Tondeur, did not disappoint us. Mere words cannot express my thanks to all our great European friends for their generosity! So much more could be said about this wonderful tour, but this author doesn't have any more time. After this rather rigorous trip, back in Paris I got together with Guillaume. We set up the Craonne Scenario from Napoleon at Bay and, after having just examined the campaign, I found the set-up completely inadequate ... so we re-designed it completely. The results are posted on Web Grognards, under "N" for Napoleon at Bay ... I had a terrible day at the airport; fortunately things began to go wrong only after I had dropped the two couples off at their own respective terminals. Then I returned home to find my computer had been struck by lightning. It took one month to get things back. Fortunately, all files were recovered. NEXT YEAR: the Tour goes to Northern Italy to follow the 1796 and 1800 campaigns, July 10th to the 18th, 2000. Back to OSG News September 1999 Table of Contents Back to OSG News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by Operational Studies Group. 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