Most of the histories describing the Gettysburg battle of 1863 indicate that General Lee packed up his Confederate army and left after the fourth day of battle. Recent research, however, has uncovered certain evidence to the effect that the General and his Southern forces remained on the field to fight on the fifth day (Geschichte Das BoomeBoome Kannonenkreig Von ACW, Professor Heinrich Schmekkele, Centre For Provocative Wargaming Analysis, 1987). We recently refought the fifth day's battle, historically recreating the engaged forces in a superbly simulatory, realistic, and accurate fashion. Duncan MacFarlane, British Citizen Extraordinaire (BCE), visited me just prior to HISTORICON, and he took the part of the Confederate commander. For the major portion of the game, I was the Union commander... and doing rather poorly... but to my rescue came Tom Elsworth, another BCE, who assumed command and managed to reverse the tide of battle. About a month later, we again played the battle, and once again, the Union managed to hold off the Southern attack. In both re-creations, most of the action focused on the southern portion of the field, near the Round Tops. I say this because, in both battles, I commanded troops in this region... what the commanders did to the north of me was of little concern. All great commanders could care less about what happens in other parts of the battlefield; a truly great commander is interested solely in adding one or two medallions to the ones already mounted on his chest, and never mind the rest of the army. Toward the end of the first battle, Jim Butters arrived to survey the field as laid out on the table-top, and he immediately found fault with the fact that the Union was permitted to mount two artillery batteries and a full brigade on the crest of Little Round Top. Jim insisted that Little Round Top was too rocky, too full of huge boulders, and too inaccessible to get a single gun, let alone a battery, on top of the mountain, and he couldn't see how in the world there was room for a full brigade there. Jim, of course, had not read Professor Schmekkele's brilliant analysis of the fifth day's battle, in which the Professor clearly shows that the Union forces, overnight, during the night hours of the fourth day, had completely filled in and leveled the summit of Little Round Top, transforming it into a virtual plateau, a parade ground, allowing all sorts of maneuvers to take place. It was only recently that the Forest Park Service restored the top to its pre-battle configuration (shoveling off tons and tons of dirt and once again exposing all the boulders), so that today's visitor has no idea of what actually occurred on the fifth day. So much for the preliminaries... The rules we used are called LA PLUME DE MA TANTE (LPDMT) , the very name of which "evokes the fighting spirit, the hostilities, the elan, the je ne sais quoi, the ethos of the American Civil War. In 15mm, the tactical element is the regiment of 5 stands. Each brigade has 2 or 3 regiments, and each division has 2 or 3 brigades. The true focal point of the rules procedures is the Division Commander (DC).., through him, orders are issued, regiments are assisted in melee, and regimental morale levels augmented. In the first battle, as I faced Duncan MacFarlane, his artillery had pounded my Union regiments on the Round Tops, preparatory to launching an assault. A hit on a regiment is denoted by a marker... I use single-figure 15mm pennant bearers... and my regiments at the top had more than their share of pennant bearers. Somehow, do to some superior dice rolling, they managed to maintain their position without falling back. Each time a regiment is hit, it receives a marker and takes a morale test. All units commence with a basic morale level of 80 percent, and from this is deducted: a. -10% for every marker on the unit b. -10% for every missing stand c. The distance to the nearest sister regiment in the brigade. This acts to persuade commanders to keep brigade integrity as much as possible. If the morale test is passed, half the markers are removed, thus there is always a "residue". Most of my infantry units had residues of 2 or 3 markers on them, and I thought it expedient to withdraw them behind the Round Tops, temporarily leaving only cannon to defend the slopes. There is a "recovery phase" in the sequence wherein markers can be removed, and if I could hang on long enough to do so, I could bring the infantry back on the hills again. My withdrawal, however, was the signal for MacFarlane's big push, and on came the Confederates. With not-too-much trouble, the good General MacFarlane managed to capture Big Round Top, the southernmost peak, and he prepared to advance straight north against Little Round Top, and roll up the Union line. And so my boys on Little Round Top were besieged both from the west and from the south. The only troops I had available were those I had withdrawn behind Little Round Top, still afflicted with myriads of hit markers. Enter our hero... General Thomas J. Elsworth, BCE. Tom and Jim Butters marched through the door, just returned from a tour of southern ACW and American Revolution battlefields. Both were invited to participate in the battle, but only Tom could do so. And so I asked Tom to take command of my somewhat bashed-up Union troops... if he could pull out a victory, I would bask in his sunlight, while should he suffer defeat, I could always fall back on: "I told you so!" A no-lose position for me! General Elsworth immediately grasped the gravity of the situation at the Round Tops... he'd never seen or played the rules before, but so historically accurate were they, that, in the words of those two great wargamers and tacticians, Dick Bryant and Bob Wiltrout: "All you have to do is use the tactics of the era and the results will be historically-correct." And so it was here. In this case, the 'tactics of the era' called for a series of extremely low dice throws as each already-shot-up Union regiment took additional hits and was forced to take a morale test... in fact, more than one morale test. An intense firefight developed as the MacFarlane Southerners fought to advance north, and the Elsworthians answered with volley for volley. The Union regiments' morale levels, starting at a basic 80 percent and weighed down with 2, 3, or 4 hit markers, each deducting 10 percent, were all at the 50 percent level or below. The only way to augment a unit's morale level is to "use" an officer on the staff of the division commander. Each turn, the commander receives a number of staff officers, who assist in melee, in organizing the brigades, and in increasing morale levels. Simply by picking up an officer are plopping him back in the box, one can add 20% to a unit's morale level. In effect, the staff officer gives his all for his country; by holding a unit in position, he does all that is expected of him. General Elsworth was seen to pick up and plop officer after officer. As each of his units tested at levels of 50% and below, he would add the +20's of one or more officers. And even with all the +20's added, it got rather dicey as he and General MacFarlane kept on exchanging volleys, for MacFarlane, too, kept looking to his staff officers for assistance. For a time, both sides gave as good as they got as the hit markers piled up. In fact, the issue soon became... who would run out of (a) low dice throws and (b) officers first? Alas for the Confederacy! 'Twas MacFarlane that broke first. The Rebel division attacking the Round Tops seemed to disintegrate. In the rules system, each division commander is allowed a specific number of melee defeats and morale failures before his entire command begins to break up. In our battle, the Southern division commander was permitted a total of 6 such instances. Battle records show that MacFarlane's man on the spot, General Dustworthy, reached his 6-failure-limit just as his men were thrown back from the Round Tops. It is noted that once the limit is reached, then any subsequent "bad thing" to the division, i.e., an additional morale failure or a loss in melee, may trigger an entire regiment in fleeing the field. Each such "bad thing" adds 20%, cumulative, to the chance that such a flight occurs. And if a regiment runs, additional "bad things" may result in an entire brigade running off, eventually resulting in the division taking to its heels. In short, although one should steer clear of "bad things", General Dustworthy couldn't seem to avoid them, and, just as in 1863, the Southern attack failed. Next Time Around Several weeks later, we again set up the scenario. This time I was in command of the Southern forces attempting to assault the Round Tops, i.e., I was now in MacFarlane's role. And opposing me, occupying the heights, were General Hubig's Yankees. I must give full credit to the Hubigian division commander, General Crapwell. He was permitted 6 "bad things", and even when he reached his limit, his men still hung on. I focused all my efforts in one grand assault on Little Round Top. In a Pickett-type of advance, regiment after regiment of my Rebel forces advanced in splendid fashion directly at the hill. And despite hit marker after hit marker, and morale test after morale test, I managed to achieve the high-water mark of the attack... I actually placed two regiments on the crest, in contact with the defending Yankees. I must admit I used up many an officer in reaching this point. In the melee phase, the combat, by definition, commences solely between the two units initially in contact. Once contact is made between the two units, however, then before melee begins, each side attempts to draw additional units into the combat. This is done with what is termed a Support Deck; 10 cards, each of which states "1 unit may advance", or"2 units may advance", etc. The attacker draws the first card, and may move the designated number of units 4 inches toward the combat. The second card is the defender's, and so on. Eventually, a "Resolve Melee" card appears and the advances cease. Despite the draws of the Support Deck cards, both sides could only march one other unit into combat, giving us 2 apiece. There was a two-fold reason for this: a. First, most of the potential supporting units were extremely weak, weighed down with hit markers, hence advancing them into melee would prove more a liability than an asset. b. Second, many of the potential supporting units were drawn up in march-column formation, ready to move forward and deploy. By definition, march-column is not a fighting formation, and these units, therefore, were not allowed to participate in the melee. Combat is resolved by giving each unit a basic number of points. From this total, points are either subtracted or added. The Yankees got a "plus" for defending the high ground, while both sides got "minuses" for the hit markers on the involved units. There is an additional plus if you choose to have the ubiquitous staff officer engage... again, all you do is pick him up, plop him in the box, and PRESTO! your force's combat strength is augmented. At this stage, however, neither the Yanks nor the Confederates had any officers to spare; they had all been employed in assisting the units during their morale tests. Each side then takes its total of combat points, and multiplies it by a 10-sided die... high product takes all. As I remember, the two combat point totals were fairly similar... all of the engaged units were pretty badly beaten up, the melee modifiers almost canceled, and no one had an advantage. Which said that the entire war effort now hinged on a single die roll. 'Twas unfortunate, but the Yankees done whupped my boys... the Bluebellies held the crest, and the Confederates fell back. This pretty much ended the battle for me at the Round Tops. My troops didn't have the strength to mount another attack. Having lost the battle on the southern part of the field, I turned to note what was going on in the north. Here I found that our Southern forces, ably commanded by General Jeff Wiltrout, was steadily forcing the Union back. General Jeff had pushed the Yankees off both Culp's Hill and Cemetery Ridge, shortening the Union's defensive line appreciably. But the defending Yankee, General F. Haub, Paladin of the North, had kept his men in good order, and despite the pushback, his lines remained unbroken. At this point in the game, we defined the day to have ended, dusk to have fallen, and we gave credit to the Union for their tenacious defense on the Fifth Day At Gettysburg. Back to PW Review July/August 1993 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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