The date: December 31, 1862. The battle: Murfreesboro, Tennessee, or Stone's River, depending upon which side you're on.
I had command of the extreme right of the Union line, Johnson's Division, three brigades strong.
According to our host, Rich Hasenaeur, who laid out the battle according to his FIRE AND FURY (FAF) rulebook, Johnson's troops are in trouble; they may be taken unawares by a sudden Confederate advance.
Each game turn encompasses a half-hour; the first turn occurs at 6:00 A.M. My immediate opponent, Tony Figlia ("immediate" in the sense that there were several other nearby Confederate commanders thirsting for my blood, but Tony was closest), on his very first move, zips his off-board divisions onto the field into contact with mine, and the battle begins. Tony's role is that of the Confederate corps commander, Hardee.
Are my troops surprised? Roll a die, says Rich, and if you toss high, you're wide awake, you can respond, and you get immediate defensive fire. Toss low, and you get waxed.
I toss high... very high. Tony grunts, my boys fire, Tony's leading brigade, the one in contact with my own troops, takes a reaction test and recoils some 3 inches. Waxed, indeed!
I hate to say it, but that was the last good thing that happened to Johnson's Division... it was all downhill, right into Waxville, from that point on.
The sketch above diagrams the Union right flank just before disaster struck, taken from Volume III of the BATTLES AND LEADERS OF THE CIVIL WAR, page 610.
The book lists three brigades for Johnson's Division: Kirk, Willich and Baldwin. The map, however, page 616, indicates only two in the front line; Baldwin's brigade shows up only after the Union gets hit and pulls back.
According to Rich's scenario book for FAF battles, therefore, two brigades sit in the front line at the beginning of the battle. Baldwin's units are some 6-inches to the rear.
Another interesting item. BATTLES AND LEADERS lists five regiments for Willich, five for Kirk, and four for Baldwin. Usually, when FAF is transferred to the table-top, each regiment is represented by a stand, but here, I seemed to have over-strength brigades. Each of my brigades had (and I'm not sure of the exact numbers) around nine or ten stands.
Perhaps Rich took pity on the poor, soon-to-be bashed Union right flank.
Over-strength that I (Johnson) was, Johnson's 3-brigade division, defending the Union right flank, was quickly inundated by two Confederate divisions, those of McCown's (3-brigades) and of Cleburne's (4-brigades).. many, many stands.
Even though I could beat back one brigade, two more took its place. This, said Rich, was all according to plan, for this was exactly what happened to the Union right flank that morning in 1862.
For a turn or so, once my troops had survived the surprise factors of the first turn, I thought I might do better than my historical military counterpart. I needed several good things to happen in tandem:
- First, I needed to toss high dice on all my fire phases. A high dice throw would result in a stand, or stands, being removed from a Confederate brigade. They would then receive a temporary casualty marker.
Second, every turn, prior to movement, all brigades test to see if they are "activated", and I needed the Confederate to toss low during his test, for then his brigade would remain immobile for that phase and couldn't advance, in effect, buying me time. The marker I had placed on him by my fire would make his modified die roll even lower.
Third, I needed to toss high on my own "activation" rolls, for only then could my brigades fall back (instead of being forced to stand... and die... in place) permitting me to form a defensive line.
Alas! The answer to the above three requirements was a solid, a definite: No! No! No!
I kept tossing "1's" on my fire phase, and the Confederate commanders would laugh. They, then, kept tossing high on their activation rolls, and they would laugh again.
And, finally, the big horselaugh came when I consistently failed most of my own activation rolls. The result was that my units stolidly held their ground, refused to fall back, couldn't form up, and were chopped up into nothingness.
One procedure that added to my rapid demise was the "pass-through" fire provision of FAF.
On those few occasions that my brigades passed the activation test, and fell back and formed into some sort of coherent defensive line, they were immediately bashed by enemy fire.
The FAF sequence for the bound consists of:
- First half
- a. Side A move
b. Side B fire
c. Side A fire
d. Resolve melee
Second half
- e. Side B moves
f. Side A fire
g. Side B fire
h. Resolve melee
Note that both sides fire once on each half of the bound, and so if I were Side A, for example, immediately after my movement, B would get his fire phase.
And due to the pass-through fire provisions, Side B could fire at me "where I had been" and not "where I was". Which meant that, with a musket range of 9-inches, my troops could never escape scottfree, but were always subject to Confederate minie balls at the position they had just left.
Since each turn corresponded to a half-hour, as the Confederate tide poured on the field from my side of the table (from the south), the scenario mandated that more and more units came into play, until, finally, the whole table's worth of troops were jes' ashootin' an' afirin' an' afightin'... great day in the mawnin'!... as my Confederate friends would say.
Unfortunately, I cannot report on the eventual outcome of the battle... I took off early. But I can report that Rich's prophecy proved quite accurate... Johnson's Division truly got waxed.
My two brigades in the front line, those of Kirk and Willich, survived only for some 3 turns. Only Baldwin's brigade remained. Historically speaking, this was quite accurate, for BATTLES AND LEADERS lists the total casualties for Willich as 1,164, and for Kirk as 859.
Back to PW Review March 1994 Table of Contents
Back to PW Review List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1994 Wally Simon
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