Back from vacation, savoring a very happy three week period in England. I took lots of notes on the wargames won and lost. Visited Paddy Grifffith, who said that sometime around October, the BBC television will present a series of four wargames, hosted by Paddy. These will be kriegspiel-type games, i.e., double-blind, in which the command staff of each side, isolated from the other, will send in its orders to the umpire, who will then judge the outcome and report back to the staffs as to whether or not the orders were efficiently carried out, estimated casualties, ground gained, etc. Waterloo, and Balaclava will be among the four battles. Paddy said that the BBC went all out for the series...large command staff rooms, large light tables on which to display the maps, large staffs to furnish runners for each side. The BBC had invited a number of retired generals (British or otherwise) to run the battles. We lucked out on the night we visited Paddy; his local military society was meeting, and the speaker was a retired sergeant of the Welsh Fusiliers, a very sprightly, lively and witty fellow, some 76 years old. He had enlisted in the army in 1939, when he was 17 1/2, eventually went in to Germany, and finished out his career in the Hongkong Brigade. Rethem In April, 1945, his battalion, the 1/5, was ordered to take the German town of Rethem. The 1/5, at this time, was understrength... it consisted of three companies, each of about 60 men each... the sergeant was in Company A. Company A approached the outskirts of Rethem under heavy fire, and captured a small stone farm house. As night fell, there were some 20 men left in Company A... the farm house and barn were on fire, the pigs were squealing, the wounded were moaning, the sergeant himself had been wounded (the Germans had fired a panzerfaust at the building, knocking a huge stone block from the wall, which struck the sergeant, stunning him for some ten minutes). Defending Rethem was a battalion of German Marines, ordered by Admiral Doenitz to defend German motherhood to the death. In so doing, the sergeant said they turned what appeared to be a 20mm quad anti-aircraft gun on the building... it was time to think things over. The remaining lead sergeant of Company A attached a white flag to his bayonet, stuck it out the window, and Company A slowly filed out, not knowing what to expect... but the Marines greeted them in 'friendly' fashion, gave them cigarettes, and sent them off to a pnson camp. This was in April, 1945. A month later, the war was over, and the sergeant went home. But he stated that in the camp; there were British prisoners who had been held there since Dunkirk, 1940. Back to PW Review May 1997 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 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