Well, I suppose I asked for it and rather led with my chin when I attempted to be highly ironical and write a satirical last-but-one paragraph in last month's Editorial. To make the point that the Newsletter cannot possibly cover every minor campaign of military history, I invented two grotesquely-named characters, supposedly complaining about a couple of most minor and obscure campaigns. The first was the Carlist Wars and for the second I thumbed through the pages of Dupuy's Encyclopedias of Military History to find something really out-of-the-run and came up with the Peruvian Invasion of Bolivia in 1841. Subscriber T.Hooker, being not only well informed but also well intentioned, seemingly took me seriously as his letter in our correspondent pages indicates! Anyway, to all those characters labouring under the pseudonym of Major Jump, you can now set about re-enacting this little known South American conflict. To friends and sympathisers of Otis Eggthymer, the Carlist Wars will be covered in a much later issue of Wargamer's Newsletter. In mid-October, a group of seven Members of the Wessex Military Society went along to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, where (by courtesy of Paddy Griffiths, David Chandler and others) we fought a wargame against some of the Staff and Cadets. The chosen battle was that of Leuthen, where on 5 December 1757, Frederick the Great's Prussians soundly defeated the Austrian Army. At Sandhurst in 1974, the Austrians (handled by the Wessex Military Society) refused to be defeated and emerged victorious from the tight fought battle. The significant points that arose from this epic six-hour affair are that the battle was fought on a vast "table" 36' by 24' which covered the entire floor of the lecture hall with the six-aside wargamers treading verily among the villages, roads, etc. This made for some most realistic wargaming with formations, in authentic fashion, marching madly for at least three hours from one part of the field to another - the Austrian Reserves did not even get into the battle! Over and above all the tactical technicalities, must be recorded the fact that this tightly fought encounter between some pretty experienced wargamers was carried off without a trace of arguments or acrimony. A most enjoyable time was had by all - not only on the wargames "table" but also at lunch and dinner in the Mess. If there are any drill halls in your area it might not be too difficult to persuade the Commanding Officer of an Army Cadet Force that a vast wargame stretching right across the floor would not only interest his Cadets but would also provide a fine opportunity for some really full-scale wargaming. After all, did not the immortal Fletcher Pratt enliven the Naval wargames scene by vast battles on the floors of American armouries (the trans-Atlantic counterpart to our drill halls). Anyway, I have thrown the idea to you and leave it to your undoubted ingenuity and acumen (nod, nod, wink, wink). Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 153 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1974 by Donald Featherstone. 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