Wargamers naturally tend to concentrate on representing soldiers and their weapons to the neglect of those impedimenta which figure so largely in real war. Yet the inclusion of baggage on the wargames table not only clutters it up realistically but also introduces important strategic and tactical factors. Most wargamers take account of the need for stores and supplies and, therefore, of the importance of depots and lines of communication as strategic objectives but the supplies which an army needs to carry with it effect not only its strategic but also its tactical movements. Ammunition, usually allowed for in rules and represented at least by gun-limbers, makes up together with food, part of these supplies but by far the largest item is fuel: forage for horse-drawn transport and oil in this mechanised age. Thus even in the static conditions of the First World War, the greater part of the tonnage of shipping supplying the British Army in Prance was given over to forage; and in the Americah Civil War a Federal Army of 50,000 men required 300 tons of forage a day; whilst Sherman allowed only one pound of ammunition per man and three pounds of food and the Confederate Army expended only half a cartridge per man per day. Nevertheless, the amount of transport required for ammunition was considerable. Even the lightest-marching armies needed large wagon-trains. Despite Napoleonts well-known insistence on his armies living off the country, he could not make do with less than 500 wagons to an army of 40,000 men. Again, Sherman in his march through Georgia, in which he intended to live off the country, required 800 wagons, taking up five miles of road, for each of his four corps, Even Lee's ill-supplied Army of Northern Virginia entered the Gettysburg campaign with a wagon-train forty-two miles long. It is, of course, possible to restrict the wagons on the battlefield to first-line transport carrying ammunition but this is vital. As the British Field Service Pocket Book of 1914 put it: "First line transport is an integral part of the war organisation of a fighting unit, without which it cannot perform its tactical functions, and by which it must be accompanied in action and at all times." As a result, a British infantry battalion took up 590 yards of road and its first-line transport 210 yards, a brigade one and a half miles and its first-line transport three-quarters of a mile, a division eight miles and its first-line transport five miles. In action, the first-line ammunition wagons had to be kept within half a mile of the front line. Even Jackson's flank march at Chancellorsville was carried out by a column ten miles long, of which the wagons took up nearly four miles. The first result of this dependence on a wagon-train, is its limitation on an army's movement, confining even its tactical movement to the immediate vicinity of roads just as effectively as its strategic movement was confined to roads, rivers and navigable waterways. This explains why, for instance, Napoleon, in addition to his inclination for the offensive, felt obliged to attack the Allies at Quatre Bras and Ligny and again at Waterloo, precisely where he did, rather than executing a flanking, if not a turning movement, as would be possible in many wargames. Napoleon, like the Allies, was not merely sensitive as to his lines of communication -- he had often shown himself willing to abandon his own so as to threaten his enemies -- but was incapable of launching an attack too far from a road. Again, Jackson's flank march at Chancellorsville was obliged to follow the roads. Similarly, the complicated manoeuvres of the Seven Days Battles and the restrictions on Lee's freedom of manoeuvre at Gettysburg only make sense viewed in the light of an army's tactical, as well as its strategic, dependence on roads. Roads on the wargames table should be more than lines along which troops can move faster or convenient lengths of cover but should be the axes of decisive manoeuvre. The second consequence of the need for first-line transport and its representation in the wargame is its role as a target, the creation of real tactical rear-areas in addition to the rear of the battle-line and to the strategic rear in the form of lines-of-communication and depots. The attack and defence of this rear constitutes the main danger of the flank and rear attack, not just the menace to the rear of the front-line, which was met in the Napoleonic era simply by forming square. As Fuller puts it: "An army is, therefore, a three-fold organisation comprising a body, its combatant arms; a stomach, its administrative services; and a brain, its command. Because the destruction of any one of these parts renders the other two inoperative, it follows that there are three tactical objectives. Of these, the first, the combatant arms, which may be compared to the shell of an egg, occupies the outer or forward area, and the second and third, the command and administrative services - representing the yolk and the white - occupy the inner or rear area. There are, therefore, two tactical area of attack, the forward and the rear." One need only consider the alarm caused to Jackson, as he commenced the Battle of Cross Keys when Shield's advance guard unexpectedly entered Port Republic and threatened his wagon-train there to realise the importance of the train as a tactical target. When Jackson himself struck at the flank or rear as at Chancellorsville and thus got in amongst the enemy wagon-train as well as enfilading his line of battle, the effect was devastating. As Swinton wrote of the Federal flight, "... a rushing whirlwind of men and artillery and wagons swept down the road." The key words are "men and artillery and wagons." To be realistic, to include the possibility of decisive tactical manoeuvre, the wargamer must have a wagon-train in his lay-out. Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 154 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1975 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