LITTLE WARS AND KRIEGSPIEL
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Appendix
THIS little book has, I hope, been perfectly frank about its intentions.
It is not a book upon Kriegspiel. It gives merely a game that may be
played by two or four or six amateurish persons in an afternoon and
evening with toy soldiers. But it has a very distinct relation to
Kriegspiel; and since the main portion of it was written and published
in a magazine, I have had quite a considerable correspondence with
military people who have been interested by it, and who have shown a
very friendly spirit towards it--in spite of the pacific outbreak in its
concluding section. They tell me--what I already a little suspected--
that Kriegspiel, as it is played by the British Army, is a very dull and
unsatisfactory exercise, lacking in realism, in stir and the unexpected,
obsessed by the umpire at every turn, and of very doubtful value in
waking up the imagination, which should be its chief function. I am
particularly indebted to Colonel Mark Sykes for advice and information
in this matter. He has pointed out to me the possibility of developing
Little Wars into a vivid and inspiring Kriegspiel, in which the element
of the umpire would be reduced to a minimum; and it would be ungrateful
to him, and a waste of an interesting opportunity, if I did not add this
Appendix, pointing out how a Kriegspiel of real educational value for
junior officers may be developed out of the amusing methods of Little
War. If Great War is to be played at all, the better it is played the
more humanely it will be done. I see no inconsistency in deploring
the practice while perfecting the method. But I am a civilian, and
Kriegspiel is not my proper business. I am deeply preoccupied with a
novel I am writing, and so I think the best thing I can do is just to
set down here all the ideas that have cropped up in my mind, in the
footsteps, so to speak, of Colonel Sykes, and leave it to the military
expert, if he cares to take the matter up, to reduce my scattered
suggestions to a system.
Now, first, it is manifest that in Little Wars there is no equivalent
for rifle-fire, and that the effect of the gun-fire has no resemblance
to the effect of shell. That may be altered very simply. Let the rules
as to gun-fire be as they are now, but let a different projectile be
used--a projectile that will drop down and stay where it falls. I find
that one can buy in ironmongers' shops small brass screws of various
sizes and weights, but all capable of being put in the muzzle of the 4'7
guns without slipping down the barrel. If, with such a screw in the
muzzle, the gun is loaded and fired, the wooden bolt remains in the gun
and the screw flies and drops and stays near where it falls--its range
being determined by the size and weight of screw selected by the gunner.
Let us assume this is a shell, and it is quite easy to make a rule that
will give the effect of its explosion. Half, or, in the case of an odd
number, one more than half, of the men within three inches of this shell
are dead, and if there is a gun completely within the circle of three
inches radius from the shell, it is destroyed. If it is not completely
within the circle, it is disabled for two moves. A supply waggon is
completely destroyed if it falls wholly or partially within the radius.
But if there is a wall, house, or entrenchment between any men and the
shell, they are uninjured--they do not count in the reckoning of the
effect of the shell.
I think one can get a practical imitation of the effect of rifle-fire
by deciding that for every five infantry-men who are roughly in a line,
and who do not move in any particular move, there may be one (ordinary)
shot taken with a 4'7 gun. It may be fired from any convenient position
behind the row of live men, so long as the shot passes roughly over the
head of the middle man of the five.
Of course, while in Little Wars there are only three or four players,
in any proper Kriegspiel the game will go on over a larger area--in
a drill-hall or some such place--and each arm and service will be
entrusted to a particular player. This permits all sorts of complicated
imitations of reality that are impossible to our parlour and playroom
Little Wars. We can consider transport, supply, ammunition, and the
moral effect of cavalry impact, and of uphill and downhill movements.
We can also bring in the spade and entrenchment, and give scope to
the Royal Engineers. But before I write anything of Colonel Sykes'
suggestions about these, let me say a word or two about Kriegspiel
"country."
The country for Kriegspiel should be made up, I think, of heavy blocks
or boxes of wood about 3 x 3 x 1/2 feet, and curved pieces (with a
rounded outline and a chord of three feet, or shaped like right-angled
triangles with an incurved hypotenuse and two straight sides of 3 feet)
can easily be contrived to round off corners and salient angles. These
blocks can be bored to take trees, etc., exactly as the boards in Little
Wars are bored, and with them a very passable model of any particular
country can be built up from a contoured Ordnance map. Houses may be
made very cheaply by shaping a long piece of wood into a house-like
section and sawing it up. There will always be someone who will touch up
and paint and stick windows on to and generally adorn and individualise
such houses, which are, of course, the stabler the heavier the wood used.
The rest of the country as in Little Wars.
Upon such a country a Kriegspiel could be played with rules upon
the lines of the following sketch rules, which are the result of a
discussion between Colonel Sykes and myself, and in which most of the
new ideas are to be ascribed to Colonel Sykes. We proffer them, not as
a finished set of rules, but as material for anyone who chooses to work
over them, in the elaboration of what we believe will be a far more
exciting and edifying Kriegspiel than any that exists at the present
time. The game may be played by any number of players, according to the
forces engaged and the size of the country available. Each side will be
under the supreme command of a General, who will be represented by a
cavalry soldier. The player who is General must stand at or behind his
representative image and within six feet of it. His signalling will be
supposed to be perfect, and he will communicate with his subordinates
by shout, whisper, or note, as he thinks fit. I suggest he should be
considered invulnerable, but Colonel Sykes has proposed arrangements
for his disablement. He would have it that if the General falls within
the zone of destruction of a shell he must go out of the room for three
moves (injured); and that if he is hit by rifle-fire or captured he
shall quit the game, and be succeeded by his next subordinate.
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LITTLE WARS AND KRIEGSPIEL 2
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ENDING WITH A SORT OF CHALLENGE
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