You command this small colonial brigade at Brandywine. You hold the center of the field for your side. Your orders are to defend this ford and prevent the enemy from crossing it. An enemy Hessian brigade attempted to cross and launched an assault up the hill. You won! A Total Defeat for the enemy, with heavy losses.
You considered following up your victory to drive across the river and finish the Hessians off. The enemy baggage train is likely behind them, however a fresh British brigade moved up from reserve and bolstered the Hessian line. Given that, you called off the attack and have held your line.
Since then? Nothing. The enemy has not made another attempt to cross the river. As the hours wore on, you’ve heard sporadic fighting back and forth to your left and to your right (about the 4 o’clock position). There were 2 friendly brigades to your right and rear, but they marched off towards the sound of combat to your right. For you, just turn after turn of sitting here.
The sound of combat to your right is growing in intensity and is moving closer to you…
What should you do? Continue to follow orders and hold this position? The enemy isn’t attacking anyways. If the enemy breaks through to your right rear, you could be surrounded and cut off! Your commanding officer is probably in the middle of heavy fighting to your right. He probably doesn’t have time to write you. Did he forget about you? If he gets shattered and has to make a run for it, will he have time to inform you first? Has that already happened? The enemy could be maneuvering around to encircle you right now! How long do you sit here and wait?
If you wait too long, your troops will have been wasted in the battle. Maybe if you marched to the sound of the guns, you could arrive at a critical moment to turn the tide and help your side win the battle!
On the other hand, that march would be disobeying direct orders in the middle of a critical battle. What if your side is doing fine over there? What if the Hessians cross the ford while you march over there without orders? Losing that key position in the center of the line, in the middle of a battle could cause your side to lose this battle!
Will you be the hero that saved the day? The fool that disobeyed orders and lost the battle? The fool that sat there doing nothing while his side was defeated, and was then captured & taken prisoner? Spend the rest of the war in prison, if you aren’t hung as a traitor by the British.
You might think that getting stuck with this command in a game would be boring. What did you do during the game? Well, the enemy attacked us once. We drove them back. Then I just sat there for the whole game doing nothing.
In Kriegsspiel, just sitting there “doing nothing” can be agonizing. How long do you sit there? What is going on around you? Has it come time to move under your own initiative or should you stay the course? What justifies disobeying orders? Can you defend your actions in a courts martial?
How about now? How about now? The clock is ticking and the situation is changing from turn to turn. More time has past and been lost. More time with no orders or updates. More fighting heard. The fighting is growing in intensity and moving from 4 o’clock to 5 o’clock and approaching 6 o’clock now. Is that enough? How much do you need? How long do you wait? It’s not boring. It is excruciating!!!! Agonizing!!!!!
Terrific fun! The kind of fun you don’t see in wargames but it is the exactly the kinds of things you see in real life.
When I play Pub Battles solo, those are some of the best internal dialogs I have going in my mind. What would that commander do? this really makes the battle come alive for me! I can put myself in that commanders position, imagining what it would be like. Knowing that, imagining his position, gains me an insight into a real commander’s quandary!
Yes! In Kriegsspiel, the goal isn’t to ‘win’ so much. It is to train and to learn. You learn so much more if you try to imagine it being real. What would you do in a real war in a situation like that? You are responsible for the men in your unit. You know most of them well. You want to win the battle and perform well but you want to get those boys home safely too. At least as many as possible.
That is why the real situation – being torn between obeying orders and taking the initiative – military or not, is so excruciating to live. A tug-of-war of body, mind and soul that must make the commander break out in a cold sweat.
That’s why kriegspiel or sometimes poker give as rarely activities, such strong sensations.
This is why there can be an intense pleasure in deciding, in obtaining victory by a good decision.
That’s why there is a (mental) comfort in following the orders received. A bit like Grouchy at Waterloo.
This will not make you a great general but a solid performer. A quality therefore but also a weakness: a mind that does not adapt. Nevertheless, a good commander-in-chief needs solid executors.
It also takes nerves not to be moved and to leave at the first distant gunshot. Impatience does not make a good general either.
Marshal Ney’s impetuosity almost compromised the Emperor’s victory several times.
To refuse reinforcements, to accept to let oneself be attacked, requires nerves of action as well.
However, a good general-in-chief needs generals who “walk with the cannon”, especially when he lacks foresight…. Like Bonaparte saved by Desaix at Marengo.
It is thus necessary to have what the ancients called the “coup d’oeil”: “the intuition of the battlefield which dictates to you the good decision, at the good moment”. You also need a lot of luck, that helps. Perhaps the brigade commander should have tried a move.
A commander-in-chief should meditate on this example in order to work on his orders … and leave a door open for initiative, when planning.
Ooooo, this raises a question in my mind: What is the safest option for your career as an officer?
If I decide to disobey orders and move on my own, that is a huge risk. If I guess right, I’m a hero! Like Desaix did at Marengo. What if I guess wrong? That’s the end of my career. Maybe the end of my life! That is a pretty huge risk to take.
The safest thing to do is what Grouchy did at Wavre: Do nothing. Follow your orders as written. Sure, we hear the sound of the guns but I don’t have orders to march there. My orders are to fight here. That’s what we’re doing. You can’t be courts martialed for following orders and sitting there.
Do you want to play it safe and have a good, long career? Or make a brilliant move and go down in history and risk being shot by firing squad if you guess wrong?
It takes a lot of guts to take that risk. -or maybe you have nothing else so lose anyways. 🙂