Previous methods of assessing military-type maneuvers and wargames often suffered from a lack of detailed information. By contrast, the sophisticated equipment used at Fort Irwin often produces it in such abundance as to make its use impossible. Some take-home packages containing scores as well as visual and auditory material relevant to individual commanders, units and individuals are available. However, it is hard to say what use, if any, is being made of them. Last but not least, Fort Irwin, like many similar if smaller installations around the world, has special units to play the role of Red. Their task is to take on other units seriatim as the latter arrive and present themselves for their scheduled training periods.74 Since moving units from one base to another is always expensive, the advantage of this arrangement is clear. However, there is another side to the coin. Regardless of whether they represent a Soviet armored brigade or a group of Afghan irregulars, inevitably the locals (OPFOR, for Opposing Force) will get to know the terrain, as well as the general setup, the strengths and weaknesses of the equipment, and so on much better than the visiting units do.
Almost as inevitably, instead of simply simulating the way the baddies are supposed to operate, OPFOR will devise their own tactics best designed to defeat all comers. Doing so, their intimate understanding of the larger organization to which both they and their opponents belong, in this case the US Army, will be of great help. All these advantages mean that they are hard to beat – adjectives often applied to them by visiting units are “awesome,” “sneaky,” and “redoubtable.”75 In the 1980s, so often did OPFOR defeat its “enemies” that a computer error was suspected.76 This fact represents both a challenge and a problem. It is a challenge in so far as units sent into the installation to train and practice will normally do their utmost to obtain a good score by defeating the redoubtable OPFOR. It is a problem because, unless care is taken, trying to do so they may learn the wrong lessons and teach themselves the wrong methods. Mirror imaging, in other words, is difficult, perhaps impossible, to avoid.
As so often, one could argue that wargames which provide no prospect for real injury are hardly likely to be taken as seriously as the real thing. As so often, one could turn this argument around on the ground that, early on, the absence of danger allows trainers to focus on their tasks and encourages better learning. Danger is best introduced in carefully measured doses, but even so there are obvious limits. Certainly the line between play, seriousness, and stress is a fine one. That is all the more the case because it varies not just from one individual and unit to another but also in the case of the same individual and the same unit from one time to another. Whether in the form of paintball or in that of laser tag, whether played by amateurs for entertainment or by professionals for serious training, the games discussed in the present section enable a degree of realism to be achieved not seen for centuries past. In so far as some versions of paintball are, or at any rate could be, used in handling “real” situations such as demonstrations and the like, play and the real thing may actually be fusing. In a different way, that also applies to the next, and last, kind of wargames we must now consider.
Reenacting war
Wars being among the most important historical events as well as the most spectacular ones, they have always produced their share of souvenirs of every kind. As the story about Alexander the Great acquiring a suit of armor that had supposedly belonged to the Homeric hero Achilles shows, weapons, equipment, and insignia truly or falsely associated with past conflicts have long attracted buyers and continue to do so today.77 From there it was a relatively small step to attempts at reconstructing the wars themselves. In Imperial Rome, reenactments of past battles were not rare. Some were held on a spectacular scale and caused the deaths of many who participated in them, though whether things were arranged in such a way as to duplicate the historical outcome, and if so just how it was done, remains unknown; it is hard to imagine how men could have been made to fight for their very lives – which is what the Roman public expected to see – and follow a prepared script. Late medieval knights on tournament sometimes did not fight under their own names but impersonated historical figures or used names taken from the Arthurian legends. During the Renaissance mock battles that pitted Christian warriors against Ottoman ones were much in vogue. One such was staged by Cardinal Pietro Riario, a nephew of Pope Sixtus IV, in 1473.78 Similar displays continued to be held into the early years of the seventeenth century.
That was not the end of the matter. Though tournaments ceased to be held after 1600 or so, reenactments of them – meaning wargames that sought to simulate other wargames – remained quite popular. They continued to be organized throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. An outstanding example of the genre was the 1839 Eglinton Tournament, funded and organized by Lord Eglinton at his castle in Scotland.79 The background was formed by the so-called Gothic Revival which, to counter the spreading Industrial Revolution, looked back to everything medieval as simple, healthy, original, and worth preserving. Particularly important in this respect was the novelist Walter Scott (1771–1832) who single-handed brought the Middle Ages, or the image of them that people wanted to see, back to life and whose voluminous opus is full of tournaments as well as knights and their beautiful ladies. Preparations, including the gathering or manufacture of the necessary equipment as well as training, took up almost a year. Some of Britain’s best-known aristocrats were enlisted and spent months learning how to joust. Doing so, they took on fancy names such as “the Black Knight,” “Knight of the Red Rose,” “the Dragon Knight,” and so on.
Entry to the show was free, it being assumed that a profit could be made by selling food, drink, souvenirs, and so on. Whereas the organizers had expected 4,000 spectators to attend, on the appointed day, 31 August, no fewer than 150,000 turned up. Among them was the future Napoleon III who was living in England at the time. Unfortunately a thunderstorm broke out in the midst of the opening parade. It turned the field into a swamp, caused the crowds to flee (the ladies, we are told, were helped to their carriages first of all; what happened to the vast majority of female spectators who were not ladies is not on record), and forced the organizers to suspend the event. Even without the centerpiece, i.e. the joust, however, the show was considered a great success in historical consciousness-raising. As one contemporary writer put it, “we heard only one feeling of admiration expressed at the gorgeousness of the whole scene, considered only as a pageant. Even on Wednesday, when the procession was seen to the greatest possible disadvantage, the dullest eye glistened with delight as the lengthy and stately train swept into the marshaled lists.”80 Canceled but not forgotten, in 1989, the tournament was reenacted in what had since become Eglinton County Park: a remarkable, and perhaps unique, case of a reenactment reenacting another reenactment.
Just as the use of firearms makes it difficult to simulate real war, so it creates complications when it is a question of reenacting the latter. Another period when reenactments were popular was the early years of the twentieth century. In 1903 Pieter Cronjé, a famous Boer general and the victor in several battles against the British in both Boer Wars (1880–1 and 1899–1902), teamed up with an American entrepreneur to form a sort of traveling circus. Allegedly it was made up of 400 real Boer and British war veterans plus 300 horses (which were certainly real). With them he toured the United States, giving exhibitions. In 1904 he was in the city of St. Louis which was hosting that year’s World Fair. Twice a day he commanded the Boers in “battle” against the British, the background being formed by a mock village populated by “Swazis, Zulus, and other African peoples.”81 The enterprise must have been profitable, for a year later we find him doing the same on New York’s Coney Island, at that time the scene of major amusement parks. As the New York Times informed its readers, 1,000 men, “including 200 Kafirs, Zulus, Matabeles, and representatives of other African tribes” and 600 horses were engaged. Though Cronjé was still the outstanding figure, several former Boer and British officers – one of them
with a missing arm, “in silent testimony to his service at Spion Kop Hill” – also participated.82
The terrain on which the show was held comprised fourteen acres. “Huge basins, zinc lined and installed at enormous cost, with running water, and made to produce the Tugeln and Modder Rivers” were installed. Surrounding the field were hundreds of canvases painted by no fewer than fifty-eight artists to represent the scenery, the towns of Colenso and Paardeburg included. The first scene was laid out near Colenso where the Boers had defeated the British in December 1899. As “the rattle of the deadly Maxim guns” was heard and “the storm of battle [was] waged in this furious fight for supremacy,” men and horses went down right and left. The Boers, rough but heroic, captured the British guns, fought their opponents hand to hand, and emerged victorious. Particularly interesting was the performance of one black horse that, having been “killed” early on, rose from the dead upon a signal being made, giving spectators “a sly look.” Are wargames the country where even horses have wings?
If anything, the next two scenes, representing the battles of Paardeburg and a Highlander’s charge across the Modder River respectively, were considered “a great deal more exciting and even more realistic” than the first one had been. Judging by the fact that the British were always being defeated, perhaps one purpose behind these shows was to help members of the growing Irish-American community to express their sympathy for the Boers. Or perhaps it was because crowds like underdogs – those who, though they deserve to win, go under fighting. In fact games celebrating the Boers’ exploits were popular in many countries at the time. That apart, there does not seem to have been any particular political message, and indeed former enemies cooperated in mounting the shows: the objective was simply to offer entertainment and make some money.
In other cases the situation was entirely different. Particularly memorable in this respect were the Russian reenactments of the 1854–5 siege of Sebastopol (1906), the 1812 battle of Borodino (1912), and the 1696 capture of Azov (1918). All three battles were considered important landmarks of Russian history and had been glorified by generations of Russian historians and artists. All three reenactments of them were organized by the authorities or on their behalf. The first two were held more or less in situ, and all three were meant to remind spectators of their ancestors’ heroism as they resisted invaders or expanded the empire to its natural limit. Not to be left behind, in 1920 the Bolsheviks reenacted the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917 on the third anniversary of the event.83 As well as attracting the usual crowd, this reenactment served as the centerpiece of Sergey Eisenstein’s film, October: Ten Days that Shook the World. Before computer-generated images started taking over during the 1990s countless other directors followed his example. Some used thousands of extras as Cecil B. DeMille (1881–1959) in particular was famous for doing.
In 1913 a Civil War reenactment was held at Gettysburg, said to have attracted no fewer than 50,000 participants, veterans and spectators. As one would expect, the highlight of the event was a reenactment of Pickett’s charge.84 A collection of photographs at the Tropenmuseum (Tropical Museum) in Amsterdam shows what looks like some kind of battle or skirmish being reenacted in Indonesia (of all places) around the time of World War I. Dutchmen and natives, armed and some of them mounted, appear to be charging up a hill, though it is not clear who is impersonating whom.85
The reenactments popular in many present-day countries may be divided into two principal types with numerous intermediary ones in between. At one extreme are large public shows. As in the case of the Russian/Soviet ones just discussed, often they are staged by, or with the assistance of, the authorities in order to celebrate some occasion and/or remind people of this or that historical event. Some are run on a regular basis. The number of participants can run into the hundreds if not thousands. While such performances often attract huge crowds and give rise to monumental traffic jams, most of the spectators in question know little about the real events being reenacted. That even applies to many performers, who are drawn by the prospect of having a day of fun or perhaps making a few dollars. Hence no very great effort is made to faithfully reproduce contemporary uniforms, weapons, and tactics; often all the organizers seem to care about is numbers of men marching about, “bodies” left lying on the field, and an opportunity sell as many baseball caps, hot dogs, and toy guns as possible.
Outside the US, which has always provided a good market for militaria of every kind, shows of this kind are held in other countries as well. In Italy, the reenactment of the naval battle of Custozza (1866) has now been turned into an annual event. An island as peaceful and as far out of the way as Tasmania has a society dedicated to reenacting historical military events.86 Even in Germany, where the memory of the Second World War has turned “militarism” into the dirtiest of all dirty words, things are changing: in October 2006 a reenactment was held to mark the two-hundredth anniversary of Napoleon’s triumph over Prussia at Jena and was shown on TV. In the words of one spectator, “watching thousands of silly buggers in funny hats line up in full Napoleonic kit before the battle is something I won’t forget in a hurry.”87 Most spectators, incidentally, were not youngsters but adults in their fifties. Four years later in the same country another reenactment marked the six-hundredth anniversary of the battle of Tannenberg. It attracted 200,000 spectators who watched 2,200 participants playing the role of knights in a reenactment of the battle. An additional 3,800 participants played peasants and camp-followers. The pageant’s organizers claim that the event has become the largest reenactment of medieval combat in Europe. They have been busily trying to repeat their success by turning it into an annual event.88
In shows of this kind the maneuvering and “fighting” are scripted and the outcomes predetermined. Consequently there is no real give and take between the sides, no real attempt to overpower or outwit the opponent and achieve victory however defined. Not representing wargames proper, this kind of reenactment will not be further discussed in the present volume. Very different are the sort of small-scale reenactments held by hobbyists for their own satisfaction.89 Groups of reenactors may number from a handful to several thousands, though for all the members of the larger organizations to come together for a single event is rare. Some players have personal experience of military service and war. Most do not: indeed it has been said of reenactors that they are prepared to do anything normally (and not so normally) done in war except, which God forbid, enlisting and serving in it. In terms of education, profession, and income they come from all walks of life. Incomes range from low to quite high, though perhaps with a disproportionate number of lower-middle-class types: young office workers and salesmen, skilled blue-collar men, and the like. As one website puts it, “mostly, we’re average folks who have a hobby that is a bit unusual.”90
Practically all reenactors are men under the age of thirty-five or so. Probably the percentage of those who are married and have children is somewhat lower than among the general population in the same age range: after all, granting dear hubby leave to spend money on a hobby as well as long weekends away from home practicing it is not something every wife will automatically do. Starting from nothing, just acquiring the basic kit may cost about $1,500, plus membership dues, plus transportation and perhaps lodging, plus all kinds of incidentals. Family men are sometimes called “gappers,” after the large gaps between their appearances in the field. They tend to drop out of the game, perhaps to reappear a few years later following a divorce.
Many reenactors will readily admit that their hobby, i.e. dressing up as soldiers from the past and pretending to shoot each other, is somewhat strange. But that does not prevent them from practicing it and enjoying it. Asked about their motivation, they will often answer that they want to understand war and that one cannot really do so without having been in it – as far as possible – complete with all the heart-beat and heightened blood pressure that are the outcome of intensive physical activity.91 Others explain that they
want to honor the men whose deeds they are bringing to life.92 This is especially true of those interested in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and so on, many of whom have relatives who served in those conflicts. Thus the Scottish Military Re-enactment Society sets out “to ensure that the memory of those men and women who fought for the allied cause during World War II, shall never be forgotten.”93 A person’s ethnic origin may also do much to determine his decision as to whom or what to impersonate: many will only join certain units and not others.
If only because of the cost, reenactors who will simply play any kind of soldier at any time and place are hard to find. Many reenactors are interested in socializing above all. As also happens in some real-life militaries, notably those that make extensive use of reservists or consist of civilians who serve an occasional day as in many national guards around the world, reenactments often cause people who would otherwise have led entirely separate existences to come together and feel much closer than would otherwise have been the case. Doing so is considered an important part of the fun.
Some choose to “be” American Revolutionary soldiers serving with Washington and crossing the Delaware. Each year as Christmas comes there is likely to take place a reenactment of that campaign:94 depending mostly on the weather, sometimes they succeed in crossing the river, sometimes not. Others pretend they are serving in the army of Frederick the Great or in Napoleon’s Grande Armée. They may represent Crimean War vintage soldiers, or Federals and Confederates, or World War I French poilus, or World War II Soviet Guards. The US alone has twenty-three different Roman legions (not counting spare ones) as well as three Praetorian cohorts (I, III and V, based in Florida, Arkansas and New Mexico, respectively). All this, on top of two gladiatorial schools and one “combat simulation organization” calling itself “The Senate and People of Rome.”95 Some reenactors give evidence of being on the peculiar side by choosing to reenact the Waffen SS. One claimed that they were “neat, bad, scary, and . . . top notch soldiers”; another that “reenacting SS is . . . the expression of some fascination for the impressive combat record/organization/uniforms of those units.”96 Both in the US and elsewhere interest in, and the popularity of, everything pertaining to the German armed forces in World War II is striking. It has created an entire industry dealing in militaria, real real, real fake, and fake.
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