A Reconnaissance

A short time ago I read in Lone Warrior an article by Jeff Subko, about reconnaissance operations in World War Two and their importance. It also included quite a lot of information about reconnaissance units and equipment in France in 1944-5 and provoked some thinking by yours truly.

I am rarely one to let a lack of suitable toys slow me down. If you abstract sufficiently, I think, more or less any situation can have its period changed, and so I started pondering. I also recalled some of the activities by the force before Naseby. In short, the Parliamentary scouts surprised a Royalist cavalry outpost in Naseby village. The latter were gambling and playing quoits; I am not sure if the two were linked. Some reports suggest that the Royalists were also having lunch.

All of this went together in my poor overstretched little mind and combined with some of the stuff I read about intelligence in Andrew’s book that I wrote about last week. As I was getting desperate to have a wargame and could not quite stomach starting another campaign, or reviving Machiavelli again, I sketched out a possible reconnaissance game. I vaguely remembered a report on a participation game from years ago, where the player was leading a squad sent to scout a farmhouse in 1944 Normandy where what they found was, in fact, randomly controlled and could be anything from nothing to a Panzer division, I needed a bit of a random method of creating what I found.

I will not bore you with the details here. It is really too much of a scribble. I might write it up more sensibly sometime. Basically, what was found in each terrain item, plus each square of the table, was controlled by playing cards. The encounters ranged from nothing to an enemy camp. There was a points system as well. Getting a message back to headquarters on what was found was 1 point, getting a prisoner or deserter back was 2 points, and losing a base in combat lost 3 points. The idea was to get out with a positive point balance.

The picture shows the initial terrain. Each terrain item was, potentially, the concealment place for an enemy force of some description. My side (the Royalists, for no better reason than that I picked a Royalist cavalry base first) enters by one of the two roads nearest the camera. The idea is to see what might be lurking in the rural scene above and get away without damage, as the points system suggests.

In order to do this I had four bases of dragoons and three of cavalry. The latter was conceived of as backup, to rescue the dragoon bases if they hit trouble. I suppose I could have deployed some scouts as well, but decided against it (or forgot). It probably would not have made much difference. The other thing to note is that I ran out of hedges and walls. I needed quite a lot of cover for troops to hide in, and that included along the roads, so every hedge and wall was deployed. I also have some more unpainted and un-based hedges. I might need to break them out.

Still, I cautiously moved some dragoons onto the table and sprang some enemy dragoons in the rough ground on the right, nearest the camera, as well as a scout on the road ahead of my troops. The dragoons opened fire (ineffectively) while the scout made off pursued by my brave men. After a turn or two they did, in fact, catch him and he was sent up the line to be questioned.

A few moves later things were getting lively. My advanced dragoon troop had found an enemy camp near the road. The shooting of the enemy dragoons (and my dragoon’s return fire when they had dismounted) had started to alert the camp but they were slow to deploy, their general in particular being rather sluggish (I wonder what he was doing). The picture shows the situation as the camp was getting organised. You can see to left and right Parliamentary dragoon outposts and patrols withdrawing, while centre right a Parliamentary cavalry troop is heading for what might become the fray from covering a foraging party which was way out to the right. The foragers themselves, another troop of horse, are rallying.

On my side, on the left, a troop of dragoons backed by cavalry are probing forwards. In the centre I have started to withdraw my leading dragoons as they are a bit exposed, and I have deployed my cavalry to stop any smart ideas of charging them.

As it was it did get a little fraught. The dragoons took a bit longer to withdraw than I hoped, leaving the cavalry facing three bases of enemy cavalry. Both sides attempted to charge but the troops of neither side fancied their chances and so after a few growls and doubtless some sword waving from the more excitable elements on both sides, I completed my withdrawal without too much further ado.

You might think that this was very boring as a wargame. Fair enough. Not much happened. But I did succeed in the mission, and got a message reporting the camp and a prisoner back to headquarters, and managed to get my troops away without too much damage – one of the dragoon troops took a lucky hit from some Parliamentary dragoons near the end of the game.

On the other hand, I had discovered the enemy’s presence in some strength and, possibly, the captive scout might tell us more about the enemy's dispositions. My dragoons had inflicted a few casualties on their most advanced post as well and those dragoons, plus their colleagues on the other flank had been pushed in, to use the contemporary term.

All in all, it was a rather satisfactory little game, I thought, and, if it had been part of a campaign context, might have been a bit more important. The thing with reconnaissance, as I have said, is to try to get your troops off without casualties and the message back to headquarters as to what you have found. Dying in a ditch while taking on the whole New Model Army with a couple of troops of dragoons is not much use to anyone.