Like a lot of people of my generation, the fighting in Vietnam was something that we lived with in our teens and early twenties. There was hardly a nightly TV news report that didn’t mention the fighting, and it was one of the reasons why I did not go to live in the US in 1972 when the opportunity arose. (At the time, my then girlfriend – who was a US exchange student – asked me if I’d like to go to New York to work in her family’s jewellery store … and then I discovered that if I did, I was liable for the draft even though I wasn’t a US citizen.)
My first experience of wargaming the conflict was at the very first Conference of Wargamers, which was held in 1980 at Moor Park. Greg McCauley – who was then a soldier in the British Army and a protégé of Paddy Griffith – staged a game using his rules, BUCKLE FOR YOUR DUST.
Not long afterwards, I was invited by Paddy to take part in a large-scale Vietnam game entitled MEMPHIS MANGLER. This took place under the aegis of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst’s wargames club, and I was given the role of being a US advisor to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). It was the first ever megagame and was a wargaming experience like no other I had ever experienced.
Subsequently, Paddy Griffith wrote quite a lot about the Vietnam War but until now his writings have not been available in a single volume. As part of his ‘History of Wargaming’ project, John Curry has assembled this material and published it as BATTLE IN THE VIETNAM WAR: INCLUDING BUCKLE FOR YOUR DUST AND OTHER WARGAMES.
The book has an introduction by John Curry, forewords by Lt. Col Greg McCauley (Retd.) and Peter Perla, is split into eight chapters, and has a selected book list. The chapters are:
- Summary of the War
- A Chronology of Main Events
- Politics Trumps Battlefield Outcomes
- The Lessons of the Vietnam War
- Estimated Total War Casualties
- The War in a Nutshell
- Geography
- Troop Types and Organisations
- Communist Forces
- The Face of Battle
- The Pattern of Literature dealing with tactic in Vietnam
- Three Types of Battle
- The Alleged Supremacy of Technology in Vietnam 1965-73
- Low-Level Tactics
- The Impact of the Helicopter on the Way the War Was Fought
- Rules of Engagement (ROE)
- Reflections on the 'Dustoff'
- Operational Analysis Data from the Vietnam War
- Wargaming the Vietnam War
- Why Wargame Vietnam?
- Dungeons & Dragons – Indochina style
- Wargaming the Second Indochina War
- Types of Vietnam Wargame
- Sample Scenario: Fighting patrol
- Sample Scenario: Go-On Search and Destroy
- Sample Scenario: Extraction
- Sample Scenario: Operation Pensacola Pitcher, 29 August 1967
- Rule Set 1: Buckle for Your Dust: Miniature Wargames in Vietnam, 1965-73
- Rule Set 2: Mouth of the Dragon: Rules for Riverine Operations by Paddy Griffith
- Rule Set 3: 'One Braincell Vietnam' in 300th Scale by Andy Callan
- Memphis Mangler: The First Megagame (1981)
- A REMF's Guide to the Country – Its Flora, Fauna and Colloquialisms
There is also a Quick Reference Sheet for BUCKLE FOR YOU DUST.
In my opinion, this book contains pretty well all the information that wargamer who wants to refight battle from the Vietnam War needs to know. I did play a very minor role in getting it into print (I submitted my memories of taking part in Memphis Mangler), so my judgement might be seem as slightly suspect. However, most of this is pure Paddy Griffith, with a big dollop of Greg McCauley and a smaller one of Andy Callan, and these are people whose work is always worth reading. As Peter Perla states in his foreword:
'This book is another example of the multidimensional talents and sheer capacity of detailed research and intricate design by Paddy Griffith.'
You don't get many higher compliments than that!
BATTLE IN THE VIETNAM WAR: INCLUDING BUCKLE FOR YOUR DUST AND OTHER WARGAMES was written by Paddy Griffith (with contributions by Greg McCauley and Andy Callan) and edited by John Curry. It was published in 2023 by The History of Wargaming Project (ISBN 979 8 3856 1798 2).
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Outstanding! Thanks for posting this. I shared the info over on the Fields of Fire Vietnam gaming forum, as I'd expect that some of the guys over there will be as excited about this as I am.
ReplyDeleteIrishserb,
DeleteThanks for spreading the word about this book. I hope that you enjoy reading it.
All the best,
Bob
Bob,
ReplyDeleteGreg McCauley and I have been friends for over forty years. These days Greg's health is suffering- since April 2022 Greg contracted Encephalitis being hospitalized...the viral infection has left Greg without any memory- Greg even has problems with his short-term memory. He has no mobile phone and even taking an e-mail and sorting it out is impossible for him.
A few weeks ago Pam (Greg's wife) brought Greg over for a half-hour visit...he expressed an interest in having a game of my Mystic Horizons...that afternoon I rang Pam to confirm a time for the following days game and Greg declined it as he wasn't having a good day remembering things. Recently a woman aged 60 and a 70 year old man died from Encephalitis...so, it is very much a life threatening situation that Greg faces. Hopefully there will be a recovery for him. Thought you'd like to know Bob- about Greg. Regards. KEV.
Kev Robertson (Kev),
DeleteI am very sorry to read the news about Greg’s ill health. Back in the early 1970s I worked with someone who caught a similar virus and was so ill that he lost the ability to read, write, and walk. He was young and fit, and yet it took him nearly eighteen months before he had recovered enough to be able to return to work part time.
I hope that Greg gets better soon, and please pass on my best wishes to him. We were in occasional contact but I hadn’t heard from him for some time, and I assume that it must have been his bout of illness that caused the break.
All the best,
Bob
Bob,
ReplyDeleteYour point about being liable for the draft even if not a US citizen struck me as somewhat odd as one of the reasons the USA declared war on Britain in 1812 was the impressment of American sailors by British warships!
I wholeheartedly agree with Peter Perla's comment; sadly, I think, Paddy's daring to challenge the mainstream, model soldier-led orthodoxy of the time led many to ignore his contribution to wargaming, then and since. He abandoned working on the tabletop game as 'simply designing a better mousetrap', which I think was a shame; had he persisted, who knows what wargames we might have enjoyed?
Best wishes, Arthur
Arthur1815 (Arthur),
DeleteA few Brits who got Green Cards to work and/or study in the US during the Vietnam War were drafted, and at least one was killed. The law that made this possible remains in place, even though the US armed forces are all-volunteer organisations nowadays.
The abandonment of what can best be termed ‘toy soldiers’ was - in my opinion - as much of a dead end as staying with them. Both approaches have their limitations and neither is perfect. Whereas I strive - and continue to strive - to make that better mousetrap (with - I think - a degree of success), Paddy’s games seemed to become a series of one-offs. Each was excellent and unique, but did not seem to take wargame design as a whole much further forward.
I think that if he had come onboard when Tom and I were trying to make Matrix Games a workable concept, we would have made faster progress and developed the concept to even greater heights … but at the time he seemed to write it off as being nothing more than a sort of semi-mugger game and showed little or no interest. It was almost as if he was saying ‘been there, done that, moved on.
He was a genius, but like many geniuses, he had flaws. That said, on a personal level he was an extremely generous person who could admit that he had got it wrong … which was very rare!
All the best,
Bob
Interesting comment about Green Carders being drafted. Over 20,000 Canadians volunteered for the US Armed Forces in the Vietnam War, and 134 of them were killed over there. Meanwhile, official delegations of the Canadian Forces monitored the ceasefire and DMZ. I haven't been able to find out how many British individuals volunteered to join the US armed forces during this time. In either case it was illegal to serve in the armed forces of another nation.
DeleteI know nothing of Memphis Mangler; was it an exercise in limited information and fog of war, that is more than the usual megagame?
Brian Train,
DeleteI understand that the conscription law is still extant, but as the US no longer conscripts its armed forces, it can be regarded as moribund.
I had no idea that so many Canadians volunteered to fight during the Vietnam War. 20,000 is not a small number!
The UK’s law about foreign enlistment is remarkably flexible. If the government sanctions it, it is legal, but if they don’t, it becomes an illegal act. For example, British officers served in the Arab Legion and my own father was offered a commission - with British Government approval - in the Burmese Army in 1947.
Memphis Mangler III was the first ever civilian-run megagame. Having taken part in it, I can assure you that there was plenty of fog of war and limited player information. My role was US advisor to an ARVN company commander and my radio operator was Tom Mouat! Thanks to poor navigation by the US Army helicopter pilot who was transporting us, we were landed in the wrong LZ (one that was under fire!) and I had to draw my sidearm and threaten to shoot him if he didn’t take off immediately! When we finally got to the right place, we had to fight our way out. At one point we requested an airdrop of much-needed mortar ammunition as we were running low … and were supplied with the wrong calibre! The players sat around the terrain, which was set up on the floor of one of the big rooms at RMAS. All communication between players was done by radio, and there seemed to be nearly as many umpires as there were players.
All the best,
Bob
PS. We restaged Memphis Mangler IV in 2012: http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2012/02/memphis-mangler-iv.html and http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2012/02/memphis-mangler-iv-report.html .
I was in high school during the height of the Vietnam war and it weighed on my mind in those days. I thought a lot about what I might do. Fortunately things ended right about the time I should have registered for the draft. I never knew non-citizens could be subject to the draft. Makes no sense to me; they can't vote in our elections. The latter is actually one of the reasons the voting age was lowered to 18. A lot of people decided it wasn't fair that people under 21 could be drafted, but couldn't vote. Young men do still have to register with Selective Service, and I checked the site (they have a pdf of who is required to register and who isn't - it does include immigrants, but not non-immigrants; I'm not sure about all of the details or who would fit under the various categories; don't feel like wading through the gov info :P).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I don't know if living through that time, under those concerns, and seeing what it did to so many men (albeit, I was never directly affected myself) is one of the reasons I never had any interest in gaming modern wars. Although I do sometimes watch WWII movies and tv series (and MASH).
Fitz-Badger,
DeleteI'm not surprised that the thought of having to leave school and risk being conscripted was something of a pre-occupation for you during your teens, especially as the war seemed to be so unpopular with a large section of the population. It must have been conflicting for patriotic young men who wanted to serve their country to have been sent to fight in a war which was far away, seemingly endless, and against an enemy who was not directly threatening their homeland.
When I considered going to the US, it was to settle there. I would have been regarded as an immigrant, hence my liability to be drafted would have kicked in after I had been there for some time.
The age for voting had been reduced to 18 in the UK by the time I was 21 and just old enough to vote, and at the time many people argued that it made a lot of sense to reduce the age as you could get married at 18 as well as go into a pub and serve on active service.
Like you, I have tended to avoid gaming wars that have taken place whilst I have been alive, so 1945 is the main cutoff point for me. I have done some wargaming of wars set during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, but these have been the exception rather than the rule.
All the best,
Bob
Just an FYI. In the US Army, the term of reference for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was "ARVN"--pronounced "Arvin". (I was in US ARMY ROTC in the 1970s; it was just after the draft but 'Nam was still very much in the culture of the force, for obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteEd M,
DeleteMy use of AVN was a mistyping and it should have read ARVN. Thanks for pointing it out. I have now corrected the error.
All the best,
Bob
At the risk of going one step too far, I'll add that the use of the term "Arvin" was not only to in reference to the Army of Vietnam, but to South Vietnameses Army soldiers or units, which would be referred to as "Arvins" (not in a derogatory way, I should add, but as an identifier--example; an"Arvin" platoon, or a "squad of Arvins...").
ReplyDeleteEd M,
DeleteFor some inexplicable reason, your latest comment arrived long after your first! As I replied to your first comment, I have corrected my original typo.
All the best,
Bob
I was living in the US at the time I turned 19 in 1971 and was informed I would soon eligible for the draft although a UK citizen....I came back to the UK...and have wondered ever since "what if I had stayed".....Regards.
ReplyDeleteTony Adams,
DeleteIt seems as if we might both have served in the US military even though we were not US citizens. As Arthur Harman commented, this is a rather change of attitude from that prevailing in 1812!
All the best,
Bob
Bob, rather it's an example of typical Yankee hypocrisy: okay for Uncle Sam; not okay for anyone else. For example: Americans rebel against King George III - okay; Texicans rebel against Santa Anna - okay; Southern states try to leave Union - not okay, get the cr*p beaten out of them!
DeleteBritish Empire - not okay; Filipinos rebel against Spanish rule, Americans offer help (as at war with Spain at time), then double-cross them by taking surrender of Spanish troops in Manila themselves and thereafter run Philippines in colonial style until after WWII.
And then there was the Anne Sacoolas case...
On the more pleasant subject of Paddy Griffith, the Napoleonic rules he wrote for Waterloo for C4's Game of War are very clever (see Paddy Griffith's Games of War, also from History of Wargaming Project) and, IMHO, well worth trying out - but were too slow for the television show. Paddy took my point on board after the demonstration game we put on for C4 executives and allowed me to use the much simpler, quicker use of opposed die rolls and result table from Strategos: an American Kriegsspiel instead for all three games in the series.
We were last in contact about a game set in the Duchess of Richmond's Ball before Waterloo, to be played - I think - at Apsley House as part of Waterloo anniversary celebrations. He seemed to imagine the participants, ordinary members of the public, would be able to roleplay high-ranking officers and diplomats to discuss strategy convincingly on the strength of a short briefing. I felt this was overly optimistic and didn't think it would make for an entertaining game anyway.
Best wishes,
Arthur
Arthur1815 (Arthur),
DeleteYou make some interesting points, but I suspect that some of my US readers will disagree. Personally, I think that all countries exhibit some levels of national hypocrisy when it suits them. I once got into a heated discussion with a devoted supporter of the former Soviet Union who decried the empires conquered by the western European nations, but who had no answer when I asked him about the Asian countries that had been conquered and absorbed into the Russian Empire. His only ‘defence’ was that when the ‘opportunity’ presented itself, they had ‘chosen’ to become republics within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
A recreation of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball would be a difficult thing to achieve with experienced role players, let alone novices. You might just about get away with it by showing the participants that section of the film WATERLOO …
All the best,
Bob
I confess that while I have never met him, pretty much anything of his that I have read has managed to rub me the wrong way but alas, arguing with a book, rather than discussing with the author, gets one nowhere!
ReplyDeleteAs for 'Nam' If I ever want to feel "old" I can remind myself that I was a ( young) soldier of the Queen before that war was over. As for wargaming it (which I don't) my favourite related incident took place during a 100 yrs war Medieval Mayhem game at a Cold Wars con where the French besiegers of a castle were asleep when an English relief force attacked. One French player had one of his sleeping figures hit by an arrow but made his saving throw. To all of our surprise, he got all excited and said that the same thing had happened to him in Nam! and he proceeded to tell the tale.
Ross Mac,
DeleteIt’s a pity that you didn’t meet Paddy. Unlike some authors, he would have enjoyed debating with you.
I’m feeling my age today … thanks to coming down with COVID again! When I tried - unsuccessfully - to join the British Army, the Vietnam War was bubbling away and the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland were about to kick off. I’ve taken part in wargames about both, but neither appealed to me as a personal project. I still prefer fighting wars that are historical (i.e. ones that took place before I was born in 1950).
All the best,
Bob