Winter Quarters 1642-43

Time to re-visit our little campaign in 17th Century Borsetshire.

New recruits were trained by both sides in Borsetshire in the winter of 1642-43

Readers will recall that the last post from this war torn English county reported the success of the Parliamentary forces in defeating the bid by the local magnate Herbert Gusset, the Earl of Grantham, to seize Borchester before it's defences were complete.

At the battle of Darrington in early October 1642, a Parliamentary army led by Sir George Fortescue stopped Grantham in his tracks, albeit at the cost of the former's life.

The fight at Darrington was dwarfed by the much larger encounter at Edgehill, some three weeks later, where the combined field armies of the King and Parliament confronted one another for the first time. It is widely known that this was a drawn battle, and that the King failed to press his strategic advantage in time to take London, resulting in the stand off at Thurnham Green in November.

What is less well known is that the leader of the Parliamentary cause in Borsetshire, Edward Dighurst, had sent a regiment of foot to fight at Edgehill, where they were decimated, and that the Borsetshire horse, flushed with their recent success at Darrington, also took many casualties.

Retiring to Borchester, Dighurst and his men took up winter quarters in the town. The Scottish engineer and mercenary, Alastair Begby, continued to fortify the town and its outlying villages and Dighurst set about raising more troops.

The Royalists, for their part, spent Christmas recovering from the campaign of 1642 and early in the New Year, a contingent of largely Welsh troops, led by Sir Gareth Williams, joined Grantham at Felpersham. Difficulties in supplying large bodies of men in the 17th century meant that, once concentrated, an army either moved or dwindled away through hunger, disease and desertion and so it was that Williams, together with the Royalist cavalry commander, Rufus Dancy, persuaded Grantham, that a winter offensive might catch the rebels unawares.

Taking the northern approach, the King's men skirted the Parliamentary outposts at the fortified manors of Perivale and Leyton Cross, and by the 30 January were at Westbury and poised to force a crossing of the River Perch. Such a move posed a threat to Parliament, because the western defences of Borchester were incomplete, and should the Royalists cross the river they would be in a position to storm the town from that direction.

Dighurst was left with little option but to take  up a defensive position in the open field, in front of the village of Hazelhurst, where he could defend the Perch crossing and use his newly acquired artillery to bombard the Royalists.


Well fed Parliamentary troops had wintered well...

For a full day the two armies faced one another as Williams and Dancy entreated Grantham to agree to an attack. After a cold night out in the open, Grantham finally gave his assent, and on the first day of February 1643, the Royalist army launched their second bid to take Borchester.

In other words I'm aiming to play a game of DBR this weekend...

Reports of Heavy Fighting in Southern Angola

'Flight Leader, I have you on my screen. You are cleared for auxiliary runway number two. Don't screw around, we have more hostiles on the way.'

'This is Three Five Zero. Roger. Auxiliary number two. Coming straight in."

'Watch for smoke Flight Leader, we have burning fuel.'

'With me Fifty One?'

'Roger Five Zero.'

'You're in first. Number two's longer than it looks, but it comes up suddenly behind the trees. Don't flare early. You'll be fine.'

'Flight Leader, this is Control, I have you visual'

'I'm rolling out, my wingman's coming in first.'

'Roger. Do you need assistance on the ground?

'Negative. Not unless we fuck it up.'

'Your runway'

.......

'Talk to me Control, where are we going?'

'Proceed to taxiway four, crescent B'

'Numbers?'

'Just take take the first open bay, this is war my distinguished Comrade Aviator'



Operation CROSSBOW continues. The South Africans have committed their air force in numbers. Cuban and East German pilots are flying multiple sorties in support of FAPLA and Cuban ground forces. The South Africans are sending in the ParaBat.

A game of AK 47 Reloaded is scheduled for tomorrow.

Once Upon a Time on the Steppe...

Colonel Anatoly Borisivich Stevany groaned inwardly, his adjutant had just told him that the officer cadet company attached to his command were grumbling, they believed that they could lead this force better than him.



'They're probably right' said Stevany, and poured himself a generous measure of cognac. 'Not much more of that left,' he thought, 'still life is short...and cheap.'

His adjutant, Major Levanich was a good officer, hard working and dedicated to the White cause. More importantly, his cousin ran the 14th Supply Depot, and had 'diverted' supplies of tinned food to Stevany's little army as the advanced along the railway line that led, eventually, to Moscow. Apart from the officer cadets, the men were happy - they had vodka and full bellies. Levanich was happy because they had plenty of rifle ammunition.

Stevany considered his postion. Since the Kornilovsky Division had run amock and burned three villages in this area the whole oblast had risen against the White army. The peasants were no lovers of the Bolsheviks but now they hated the Whites more. The advance had slowed down to the pace of a donkey.

His cavalry were out scouting. A report came in late last night that Red troops were moving south to meet them. Stevany's detachment was right in their path. There would be a battle. Men would desert, guns would not work because too many shells were duds, men would die.

'It's going to a long war,' said Stevany to no one in particular, and drank his cognac.



By request of my regular opponent we're planning a game of 'Comrade Kommissar!', my Russian Civil War adaptation of AK47 Reloaded this week If I can finish my Peter Pig Railway Station and Water Tower we may feature an armoured train...

Cuban and South Africans Clash in Angola

The Guardian 18 March 1979

Associated Press: Luanda

Reports of heavy fighting along the Angolan-South West African Border have been confirmed by the communist MPLA government here in Luanda.

According to government sources, South African troops crossed the border into Angola three nights ago and were met by a swift response from the Angolan Army. The fighting including tank battles near the town of N'giva.

There are unconfirmed reports of airstrikes by Cuban and East German piloted Migs in support of the Angolan troops. The Angolan army is trained and advised by Cuban soldiers.

The fighting represents the biggest escalation of the tension between South Africa and Angola in the area since the apartheid regime's raid on a SWAPO guerilla base in the southern Angolan town of Cassinga last year.

15 March 1979: South of Ngiva

Captain Pieter Van der Horst's radio crackled:




'Enemy now within 3 kilometres of your position, mixed tanks and APCs, infantry dismounted'

Van der Horst looked at his radio operator, his eyebrows raised...there wasn't supposed to be any enemy armour in the area...

'Alpha One, this is Sierra Six, hostiles at location 485674, prepare for contact, shoot on my command, over'

'Roger Sierra Six, over'



Elements of the South African 62 Mechanised Battalion, supported by tanks from the School of Armour, are about to engage the the Angolan 11th Mechanised Brigade some 15 km inside Angola. The SADF forces crossed the border late last night, launching Operation Crossbow, the second major 'external' of the border war to date. Their objective was to disrupt SWAPO actvity in the border region, now they have encountered Angolan regular forces.

Our alternative timeline of the war in Angola is about to re-start. The guerilla war between SWAPO and the SADF and their South West African Territorial Force allies has been gradually escalating. The South Africans launched their first major incursion into Angola last year with an airborne assault on SWAPO at Cassinga. This was a military success but the political consequences have not been as favourable to South Africa - western public opinion is even more negative towards the Apartheid regime and Cuba and the Soviet Union have increased their support to the Angolan government.

Alerted by SWAPO forces on the border, Cuban and East German pilots flew reconnaissance missions at first light and have detected the SADF columns. Angolan forces and their Cuban advisors have moved swiftly to meet the incursion.

In other words, a game of AK 47 is scheduled for tomorrow evening...

17th Century County Warfare

Herbert Gusset, the Earl of Grantham, rides out...

One idea I've had for this year's gaming is a British Civil Wars campaign. I have all the armies and plenty of terrain and a couple of regular opponents so it should be relatively easy to get something up and going.

I play this period using Phil Barker's DBR rules and like them. The reasons why are like them are expressed far better than I could do by Keith McNelly here: 

http://renaissancewargaming.wordpress.com/20-2/

Keith expands on one characteristic of this rule set in another article here: 

http://renaissancewargaming.wordpress.com/a-question-of-scale/

One of the distinguishing features of DBR is the option of playing in one of two scales. I believe the flexibility this brings to gaming is well suited to the civil wars in Britain where the vast majority of the engagements were skirmishes and sieges. As Keith points out:

Lets first consider the smaller points budgets, say 100 points. Using normal scale and such a points budget engagements between small armies of 1,000 to 1,500 men can be modeled... the first engagement of the English Civil War at Powick Bridge pitted some 1,000 Parliamentarian horse and dragoons against a similar number of Royalists.

And later on in the piece:

 A 400 point Royalist army I recently took to a competition in Australia would, in normal scale, represent an army of 2,800 foot, 900 horse and 200 dragoons. Using condensed scale this same army would represent 11,200 foot, 3,600 horse and 800 dragoons. 

However, DBR is not all about competition gaming. If we were to look at the New Model army at the battle of Naseby it comprised some 6,500 horse, 6,000 foot and 1,000 dragoons. This translates to some 40 stands of troops using condensed scale, or some 400 points. In normal scale over 170 stands would be required for the same army, a massive 1,500 points. Clearly the advantages of both scales are now becoming apparent.

So where does that leave us if we're planning a campaign? I tried using a slightly adapted version of this campaign system a couple of years ago: 

http://www.balagan.org.uk/war/dbx/dbr/generic-campaign.htm

It's a gem of a system, adapted from the Wargames Foundry 1644 Rules for DBR. Alas, I lost enthusiasm quite quickly as I was playing out the campaign moves solo and tried fighting the battles that were generated both  solo and against real opponents and it simply didn't work for me. Firstly, I got bogged down in book keeping. Secondly, I found myself under pressure to do the book keeping during what were very busy weeks in readiness for a game at the weekend. This was neither relaxing nor motivating - I spend a fair chunk of my working life engaged in conflict and a  good deal of it on a computer or wading through paperwork, so you can imagine this wasn't much fun.

So, back to first principles. What are  the aims of a campaign? After all, I regularly and relatively frequently play British Civil War battles - what would a campaign add? For me, wargaming isn't about 'winning' and 'losing; rather it's more of being involved with an interactive history book, watching events unfold whilst having some influence over them - sending in a cavalry charge and seeing if it does break the enemy foot for example.

So, a campaign would have to add something to that interactive history book. Self evidently this would be a context for a battle in terms of its place in an unfolding narrative - why are these two forces fighting here at this particular point in time? 

Crucially, it would have to be fun as well. I can define this better by what it wouldn't be, rather than what it would be. I don't know much about campaigning but I know what I like...

• Minimum bookeeping
• The ability to generate games quickly and with little fuss but in the context of a wider narrative structure
• Balanced games that can be played solo or with an opponent or two but which allow players to choose which side they are playing from game to game, so as to encourage the unfolding history book approach rather than it becoming a competitive event.
• Something that provides an intellectually satisfying distraction from real life. 

The approach that best captures this philosophy is, for me, expressed brilliantly by Mark over at  Winter of 79, albeit in the context of a 20th Century conflict: www.winterof79.blogspot.com

The campaign is set in the fictional midlands county of Borsetshire (those of you who are familiar with the Radio 4 series The Archers will know this area well) and the approach is described as reflecting the fact

the world has moved on since the days of SPI's Wacht Am Rhine where you would spend months of your life pouring over maps and moving counters. Remember, for us Winter of '79 is a box within which to play our games and sometimes we just want to shake the box and see what ticket we pull out.

I like that...

Using this BBC map of Borsetshire Mark has 

placed our campaign arena within a national setting and local geographic context. We've given it key personages, major locations and strategic direction.

Now for the bookeeping part...

Without sweating over how many squaddies, tanks, guns, Garibaldi biscuits or tins of chicken supreme, we know that higher level command and operations are being directed from Felpersham. We've established there's a strong QRF, and a company base at Borchester that's a potential launching pad for smaller scale operations, or even a magnet for attack.

Does it actually matter how many men the Army has in Borsetshire, the composition, size of the population of Felpersham, number of roundabouts etc? No. Remember games are the goal not the detail. 

And

We don’t have fixed “armies” to do the paperwork on or keep in command radius on map as the whole thing is “virtual” and decided by chinese parliament. Do we really need to use much more than common sense and perhaps a d6 for randomness. If I say “well, I want a gunned up westland scout” its only fair (for sake of fun game) that somehow, Maff the 'Mad Trot' get a few rpgs/Laws or perhaps a Dushka type weapon. Op Sec? lets presume it cancels out and leaks happen on both sides. 

This is starting to look very attractive. The sharp eyed among you will see that there are even a couple of civil war battle sites on the above map at Ambridge itself and also at Francester.

So, here's a go at providing a background for a campaign set in our fictional English midlands county of Borsetshire on the Welsh Marches  starting in the summer of 1642, as King and Parliament start to raise armies.

According to Wikpedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borsetshire , the two major towns in the county are the cathedral city of Felpersham in the east and the county town of Borchester roughly 17 miles to the west. Obviously, in the 17th Century there would be no railways and, for our purposes, the Felpersham canal doesn't exist either. The road network would be roughly similar, excluding the modern ring road at Borchester, although it would be made up of little more than rough tracks that would be well nigh impassable in the winter months. The river Perch and river Mercer are navigable to to barge traffic.

Borchester is the commercial and adminstrative centre of the county and the local notables, led by a cabal of merchants and minor gentry of godly protestant persuasion, are for Parliament. There is a local trained band in the town and a limited supply of weapons and ammunition in the county magazine.

Felpersham is the seat of the Anglican Bishop, and the governing class, led by the landowning gentry, are for the King. The Lord Lieutenant is the Earl of Grantham, Herbert Gusset, who has extensive lands in the county but rarely visits it. The Royalists see Borsetshire as being of some  value given it's proximity to the recruiting grounds of Wales, and the fact it sits astride the so called 'King's Way' from the principality to Oxford, a city where he enjoys great support and which will become his headquarters. It's strategic significance is further underlined by its location on the north-south axis from the midlands and north west England to the gateway to the West Country at Gloucester.


By September 1642 however the King is still in Shrewsbury, to the north, recruiting and raising funds for arms. The Parliamentarian field army under the Earl of Essex is marching on Worcester and a sharp skirmish, the first of the war, has just taken place at Powick Bridge between Prince Rupert's cavalry and that of Parliament.

In Borsetshire, several troops of horse, together with some dragoons and commanded shot have marched from Felpersham and crossed the Am at Ambridge. They are probing and scouting the defences of Borchester with a view to assessing whether an attempt can be made to storm the town. 

The leader of the Parliamentarian forces in Borsetshire is Edward Dighurst. who has already raised his own regiment of foot to reinforce the Borchester Trained Band and who has enlisted the services of one Alastair Begby, a Scottish veteran of the wars in Germany, and an experienced engineer. The medieval defences of Borchester are being strengthened with earthworks and the Parliamentarians are also seeking to fortify manor houses at Perivale, Leyton Cross and Lakey Green. Word of Royalist troops to the south of the town leads Dighurst to send forth a detachment of horse and commanded shot to see if he can seize the river crossing at Ambridge at cut the King's men off from Felpersham.

On 24 September, the day after the opening action of the war at Powick Bridge, the little known skirmish at Ambridge takes place.

Chetequera March 1976

'We start training next month, by the beginning of the rainy season you will have ample supplies of weapons and ammunition and we'll be in a postion to overwhelm the Boers.'

'They know that with the victory here in Angola that the liberation movement will intensify its efforts across the border. We can expect an elevated state of readiness on the part of their security froces, they won't give up wihout a fight.'

'We'll use the winter to put all cadre through a programme that will prepare them for an intensified struggle. Our Cuban comrades will provide instruction and we've been promised that shipments of Czech manufactured small arms and ammunition will  begin to arrive via Luanda from April. The first batch left Constanta last week.'

'The new recruits should start arriving next week, they need to begin basic training immediately. Our Cuban comrades arrive the week after next - I want them to see that we're not completely incompetent...'

'Any questions?'

'Of course comrade,  I appreciate your question. I am confident that together with the support of our brothers and comrades from across the Atlantic and with the new weapons that our fraternal comrades from the north are sending us we will strike a decisive blow against the racists.'

The Future As It Used To Be...

This leapt off the shelf in a second hand bookshop last weekend. I last read it when it was published - I was 15 and the world hadn't experienced Thatcherism and Reagonomics, Iran was still under the Shah, the Soviets hadn't invaded Afghanistan, the Internet wasn't even thought of (or maybe not - after all it was a network designed to survive a nuclear attack so perhaps it had been dreamt up by then).

At the time this book made quite an impression on me. I swallowed the argument about Soviet expansionism, although I didn't fully understand the subtlety of it. Later on, while studying Russian history, I could put the thesis in some sort of historical context and it still appeared compelling.

Of course, we know much more about the challenges the Soviets faced in the late eighties and early eighties now. I assume the people who wrote this book were amongst all those experts that failed to predict the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc and final collapse of the Soviet Union.

Re-reading this, with the obvious benefit of hindsight, it's apparent that the authors were sincere but ever so slightly barking mad.

The Third World War breaks out in Europe with a massive Soviet conventional offensive on 4th August 1985, the 71st anniversary of Britain's entry into World War One, and is effectively over three weeks later with the Warsaw Pact forces stopped in their tracks and a tit for tat nuclear exchange in which Birmingham and Minsk are incinerated before the Soviet Union collapses. Oh, and the boys are home for Christmas...

Of course, the book was a polemic designed to persuade the policy makers to ramp up defence spending and lend weight to the deterrent in the hope this very thing would never happen. So, as the imagined future unfolds, the West spends up large on armaments and increases the size of its armed forces, not enough to deter the Soviets, but enough to give them a drubbing after some initial successes.

Their are some setbacks for NATO, but everything goes pretty much according to the script of an exercise. Nothing (of substance) unpredicted happens.

Even without the benefit of knowledge unavailable to the authors at the time, I think a more plausible account of war in Europe in the mid-eighties would have featured far more chaos than this neat and tidy narrative. Look at just about any modern war and the outstanding feature is that it didn't play out as planned and predicted by the General Staffs.

From the perspective of my wargaming interests I found the chapters that touched on  Southern Africa  fascinating. Namibia is liberated (although the authors describe this as a 'loss') in 1980 by combined SWAPO-Cuban-Nigerian-Angolan forces who defeat a 50,000 strong South African army equipped with modern weapons,  and by the summer of 1985 the Boers are facing a four pronged invasion from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia.

Given that War for Slow Readers has reached early 1976 and the MPLA are seeking to consolidate their newly acquired power in Angola there is scope to play out a timeline very different from the so called 'Border War' that eventuated. Anyone on for a massive invasion of Namibia once UNITA has been contained?

The accounts of fighting on the Central Front in West Germany and beyond are pretty bland. The authors avoid naming formations below corps level, and whilst there are some fictionalised eye witness accounts, they're unconvincing by the standards of the real thing. Read just about anything by Anthony Beever and my point should be clear. Ralph Peters 'Red Army' is much better written and far more convincing, in my view.

That's not to say this isn't a valuable resource for anyone wanting to play out the war that was never fought. I doubt I'll ever get round to that although I find accounts written by gamers who are doing it very absorbing. For me, one of the real plusses of this book is comparing the performance of the British in the Falklands with how they fare in 'The Third World War'. Looking at the imagined events of 1985 through the prism of the lessons learnt in the South Atlantic has made me realise what a shock the Falklands must have been for the British and for NATO. Probably for the Soviets too.The effect of Exocets on naval strategy and tactics, the high quality of the British infantry, unforced errors by both sides and the impact of logistics on all aspects of the war make for interesting speculation.

I don't know enough of the aftermath of the fight for the Malvinas to make any sort of judgement about whether the lessons were heeded by NATO and the Warsaw Pact but I'm curious.

I'll finish with this quotation from a review written at the time of publication:

'Towards the end The Third World War degenerates into pure fantasy, the pipe-dream of Cold Warrior too old to stay on the front line but too fevered to give up the good fight. China and Japan have formed a "co-prosperity sphere" in Hackett's rosy future, and play no part in the war. Valiant Afrikaaners defend their homeland from the incompetent assaults of Soviet-supplied Namibians and Zimbabwians. As the Soviet drive into West Germany falters, Soviet satellites rebel, soldiers stop fighting, and a high-level coup in the Kremlin leads to a break-up of the entire Soviet Union--the internal contradictions of Marxism-Leninism, y'know? '

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1979/8/7/armchair-armageddon-pbpbrophetic-scenarios-fleshed-out/

Says it all really...except of course the Soviet Union did break up just over a decade later...

Rewriting History...

I stumbled on a couple of very good articles on the History Today website this week

 www.historytoday.com/gary-baines/south-africa’s-forgotten-war

www.historytoday.com/gary-baines/replaying-cuito-cuanavale

Some very astute comments on the way former SADF veterans are remembering their war. I encourage readers to have a look...

Update 31 December 1975

The last couple of weeks have been busy on our alternative frontline.

The arrival of Soviet supplied aircraft has begun and East German and Cuban air and ground crew are being flown in to commission the MiGs and helicopters and to commence operations in support of the Cuban and MPLA ground froces.

Despite western propaganda to the contrary, the only foreign communist combat troops deployed are Cuban.

Luanda is secure for the time being and Cuban troops have spearheaded the advance north and north east against the FNLA and their mercenary led forces. Whilst the advancing troops have made steady gains, there have been unexpectedly high casualties. We played a couple of games pitting company strength Cuban forces against FNLA rearguards using the adapted Cold War 83 rules ('Fireteam Angola') and whilst the communists have won, they've been bloody encounters.

In central Angola South African instructors are training UNITA cadre, and supplies of Bulgarian manufactured small arms and ammunition is being flown in via Zambia in specially adapted cargo planes crewed by mercenary pilots.

In the South, an unexpected development has been the emergence of a Portuguese settler faction centred on Benguela. This group is lobbying Zambia and South Africa for support and it may have already secured covert aid from the CIA.

The SADF is in full retreat and heading for the southern border, although it is rumoured that arms and munitions are being handed over to the Portuguese in Benguela.

On the modelling front I've finished a MiG 21, a MiL 8, a MiL 24 and am half way through painting a Dakota (for those covert flights supplying UNITA).

Look out for games involving civilians and media soon - also a mini campaign based on a UNITA insurgency.

London December 1975

'You wanted to see me sir?'

'Yes Callan, this is the chap I told you about, he's recruited 400 mercenaries in the past four weeks'

Do we have a name sir?'

'Fletcher, ex-Para as you can see. Extensive service in Northern Ireland, including Bloody Sunday. He's not like most of them, he can organise. He served with Watson, who is still in Angola, as far as we can tell'

'Watson? He was with Shannon?'

'Yes, and he's ours Callan'

'Ours? Since when?'

'The beginning, he's SIS'

'Oh great! So we have an SIS agent serving with a bunch of cut throats in Africa?'

'Never mind about that Callan. Contact Fletcher and investigate his operation. I want a report by Monday morning, to the same level of detail as the job you did on Shannon'

'Bang goes the weekend then sir?'

'Never mind about that Callan, just do it!'

'Cost you sir, that's overtime that is...and expenses'

'Callan, just get the job done, and get out!'

Langley, Virginia: December 1975

'Jesus, what a mess!'

'Stockwell did warn us sir..'

'Yeah well, fat lot of notice we all took'

'The South Africans have been cooking something up with Savimbi in Huambo province sir...'

'Where the hell's that Epstein? Christ, I couldn't find the goddamn shitty country on a map six months ago and now it's the biggest clusterfuck since Saigon...'

'Here sir. They've been training UNITA to operate as a stay behind guerilla army as the Cubans advance to the southern border. They've even managed to do a deal with the Bulgarians to get hardware for Savimbi.'

'The Bulgarians? I thought they played for the other team?'

'They do, seems they'll sell their grand daughters for greenbacks and apparently the President's son in law did a deal in Vienna through his mistress to sell a stack of small arms and ammunition to a dealer that was fronting for BOSS'

'Sounds like our kind of guy..'

'Yes sir, he's a Dutchman that has connections in Pretoria...'

'I meant the son in law Epstein'

'Er..quite sir..'

'Anyway, there's a freighter bound for South West Africa with the arms on board.

'Great, so what do they want from us?'

'Er...money sir'

Moscow December 1975: KGB Headquarters

'Comrade General, you'll recall that GRU is running a source close to the Chief of Staff in Pretoria?'

'Hmm...refresh my memory Comrade Colonel'

'The source is codenamed "Felix", and has been active for a over a decade. GRU has been receiving high grade product on the Royal Navy and SADF for all that time'

'And...'

'Given the recent success of our Cuban comrades in assisting the MPLA to secure Luanda, Felix has provided information that may be crucial in the next phase of the struggle...'

'Bloody Castro...do you realise how far I had to stick my neck out to get Gromyko and the air force to agree to support his little adventure? Never mind, go on...'

'Felix says that the South African secret service and their special forces have been operating in Huambo province for the last four months, training UNITA cadre. He believes that the South African strategy is to back UNITA so they establish a buffer zone in Southern Angola, thereby preventing the Cubans and the MPLA from backing SWAPO and escalating the insurgency in South West Africa.'

'So, Comrade Colonel, how is that the KGB's problem?'

'Comrade General, I believe that if Felix is correct, and his information is very detailed, then our Cuban and Angolan comrades are in for some very hard fighting. It may be that we need to provide targeted support in order to prevent them a setback in the south'

'What does 'targeted support' mean Colonel, I know we specialise in euphemisms here in the land of actual existing socialism, but now and then plain speaking is appreciated you know'

'MiGs, and the ground crew and pilots to service and fly them, we could enlist the fraternal assistance of our East German and Romanian comrades so the air force wouldn't kick up a fuss; and communications and logsistics specialists. The army isn't as difficult to persuade as the air force General...'

'Leave me the file Colonel. I'll think about it'

December 1975 Enter UNITA

Up to now our alternative timeline has largely ignored UNITA's role in the events leading up to Angolan independence and beyond.

We suspect that the South African secret service and/or special forces are behind an arms deal in Vienna that may have been aimed at obtaining Bulgarian weapons for Savimbi's forces. With the failure of the FNLA to take Luanda, either from the north with the support of white mercenaries and Zaire, or from the south with the support of the SADF, the role of UNITA in the war is going to get bigger.

So, what do we know about UNITA? Blogger Jim Hale has written a very pithy account of the real history that we'll use to build our counter-factual

http://warsinpeace.blogspot.co.nz/p/angola-1974-1980.html

'UNITA was both smaller and out-gunned by the other two factions and like the FNLA had fought the MPLA as much as it had fought the Portuguese. Although supported by China, the vast distance from Tanzania, where the Chinese mission was located and the hostility of Zambia, who relied on the Benguela railway line that UNITA kept attacking, made supply difficult. Zaire was very much behind the FNLA, so that route was out of the question too. During the Liberation War therefore, UNITA became self-reliant, built up an infrastructure within Angola and took what it needed from its enemies when it could.

Occupying the Central and Southern regions of Angola, UNITA were in a much better position to receive aid from South Africa. Portugal had previously secured Namibia's northern border, making insurgent (SWAPO) operations over it very difficult. Now that this security had gone, the South Africans wanted to create a new 'buffer zone' in its stead. By aiding UNITA against the MPLA and securing their aid against SWAPO forces in Southern Angola, they believed that this could be achieved. Despite ideological differences, UNITA and the South Africans shared a common enemy, the Soviet-backed MPLA....

South Africa's forces at this time were not the ultra-modern force it was later to become, at this time, but it was able to supply basic weapons and the men to undertake training UNITA troops with them (commencing 14th July 1975). UNITA had established its own diamond and other concerns within the areas it held and South Africa acted as its main trade route to get them out of the country.'

Jim also neatly sums up South Africa's stance in 1975

'The South African plan was to fortify the main UNITA stronghold Huamba, establish a formal training camp at Silva Porto 'flying columns' and assembled a strike force; 'Task Force Foxbat', which blunted the MPLA advance and was subsequently followed by 'Task Force Zulu' to take on the advancing MPLA, clear them from Southern Angola and then take Luanda, so as to install UNITA as the de facto government before independence in November.
'
So, in our counter-factual, there is room for shadowy elements in the South African security forces and military establishment to have quietly worked at supporting UNITA while their more visible colleagues embarked on the invasion of Angola that was foiled by Colonel Menendez and his comrades.

As Cuban personnel and Soviet equipment pour into Luanda, and as the Cuban led MPLA forces start to push north against the remnants of the FNLA, and south against the retreating SADF/FNLA, UNITA will become increasingly important.

Like the MPLA, UNITA is a client of more powerful intervening players, in this case South Africa and, indirectly, the USA. Again like the MPLA, UNITA has its own objectives, and whilst these are sometimes part of their common ground with the supporting power(s), they may just as often be entirely different. UNITA is based in central and southern Angola, and its support base is amongst the Ovimbundu peoples. It appears that once again ethnic divisions may be cloaked in 20th century ideological differences, a consequence of the fact that the Europeans who carved up Africa had scant regard demographic realiy on the ground and drew their borders along lines of latitude or convenient (to the cartographers) rivers.

So, it's December 1975. The Cubans and MPLA are advancing. European mercenaries are meeting in airport hotels in London and Paris. South African troops are heading south but BOSS and SADF Special Forces are organising supplies of weapons to UNITA cadre in Huamba and the surrounding area.



Peter de Jong, a Dutch arms dealer with family and commercial connections in South Africa has just purchased a former New Zealand Airways passenger aircraft through a Luxembourg registered shell company. The aircraft is refitted in Capetown to carry freight. A freighter registered in Greece has just picked up a shipment of 'machine tools' from Beloslav in Bulgaria. The machine tools are to be shipped to Robert Harbour near Luderitz in South West Africa. Then, who knows where they will be taken to?

I feel a game or two coming on...

Another Day of Life

A busy couple of weeks, both at work and watching the European Football Championships, has meant little progress on our War in Angola project.

The one thing I I have managed to do in relation to 'War for Slow Readers' is some reading however. Specifically, I finished Ryszard Kapuscinski's 'Another Day of Life' whilst flying around the country working. It's a wonderful book, written by a Polish jounalist who was working for the Polish Press Agency in 1975 and was in Angola just before and after the transition from Portuguese colonial rule to the MPLA. That's right, Kapuscinski is an Eastern European reporter writing for a communist government controlled press agency at the exact time that our alternative timeline has been played out.

And what an inspirational read it is for someone developing scenarios for our project.Firstly, he captures the atmosphere of the time superbly. The tension of being in a city where the established authority has crumbled and no one really knows what's happening is brilliantly recreated. Reading the accounts of Luanda as independence approached reminded me of George Orwell's account of Barcelona during the street fighting between the communists and their opponents during the Spanish Civil War in 'Homage to Catalonia'. Clearly Kapuscinski's sympathies, not to mention his prospects of personal safety, are aligned with the MPLA. He does however, describe the human side of the events as they play out remarkably even handedly - he is no hack trotting out the party line at the expense of the bigger story.



His description of the thread by which the MPLA was hanging on to what power it had, the fear of an FNLA uprising, the fragility of the power and water supplies, the rumours of the South African advance from the south, and the approach of Holden Roberto's forces to the gates of Luanda are very evocative. The tension of not knowing if he'll go down to his hotel reception to try and file his report via telex and be arrested by the armed men who are always hanging around in the lobby; his instinct for self preservation as he notices little things that change day by day that might foretell what will happen next; the almost complete lack of reliable information about the political and military situation are told in a way that grips the reader. The revolution is memorably described as a 'confusion' and one that almost defies narrative, yet it is narrative that Kapuscinski does best.

We'll be revisting this book in weeks to come as we play out some of the events Kapuscinski describes. In the meantime, I encourage you to find a copy and read it - if you've enjoyed this blog you'll love this book.

The Fourth Estate and the Merchants of Death

Progress here at 'War for Slow Readers' can best be described as 'incremental', a word that tends to be used instead of its plain English equivalent - 'slow' - by obfuscators.

Reading a book on the role of the SIS and the SAS in the Falklands conflict last week led me to a gem of a story that was reported in 'Der Speigel' in the mid 80s about an arms deal in which the South African secret service, BOSS, finessed a transaction through the son-in law of the Bulgarian President to supply UNITA with weapons and ammunition. An aircraft formerly owned by the New Zealand national airline was procured and modified to carry freight so the gear could be shipped via airstrips in SW Africa (as it was) and Zaire to  Angola. Of course, the Soviet bloc supplied hardware was destined to be used against Cuban soldiers...

So, here's the Merchant of Death and his henchmen.

I have a nice blue Mercedes saloon and an olive green ex-SADF Unimog for him to transport himself and his merchandise in. Now I just have to dream up some suitable scenarios. UNITA hasn't featured much in our alternative timeline yet but I suspect they may do soon - a spot of internecine fighting between the FNLA and UNITA in Task Force Orange's area of operations as the SADF extract themselves from Angola (for now...)?

The other aspect of the war I'd like to explore is the role of the media. I've just ordered 'Another Day of Life' by Polish journalist  Ryszard Kapuscinski which is apparently the definitive eye witness account of the collapse of Portuguese rule. So, perhaps it's time for the Fourth Estate to make their presence felt alongside the mercenaries, gun runners, whores, internationalists, aid workers, nuns and priests, freedom fighters, commissars and chancers in the war zone?

The other thought I've had stems from the review that was posted on a fellow blogger's website http://coldwargamer.blogspot.co.nz/2012/05/review-web-resources-war-for-slow.html that commented on how 'focused' this blog is on the War in Angola. Of course, our 1975 alternative timeline is not restricted to Angola, but it's dead right to say that's where the tabletop action is. I have found myself developing storylines further afield though, and it's probably only a matter of time before this becomes an alternative timeline of the late seventies and the eighties, and not just in our chosen West African country. The British mercenaries that fought at Caxito could find employment in late seventies Britain, or that SAS raid on Soviet Bear aircraft operating out of Luanda during the Falklands War could trigger a much wider conflict...

What do you think?

Situation Report 11 November 1975

This is a good time to pause and take stock at 'War for Slow Readers', for although this is an alternative timeline of the war in Angola 1975-89, 11th November 1975 is still Angolan Independence Day.

So, it's dawn on the 11th, what has happened and what is about to happen in our alternative history?

• The Portuguese administration is poised to slip away quietly aboard one of their navy's frigates after a brief, low key ceremony during which power will formally be handed over to a provisional government dominated by Dr Augustino Neto's Marxist MPLA.
• Over 3000 Cuban troops have disembarked in Luanda during the last week. Of these approximately 1000 are in action against South African and FNLA troops to the south east of Luanda.
• The FNLA's bid to take Luanda has failed and their cadre in the capital have been decimated. A joint FNLA-Zaire task force that tried to take Luanda was destroyed over a week ago by MPLA units and their Cuban special forces advisers. The mercenary leading the task force, Anglo-Irishman Carlo Shannon, was killed. There are guerrillas sympathetic to the FNLA operating in the countryside around Luanda, led by the enigmatic 'Commander Zero', although they appear to have gone to ground for the time being.
• Operation Savannah, the South African attempt to seize as much Angolan territory as possible for the FNLA and install a government friendly to Pretoria in Luanda, has stalled. The reality is, with Holden Roberto and the FNLA a busted flush, there is no political solution to Pretoria's problem. Angola is twice the size of Texas and almost five times the size of the United Kingdom. The population is estimated at 6.5 million. There are three SADF led Task Forces operating in Angola, and their total strength is that of a weak NATO division. It's simply not enough. The spearhead, Task Force Zulu, a brigade sized force operating fewer than 200 km from Luanda, has just been instructed to withdraw. They've started to pull back just as Cuban armoured forces are advancing in their direction.
• The rainy season has finally started, over a month later than usual.

Staff Conference Cuban 201 Composite Brigade HQ Luanda 10 November 1975

'Comrade Colonel, reporting as instructed.'

'Welcome Captain Martinez. How soon before your armour is ready to move?'

'Comrade Colonel, the last of the tanks are being unloaded this afternoon. The whole battalion will be ready to move by midnight.'

'Your boys will miss out on the independence party...'

'They're just glad to get off that ship Comrade.'

'We have reports that the South African advance guard have reached Dondo, here. They have light armour and jeeps. We're unsure about their supply situation but it can't be good. Air activity has dropped off considerably over the past 48 hours.'

'Colonel, we can attempt a night march but I doubt we'll make it in one bound I'd expect between three and six mechanical failures over that distance. We can fix them but it takes time. Better we move at night if at all possible.'

'I agree, there is no guarantee their aircraft won't reappear. There is a railway to Dondo but the system is in chaos. We'll send Sanchez's recon group ahead to the bridge at Cassoalala. They can get there tonight. They should be able to hold the crossing for 24 hours which will give you and Durreti's motor rifle troops time to relieve them.

'Comrade, the South Africans have to be stopped at here at the crossing. Time is not a luxury we have. The Chief is counting on you...'

'Yes Comrade, I understand.'

Moscow 10 November 1975

'Let me understand what you're saying comrade. I'm responsible for the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, directly accountable to the Central Committee and you're telling me...no, forgive me... advising me that we really have no choice but to support Castro on his crusade'


'Comrade Minister, I believe it is my duty to advise you that there is a very real risk that the Cuban adventure in Angola will collapse unless they are granted minimal assistance in the form of long range air transport and weapons. I do not see that we need to provide personnel. Er..beyond aircrew of course...'


'Thank you comrade. I have to think about this. The General Secretary won't like it...'

London 8 November 1975

'So The Service has had an agent in Angola?'


'Yes sir, completely deniable naturally. The operation is codenamed SILVERBACK. An agent was infiltrated into the group of mercenaries recruited by Carlo Shannon in London on behalf of the FNLA.'


'Shannon is dead though...'


'And the FNLA's offensive was a fiasco, Shannon should never have attacked when he did. SILVERBACK is telling us that he didn't want to but Holden Roberto insisted on it. Apparently Shannon was killed in street fighting in Caxito, leading from the front. A house was booby trapped and his command group was caught in it. They were fighting Angolans but the Cubans were running the show. SILVERBACK thinks that the group Shannon was with were leading an attack on a Cuban command post.'


'Hmmm...what now? It appears Castro is sending everything he has to Luanda and after the St John's incident he's doing it overtly. The whole of his merchant marine has been mobilised.'


'The Cuban's will get stronger. They'll have thousands of men on the ground within a month. SILVERBACK tells us that the FNLA are stepping up recruitment again in Paris and Callan has reports that Banks is active in London...'


'God help us. And the Soviets?'


'Very quiet. They must be giving Castro approval. It's only a matter of time before Soviet heavy lift aircraft start moving Cubans to Luanda. They'll use the Cubans as proxies. This is part of their plan to expand their influence in the region sir.'


'Hmmm...yes. Well keep me informed. And make sure Callan watches Banks.'