Hooptedoodle #499 - Yet More Family Archives

My mother died in November last year. I've had in my possession some boxes of her private papers for a few years; I've been looking after them for her. Now that she definitely does not want them back, it's time to take a deep breath and sort out what's there.

I have done some preliminary tidying up a little while ago. I threw out masses of wedding photos of complete strangers (usually the children of my mother's work colleagues), greetings cards to and from people I never heard of. There still remains a stack of assorted birth certificates and so on, which I shall have a look through.

Also in there is a parcel of unfinished family research which was carried out by my late cousin, Dave. Sadly - as is often the case - Dave started on this project after he found out he was terminally ill, once he was no longer working; he achieved a lot, and I shall be interested to have a nose through what is there, and reduce some of it to short notes for my own information. The thing to remember is that nobody actually cares any more; I've tried to pass on some family history to my own sons in the past, and they were polite about it, but very obviously weren't interested!

I hope to have a fascinating few weeks trawling through Dave's final efforts. One thing I found quickly was some information about yet another unknown soldier in the archives, Lt Col Ralph Hindle (originally from Chorley in Lancashire), who commanded the 4th Bn of the Loyal North Lancs Regt and was killed at Cambrai on 30th Nov 1917. I reckon he was my maternal grandmother's uncle (or maybe second-cousin) - my maternal grandmother being the infamously eccentric Preston Grannie who is quoted here now and then. I never heard of him before, anyway.

The Loyal North Lancs had rather a convoluted history - I think the 4th Bn may formerly have been a Territorial formation - no doubt I'll find out more as I get into the paperwork. The family were mostly Lancashire people - Dave learned quite quickly from his research that a great many of the Hindle males were named John or Ralph, and the females were usually named Mary or Alice (or both), so some care and attention to dates of birth is required to sort out who was who. Again - quite apart from war casualties - when you look at family details it is astonishing how high a proportion of the children died in infancy in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in Northern industrial towns. Hmmm.

I have tidied everything back into a single box for the moment - there are hundreds of old photos in there, so I'll need to get very organised. 

 

 

WSS: Game Coming Up Next Week

 I've started putting together a battle for next week. The following introduction is shamelessly cribbed from my email to Stryker today - apologies, Ian - I can only think about anything once a day.

The scenario is influenced (a bit) by the Battle of Neerwinden 1693 (aka Landen), though it is 10 years later (and therefore has no pikes), and is not (of course) the Battle of Neerwinden - it is much smaller, for a start.

An Allied army (Anglo-Hessian, this time) is in an area near to a small (but interesting) fortress, to protect it from the attentions of the French. As it happens, the French have decided to clear out this protecting army, and have sent a larger force to deal with them. The Allied commander has opted to stay in the area, and his men have been busy digging some earthworks to strengthen their position. 

The earthworks are not that formidable - if someone is defending them then they will be a nuisance, but if there is no-one there they can be walked through - even by cavalry. 

On the edge of the table is the citadel, which is really just a bit of extra scenic interest, and is pretty much off limits, since the French do not have their Siege Train with them (this time, though the intention is to come back with the siege train once they've cleared the defending force out of the area). The (Dutch) garrison is small (about 2 battalions) and cannot be attacked, and is not available to the Allied side as a reinforcement - also the Allied troops cannot enter the fortress; it  does, however, have a few mortars available which can provide a bit of supporting fire for the Allies. Mortars have a long range, but are prone to misfires, which might just mean that the shells don't detonate, but could also mean that the mortar suffers damage right up to a complete write-off (if the shell explodes in the barrel, for example). The self-igniting shell is still some years in the future. The French army is quite a bit bigger than the Allied, and they have 5 brigade cubes to the Allies' 3 (probably). The mortars in the fort are not a brigade, but may be activated along with any of the Allied brigades (only once a turn, obviously).

There will be a preliminary artillery exchange - haven't had one for a while. 

I'll probably make another post once the soldiers arrive.

 

 

My old ECO plastic Ritterburg looms on the table edge - mostly to add a bit of visual interest, but the defending side will be able to call on a few of the fortress's guns for support

 

 

The defending side has put in many hours of spadework, which I am sure they hated, but they may gain some benefit from the time spent

 

 

Haven't yet decided which general will command which army. We do know there will be some bonus victory points if the French take any of the villages. Residents should probably check their property insurance policies

 

 

Hooptedoodle #498 - It Was Only a Matter of Time

It seems that the Almighty Festering Lard Barrel has decided to interfere in the World Cup. Well of course he has; what took him so long? 

He truly is an inspiration to us all. I'm writing to the US Supreme Court this afternoon, to see if they would like to review a few VAR offside decisions from Scotland's brief involvement in the competition. It must be worth a shot, you would think?

WSS: A Little Gentle Solo Rules-Testing for a Wet Afternoon

 This is a first step at getting back to what passes for normal at Chateau Foy. Last game I played here was in January, when David Crenshaw visited, courtesy of Zoom. Since then there has been a stream of excuses - all good, but too many in number (check out this old post of mine, from back in the Dark Ages, for the theory). I lost weeks of late evenings, studying online the fine details of the Scottish Courts' guidelines for submission of probate on inherited estates, meanwhile we had decorators working here, so we had rooms out of action, and in addition I had persistent problems with my eyes - all very tiresome and not at all interesting. If you sampled the link above, you will observe the mystic count of three excuses...

The decoration is complete, Edinburgh Sheriff Court (Gawd bless them) finally became fed up with trying to think up new reasons to bounce my application, and relented, and my eyes are now improving - slowly but indisputably, so it has become time to get out the toy soldiers and see how it might go.

No problems at all. I took the opportunity to run a game to test some recent changes in my rules concerning the effect of fordable rivers and streams. I have had some concerns in this area for a while, and a solo game seems the right occasion to try this out. I can describe the testing very quickly - it worked well, the new rule changes produced no snags - all good, but I still have to say that the presence of a significant river - even a fordable one - does not enhance the excitement levels in the game!

The OOB for this game was the original one for my January Zoom game, or, rather, what that game would have featured if I had not cut it back a little because of time constraints.

There is no back narrative - it was just a solo test game - an encounter - 9 Victory Pts for the win. If you like OOBs, here it is. 

French Army (Maréchal de France Clément-Alibert, Comte de Rabachière)     
(8 horse; 13 foot; 2 art; 5 leaders)

Bourgeois’ Cavalry Brigade [1] (Marquis de Bourgeois)
Gendarmérie de France (6 Sqns) (elite)
Régt de Grignand (3 Sqns)
Dragons de La Vrillière (3 Sqns)
Saint-Gervais’ Cavalry Brigade [2] (Marquis de Saint-Gervais)
Régt du Mestre de Camp (3 Sqns)
Régt de Lavallière (3 Sqns)
Régt du Roi (3 Sqns)
Régt de Tarnault (3 Sqns)
Pelletier’s Infantry Brigade [3] (Comte Pelletier de Montmarie)
Régt de Béarn (2 Bns)
Régt de Champagne (2 Bns)
Régt de Languedoc (1 Bn)
Régt du Dauphin (2 Bns)
1 field battery
Coustine’s Infantry Brigade [4] (Marquis de Coustine)
Régt de Navarre (2 Bns)
Régt de Poitou (2 Bns)
Régt de Saintonge (1 Bn)
Régt de Toulouse (1 Bn)
1 field battery

Allied Army (Lt Gen Charles Churchill)    
(8 horse; 12 foot; 2 art; 5 leaders)

Pickering’s Cavalry Brigade [1] (Br Gen Sir Mortimer Pickering)
Cadogan’s Regt (3 Sqns)
Lumley’s (Queen’s) Regt (3 Sqns)
Schomberg’s Regt (3 Sqns)
Hay’s (Scots) Dragoons (3 Sqns)
Whitstable’s Cavalry Brigade [2] (Br Gen Lord Whitstable)
Wood’s Regt (3 Sqns)
Wundham’s Regt (3 Sqns)
Leibregiment zu Pferd (Hessen-Kassel) (3 Sqns)
Spiegel Karabiniere (Hessen-Kassel) (3 Sqns)
Cirencester’s Infantry Brigade [3] (Br Gen Earl of Cirencester) [3 Bns have battalion guns]
1^st Foot Guards (1 Bn) (elite)
Duke of Marlborough’s Regt (1 Bn)
Chas Churchill’s (Buffs) Regt (1 Bn)
Ferguson’s (Cameronian) Regt (1 Bn)
Howe’s Regt (1 Bn)
Hamilton’s (Royal Irish) Regt (1 Bn)
1 field battery
Pentecost’s Infantry Brigade [4] (Br Gen Jan-Hendrik van Pentecost (Dutch))
Lord Orkney’s (Royal) Regt (1 Bn)
Lord North & Grey’s Regt (1 Bn)
IR Leib zu Fuss (Hessen-Kassel) (1 Bn)
IR Erbprinz (Hessen-Kassel) (1 Bn)
IR Prinz Wilhelm (Hessen-Kassel) (1 Bn)
IR Stückrad (Hessen-Kassel) (1 Bn)
1 field battery

 

    

 

Since this was a day about fighting with wet feet, it was essential to deploy the swans on the lake. You know it makes sense

 

Initial set-up; French on the left, Allies on the right, with a dirty great river dominating the field

 

I won't attempt a detailed account - the idea is just to offer some pictures to look at. This is Lord Whitstable's cavalry brigade, on the Allied left

 

The Allied Commander (another outing for Charlie Churchill) has a look at the old Butter Market in the village

 

Another general view at the start - this time from behind the Allies' right flank

 

The French commander, with his staff [I must try to arrange for some blank 5mm mini-dice, to identify the army without giving a fake brigade number for the Marshal...]

 

Regrettable lapse in elegance here - one of the French battalions does that embarrassing thing of balancing sideways on the bridge. In fact my infantry, if detached from their sabots, will form a very convincing column of march which is narrow enough to fit on the bridge, but it's fiddly. and this is a solo test, with the dining chairs still in position. A unit in the centre of the table gives too high a chance of dropping everything in a heap - especially given an operator with dodgy eyesight - so I played it lazy but safe. You know that for a proper game I'd have put them in column specially...

 

Splish-splash...

 

 

Nuts-and-bolts testing photo, warts and all - that dice roll inflicts one hit and one potential retreat on the enemy. The red cube indicates that this general's brigade (Pentecost, I think) has been activated this turn. The blue Tesco tokens show units which are ordered. Since Zoom is not used here, I reverted to the official black loss counters

 

British unit advances across the river (why us, serge? - because we're 'ere, lad)

 

Unusually for one of my battles, the cavalry only really got involved late in the day

 

Situation after about 3 hours shows a large hole in the middle of the French army. The Allies won 9-3 on Victory Points

 

The Bone Yard at the end. Lost units are classified as "Rally Fails" (i.e. "legged it") or "Eliminated" - French trays at the top here. The classification is meaningless in a single encounter game, but in a campaign the proportion of hits recovered for the next game depends on which tray the units finished up in, how many hits they suffered and what kind of a victory it was. Death by spreadsheets.

 

Hooptedoodle #497 - In the Garden Again

 Just a quick postscript to my last post - things are sprouting and flowering and all that. Here are just a few additional photos.

 

An old friend, always welcome; our white lilac, Madame Lemoine, is a lovely thing, but you have to be quick to catch it at its best - not quite in full flower yet, but the first heavy shower will wreck it!

 

Vigorous signs of being ready to go again - our Cotinus is a bit of a monster (in a very nice way)

 

The little red apple tree (with red blossom, and red fruit with bright red flesh) is looking good. The dry summer last year gave us quite a lot of apples, but they were small and as tough as conkers - I hope the wasps enjoyed them...

 

Appropriate alpines have been planted in the pockets in the old herb garden - I have a little spreadsheet which tells me what they all are...

 

 

...to keep the Professor happy, they are (from the far end round to the left): dianthus (Inchriach Dazzler); arenaria (montana); armeria (maritima Deep Rose); sedum (Cape Blanco); campanula (Blue Clips); oxalis (adenophylla); phlox (McDaniel's Cushion); Delosperma (Table Mountain); erodium (Bishops Form) 

 

Hooptedoodle #496 - Got to Get Ourselves back to the Garden

 It's a year since we planted our brave new shrubbery on the site of the legendary Roland's Hedge (which was wrecked in a storm so long ago that I now can't remember which one). The flowering shrubs have come on well, so now we have reached the time for Phase 2 of the Roland's Hedge Memorial Project - the planting of the perennials.

I've been looking forward to this, with just a faint buzz of apprehension. Planning has been thorough - Matty the Heroic Gardener put together a monster plan - words and pictures - of what we should get, and where it should go. All colour-coded and touched in with felt-tips - how big, what colours, when do the flowers appear - all of that. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Planning is all well and good, but actually doing it is still a little scary. Well, it's been done - the days are accomplished.

 

I brought in a couple of loads of hardy perennials - for a week I kept them safely out of the wind, and watered them devoutly every morning

 

Then, last Tuesday, the great planting went ahead. At present, you have to look for the new wee fellows in among the shrubs, but it should all be a riot of colour when it gets established

 

We are still on a gentle watering every morning

 

We are keeping the gates closed at the moment - we have a history of passing deer coming in for a munch...

 

 

This is a further sub-project - we had some helleborus in pots at the top of the steps, and they took a beating during the recent monsoons and gales, so they have been moved to the old herb-garden. The flowers should be white, but are currently brown - let's see how this goes. Our herb-growing days are in the past, so some nice, tight little alpines will go in the pockets. The patio paving needs to be re-pointed - I regret this may have to be a forthcoming project too

 

We have a pieris (mountain fire) which was planted last year - they have a reputation for being easily discouraged by the cold, but it has done well. An interesting plant - the new leaf growth is red, which fades to green, so you get a good idea of how things are going

And, in tribute to my borrowed title for this post, here's a version you may not have heard before - Symphonic Joni:

I confess that I am more than a little shaken to realise that this late retrospective album of Joni's work (arranged and conducted by Vince Mendoza) was almost a quarter of a century ago. Next time, I promise myself, I'm going to try to pay more attention. 

 

Guest Contributor Issue - Jean-Marc's 18th Century Fort

Always good value; I was delighted to hear from Jean-Marc last weekend. Apart from being an invaluable and knowledgeable friend (he is, among other things, a noted author and Professor of History at the University of Tours), Jean-Marc is also my link to the obscure world of Le Kriegspiel, an early hex-based French miniatures game (not the German map-based game much studied by the Prussian Officer Corps and others). You may have seen photos of some of his Napoleonic 20mm flats here in the past.

Our exchange of emails this week was mostly about sources for the original rules of the game, which might be a topic for another post sometime, but J-M was also kind enough to send me some photos from his archives of what seems (thus far, at least) to be an unfinished project!

A brief quote from Jean-Marc himself: 

[I made] a good starfort for 18C games with 6mm Heroics and Ros. I have the troops (see attached pics, on one you'll see the Royal Ecossais regt), the guns for battles, but, alas, not the rest: siege guns, gabions etc. And no rules that I can remember any line!

Fantastic stuff, Jean-Marc - many thanks for sending these - I am impressed and fascinated by your work. 6mm scale sieges seems a very appealing idea; I am not sure where you might get siege artillery in this scale (maybe someone got into this in the interim?), but it looks brilliant.

***** Late Edit *****

Very kindly, Jean Mark emailed a follow-up to the comments sent in, so I've cut-&-pasted him into this edit:

Hi Tony, 

I have read the comments. As regards on how the Vauban fort was made :

a) I had tried first what you see on the left of the pic: wood frame parts for picture frame for walls. it's very hard to work with this kind of wood, damaging the parts is easy, the results was not very good though I liked the "old fashioned" look of these walls. I tried twice, and stopped, and destroyed the forts. I suppose the engineers were exiled or shot! I suppose this method would be better for 15mm or 20mm scale.

b) 3rd and 4th times:  the way I worked was completely different. From the beginning I wanted a starfort which could be put on a single 30cmsX60cms terrain tile I used.  I believed in very modular terrain at the time!

So, I used one of the simplest plan of a fort I could find, enlarged it to the scale you see, and worked from the plan and on the plan (I suppose this makes sense) with card, balsa, some pieces of light wood and some green stuff. The 3rd attempt was not that good but I was happy with the 4th. You just have to be careful to have at least 4/5 plans because, well, with blades and such, the plan can be quickly damaged. So it's a rather 1/500-1/600 model not 1/300 even if the walls are not to scale, (they are larger than they should have been, but it's deliberate).

I also made a few buildings in this scale (again card, balsa, and also plasticard) for "Army level games" and could reduce the scale of old H&R buildings card stuff or use tourist cards (the castle on the pics is a well known Loire chateau).

c) I never finished the siege project, as I have said no siege guns, gabions etc. Only the SYW troops are ready, (but many H&R WSS packs remain unpainted). On the right of the wooden picture frame-wall you see the prototype of an artillery siege emplacement using card and wood pencil round pieces cut in half , and masquerading as gabions of some sort. 

Best Regards, 

Jean-Marc

 

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***** Even Later Edit *****

Jean-Marc sent some more photos, of a different project, which I thought were interesting enough to add to this post:

Hi Tony, 

That's me again, 

Just for fun, some pics of a Canadian wooden stockade, SYW, way too much reading about Montcalm and the Last of the Mohicans when I was young and after. I loved the movies: Last of the Mohicans, North West passage etc. 

So in 6mm, the fort needs some repair, but you'll see that British and French troops can use it. If you look carefully you'll see Redcoats,  Rangers, French trappers and Canadian militias, and French regulars. Iroquois have a red piece of wood on their stands, Hurons have only a green one...

Best Regards, 

Jean-Marc

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