Duke of York's HQ - Military Festival 20th March 1965 - PROGRAMME

Over the last year there has been some discussion here of the celebrated 1965 commemorative Waterloo wargame played at the Duke of York's HQ. If you wish to have a look at that, click here. We've had photos from the Featherstone book, and the report from Wargamer's Newsletter.

Today I am delighted to have a scan of the original programme, very kindly provided by Iain, the famed Albannach, no less - a Nobel Prize nomination will follow forthwith.

Here you will find all sorts - list of the participants, list of trade stands and - wait for it - the rules they used! Have a look - nostalgia lives - 1 dice for each 6 firers...

Anyway - without further ado, here it is. [One small message here - if any Resource Investigator on TMP feels the need to spread this round the world, it would be appreciated if they had the courtesy to say thanks, or at least hello, to acknowledge the hard work and love which goes into keeping these things alive. Iain, I'll be right behind you, mate - no worries - and thanks again!]  

 

More on the 1965 Waterloo War Game at the DoY's HQ, Chelsea

Many, many thanks to Jim Walkley, who found a report on the event in the April 1965 (?) Wargamer's Newsletter in his loft, and to Steve the Wargamer, who very kindly scanned it and sent me copies.

Steve has also sent a scan of the complete magazine to the WN Archives, which is only right and proper. If there is some copyright reason why it is illegal for me to put these scanned pages up here, please let me know and we can take it from there. On balance, I thought there was probably sufficient interest in this game, and sufficient time has elapsed since publication, to justify posting it here.

A few first thoughts from me:

* the date of 3rd March on the Alamy photos would appear to be incorrect
* so Wellington was Bob Gould! - Eric Knowles was Picton
* the game ran out of time - that's never happened before or since, has it?
* we can now fit names to faces
* that table looks bigger than 13ft6in to me!

Waterloo Wargame, Duke of York's Headquarters - 1965

Further to my previous reference to the 150th anniversary commemorative Waterloo game played at the Duke of York's HQ in Chelsea in 1965 (a good year for it, as I'm sure you'll agree, though I have some confusing idea that it took place in March, which would be less appropriate), David very kindly supplied a scan of the photos of the event which were included in Donald Featherstone's Advanced War Games - a book which I used to own, subsequently unloaded on eBay and never bothered to replace.

I have to say, right up front, that I have no right or permission to reproduce this picture, so if anyone is compromised or upset by its appearance here, please shout and I shall delete it.

The pictures mostly show the players on the French side - Tony Bath, who took the role of Napoleon, is in evidence, slightly to the right of centre in the two left-hand photos - as we look at the picture, Bath is on the right of the bald-headed man without glasses - he appears also on the right edge of the lower-right photo. The only hope I had of a glimpse of the other army's commanders was the middle image on the right side, but, having spent a little time working out the ground plan of the Hougoumont feature, I am pretty sure that is the end of the table, not the Mont St Jean side - the gentleman with the lapel badge and the opera glasses looks like an official player, though. Frustratingly, we can see the back view of the Allied commanders in the top-left photo.

As I understand it, Eric Knowles was Wellington for the day.

Not to worry - this is all I have for the moment. Does anyone recognise, or can you put names to, the people who are pictured, or even people known to have been there who are not pictured? I believe that the organisers were the British Model Soldier Society, though I am not very sure about that either - any clues, names, links or further photos would be very welcome. These chaps must have been well known at the time. I also read somewhere that the BMSS rather disapproved of wargaming, and thus a separate wargaming section was set up - round about 1965, in fact!

I am deeply impressed by the formal turn-out - even the schoolboys in the crowd wore ties - does that suggest official school parties, or did everyone wear ties then? In passing, the table looks to be about 24 feet x 6 feet - any views on that?

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

I was sent some links to these photos, which are definitely copyrighted by Alamy, though I understand that it is legal to download the preview versions (as I have done) for non-commercial purposes.

This is a larger version of one of the photos above, which gives a better view of the miniatures, and also reveals that the three participants here are (L to R) Ney, D'Erlon and Napoleon (T Bath)

And this is Eric Knowles, in uniform, no less, in his role of Wellington. Picture details give the date as 3rd March 1965

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