Eighty-one* years ago today, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann got on his bike for a celebrated ride. Or rather, it’s celebrated by a certain subculture.
Bicycle Day commemorates the moment when Dr. Hofmann discovered the hallucinogenic properties of LSD. He had been (unsuccessfully) investigating the compound’s properties to treat medical conditions when it seems he got a hint (perhaps through an accidental ingestion) of the drugs emotion-altering properties. On April 19th, apparently at 4:20 PM, he decided to administer himself what he thought was a proper medical dose. As he began feeling its mind-altering effects, he decided he needed to leave his lab and go home.
It being wartime (1943), automobile usage was heavily restricted. He and his lab workers commuted via bike and leaving him with no other option for returning home. As he began his six-mile ride (accompanied by his still-sober assistant), the effects of the LSD became stronger and stronger. Thus the ride, and the notes taken about it afterward, have become the stuff of legend.
I wanted to link to Queen’s Bicycle Race video but it is a little too, uh, racy for public consumption. If you’ve allowed YouTube to verify your age, however, you can watch it. We were more tolerant in the 80s. Not that tolerant, though… some versions of the titular bicycle race included painted-on panties so as to avoid public distress.
*Not being a consumer of psychedelics, I had no idea that such a designation existed until I saw some hullabaloo surrounding the 80-year anniversary, last year. Too late to share it with you, though, as a nice, round anniversary number.
It was Christmas Eve, babe, in the drunk tank An old man said to me, won’t see another one And then he sang a song; “The Rare Old Mountain Dew” I turned my face away and dreamed about you
As of today, I have been at this blog for ten years. Ten years!
It started out as a way to post things that struck my fancy, to a public audience, without worrying about whether what I had to say would offend an elderly aunt, a radical cousin, or my mother. It would take almost another five years before I decided that the discipline of regular entries was something that would build my character. That decision resulted in this site growing into something that the me of 2013 could never have imagined.
The website, as it stands today, sports something north of 1,100 posts. This count, notably, also includes a startlingly high tally of 148 posts on the U.S. War in Vietnam. The site’s content has turned out to be a bit of an odd mix. Gaming after-action reports are interspersed with superficial moviereviews and links toWall Street Journal editorials. Through it all, I complain bitterly about how Netflix’s business model makes me unhappy.
I remember something written back, more than ten years ago. It was frequently posted on one of the blogs that I followed at the time. The owner wrote “I don’t write this blog for you, I write it for me.” This is true for me also, even if in a sadly self-indulgent way. I do this neither for the fame1, the fortune2, nor with any concerted message behind it all. While I may have started out this project merely looking for a way to say things that I probably shouldn’t say out loud, what you see here today has little to do with that vaguely-offensive doo-wop quote. It may even be that, these days, I keep it up as much out of force of habit as much as any other reason. One might say that habits can be the foundations of skills and forcing myself to write on a daily basis has developed and honed my ability to crank out 1000 words in fairly short order. I do think this has been valuable to me. Putting words to paper (well, screen) also helps me to organize my thinking on current events and the challenges inherent in the human condition. This remains true even when I don’t, ultimately, put those thoughts to paper (or screen). I often catch myself thinking about what I read, see, and experience related to how I might tie these things into historical timelines and how I would, then, explain it all to an audience.
Worthwhile? Sometimes I wonder, but we all need a hobby.
Here’s hoping that the second decade of et tu Bluto? turns out to be better than the first. For each and every one of us.
The writing is anonymous, insofar as anything connected to the internet can be considered to be. ↩︎
It’s the article that I would have written, had I been a little bit more aware of the timing. Oh, and if I were a better writer.
Holman Jenkins wrote, in The Wall Street Journal weekend edition, of the half-a-century anniversary of the Arab Oil Embargo. He ties the folly of Electric Vehicle mandates to the bad policy that sprung from the oil economy machinations in 1973. As to our present lapse in policy judgment, he refers to this weeks’ report (in The Journal naturally) that a “second wave” of EV sales has not materialized – to nobody’s surprise beyond those who were so sure that it would. Current “climate change” policy, he suggests, might be understood as a reflection of the disastrous energy policy of the 1970s, one that still warps and harms our economy to this day.
In the latter argument, he leans on author and former professor of economics at Butler University, Peter Z. Grossman. Dr. Grossman anticipated the October 17th anniversary of the Arab Oil Embargo sufficiently to prepare a print piece in The New Atlantis. His article is also on-line but not behind a paywall, so you might yourself enjoy what he has to say.
I say I would have written Jenkins’ article were I capable of doing so but that only applies to the first half, more or less. I would not have dived into the passionate cry for a global carbon tax, as nearly all of his environment-related opinion pieces do. With this weekend’s piece he outdoes even himself, dedicating almost a third of the article to a defense of his carbon-tax position from his otherwise-like-minded critics. If you can get through or around the WSJ paywall, you might enjoy reading that as well.
With Jenkins and I having missed the actual 50-year anniversary of the event in question, I’ll also make reference to what actually happened 50 years ago today. This is the 50th anniversary of the UN security council resolution calling for a cease fire in the Yom Kippur War. The hostilities themselves would last another four days, bringing the conflict to a close in under two weeks from the commencement of the attack on Israel.
I can’t imagine we’ll get off so easy this time around.
I have a friend who likes to post the hits of years gone by on Facebook. He obtains scans of old top-20 features out of a magazine – I think they’re typically from one of the British trade magazines – and posts them. His point, I must assume, is that they don’t write ’em like that anymore. Usually his choice of week means I’m actually not that impressed by his list of songs. He has posted several from the mid-70s, with most of the songs being before my time. Several more were from the early 80s, where the British bias meant that the early “New Wave” selections were outside of my own experience (I was too young and the bands too edgy). While I agree with him the songs from these lists are decidedly better than what’s popular now, they are not what I would have listened to then.
Just recently, however, he chose to post the chart* from 19 years ago “today” (at the time of his post – October 3rd). This puts it into that period of my life that I’ve gone on about before. The fall of 1984 would have, mostly likely, been my peak exposure to the strain of pop radio that would have been playing these very “hits” on heavy rotation. With the exception** of the Sheila E. song, I could hum any one of these songs from 19-year-old memory.
When I began my timeline of the “Songs of 1984,” I noted that many of the bands were those that had been popular in the 70s and, by the mid-eighties, were on their way out. By fall of 1984, the charts (and this one in particular) tended to jive more with the “dance” rankings or, to put it another way, with more of a focus on the new artists rather than the old.
If this were Facebook, I’d just share his post. This not being Facebook, I’m not going to post a copy of his list because the image might well be copyrighted. Instead, I’ll just list the songs and, because I’m typing them out and I’m lazy, I’ll stick with the top 10 plus an honorable mention.
Let’s Go Crazy – Prince
Missing You – John Waite
Drive – The Cars
She Bop – Cyndi Lauper
I Just Called to Say I Love You – Stevie Wonder
What’s Love Got to Do With It – Tina Turner
The Warrior – Scandal ft. Patty Smyth
The Glamorous Life – Sheila E.
Cruel Summer – Bananarama
Cover Me – Bruce Springsteen
My honorable mention weighs in at #14 and is Night Ranger’s When You Close Your Eyes, which I really did listen to quite a bit at the time. As to the rest of the October 1984 also-rans? Not so much.
For ready reference, I’ve inserted these songs, those that weren’t already there by virtue of them hitting #1, into my “Songs of 1984” timeline.
*But which chart is it? This one isn’t marked. From several of the songs and their positions thereupon, I think this may be the Billboard Top 100. This would certainly explain why these songs are so much more familiar to me rather than having that edgy, British sound.
**Listening to it now, it is vaguely familiar but still not remembered entirely. Part of it is it sounds so much like other Prince songs (that’s who wrote it). I’m reminded, also, of Rick Springfield’s Human Touch and other club dance hits of the time. Yet, for all my fuzziness surrounding the rest of the song, I do specifically recall this song’s line “without love it ain’t much.”
‘Tis all very well for the children to hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere; But why should my name be quite forgot, Who rode as boldly and well, God wot? Why should I ask? The reason is clear — My name was Dawes and his Revere.
This is Part 2 of a two-part post about the Tet Offensive. Read the first part at the link. Or return to the master post, where this is the hundred-fifteenth post about the Vietnam War.
Less than impressed so far, I fired up another January 31st Steel Panthers scenario, this one called Ho Nai: Initial Contact. It is a similar story to that presented by Not Here, Not Now, but now the focus is a town near the American airbase at Biên Hòa. As before, the American (this time) defenders are understrength and unprepared* for the assault but there is a balance to the game that makes it challenging without being painfully so.
In my first go around, I fought to a draw. Considering the details, I see this as a sign of a well-made, well-balanced** scenario. One that is built as a simulacrum of a tactical experience rather than a puzzle to be solved. I made some obvious mistakes, not the least assuming that a lull in the attack meant that I had already gained the upper hand. I also managed to lose my artillery for a couple of turns by inadvertently switching spotters. I feel like a little effort would allow me to make a decent showing for myself.
There is a third January 31st battle in the Steel Panthers library, that being Claws of the Black Panther. I would say last-but-not-least except I lack information about exactly when each of these scenarios took place. I am assuming, based on the very limited visibility on both of these scenarios, that they are in the dawn or pre-dawn hours of the morning. Contrast with the first of the three, which on turn 4 would already seem to have full daylight. My concurrent reading of Hue 1968 helps me to understand that the attack on Hue City was intended*** to start at 2 AM in a simultaneous assault. Online descriptions suggest that the Bến Tre assault began at 4:15 AM and the Ho Nai commencement sometime in between.
Claws of the Black Panther exemplifies one of the stronger features of Steel Panthers. That being its suitability for user-designed scenarios and its unique position, in its prime, to support such for post-World War II tactical battles. This scenario depicts the initial engagement of the elite of the ARVN forces in Hue City. The recon force Hac Bao, or Black Panther, was the only front-line fighting force in the Citadel and had been stationed in reserve at the Tây Lộc Airfield when 1st Division commander, Brigadier General Ngô Quang Trưởng, learned that the Tet cease fire had been broken (courtesy of premature attacks in the South). Historically, the Black Panthers defended the airport and then retreated to the 1st Division headquarters at the Mang Ca Garrison, a Victorian-era French fortress built to control the Perfume River.
Playing the defensive means a scenario that is light on the tactical choices that often make for a compelling game. You control mostly emplaced positions plus a mere handful of effective maneuverable forces. The previous two scenarios taught me, the hard way, not to bring units out of cover against unknown (but nevertheless clearly superior) forces. In exchange, however, it presents an important bit of history modeling a critical part of the Hue battle that, absent the engagement of U.S. forces, would typically get ignored.
Having now completed three Steel Panthers scenarios, I’ll open up the three Squad Battles scenarios that are also set on January 31st. These three are Tiller-authored sequential scenarios depicting the defense of Tan Son Nhut Air Base during a pre-dawn attack. I’ve said it before but I think these multi-part scenarios are meant to be digested as a whole rather than, necessarily, one-by-one.
Take, as an example, the screenshot above, showing the first player turn within Part I of the trio. The VC have just broken through the airbase fence and face a single security squad (5 men) manning a single M-60 from within a fortified position. That’s it. Nobody else on the map. Of course (as you can see in the dialog) two more security platoons are on their way along with two helicopter gunships. It’s a race against the clock, and the randomized entry turns, and when the scenario decides to end.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a scenario like this one. That said, it does show something of the nature of defending against a surprise attack. While Part One is fifteen turns long (and then some, for me), it is a very fast scenario because there are so few units on the board.
The second scenario is both small and short. Only six turns, it begins with an armored relief column already engaged at close range with enemy sporting RPGs. I took the above screenshot just as I lost my first AFV but I probably needn’t tell you there are many more burning wrecks to follow.
Once again, this feels like more of an instructional setup – a way to help guide the player through the events of the morning rather than, necessarily, provide a good game. My losses were terribly high but I think that the only way to do substantially better is to get better virtual die rolls. I did wonder if abandoning the victory locations to the enemy is a viable option, rather than staying on the road and duking it out. The victory point numbers suggest that the road must be defended. Incidentally, this is how it happened on the morning of the 31st but, as deadly as that fight was, I don’t think it turned out as bad as what happened to my guys.
As I’ve said time and again, the purpose of these multipart scenarios may be to set up the “main event.” In this case, Part Three is a 12 turn, properly-supported armored attack against positions seized by the VC earlier that morning. The final screenshot above shows the opening setup for the attackers – just before they move out.
But is this the main event? Maybe this one, too, is meant to be an educational experience. For example, if I had full planning capacity for this fight, I would never attack a built up area with armor unless I also used infantry support. Since I have been forced to do without, I can see the power of American armor when used properly against the VC. I had long read about how M113s were used effectively against the insurgents but this is my first chance to see them really work that way. I have no choice.
Given that they do work, this third scenario is as imbalanced for me as the other two were against me.
Allow me one last comment. In my first post, I tossed in that Tet was modeled by the First Person Shooter genre. Indeed, I was actually hoping to get to the Tet Offensive missions from Men of Valor in a way that coordinated with these, above, tactical games; one step closer to fine, if you will. The problem is I’ve been stuck on the Khe Sahn missions, still in the summer of ’67, for going-on four years now.
I probably shouldn’t have admitted it, but it is true. It’s a shame because I think I’d be impressed by the urban environments in Men of Valor.
Return to the master post or continue on for a Squad Battles take on the Battle of Hue.
*The lack of preparedness was less excusable at Ho Nai. American patrols had encountered the VC forces preparing for the attack. Leadership simply didn’t believe that it was part of something significant.
**I am not talking about a scenario that is the right level of challenge for me personally, although this one is that. One of my metrics is that a scenario is best when approached without preparation. If it takes multiple attempts to learn “tricks” for winning, the scenario loses points with me.
***The go-signal was to be a signal flare and mortar bombardment, which did not come off at exactly H-hour. It was close enough.
This is the one-hundred-fourteenth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series and here to go back to the master post.
Today marks the 55th anniversary of the launch of the Tet Offensive in 1968. The combined forces of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF aka the Viet Cong) and the North Vietnamese People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN and, often, NVA) had been preparing for months to launch simultaneous attacks, all across South Vietnam, intended to seize the major urban areas. The anticipation was that the appearance of the “liberation” soldiers would spark a “general uprising,” whereby the people would seize power from the corrupt “puppet” government in the South. The attack was to occur in the early morning hours of January 31st, but premature assaults on the 30th gave precious advanced warning of the impending operation.
Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been dreaming about the treatment of the Tet Offensive within games for many years now. As with Operation Starlite, the bits and pieces that comprise the Tet attacks are featured in most of the Vietnam-era games that I own; from the grand-strategic down to the first person shooter. All these years I’ve been anticipating diving into this cornucopia of gaming options.
Now that I am actually here, I have to say I feel a little bit let down. Maybe it is just me; a case of the mid-winter doldrums perhaps? While that is surely is part of it, it may also be that the Tet Offensive is even less suited to my wargames than some other of the operations that I’ve looked at previously. While it was a big operation, it was really just counter-insurgency writ large rather than the large unit actions that wargames prefer to model.
I started by picking up where I left off with Vietnam Combat Operations, this time #7. The opening turn, beginning on January 31st, is unlike any other turn that came before in the series – as it should be. It has the NLF kick off the action with simultaneous attacks all across the map. Similarly, the series’ unique gameplay involving a series of missions for each turn (which I’ve spoken so favorably about in the past) remains, but for the first few turns there are practically no instructions for the gamer to follow. The nature of the surprise attack means player, like the allied high command, must react to events. There are far more fires to be put out than there are fireman to throw into the fight.
The theater-wide operational scope of Vietnam Combat Operations is, broadly speaking, not suited to the small-scale, irregular warfare that made up the details of the Tet Offensive. Still, this module has always done an admirable job of using scripting to fill in the gap between TOAW‘s combat results tables and the much-smaller scale fighting that drive those results. #7 continues in this regard although I do detect some measure of struggle. For example, fighting that should have taken a matter of days can wind up spread out over weeks due to the coarseness of the turns. Part of it is again me in that I’ve never got the hang of the multi-impulse system in TOAW III. I tend to accomplish less in each turn that I would really like to, and almost certainly could with better planning.
As before, there is another TOAW scenario that covers the same ground as Vietnam Combat Operations, but at a finer scale. The Light Grows Dim: The Tet Offensive is a more traditional TOAW treatment of the uprising, set at a scale of 1 day per turn. It has been part of the TOAW package since its early iterations and, in TOAW III, is found in the “Classic TOAW” scenario folder. I’ve complained before that, sometimes, the nature of the TOAW engine means these scenarios play out as the historical order of battle scattered about a reasonably-accurate map rather than a representation of the historical events. I see this again, but I’ll not dwell on it.
Instead, I am going to bellyache about the special scripting that tries to better model this historical factors. To quote from the scenario information screen:
Most of the Allied units are severely understrength. Historically, this mirrors the fact that only one serviceman in seven in the US Army was actually involved in direct combat.
The South Vietnamese units were also cut to half strength or less, many soldiers being on leave for the holiday.
The tactical surprise and scope of the Communist attacks caused great confusion among Allied units all over the country. For that reason, they begin in a state of shock that limits their activities for the first three turns.
Bad weather (which actually happened) during the first few days of Tet severely limited the use of air support.
To put it another way, for the American first turn, there are but a handful of units that can move, shoot, or even just dig in, and these are virtually useless as fighting units due to being modeled as understrength. More pieces become controllable as each turn passes but, even by turn 3 or 4, their isn’t much for you to do.
Except watch your units get hammered by the full-strength NVA attacks.
While I appreciate the reality that is being game-i-fied here, watching your units get attacked with no ability to interact with the game isn’t good gameplay. Furthermore, the perception* of the U.S. command, by the first days of February, was that they had everything under control. Contrast that with a literal inability to control your own units.
Point is, it doesn’t feel right to me.
Compare, for example, the very similar map focus and timestamp of the first two screenshots, above. In the first, from Vietnam Combat Operations, the historically-contested portions of Saigon are shown as being under enemy control. The ARVN artillery and armored depot at Go Vap, correctly, has fallen and will, admittedly, require more to retake the position than the historical “hours” in which the 4th Vietnamese Marine Corps Battalion accomplished such. The ethnic Chinese Cholon neighborhood, too, will be a tough nut to crack in game and was, in fact, contested for more than a month. The point is that the NLF successes are isolated and the ARVN clearly have the forces to eventually prevail.
Contrast with the second screenshot where nearly the entire city is lost and, even as the days go by, there are no units under command to move into position, much less fight for control. Recall that the most newsworthy event of the Battle of Saigon occurred on February 1st (Turn 2!) when an ARVN general publicly executed a VC officer found in civilian clothing. This illustrates how, almost immediately, the ARVN forces in Saigon were able to retake the initiative.
Bottom line, as I indicated above, I just don’t get the right vibe from this one. I’ll try to play out the scenario to its conclusion but, for now, I’ve paused so as to dive down deeper into some tactical modeling of various engagements as communists launched their attacks.
The Light Grows Dim was put together by player/scenario designer Wild Bill Wilder (Why-uld-der, I’m pretty sure), who was one of the top content producers in the heyday of these toolkit wargames. It is therefore not surprising to find that he also built a Steel Panthers scenario for the Tet Offensive. That scenario, Not Here, Not Now, models the unprepared and overwhelmed defenders attempt to stop the offensive in the Mekong Delta region by holding a river crossing. This engagement, The Battle of Bến Tre, is best remembered for a quote, controversially attributed to a U.S. major; “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”
It’s an interesting battle and one that demonstrated how America’s support units (riverine, artillery, and aircraft) could make up for an utter lack of adequate forces on the ground. It’s also an interesting scenario design, seemingly presented as a set of puzzles to solve. Is it possible to keep enough units alive to mount an effective defense? (Not me, I lost almost all my boats very quickly to RPGs… again, unable to move or fight due to shock).
There is also an additional, and admittedly a-historical, inclusion of a South Vietnamese dignitary (his family is depicted as a Steel Panthers unit) who needs to be rescued. This is a nod to the reality that the Tet Offensive included assassination squads as well as general instructions to eliminate any and all collaborators found in captured territory. What was originally intended as a controlled political operation quickly spun out of control into a mass execution of civilians. A name on a list (as read by barely-literate teens) or even whispers from the neighbors might get you summarily shot.
Once again, I don’t find the imbalance particularly fun as a game. Maybe it’s just my seasonal affective disorder talking. Or maybe not, because…
*Hue 1968explains how, especially in Hue, the U.S. high command drastically and tragically underestimated what they were facing, sending inadequate forces against vastly superior numbers. It also explains how, in Saigon and throughout much of the South, the “surprise” part of the surprise attack aside, it was far less of a big deal militarily than the press and the folks at home understood it to be.
Technically speaking, America’s war in Vietnam ended fifty years ago today. On January 27th, 1973, the U.S. was a signatory to the Paris Peace Accords. This was the culmination of a negotiation process that had been ongoing since 1968, both above board and in secret.
While the United States immediately began full withdrawal of combat troops, fighting resumed almost immediately in South Vietnam with provisions of the treaty frequently violated on both sides. Open warfare resumed in March but after the treaty was signed the U.S. remained only indirectly involved.
US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiation of the accord. Lê Đức Thọ, a member of the North Vietnamese Politburo, was also granted the same honor but he refused to accept the award.
Five, almost six years ago, I had a post that talked about the 100-year anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. That anniversary roughly corresponded to the earliest posts in this blog. One hundred years ago seems like ancient history to most of us today. Nobody* who was old enough to remember, much less having participated in, the events leading us into the Great War remains alive. We imagine that world populated with people very different than ourselves.
It got me to thinking about how much, and how quickly, time has elapsed since I first began to focus on this “half a century” set of anniversaries. Younger readers may think differently but, for me, 50 years ago still has a “current events” tinge to it. I can remember watching the moon landings on TV or boarding the 1976 “Freedom Train”… well, not as if it was yesterday, or even very reliably, but it is all a part of my life.
Or focus on, for instance, the Spring of 1966, where the split in my graphical timelines between Cold War Part I and Cold War Part II occurs. I picked that as a date (circa 2016) in part inspired by the technological shift in superpower-fielded weaponry that occurred around 1965/1966. 1966 also put me at a mark close to half-way between the end of World War II and the end of the Berlin Wall. Most importantly, I was looking back almost exactly half a century – a nice, round 50 years.
May of 1966 is closer to the commencement of World War I than it is to the “great pandemic” in 2019. Likewise that “pivotal year” of 1968 is nearer to the June 1919 Treaty of Versailles than it is to Trump’s Syrian withdrawal or Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal, both of which are already fading into the past. The Paris Accord itself was signed on a date closer to the end of Prohibition (another arbitrary date used to break up my graphical timelines) than to the current events of today.
The Wall Street Journal reminded me of the importance of today’s date in their weekend edition, last Saturday. The date served as an anchor for an interview/article with Vietnam Vet/author/former SecNav/sometimes presidential candidate Jim Webb. Among other things, the piece wonders whether enough time has passed since the 1973 treaty and the 1975 “Fall of Saigon” for us to entertain a kinder view of America’s intervention in Vietnam. Webb certainly thinks that the U.S. comported itself better in Vietnam than it has in recent years and continues to be frustrated with the popular view of Vietnam Vets as a generation ruined by their war experience.
But that is all its own topic better left for a future post.
For the moment I’ll just look, with a combination of marvel and trepidation, at how quickly these 50 year anniversaries are racing past me and into history.
Count this as the one-hundred-thirteenth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series, here to go back to the master post, or follow on to the next post where I get back into gaming with another exploration of a single battle across multiple games.
*Had I written this post a week or two ago, I might have had to phrase this differently. On January 17th of 2023, Sister André (born Lucile Randon), a nun believed to be the world’s oldest living person, passed away. She would have been 10 at the outset of the First World War and we could argue about a 10 year olds ability to bear witness to world events. The oldest person on record is now Maria Branyas Morera, a Spanish woman born in San Francisco, CA in 1907. I will not argue whether she is “old enough to remember” the time leading up to WWI in Europe.