The Grind

Tags

Cold War, guns in hollywood, Hamburger Hill, netflix, Vietnam

This is the sixty-fourth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series or go back to the master post.

I’m almost certain I watched Hamburger Hill sometime around the time it came out (1987). I vaguely recall not liking it, although I can’t say I remember anything else about it. Within the last six months or so, happened across some video clips from it (I was perusing a best movies of the Vietnam War list) and wondered if I shouldn’t watch it again. Or for the first time if, perhaps, I hadn’t watched it already. It then took a slot on my “to watch” list.

When I found out it, this past weekend, that was set to be removed from Netflix in the middle of May, I decided that the time had come to give it a watch. This despite the fact that I’ve not been watching much TV recently and despite the fact that the film, although gone from Netflix, remains on Amazon’s included-with-Prime streaming.

It seems that, at the time it came out, the film was overshadowed by several of “the big” Vietnam War films that released just before or at the same time. Hamburger Hill debuted some 8-9 months after Platoon‘s release. It then shared the summer audience with Full Metal Jacket. A few months after that, Good Morning Vietnam was added to the competition. To lend support to the idea that this was a genuinely good film that was overshadowed by its bigger-budget brethren is a (presently) 100% tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes.

But as I watch the film (or watch it again – I still can’t be sure), a number of things bother me. Part of the problem is that the likes of We Were Soldiers has raised the bar for what I expect from a war movie. Yet even evaluated from the perspective of the late 1980s, I don’t think this is in the same ballpark as Full Metal Jacket or Platoon.

My very first impression how much the actors reflect the look and mannerisms 80s, not the 60s. It has always been a problem and probably always will be, but failing to get the period right in your period piece tends to foreshadow other quality issues. It also mean that, throughout the remainder of the film, I have a hard time telling the supporting actors one from the other.

The focus of a film is on a single squad which, as the events of the film begin, is a mix of veterans and replacements. To start, the squad is being extracted from a firefight, perhaps a patrol gone wrong. We later find out that this nasty fight takes place in the region to which they are to ultimately return for the titular battle. The squad leader is played by Dylan McDermott* in what I would call the “lead role.” It is also his first credited film appearance. Strangely, Netflix doesn’t credit him as one of the “top” credits, despite his obviously key part. Amazon does, as does the “Blue Ray” disc version of the film. Odd.

While we, the audience, tries to figure out who these guys are and what they are up to, the movie seems want to run us through all the war-movie tropes. The Lieutenant / Platoon Leader is incompetent and the platoon is run by the Platoon Sergeant. There’s the draftees versus volunteers conflict (with a little anti-war and anti-anti-war politics thrown in for good measure). A nasty, friendly fire incident produces a gut-wrenching scene. It’s as if the writers wanted to take all the “issues” of the time and make sure each got their place within the film. One significant must-include for a 1969 period piece is the civil rights conflict. We are treated to repeated eruptions of racial tension in the mixed-race platoon. In this, that 80s look really confuses the story. There is an odd scene where the (black) medic teaches the new (white) recruits how to brush their teeth. The implication is that the whites are unsophisticated “rednecks,” perhaps in contrast to the urban (and urbane?) blacks. Yet, all the white boys looks suspiciously like 80s yuppies**.

The portrayal of battle itself also come off pretty flat. This may be par for the course for 1987. We’re still in the middle of that transition from the likes of Force 10 From Navarone to Saving Private Ryan in terms of combat realism. Gun handling is a mixed bag and nearly everyone fires incessantly on full-automatic from a single, 10-round magazine. The squad prefers to move around in a densely-packed group, and although here and there a thought is given to enemy location and flanks, it’s mostly a very simple and simplistic representation of the battlefield.

We rarely see the whole platoon together in a scene and rarer still the shots bring in the rest of the company. With that, there seems to be little consideration as to the greater tactical plan. One might argue this is intentional. Like the individual infantryman, the viewers are not privy to any overarching plan and we may even suspect that there isn’t one. Thus having combat scenes be confusing and disconnected is a feature, not a bug. Still, it seems like the scenes were put together, not with a temporal and geographic narrative in mind, but to serve the visual story. “Let’s have two intense combat scenes with an intervening pause for quiet reflection.” I, for one, think the movie could have held together much better if the directory tried to keep the battle itself coherent.

My perceived deficit in authenticity is not for lack of trying. Director John Irvin, himself, had made a documentary in Vietnam during the war (about war photographers) and strove for accuracy. Writer James Carabatsos served in combat in the Vietnam war and he specifically wanted to counter the non-realism found in films like Apocalypse Now or The Deer Hunter. I’ve read that the film was extensively researched and praise from the Veteran community often focuses on its realism. I guess it is all relative.

One final benefit to Netflix pulling this film just when they did is that I watched it over the same days as the actual battle, 51 years after the fact. It’s a coincidence attributable to dumb luck, but one that I appreciate nonetheless.

*Looking over McDermott’s acting credits, I feel like I’ve seen him in a lot more films and/or television than he has actually been in. I don’t know why that would be.

**The one actor who has a grip on his poor, southern white-boy role is Steven Weber (Wings, The Shining),  as the Platoon Sergeant. Later, some exposition reveals to us that Weber’s Worcester is a California, city boy. Oh well.

Happy Endings

Tags

Cold War, Happy Valley, Plague Inc, The Operational Art of War, Vietnam, Vietnam Combat Operations, Wall Street Journal

This is the sixty-third in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series or go back to the master post.

I managed to finish Happy Valley on the last possible night, a night I also completed Volume V of the Vietnam Combat Operations series. This, having just finished, in a marathon effort, another project in right before Covid-19 shut everything down.

Now the rest of the world is finally granting me the social distance that I’ve always craved. Is it wrong to feel a measure of contentedness as the world burns? Probably.

I’ll say, first, about Happy Valley that it was well worth pressing onward and finishing both seasons. The biggest downside is that I struggled sometimes with the northern accent but I refrained from using any subtitles. I think that would have been wrong. That aside, this was a top-notch police drama. Heartily recommended.

The last turn brought with it some of the biggest and most interesting “battles” I’ve yet fought.

As for Vietnam Combat Operations, my final couple of turns provided more action than much of the game so far. There were several areas, particularly near Pleiku (as pictured above, showing part of Operation Francis Marion) and in the Quang Nam/Quang Tin area (Operation Union II), where sizable-looking NVA forces popped up just at the end.

While both these operations saw fairly significant engagement with the enemy, there were no large-scale, conventional-style battles. In both cases, the U.S. command was aware of significant enemy formations in the area, prompting sweeping actions to pin them down and destroy them. Still, as a rule, the communists were able to dictate the terms of engagement. U.S. losses were mostly due to ambush and bombardment rather than set piece battles. As with the war in general, communist losses substantially exceeded U.S. losses, but it was a price that the enemy was willing to pay for victory in the longer term.

As always a draw. The flavor text tastes about right.

TOAW is not, as far as I know, capable of explicitly modeling asymmetric warfare. Neither, however, is it explicitly modelling specific tactics of conventional warfare. I did not try to analyze how the casualty rates compare between this scenario and the historical estimates, nor do I think that would be a worthwhile exercise. As I play, I suspect that I react a lot more vigorously than would be historically accurate. When I see an enemy formation on the map, I try to surround and destroy it, even if that means drawing in units from outside the engaged command. As a result, I should probably see higher casualties, in many cases, relative to the actual battles. I actually suspect, if I were to dig into it, that the modelling isn’t doing that badly.

In the end, Vietnam Combat Operations is not trying to predict casualty rates and probably shouldn’t be seen as doing so. Getting lethality wrong, even systematically wrong, doesn’t necessarily destroy the scenario suite’s concept. Every six months (at least at this point in the series) there is a “reset” to bring everything back in line with historical reality. As I’ve said before, from the standpoint of the (U.S.) player, the results do appear correct. Even as an enemy “counter” disappears, what does that mean? PAVN units were rarely “wiped out.” They did, however, get “removed from the map” sometimes for the better part of a year. This wasn’t destruction or surrender – it was the soldiers scattering and then reforming in a remote area or in Cambodia/Laos, to refit and reinforce. The scenario seems to get this right, particularly once you’re willing to interpret what you are seeing in just that way.

As you see from my lower screenshot, I once again scored a draw. As I’ve said earlier, I’ve come to play this series by focusing on the suggested goals first and foremost. While wargaming as a whole is enjoyed as a “what if” exercise, keeping mostly to the script insures that I engage in those fights that the scenario author has prepared for me. As I said, I think I’m a little more vigorous that my historical counterparts. I also try to grab easy victory point locations (if they are nearby), even if they aren’t identified in the historical operations. As such, I think I should be doing better than average, points-wise. It is hard to see how this scenario is “winnable” without breaking the game, but then I sometimes lack imagination.

One thing I can imagine, moving abruptly to my third point of happiness, is the scenario pitched by a Wall St. Journal editorial in this morning’s paper. The authors, who do have a dog in this particular fight*, argue that remote work activity was already in our future. The current lockdowns and precautions will mean that companies and workers are forced to rapidly adopt telecommuting, even if they would have otherwise found it unthinkable. Give everyone a few months and they will learn that the unthinkable is, in fact, reasonable and (for many, even) an improvement over the status quo. They predict that once we all get used to a distributed workplace, nobody will want to go back.

As I stated at the outset, I’ve been social distancing before it was cool, although I probably moved too far ahead of the curve to be good for me. I suspect that while the “new normal” will include a lot more telecommuting, employers will be most likely to trust those with which they’ve had a traditional, cubicle-centered relationship up until recent events. But this isn’t all about me. I will say that, in my experience, a (purely) virtual workplace is healthy, happier, and more productive all at the same time. I wouldn’t be surprised if many more people come to this same conclusion. Let us wait until next fall and see if the authors are right.

Return to the master post or proceed to the next article, somewhat out of order, where I watched (or maybe rewatched) the 1987 film Hamburger Hill.

*They are management at a company called Nomadic Learning, which has been advocating for the shift for some time.

Support Call

Tags

Cold War, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Vietnam, Vietnam

This is the sixty-second 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.

The Squad Battles: Vietnam scenario Back Door is dated May 20th, 1967. There does not seem to be any particular reason to use that date, as the scenario isn’t meant to even approximate any real encounter. It has the U.S. Marines facing off against a handful of infantry-supported armor in the hands of the NVA forces.

This is one of the scenarios – indeed the first of the Squad Battles: Vietnam scenarios – downloadable from the site I discussed almost a year ago. The author describes it as a “beginner scenario.” “By that I mean that there are all sorts of “support stuff” to use, so that a beginner can get the feel of the game,” he elaborates. What he meant by this is, I think, a little more clear to me now.

Only a handful of boots on the ground to try to stop this NVA column.

This is an interesting deviation from the usual fare given my propensity to complain about the American’s lack of support. This scenario supplies plenty of everything. There is off-board artillery and aircraft (including a AH-1 cobra available as an airstrike – haven’t seen that before). There are Claymores hidden at objective points. As more forces trickle in toward the front lines, they bring with them bazookas and, eventually, a pair of M-48 Patton tanks.

The scenario isn’t for the beginner because it’s easy. Although the scoring is generous, the U.S Marines (which is the recommended side for the player) is outnumbered and is going to take quite a pounding. Rather, the point is to give the player a try at using a bunch of different features, all in one scenario. You have to figure out (possibly the hard way) that you don’t go maneuvering your squads that start next to the Claymores, because they need to be there to activate them. It is also a reminder that a handful of RPG-7s can make short work of your armor. You learn that your off-board support is of greatly reduced value if you don’t have line-of-sight to your target. You’ll also learn how brittle your support is if you do have line-of-sight to your target – one lucky near-miss with enemy artillery can take out your commander, which will then completely nullify all your support. Because without a leader to call in strikes, you’re not gettin’ nothin’. Remember that in Squad Battles, there’s no platoon Sergeant to step up into the breach.

In this case, there is no “real life” to compare the results to. I still think that the way off-board support is modeled makes it overly difficult to use successfully. I can’t back that up, though.

Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles or go on to the next article, for some operational level thoughts at the end of May, 1967. Note also that the previous article, not linked to the Vietnam War posts, was written after I finished reading the Vietnam-related novel First Blood.

Rambolin’ Man

Tags

Cold War, guns in hollywood, Vietnam

When one reads First Blood today, their situation must be similar to my own experience with the James Bond series. For almost all of us, we have been introduced to the character of Rambo through the movie series, not the book upon which that first film was based. Because of that, we tend to focus quite a bit on how the book deviates from the movie and not the other way around.

The most obvious difference is that Rambo (the first name John was added for the film, in the book he was just “Rambo”) did not survive the book. In fact, the original ending of the film also had Rambo meeting his maker. Fortunately for Stallone and decades of Rambo movies, the test audience was upset that the main character died in the end. Giving the people what they want, the ending was re-shot to have Rambo survive.

The author of First Blood, David Morrell, would go on to write sequels to his novels. When he originally sold the rights to his book to Hollywood, it came with the provision that he alone could write additional books about Rambo. This actually gave him quite a bit of leverage. Novelizations were popular aspects of movie marketing in the early 1980s (Rambo: First Blood Part II came out in 1985) but the studio was required to go with Morrell or nothing. Morrell negotiated that he would write the book, but only if he was allowed to deviate, as he felt appropriate, from the screenplay. The studio reluctantly agreed and a series of novels were also launched. Naturally, the book Rambo had to have come back alive, but if Morrell could handle that then so can we.

When I began my reading of the book, my immediate comparison was not with the movie, but with today’s military-veteran-turned-hero book genre, which is now quite popular. Following decades of war in the Middle East, there seem to be plenty of authors who themselves have had military experience, spawning a genre that thrives on meticulous detail. Morrell, by contrast, is a Canadian-born English professor, lacking military experience. My first clue was his reference to the “Congressional Medal of Honor,” a phrase I would expect those with familiarity with the honor to avoid. He also has describes the firearms to which Rambo has access in the language of someone unfamiliar with firearms. In both these cases, I may just be applying 2020 sensibilities to 1970 mentality – the military crowd of the Vietnam generation was less meticulous about all the tech-specs than even the keyboard warriors of today. Nonetheless, the book comes off as a decently researched, but not first hand, description of the guerrilla warrior.

Morrell has elaborated on some of his intended themes in interviews*. The idea came from seeing a juxtaposition of television footage from the Vietnam War and domestic images from the Civil Rights -related unrest. It occurred to him that it was difficult to distinguish the two and it got him thinking about what it would be like if the Vietnam War came home to America. At the same time, as a professor, he spoke to students who had been in the war and began to appreciate the mental trauma they had brought back with them – what we would now call manifestations of PTSD. The book sprung from an desire to dramatize these thoughts. Perhaps intentionally, the “war,” in his case, is but a single soldier. Yet, this single, trained warrior brings many deaths and out-sized destruction to small town America.

When it came to the film, star Stallone objected to the murderous nature of the character. He demanded the screenplay be rewritten so that John Rambo was responsible for only a single, and unintentional, death. By contrast, the Rambo of the book, once he begins to kill his adversaries, takes to it like a fish returning to the water. Stallone wanted his character, the misunderstood veteran, to be unambiguously sympathetic. In the book, however, Rambo and his nemesis Police Chief Teasle, are treated more equitably. Both make mistakes and yet both are military heroes in their own right and are intended to be equally deserving of our sympathy.

Morrell uses the dual characters of Rambo and Teasle to compare and contrast America’s past with its (then) present. Teasle is a hero of Korea, an early Cold War conflict and a war fought, in many ways, as an extension of World War II. In Vietnam, the United States began its path through repeated involvements in asymmetric warfare; wars fought by very different rules. Rambo, the insurgent, understands Teasle’s rules but Teasle struggles to understand Rambo. The individual struggle symbolizes America’s post-World-War-II struggle to find its place in the world – a struggle that remains relevant today.

Those ideas aside, reading this book made me think about one more of my recent themes from this site. It strikes me as unreasonable when books from nearly a century ago are available only for an order-of-magnitude above their original cost (or entirely out-of-print), locked up by some mega-publisher, making profits at the expense of readers and the work of a dead author. Yet here is an example of a writer who continues to actively market his work, albeit a 50-year-old work. Do any of us begrudge him earning a living from his efforts? I’d say no, although that makes it difficult take a stand on intellectual property protections. There are either rights, which can be bought, sold, held, and exploited or there are not. Or is there a middle ground?

*One such interview is printed in the back of the newest pressing of the book.

Uphill Battle

Tags

Cold War, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Vietnam, Vietnam

This is the sixty-first 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.

Since I mentioned it in the earlier post, I had better follow up. Squad Battles: Vietnam has a series of scenarios portraying the “Hill Fights” near the remote, Khe Sahn combat base. For more than a year, it was clear that the NVA were infiltrating forces across the DMZ and into South Vietnam. While the intense Battle of Khe Sahn was still more than 6 months away, a Marine patrol in April of 1967 encountered NVA units and triggered a preview of the fight that was to come.

Three platoons, three objectives.

The scenarios, a series of five, are called The Battle of the Khe Sanh Hills (parts 1-5). To me, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the scenarios is a typo in the scenario configuration, making it appear that the scenarios span both 1967 and 1968. Going through each scenario in detail, this obviously isn’t the case. The series is supposed to take place over little more than week near the end of April through the beginning of May, 1967.

The first of the scenarios (see previous screenshot) starts out with a very typical setup for Squad Battles: Vietnam. Three platoons are assigned three objectives across rough terrain wherein the defenders remain hidden until they open fire upon you. There is no off-board support and no on-board mortar squads; you advance infantry on the objectives take them. As you can see from the shading, marking my line-of-sight, this isn’t the ultra-dense jungle of some scenarios. There is occasional opportunity for movement of more than one hex at a time and there are areas where enemies can be engaged from a distance. Even still, this is mostly a scenario of advancing units straight at the objectives, to capture them before the scenario ends.

More units, more objectives, but still the same hill.

Like other scenarios, however, this one comes in multiple parts. Each scenario feeds into the next to create the larger story of the battle. While this does add something to the experience, it’s worth noting that each individual scenario remains independent. Successes or failures do not carry over in any way.

Scenario #2 is the same terrain but with slightly shifted objectives (see above). There are also more objectives, move defenders, and a full battalion of Marines at your disposal to take the hill. It is intended to reenact, after the first effort failed to dislodge the enemy, a second and successful assault on Hill 861.

The third scenario adds on-board air support. In 1967.

Moving on, to both a new scenario (above) and a new hill, the introductory text explains that the “Marines moved in fully knowing what to expect from the NVA defenders there.” They now have air and artillery support (again, so says the mission text). I found the implementation of this to be interesting. If you look at the above screenshot, you see I have two Huey gunships to aid me in my advance. But also look at how the map has been created. The cratered hilltop suggests that this assault was preceded by off-board air and artillery support that simply falls outside the turns allotted for the scenario. I suppose this makes sense. Once the Marines advance into the NVA earthworks, bombing runs and shelling would be risking own-side casualties. Therefore, for the scenario itself, we are given only two helicopters and no off-board support.

I really hate losing helicopters.

Somehow I knew, even as I started the scenario, that my helicopters were not going to make it. I don’t know if the U.S. had air support losses during the actual battle but I did. I always kept my helicopters at a good standoff distance but there seems to be an inevitability built into the dice. Every turn, the NVA is going to make multiple rolls against those helicopters and, in 15 turns, they’re bound to roll sixes at least once. My gaming personality wants to believe that there is a strategy to saving those helicopters, but is there?

Moreover, this middle scenario is the high point in terms of novelty. The rest of the series is also battalion actions against hilltop entrenchments, albeit different hilltops each time, but otherwise a repeat of #2. At the end of it all, what stood out the most was that 1968 scenario date and even this is very specific. In most other battles, I wouldn’t have been fooled by one scenario in the set being a year off. But it would be almost a full year before the Battle of Khe Sahn reached its climax.

As for our Marines, they couldn’t know what was coming. However, having learned a lesson from Dien Bien Phu, they realized that keeping the hills surrounding their combat base was a key component to its defense. The bloody fighting over the Khe Sahn hills was followed up by a long-term effort to keep these hills in friendly hands. Although there were some additional encounters, the area around Khe Sahn would remain quiet for the remainder of 1967. By December, however, the NVA was gearing up for a major assault.

Click here for the master post of Vietnam War articles. Another scenario taking place in the spring of 1967 near the northern border, albeit entirely hypothetical, is the subject of the next post.

I Must Be Dreaming

Tags

Cold War, Ian Fleming, James Bond, mafia, monetary policy

Goldfinger is the seventh book in the Bond series. It was written in its initial form in the first two months of 1958 and was published in early 1959. The story takes place in May and June of 1958. In 1964, it was made into the third* Bond film.

Similar to the film that preceded it, Goldfinger benefits both by being one of the earlier conversions and from being a near contemporary to the written source. This movie also I haven’t watched in quite some time, but I recall that I didn’t like it quite as much as the first two. Was it still better than what followed? I guess I’d need to watch them all again.

Like all of the works so far, the novel is considerably more serious than the movies that adapted them. In this case, the plot’s key crime – stealing the gold from Fort Knox – is itself like a punch line for some kind of gag. Maybe kids don’t make the connection these days, but back then it was synonymous with an impossible caper. That bit aside, Goldfinger follows in the footsteps of the series’ predecessors, doubling as a travelogue through the world of the ultra rich. In this case, it is a high-stakes Canasta game and a very expensive wager on golf which pivots on cheating all around. Now that I think about it, that sounds like another punchline to a joke.

Goldfinger also brings together threads from the previous stories. The titular villain joins forces with the Diamonds Are Forever mobsters to the benefit of the Soviet’s SMERSH. Having made so many enemies in the service to his country thus far, it is a wonder that Bond isn’t (gold)fingered sooner than he eventually is. Highlighting the sharp contrast between the book and film Bonds, James saves the day in the written Goldfinger, not by action sequences and high tech gadgetry, but by passing a message off by way of a private jet’s toilet. Seriously.

Apparently, and I’m using Fleming’s story line as my source because historical information doesn’t seem to be readily available, while England abandoned the gold standard in 1931, they continued to manage gold reserves as a guarantee of currency value through the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The dates when this novel is to have taken place may also mark the peak gold reserves of both the United States and the United Kingdom. Given how much international banking has changed since 1958, key aspects of the plot are difficult to understand today.

Goldfinger (this time the man, not the book) runs afoul of British authorities because he is smuggling gold from England to India. In England, the exchange rate with the pound sterling is set by the government. In India, one can obtain market rates. While the pound’s value is no longer determined by England’s gold reserves, in 1958 it is apparently guaranteed by England’s gold reserves. Thus England has an incentive to artificially increase the amount of gold that can be exchanged for a given amount of currency and, as a result, creates a lucrative arbitrage relative free markets in gold. The only way to square this circle is to enforce a policy restricting the export of gold. As policy this might be difficult to understand. As economics, its simpler (although it exposes the stupidity of the policy). By fencing off the English gold market and prohibiting export outside of its borders, England can maximize the quantity of all gold subject to their fiat rate of exchange.

Within a decade (1966), England would prohibit its citizens from owning more than four gold coins or from purchasing gold that they didn’t already possess. Even in Fleming’s novel, the government is already policing the “hoarding” of gold, but Goldfinger can skirt this effort because, as a jeweler, he legitimately holds a certain quantity of precious metal. The United States also underwent its own round of gold confiscation (1933, in theory – it wasn’t much enforced) and Australia prohibited private gold ownership in 1959. The U.S. still dictated a fixed exchange rate for gold, but that too would be abandoned by Nixon in 1971.

Also incomprehensible to today’s minds is the ability for Goldfinger to make millions worth of gold simply disappear. The government apparently could go in to inspect his gold holdings, but had no means to compare that with transaction receipts to verify that the gold that he held matched that which he had accumulated through the conduct of his business. Of course, this is a work of fiction so I wouldn’t know whether it accurately reflects limitations of government knowledge of a business’ details or not. At some point, historically, one could expect some privacy with respect to one’s business dealings – an expectation that is, mostly, no longer there. When did that actually change?

To me, Goldfinger represents an important transition in the Jame Bond world. The next book would be a series of short stories, breaking up the sequence of the novels and back-filling some of the fictional details. The next full-length novel, Thunderball, was originally created with the big screen in mind. Although this wasn’t a first (Dr. No, also, was originally conceived as a television series), Goldfinger was the last novel published before the film machine began rolling. Thunderball, also, will come to introduce SPECTRE as Bond’s arch-enemy, distancing Bond from the reality of Cold War politics and creating the Bond world which we’ve come to know. As I started out, for me and (I’d assume) many of my age and younger, James Bond exists first and foremost as a film character and the novels are there as a mere footnote.

*Thunderball was intended to go forward first, but copyright disputes were holding up production.

Fire Teams

Tags

Advance Squad Leader, Cold War, Khe Sanh, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Tour of Duty, Vietnam

This is the sixtieth 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.

As improbable as it may seem in retrospect, there was a time when Squad Battles looked like it could be the future of tactical wargaming.

In 2001, when Squad Battles first came out, we may have finally moved past that quest for the holy grail of a computer version of Advanced Squad Leader. 1996’s Close Combat began its development path as an explicit attempt to create such a beastie. 2000’s Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord was an attempt to get right what Close Combat did not and, once again, was first conceived as a direct conversion. Neither actually wound up as computer versions of ASL in any sense beyond the obvious overlap in scale, scope, and content. 2000 also finally saw a release of a licensed version* of Squad Leader – apparently thoroughly forgettable. So while the dream was still alive, it was just no longer on the front burner.

Close Combat shifted the playing field to a “real time” focus for grognard-level tactical gaming. This seemed a more natural fit for a computer platform, solving some of the development difficulties for both AI and UI. Combat Mission saw the real time and raised its own 3D representation, if nothing else**, using the power of the computer platform to solve the “line of sight” conceptual problem. It’s worth recognizing that both of these franchises are going strong, even after all this time.

Squad Battles, by contrast, was not (as far as I can recall) marketed as an ASL conversion, but it certainly looked the part. No 3D and no real-time here, just hexes and counters. Close Combat and Combat Mission notwithstanding, sharing the look of a classic, numbers-heavy board game was, at that time, strongly indicative of authenticity.

Remember, too, there was little else by way of competition. Steel Panthers was out there, but side-by-side, Squad Battles looked like the future while Steel Panthers was looking more and more like the past. While I recall complaints about aspects of the HPS series that weren’t open to modding (relative to Steel Panthers, I suppose), the game was intended to accommodate the needs of modders and scenario builders. On top of that, Tiller is nothing if not prolific, so once he released a pair of Squad Battles, we all anticipated many follow-ons.

These days, with the scenarios that were created slowly disappearing, it may be hard to imagine the time when enthusiasm and optimism reigned. In my earlier article, I mentioned a website maintaining links to older scenarios. Today I try one of those scenarios, created back when this world was new – a user-made scenario for Squad Battles: Tour of Duty called 3 Down River by long-time series contributor Frank Harmon.

Who can get there first?

This scenario is a hypothetical encounter set near the Marine combat outpost in the area of Khe Sanh. Date-wise, it precedes the the “Hill Fights” of April, 1967 by a couple of days. It images a platoon on a sweep operation that is redirected to a crash site to secure the area until a rescue helicopter can arrive for the downed crew.  Unfortunately for everyone involved, a company (?) -sized unit of NVA are also moving in toward the crash site, intent on capturing or killing the pilot and crew.

What makes this special is evident in the above screenshot, if you know what you’re looking for. As I said, this is a platoon on patrol – but just look at all those units! This scenario was created to have each “counter” represent, not a squad but a (four man) fire team. I’d like to detail all of the implications of this, but it looks to me that some of the documentation is lost to the interwebs. I believe this may have been part of a larger project with an accompanying web page but, even if that once existed, I can no longer access it. From inspection, I see two major changes – the four man “fire team” counters, of course, plus a lower level of leaders; corporals and sergeants, availabe to help organize the platoon and squad structure.

In his notes, the author says that his goal was to temper the lethality of the Squad Battles scenarios, an issue I mentioned briefly in my previous article and before. It also creates a little more “game” for a platoon-sized encounter, as you have the maneuver units and leader availability of a much larger scenario. It does not appear that anything was changed with the scale or the map design. It’s just more and smaller units.

It’s an interesting variation and, like many user-made scenarios, a more difficult one. Victory points are awarded purely on casualties, although, to win, the U.S. must additionally “rescue” at least one of the one of the downed crew. I find it difficult to give as good as I get, much less have the kind of kill ratio necessary to claim a victory. Of course, I don’t think I’ve quite figured out the “trick” to this game. Every scenario I play seems either to be a cake walk or impossible. If I experience an impossible scenario, that might just mean it is well designed.

The master post of Vietnam War articles is available at the link. For more scenario action dealing with the Hill Fights near Khe Sahn, move on to the next post.

*Avalon Hill’s Squad Leader itself was probably less faithful to the board game original than the two that didn’t make the name licensing cut. It went down some of the same paths as Close Combat and Combat Mission, but perhaps would be best thought of as an X-Com or Jagged Alliance, pitting the player’s squad management skills against scripted challenges. This is not what we ASL fans wanted. No, not at all.

**Let’s face it. At least half of us got into computer wargaming as an extension of the desire to push toy tanks and tin soldiers around the basement. Watching 3D models respond to our orders is hugely appealing.

Who Controls the Past Controls the Future

Tags

1984, Cold War, communism, England, george orwell, timeline, timelines

I was reading an article about the cultural tastes of the older generations. At some point our taste (in music, in the specific article) calcifies and we prefer to listen only to the sounds that we enjoyed in our youth. This being so, most of us have a moment in time that we see as defining. We see the events of this moment as shaping not only our own lives but the culture in which we live. While the feeling is universal, that actual moment will vary, being different for each of us. I believe the article called out the late-teens or early-twenties as the age for which we develop this nostalgia.

At the risk of dating myself, I find the years 1984 and 1985 to be particularly defining. First off, it helps that George Orwell not only placed his dystopian novel in the year 1984, but titled it the same. That left all of us in the first few years of the decade talking seriously about the arrival of this dystopian future and the extent to which it had already come about. The year saw a remade version of the film (same name) come out while the novel was on the required reading list for many a school.

I’ve read the book before, but it was a long time ago. My perspective likely drifted since that reading and I probably would need another go-through just to remember how the novel relates and differs from the film experience. The novel’s copyright expires January 1, 2021, less than a year away and counting down. Maybe I should read it again once the content, itself, is free from government control.

Up until I started watching, I was sure that I had also already seen the 1984 version of the film. After having watched, I’m pretty sure I haven’t actually seen it. I probably intended to when the film was released and somehow that aspiration turned into a vague recollection that I already had.

The book is a product of the desolation and destruction left behind by the Second World War. Orwell did not believe that free, Western Democracy would survive the war or, once the war ended, the ensuing Cold War. The book specifically reacted to the Tehran Conference and the notion that Allied victory would see the post-war world divided into zones of control. While partially correct (the world would see multiple wars fought across the post-war demarcations, such as in Korea and Vietnam), the full-scale war between superpowers never took place. One might also wonder how much Orwell’s own struggle with disease (tuberculosis) helped create the tone of utter despair within his novel.

Volumes have been written about the book, its context, its predictive ability or lack thereof, and its implications for the present society, whether that be present-day 1984 or present-day 2020. I’ll mostly stay away from that bigger picture so as to focus on this movie version.

At roughly this same time, 1982 had seen the release of Blade Runner and its imagery and style were redefining what the future might look like from 1984’s present. Oddly enough, that future is now the past. At the time, though, it seemed entirely plausible that we’d be living in an over-populated, corporate-controlled hell where our western culture had been almost entirely swallowed by the dominance of all things Japanese. Conflict with the Soviet Union was anticipated to follow paths as in Red Dawn or The Hunt for Red October (both 1984).

By contrast, the imagery of Nineteen Eighty-Four (the film), is the standard “war-torn Europe” pastiche. Was that a plausible future to us in 1984? Yes, if for no other reason than it was common within this exact context. Compare, for example, with the imagery of Pink Floyd – The Wall, also a 1982 film. It all fits the then-current archetype of World War III, conventional war version.

What about today, in the eyes of the “average” entertainment consumer? No world where progress was brought to a near-halt by the Second World War can possibly feel “futuristic” today. Nor can a story where Soviet and/or Nazi totalitarianism simply became ubiquitous. Even the imagery is all wrong for “perpetual war,” a state that we should feel quite familiar with. The fact is, the vision of a “war-torn Europe” has passed almost entirely out of human memory. There are very few still living who experienced the Second World War as an adult. Even the number that were old enough to have coherent memories of that time is rapidly dwindling. Thirty-six years on, the film has become a historical piece – depicting something from the 1940s – rather than the futuristic warning that it was intended to be.

The other bit of imagery from the film that surprised me a bit was the quantity and character of the sexual content. Part of it was I probably wasn’t quite ready to “get” the book when I first read it and so didn’t properly digest the content. Part of it is that any language from a 1940s novel is not going to produce quite the same impact of an actual big-screen beaver shot.

The sexual imagery in this film dominates the screen. Furthermore, it is a kind of sexual imagery that one is not going to see in the present day. It is explicit without being “sexy.” Like the shattered buildings and unhealthy-looking populace, it adds to the sense of despair rather than distracting from it. Similar scenes in a modern film would show a lot more writhing and humping but nowhere near the anatomical accuracy. There is a new Victorian prudery at play that has redefined what is acceptable even within what is meant to push the boundaries of our sensibility.

The sexual focus is interesting in another way. As I said, I never thought of the story as primarily about sex. When I read the book, this was a facet of Winston’s “rebellion” but I wouldn’t have seen it as dominant. In the film, their revolution is primarily a sexual one. Julia (although this probably isn’t as clear in the movie as in the book) has no aspirations to revolution beyond forbidden acts of sexuality and sensuality. In Orwell’s words, she is a “rebel from the waist downwards.” Winston challenges the government’s new world order at a more intellectual and philosophical level but, as he acknowledges that he will eventually be caught and reprogrammed, his main goal is that he will retain his love for Julia no matter what is done to him. The sexual focus in 1984 is probably related to the experience of those behind the movie of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. I see a very different context today.

I mentioned what I termed a new Victorian prudery. Sexuality, perhaps mostly male sexuality, is on many fronts being deterred. The massive depopulation of the Second World War and the even greater depopulation imagined by an Orwellian future aligned the needs of the State with the values of the religious right*; the need to build cultural and military strength with a vibrant and growing population. Thus the Ninety Eighty-Four State’s suppression of sexuality, to the 80s eye, would be seen as clearly anti-progressive. In actuality, totalitarian governments, in the years leading up to 1984 , were more likely to institute population limitations. Today, this has become an accepted part of what’s wrong with sex – it’s bad precisely because it tends to make babies.

In other words, among the Orwellian trends we are currently subject to, one of them seems to be the suppression of human sexuality – albeit in a very different direction than what Orwell imagined. This may be more profound in today’s world than then Orwell’s insight into the neuro-linguistic programing effects of political correctness. Winston is defeated when his eternal feelings for Julia are taken from him. Mankind is defeated, not when we cease to question the powers that be, but when we can no longer express our natural and inherent nature. Politics truly conquers all when politics can overcome genetics.

One final thing that surprised me when watching was the opening credit nod to the Eurythmics. I didn’t know they did the soundtrack for this film and I certainly didn’t know it was controversial. At the time, the Eurythmics were peaking commercially with their 1983 release of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). Their single Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four) was not quite as successful in the U.S. as it was in the UK, but it was popular in dance clubs. I never associated the song with the movie. Indeed, why would I? While I now connect Annie Lennox with movie soundtracks (courtesy of The Lord of the Rings), this would have seemed an oddity in the 80s. Furthermore, the Eurythmics’ electro-pop sound does not fit at all with the dystopia past/future of Nineteen Eighty-Four. This was a significant problem for the director. While the film’s production company, Virgin Studios, had commissioned the Eurythmics to do the soundtrack, director Michael Radford felt that the dance pop sound did not fit into his artistic vision. He had scored the movie, both with songs and musical background, with the compositions of Dominic Muldowney. Late in production, Virgin inserted Eurythmics recordings in place of the orchestra score. Virgin also released an Eurythmics album, which they sold as the soundtrack to the movie. Muldowney’s songs still remain prominent in the film, particularly his creation of the nationalistic anthems for Oceania. Radford and Muldowney were very unhappy with the decision and said as much.

In the intervening years, rights have shifted and the past has been rewritten. In 1999, a new soundtrack CD was released. It was titled Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Music of Oceania, and contained Muldowney’s score only. At that same time, the film was re-edited to restore Muldowney’s “cues” where they had been replaced with Eurythmics electronica. Currently, DVD versions might contain both edits** of the film. I’m not entirely clear about which version I watched. I think I probably saw the Eurythmics version in that I was thinking that some of the mood music was a little weird. I’ve read that the streaming version uses the Virgin cut, but Amazon’s interface does not readily provide those details. I guess the lesson is that, whichever version I saw is the right version and it always has been the right version.

Now, when it came to music, rock and pop, this mainstreaming of the newest sounds sometimes seemed like a wild exception rather than the rule. The early 1980s was heavily dominated by the artists of the previous decades. Look at the chart-toppers of 1984 and 1985 an you’ll see (if not the intact bands, at least the members of) The Beatles, Yes, Kenny Loggins, Genesis, The Commodores, Stevie Wonder, Ike & Tina Turner, King Crimson, REO Speedwagon, Dire Straits, and Jefferson Airplane. One would be forgiven for thinking it was still the early 1970s. At the same time, many of the bands that I would think of as “the future” of rock were either releasing their first albums or coming into their own commercially. In fact, looking at the musicscape of 1984 and 1985, I see several iterations of musical future as my own taste evolved.

Enjoying so this whole timeline-generating process and having been pleased with the music-and-events format I indulged in for 1968, I decided to make one for 1984. In doing so, I realized that the events I so strongly associate with this time are actually spread (mostly) across 1984 and 1985, so my musical timeline covers a two-year span.

One more thought and a caution to readers.

As loaded up my timeline with so many music videos, I realized I was pushing against some limits, at least in terms of the way my timelines interact with Firefox. The way the Knight Lab software works, it is loading the multi-media into the browser memory to display it. With dozens upon dozens of music videos involved, computer resources quickly become overloaded. This seems to persist even after closing the tab containing the timeline – one needs to shut down Firefox altogether, a action that itself becomes difficult due to the huge memory usage.

*I mean neither “religious” nor “right” in the American sense. The leftist wave of the sexual revolution attacked a prudery that, as in Victorian times, was closely tied with Christianity. In the modern world, the religious can fall on either side of the political divide (fundamentalist Islam is far more restrictive than almost any Christian sect). Likewise, “conservatism” here means only the emphasis on traditional norms. Non-Western traditions seem to be acceptable to the left.

**The change also removes a post-directorial saturation edit which Virgin had made against Radford’s wishes.

Conjunction Junction, How’s That Function?

Tags

Bau Bang, Cold War, Radio Commander, schoolhouse rock, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Tour of Duty, Squad Battles: Vietnam, The Operational Art of War, Vietnam, Vietnam Combat Operations

This is the fifty-ninth 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.

In February of 1967, preparations began for what was to be one of the the largest operations of the Vietnam War, code-named Operation Junction City. The offensive targeted the communist stronghold referred to as “War Zone C” with a massive invasion intended to trap and destroy what was referred to as the “mini-Pentagon,” an informal term for the Central Executive Committee of the People’s Revolutionary Party. This was the administrative headquarters directing the anti-government forces in the South.

The operation has an unprecedented scale for this scenario series. In the weeks before Junction City is to take place, preparations such as this diversion, are among the player’s tasks.

In gaming terms, I had some high hopes for this operation. It is covered by scenarios in three (or four, depending on your counting method) games; Vietnam Combat Operations, Volume V in The Operational Art of War, a scenario in each version of Squad Battles, and a campaign scenario in Radio Commander. In some ways, it provides an unprecedented opportunity to compare different games and different scales while looking at a single battle. The key is the scale of the operation. Junction City itself lasted for 82 days and that can be pushed to over 100 if you include preparatory operations such as Operation Gadsden. The U.S. forces committed included much of the 1st Infantry and 25th Infantry Divisions, the 196th Light Infantry Brigade, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. This is potentially 30 turns in Vietnam Combat Operations with a maneuver area this actually meshes well with the TOAW mechanics.

Horseshoe? It is hard to separate hammer from anvil in this screenshot. In what is considered by some to be bad luck, the “horseshoe” faces downward.

As I’ve explained, the scenario manual instructs you which units were historically involved in the operation in question and directs you how to place them historically. Satisfactorily doing so will earn you victory points as well as help match your play with the built-in triggers. You are, of course, free to deviate from the historical path in whatever ways you see fit.

Operation Junction City consisted of a horseshoe-shaped static perimeter intended to isolate the area containing the mini-Pentagon and to prevent enemy from escaping the operational area. With the perimeter established, a massive mechanized force entered the open end of the horseshoe from the south, sweeping north. They would either engage the enemy forces and annihilate them or force them against the waiting forces of the prepared perimeter.

In the end, my massive operation netted little more than a captured supply base.

The problem was, the communists, perhaps alerted to their vulnerability by sources inside the South Vietnam government, were able to move their logistics center to Cambodia and avoid being trapped by the operation. What engagements there were resulted in lopsided American victories, but the large scale battle where the U.S. expected to have a clear advantage did not materialize. While casualty ratios (per U.S. estimates) were on the order of 9:1, that did mean a non-trivial loss approaching 300 American servicemen in addition to equipment losses. In this, the scenario accurately recreates the operation. Besides a few inconclusive (and obscured by the game’s fog of war) battles, my only result was the location and destruction of an enemy supply center.

A very nice array of assets. both armor an artillery.

Absent a major, defining battle, one probably can’t expect the tactical-level games to integrate in any way with the operational treatment. For the Squad Battles scenarios, there is really nothing about them that gives a uniquely “Junction City” feel to them. In fact, the first of the two fits in just as well with one of my previous articles as as it contributes to this topic.

March 20th, around about midnight, saw a VC assault on a Fire Support Base 20 near the village of Bàu Bàng. Such an assault was anticipated by the American command, due to its proximity to a known communist stronghold, and so forces (3rd Squadron) from the Fifth Cavalry Regiment were deployed to defend the artillery. This fight is sometimes designated as the Second Battle of Bàu Bàng, the first having been fought in November of 1965. When I played a (First) Battle of Bàu Bàng in Steel Panthers, I suspected that a research error had caused some M48 Pattons to incorrectly make it into the order of battle. It is this, the 1967 scenario where the defenders have a mix of M113s and M48s and the Squad Battles setup accurately provides them.

Now, for all my complaints about deviation from historical lethality, my results in this scenario were very much matched to the historical results. I wound up losing only one AFV (it happened to be the one highlighted in the above screenshot) whereas the U.S. lost two vehicles to enemy fire in the portion of the actual fight modeled* by the scenario. Although the ability to rapidly react and to establish and expand a perimeter was a key element in the U.S. victory, I mostly fought from fixed positions. In any case, the scenario gives the (American) player a nice mix of armor and artillery. It’s a slaughter, but that’s the reality. The real-world casualty ratio was pushing 100:1.

Another fire base defense scenario.

Move ahead a day, and we get to the next of the Squad Battles scenarios. This one was part of the Squad Battles: Vietnam package, as opposed to Squad Battles: Tour of Duty, but like the first it is a fire base defense scenario. In this case, the defenses are manned by dug-in infantry of the 4th Infantry Division. What’s special about this scenario is that it (as seen in the above screenshot) models the direct fire capability of the artillery batteries using flechette ammunition, also called “beehive” rounds due to the buzzing noise they produce on their way to their target. Direct fire from defending artillery was often a factor when defending a fire base and this scenario allows the player to experience this capability hands-on.

Cavalry riding to the rescue.

As with the previous day’s action, armor was a factor. The player is granted four tanks to rush toward the sound of the guns. Moving them at maximum speed, they can engage the enemy for the last few turns of the scenario. In my case, they may have contributed to the salvaging of one of the victory locations, although it is hard to tell. I also lost a tank to RPG fire during the advance, which is consistent with the historical results. It was a hard-fought battle, but it is an easy win in game terms.

Another Radio Commander intro sequence, in the voice of an embedded reporter, answers my question about Coleman’s rank. Is he a grunt?

On to my third tactical scenario, this one from Radio Commander. First off, the campaign sees fit to address some of my open issues from previous steps. The cinematic intros continue, this time via commentary from a civilian reporter. We’re now clear on Coleman’s educational background and rank. What I don’t understand is whether or not an officer, provided they lead troops in the field, would have qualified as a “grunt.” Was this how the term was applied 50+ years ago? Besides that, I finally have my company up to full strength. I’m in command of three platoons instead of the usual two.

Dropped behind enemy lines, my guys need to find and trap the guerrillas.

I can’t knowledgeably comment on the historicity of this scenario. The action is too small and, frankly, too uneventful to be notable. It is certainly possible that something very similar happened at this time and place, but to verify or disprove that would take more effort than I’m willing to put in. I strongly suspect, instead, that this is yet another example of making a scenario that encapsulates key points from the larger battle, but at a scale more appropriate for the game.

Operation Junction was the largest airborne operation in the Vietnam War. By Vietnam, the U.S was seeing the need for parachute drops being, well, dropped in favor of helicopter insertions. The drop of 845 paratroopers was only a small part of the overall operation, but a noteworthy part. In my (above) operational game, I missed my chance to use the 173rd in their paradrop role. As I was reading the instructions, I actually inserted the second battalion of the 503rd via helicopter before I realized they were supposed to use an air drop. I probably lost some mission points for this, but given that I had more than enough helicopter transport to go around, my way was likely more effective otherwise.

The Radio Commander scenario, Hammer and Anvil, has an early AM drop of your subordinate company. Once in position, they are to push the enemy toward waiting mechanized elements of the 196th Brigade. This small-scale drop takes place about a month after the historical airborne operation. My gut tells me there was nothing that actually corresponds to this configuration of forces.

Herding cats. Armed, communist cats.

That aside, the scenario is an interesting in terms of its different approach. In this go-around, the objective is not to engage and defeat the enemy, the trick is to force them to move in the direction that you want them to. In doing this, there are plenty of things that can go wrong. You can miss them entirely, as you pass by them in the jungle. They can slip around your flanks or through the holes in your forces, escaping out of the operational area. They can achieve sudden, local superiority and teach you a nasty lesson. In short, it reflects the experiences of America’s large-formation operations against the insurgency.

There also seems to be, tucked away, a scripted event meant to advance a story line about war crimes. I’ll avoid commenting too much… for now. I will say that fictional battlefield atrocities seems like a cheap way to make a point, particularly if it is untethered to reality either through actual events or at least statistical occurrence.

That bit aside, I’d say all four of these scenarios provide some useful insight into various aspects of this operation, even if none of them are quite the gaming challenge that one might be hoping for.

Return to the master post for more Vietnam War articles. The next article looks at a hypothetical as implemented in a user made scenario – with a twist.

*As is often the case, it is hard to pin down what segment of the battle, exactly, is represented by the scenario. The battle went on for something like 4-5 hours before massive air power drove off the VC. Despite the effectiveness of mechanized units against the assault, it is estimated that the bulk of the enemy losses were due to airstrikes.

Mercy Sakes Alive

Tags

c.w. mccall, Cold War, Radio Commander, Vietnam

This is the fifty-eighth 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.

What feels right and what doesn’t?

I complained recently about the way close artillery support seems unrealistically ineffective in The Operational Art of War and Squad Battles. This is not an observation based on data – it’s just a gut feeling. In fact, it would surprise me if the these wargames, which have been around for so many decades, were really all that far off.

On the other hand, Radio Commander does feel good in my gut. If you’re facing a close fight and you call in some air or artillery support, it almost immediately shifts the balance. Fire support comes quickly and is generally on target. Again, no hard data to back this up, but the in-game experience seems to be consistent with the reading of after-action reports.

Flanking and eliminating the enemy.

Contrast that with the realism of the missions that make up the campaign. The next mission in the sequence (pictured above) is escorting an ARVN resupply convoy on its way to a besieged ARVN camp. So far, so good. Recall that the standard setup for this game has you in command of two airmobile infantry platoons plus supporting forces. The same applies here. Now, I can’t say this would never have been done but escorting trucks with foot-bound infantry seems like a pretty inefficient method of protecting a convoy.

What I do have in support is a unit of armor (M113s) plus artillery and air support. Like the artillery, the M113s seem to better conform to their performance in line with what I’ve read. In Squad Battles and in Steel Panthers, these vehicles seem extremely brittle when compared with the literature. In Radio Commander, in contrast, these are very effective units.

Hopefully not to ruin it for you, but this mission introduces certain story elements relative to the political difficulties in Vietnam. The scenario begins with some anti-Vietnamese banter from the attached unit while we are also operating with an ARVN unit – an event that feeds into the conversation tree. That same ARVN unit witnesses and reacts to a napalm strike on an enemy-held village that resulted in significant civilian casualties. I’ve yet to see if it is an integral part of the story or scoring or just included for color, but it seems to be building that Vietnam experience.

So does Radio Commander feel right?  Once again, it is a question of expectations. Is this an RTS with realistic combat elements? If it is, the campaign is structured very much like the typical RTS or even the similarly-constructed Men of Valor. You’ve got some core people that you husband through some key historical landmarks, without necessarily trying to reconstruct any particular battle or operation. If this is your ruler, Radio Commander is doing a better job than most. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a tactical wargame similar to Squad Battles, then we’re still in the realm of those introductory/tutorial missions that help you get the feel of the game and UI without explicitly trying reproduce historical combat. By this measure (and I’ll compare to the Squad Battles campaign game), it has its pros and its cons. We’ll say the jury is still out.

Return to the master post for Vietnam War articles or go on to the next article, in which Radio Commander is but one of several games to compare engines using the same battle.