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Tag Archives: Cold War

On a Nameless Height

11 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by magnacetaria in History of Games

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Cold War, John Tiller, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Tour of Duty, Vietnam, Vietnam Combat Operations

This is the seventy-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 master post.

Back to an original Tiller scenario from Squad Battles: Tour of Duty. This is another enrty I struggle with. Did Tiller include it simply because he could? Should this be winnable? Should this be fun?

Found them! This time I have mortars.

The actual fight over Hill 830 (so-named for its height in meters) took place over three days. The Squad Battles scenario seems to be focusing on the first hour or two following initial contact. Since early that morning, the 4th Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment of the 173rd Airborne Brigade had been tasked with moving to Hill 830* to begin a search-and-destroy operation. The plan was that they would stay in the field overnight and so conduct a multi-day operation.

At 3:45 PM, the lead elements of Alpha Company began to encounter fire from entrenched enemy positions near the top of Hill 830. Estimating that they had an NVA company in front of them (but the rest of a friendly batallion behind them), Alpha began deploying against the enemy positions. At the same time, they called in close artillery support from both the battalion’s own mortars and Fire Support Base 4 on nearby Hill 664. The next company in line, Delta, attempted to deploy on Alpha’s flank. The U.S. forces gradually determined that the enemy lines were longer than they had estimated and that therefore the opposing force must also be larger. The estimate was expanded, first, to two companies and then t a full battalion of opposition force. Over several hours, as nighttime approached, the US forces continued to maneuver in attempts to outflank any sources of enfilade fire and to link up their own lines, with mixed results. Artillery continued to be directed in, including fire targeted at the enemy’s rear to prevent them from withdrawing from the fight. As night fell, the major concern was the ability to extract causalities in the face of rough terrain, darkness, and adverse weather.

From this description, the setup of the Squad Battles scenario The Attack on Hill 830 seems about right. The forward elements are beginning to deploy against a suspected enemy position while most of the battalion is still in column (see above screenshot). From the terrain you will anticipate that movement will be very slow – one hex per turn. It is unlikely that a player can bring the rear-most elements into contact before scenario expiration. Particularly given that, it also seems unlikely that the U.S. can force the NVA out of their victory locations before scenario end.

One thing I do like about this scenario is the inclusion of a supporting mortar company in the order of battle. Indirect weapons are usually, ahistorically, in short supply for Squad Battles scenarios. Their presence lead to this being one of the few scenarios I actually played twice in a row. My first time through, I hoped to get at least some of the mortars into a direct line-of-sight with the enemy, to improve my accuracy. What I failed to check was the minimum range for the M30 (4.2 inch or 106.7mm) mortar. Having positioned the mortars to where I wanted them, I found that they were too close to the target to use. At the same time, I had move in my infantry to assault the enemy works, effectively nullifying my own fire support.

The second time through, I held my infantry back once they reached contact range (1-2 hexes) to give some” room for error” for my mortar support, which I brought to bear from turn 1. The end result didn’t change much – I was still unable to take any victory hexes nor score a win on points, but I felt like the battle was a little closer to the original. What was missing, of course, were the big guns from off-board. I do understand why they weren’t included, though. The problem is with the indirect fire rules for Squad Battles – there would be no way to prevent significant friendly fire casualties. Even using just the mortars, I took several hits on own squads. This stands in stark contrast to the actual battle, where the front lines were a mere 35 meters apart (a Squad Battles hex is 40m) and steady artillery support was available, apparently without serious incident.

Back in the real world, it would be until the next day before the U.S. forces were able to advance on the NVA positions and still another day until they cleared them. The end result where I, the player, accomplish not much besides getting shot up from entrenched machine guns, does seem to be fairly accurate. Even my moves, slowly trying to slide my guys around the edges of the enemy line, look to be about right. But where is the fun factor? It’s fifteen turns of, mostly, just watching the system shoot back and forth as the die rolls occasionally drop a man here, two men there. Is there any strategy that can win? Is there any strategy that can even reduce losses? Is there any point in trying to find such, given that the scenario is missing the close artillery support that was probably the major factor in this battle?

Who can say?

I also struggled with reality in my operational view of this battle. The scenario outline for Vietnam Combat Operations Volume 6 tells me to dispatch the fourth battalion to Hill 830 on the appropriate turn. When I found a rather scary-looking headquarters in that hex, I immediately airlifted in the remaining battalions from the brigade as well as positioning an ad-hoc fire base. Historically speaking, its massive overreaction, but its the only way to hope to achieve a win, given TOAW‘s mechanics.

Bringing the pain.

Simultaneously, I’m supporting an ARVN operation that seems to have found a decently-sized guerrilla force in the hills above Kontum.

Predictably, even with my overreaction, I didn’t net a NVA headquarters. The scripting behind the scenes of this game meant that, after one turn of fighting, the enemy slipped away into the wilderness. Which is pretty much what happened – almost always happened – with these Search and Destroy operations. I don’t think I suffered any harm due to my over-commitment, though.

*I’m struggling a little bit to back up this statement. The data I’m looking at says that the objective for the Battalion was reassigned in the early afternoon. On the maps I have, the grid coordinates don’t match up with my overlay. In any case, I don’t think the distance between the two objectives was that significant. A few thousandths of a grid square.

Another Half-Century Gone By

07 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by magnacetaria in on this day

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Tags

Cold War, timeline, Wall Street Journal

Three years ago, the Wall St. Journal had an article about the momentous year of 1968 and the fact that it was 50 years behind us. I’ve made much about it in the years since then and will certainly continue to do so in the near future.

Objectively, 1971 didn’t have nearly the impact that 1968 did. Nevertheless, the Wall St. Journal once again reflected on what took place 50 years ago. An editorial titled The Future Turns 50 This Year (as always, searching for the title rather than clicking on the link is apt to give you a glimpse behind the paywall) was published as a New Year’s piece and talks about some defining events of 1971.

  • Nixon’s playing of the China Card via Kissenger’s secret trip to China.
  • An FCC decision that paved the way for MCI to challenge the AT&T monopoly over long distance and business telephone services.
  • Nixon also “closed the gold window,” ending the Bretton Woods system which allowed the exchange (between governments) of dollars for gold.
  • The opening of Disney World, which would become a gold standard for theme resorts.
  • The marketing of the Intel 4004 chip, the first microprocessor.
  • Ratification of the 26th amendment, lowering the voting age to 18.
  • Founding of Nasdaq, Greenpeace, and Starbucks.

It’s an interesting tale of events that, small though they may have seemed at the time, greatly shape our present day. As I said, though, this is not 1968. As much as I obsess with the making of timelines, it’s hard to see these nine (or so) events lending themselves to such an effort. Were I to do so, I would perhaps add that the pop single of the year was Joy to the World from Three Dog Night. Always, at least to me, associated with winter weather, it was a chart topper* through the spring of 1971. No suprise, the hits display a mix of the past (George Harrison, The Temptations, Paul McCartney, and Janis Joplin (deceased)), the present (Rolling Stones, Dawn**), and the future (Bee Gees). There are also two #1 spots held by the Osmonds, in an illustration of what it was like to live 1971.

Speaking of the future, does anyone else think that Melanie foreshadows the ubiquitous sound of the biggest female singers of the twenty-teens?

Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com

*Airplay and chart position have a more complex relationship that might appear from the “weeks and number one” metric. The album Naturally, containing the song, was released in November of 1970. The single itself wasn’t released until February and it first made Billboard’s number one in April.

**Until just today, I always thought the “Dawn,” as in “Tony Orlando and Dawn,” was a person, a woman, a member of Tony’s singing outfit.

Quote

This is the Dark Part of the Year

06 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by magnacetaria in History of Games

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Cold War, mudhens, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Vietnam, The Operational Art of War, Vietnam, Vietnam Combat Operations

Happy New Year. May this one be better than what we are leaving behind.

Amazingly enough, it was one year ago when I began playing a new entry in the Vietnam Combat Operations series, which started off the year 1967. The next entry in that progression, I suppose it goes without saying, is Volume 6, which starts off halfway through that same year. Perhaps it says something about 2020 that I was only able to progress 6 months of fantasy time in a whole year of real time. Of course, a large part of it was my detour into the Six Day War, consuming six months of my time on with barely a few days of fighting. That said, January 2020 seems like a long, long time ago.

This is the seventy-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.

As a result of such a gap, I kind of forgot that Vietnam Combat Operations did switch over at mid-year. My usual habit is the syncing the scenarios in Squad Battles with those of Vietnam Combat Operations, and that fell out of sync.

My special forces over Hill 1338 en route to the Dak To special forces base.

As I pick back up with Volume 6, I notice some familiar terrain. The area around Dak To was the location of the first of the reasonably-sized scenarios from the continued half of the year, giving us a chance to see (after the fact) how well it reflects back at the operational level. At least, I hope so. I actually may have messed up a bit. While I am airlifting my LRRP unit into the vicinity of Dak To (above screenshot), where intelligence suspects the 24th PAVN Regiment. My patrols haven’t found them yet, so I have my main Airborne battalions moving by ground transport rather than airlift. Being slow, my unit will not be in place to engage in company-scale combat on June 22nd, as it should historically. As you can see below, I did manage to find some enemy on Hill 1338 no more than a day or two behind schedule, whatever that’s worth.

There they are, right where they are supposed to be.

Waiting another couple of turns, I run into some familiar action right around the DMZ and Con Thien (below). The AI has pushed the fight a little farther to the east than I would reckon it from the Squad Battles scenario, but that’s all right by me. Notice the carriers and battleship all sitting off of the coast. The closer Charlie comes to the ocean, the harder I’m going to smack him back. This screen capture I got during the AI turn, which is always a bit tough. Enemy units tend to flash on and off the screen along with assorted attack animations. I didn’t get any of the latter, but you can see both a portion of the attack NVA plus their artillery support further north. Next turn he’s going to get his.

Big guns firing across the DMZ are about to deal me a bit of a blow.

While I’m getting myself all realigned, I also thought it worthwhile to toss in one more July ’67 Squad Battles scenario. This one is another user-made scenario. At their best, the user-made scenarios explore aspects of the game engine that are absent from the stock scenario list and that’s what going on here. The scenario, S&D* at X Lam Va, isn’t going to appear in the operational-level treatment – both because its too small and I’m pretty sure it’s a hypothetical. What it does provide, beyond the run-of-the-mill, are two items. First, the pair of attacking American platoons have the kind of massively-superior firepower that characterized much of the Vietnam War. Both platoons have radio communications and there is plenty of artillery support to be called in. Secondly, it asks the player to conduct a rapid raid and extraction, hinging victory on your ability, not just to get in, but to get out.

Platoons actually have radios!

The off-board artillery is nice and makes the scenario feel more like reports that I’ve read. The extraction is a little more problematic. First, I do wonder whether an operation would have been conducted under such a tight clock – one hour to get in and out where a failure to stick to the time table meant abandoning American soldiers in enemy-held territory. Second, as I’ve complained before, the ability to extract forces can be flummoxed if friendlies get pinned, especially combine with a loss of leadership. In the screen grab below, the highlighted unit is pinned down (by friendly short-rounds, no less). When my platoon leader went to get them moving again, he was shot and killed by nearby VC. No way these guys are going to make the extraction plan (which was to pass through the village and be picked up in clearing at the top of the screen).

Pinned down with a loss of leadership.

Another interesting, and not-immediately-obvious feature of the scenario is due to the lack of on-board victory locations. As a human player, I know I’m trying to stomp on any VC present in the village. The AI attaches no sentiment to the village whatsoever. That means that the VC will, realistically I might add, try to escape the American hammer rather than stay and fight to the end. I’ve not seen that before.

In the end, I obviously messed up a few things, including the timing of the extraction. Had I wanted to put in the effort, the right way to play this scenario would have been to actually plan out the number of turns necessary to remove one’s forces and back the entire timeline out from that. That’s a little too much work for a casual game. It’s also not really worth it (again, to me) to replay the scenario to correct my problems the first time through. After all, I managed to get some of it right.

Now forward through the second half of 1967 and a much-anticipated 2021.

‘So long to the worst year of my life,’ said she.

Worst Year – The Mudhens

So say we all.

Return to the master post for more on the Vietnam War. Continue forward for more TOAW and Squad Battles goodness.

*Search and Destroy.

Big Things

10 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by magnacetaria in History of Games

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Cold War, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Vietnam, U.S. Marines in Vietnam Fighting the North Vietnamese 1967, Vietnam

Jumping from a tiny scenario to a big one… Although I lamented, back when 2020 was new, that there were no big battle scenarios in 1967, the Year of Big Battles, I found a Squad Battles scenario that edges into that designation.

This is the seventieth 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 Battle at Con Thien scenario comes, actually, in three flavors. I haven’t really done the research but I’m almost certain that the original CD included one scenario and the two alternate versions were made available as what we now fondly (or not so fondly) call DownLoadable Content (DLC). The additions add a delay, allowing the American’s to develop a reaction to the NVA ambush. The second of the two alternate versions has that delayed start plus many extra turns added to the end. It also adds more formations and weaponry. It is this third version that I chose to play. Reading between the lines (or between the authors’ names, I should say) in the credits says that HPS-founder Scott Hamilton added these extras to the Tiller original.

The American base is not the center of the scenario.

This is all good stuff. While it is mostly an infantry fight, the terrain is fairly open and crisscrossed by roadways. This, plus the 50-turn duration, means that units can cross the very large battlefield and have the opportunity for maneuver. The level of support is not exceptional but it is nice to be allocated something. The U.S. marines have four armored fighting vehicles (seen in the above screenshot) and four airstrikes.

I played this scenario without any background on the battle, so as not to ruin any surprises. This is always a risk in Squad Battles; not knowing what to do might let you be surprised in the same way the participants were or it may mean you miss out on what the scenario has to offer because you do the wrong thing. I probably got a little of each going here.

The main, company-sized patrol, starts out on the victory locations. That signals it is time to defend.

Once I was well into things, I decided to see what my game was trying to model. To assist me in this effort I downloaded U.S. Marines in Vietnam: Fighting the North Vietnamese 1967, the next volume in the series that began with Stemming the Tide and An Expanding War. The book has a chapter (8) that is dedicated to the fighting around Con Thien, beginning with the ambush played out in this scenario.

Fighting the North Vietnamese explains the context of this battle as being tied to the McNamara Line. I have to wonder if there isn’t a little bit of policy disagreement bleeding through here. The McNamara Line is a term the media applied to a project to construct a fortified barrier along the South Vietnamese side of the DMZ. McNamara was the primary advocate, terming it the “barrier system.” It had various governmental code names including “Practice Nine,” “Illinois City,” “Igloo White, ” and “SPOS” (for Strong-point obstacle system). The idea originated with academics from Harvard and MIT and was, from the beginning, opposed by the military. Created such a barrier would require extensive construction by combat units, diverting efforts from their primary role – combat.

The chain of events per Fighting the North Vietnamese is that the McNamara Line construction, which was funded in January of 1968 and was undergoing building by the time of this scenario (July), was targeted by the NVA. Instead of the usual hit and run tactics, the Marines along the DMV began to see larger unit action and more persistent attacks. These so-called “border battles,” the book explains, were attempts by the NVA to disrupt the construction of the McNamara Line. Note that others have surmised that the communists’ ramped-up assaults were intended to draw the U.S. forces away from the cities as a set up to the planned Tet Offensive. Westmoreland apparently believed the opposite – that the Tet Offensive was itself intended to draw forces away from Khe Sanh and the remote areas near the DMV.

Whatever the truth, which remains disputed, at the beginning of July Marines were defending a strong-point at Con Thien. The location was tactically important, situated as it was between the DMZ and the otherwise vulnerable bases further back. From a slight rise, the base had a view of the surrounding area which included favored infiltration routes for North Vietnamese forces. To interdict this infiltration, the Marines engaged in sweeps of the area just inside the DMZ. Perhaps due to a paucity of forces resulting from diversion of manpower to the construction of the McNamara Line, any given area was swept over a period of a few days and then was left alone for a week or so. In reaction, the NVA could retreat before the sweep operation and then move back in once it was completed. To catch them in the act, the Marines devised Operation Buffalo. To surprise the NVA, after the sweeping forces had left the area, the Marines would unexpectedly re-enter the area when, by previous patterns, they should have been moving on. Unfortunately, the NVA seem to have figured it all out. While they were there, they were also ready with a multi-battalion ambush.

I don’t know whether it is the large map or better accuracy, the the air strikes have delivered for me.

As I said above, this is one of the better Squad Battles scenarios that I have played. Part of it is that it does a very good job, by Squad Battles standards certainly, of recreating the actual situation. The Marine battalion at Con Thien was, on the morning of July 2nd, spread across the map. Two companies were patrolling the hostile area while a third was rearward at the 9th Marines’ regimental base at Dong Ha. The fourth had defensive duties for the Con Thien strong-point. The scenario began for me almost exactly as described in the book (remembering that I hadn’t read the book yet, so my reactions were genuine). Company A* trips a claymore mine trap and goes to ground. Historically, they called for medevac, something that Squad Battles does not support. I believed this was the beginning of an infantry ambush and so went defensive for a turn or two until I realized that the main attack was coming elsewhere. The enemy’s focus was obvious when Company B got smacked with some fairly potent artillery fire and began seeing attackers on its flanks.

As shown in the below screenshot, the forces at the Con Thien strong-point are explicitly included. At the outset of the scenario, they are locked in place to account for a more realistic response time. That July morning, the battalion commander first elected to air lift Company C from Dong Ha. However, given the delay in doing so he also dispatched four tanks and a platoon (from Company D, defending the strong-point) by road. Here I began to depart substantially from the script. First, it wasn’t clear that my airlifted forces were going to be significantly delayed. Second, it wasn’t at all obvious to me that the base wasn’t under threat. Third, the time to move forces on foot along the roadways was obviously going to be significant and I didn’t think to try to mount the squads on the tanks before I moved out.

I also deviated significantly in that the placement of the victory locations suggested I should be holding the entire length of road in the ambush zone. The reality was that the platoons immediately tried to consolidate and withdraw but the initial attack had pinned them in place. Ultimately, it makes sense to include these hexes as victory locations, even though I, personally, took the wrong message from them. First, it gives the AI a sense of what it is supposed to do. Second, by the end of the day, the main U.S. objective was to recover injured and KIA soldiers from the ambush zone. Requiring the U.S. player to hold the victory locations solidly enough to support evacuation is, in fact, very appropriate.

I didn’t get the notice when my armor unlocked. I’ll happily send them to the front now, though.

A few other oddities stood out. As I said, this was one of the better scenarios both in terms of stuff-to-do and alignment with the historical situation. Nevertheless, this is still a Squad Battles scenario and, predictably, there were a few problems. Referring to the screen shot directly above, as soon as I began moving my armor one of my Dusters broke down on one of the internal roads inside my base. While I appreciate the role that reliability plays, it doesn’t feel right that I can’t even get my armor outside the perimeter.

While it is nice to see a variety of forces and this scenario does better than most in allocating support, it still seems only a fraction of what should have been available. The U.S. called in far more than just four airstrikes. The trapped forces called in close air support, including napalm strikes, and this support was decisive. Fighting the North Vietnamese references “90 tons of [aircraft-delivered] ordnance during 28 sorties.” Also, “[a]rtillery fired 453 missions, while Navy destroyers fired 142 5-inch rounds into enemy positions.” Missing also is helicopter gunship support**, not to mention the integrated support units (mortars?) that a battalion would have been deploying. Similarly the NVA support has been scaled down.

The U.S. command spent the first few hours of the battle underestimating the size of the enemy attack. At the outset of the ambush, the U.S. sallied forth to combat a platoon sized unit. Estimates of enemy strength ratcheted up until finally settling in on the multi-battalion opposition that was really out there. Likewise, playing this scenario with no background information meant I never knew what I was facing until at least half-way through the scenario. Unlike many Squad Battles scenarios, this battle could be interesting in replay – perhaps attempting to reproduce the historical flow of the battle. I’m not sure if I’ll do that (50 turns is a lot of investment with three battalions on the board) but this is one scenario that has earned my compliments.

Return to the master post for the Vietnam War. The next article takes us from the big to the even bigger.

*Recall that Squad Battles deliberately does not use the historical unit designations.

**The lack of close air support meant that, as before, I used my transport helicopters for air support, ahistorically losing a handful of them in the process. Add to this distortion the fact that, in a hex-and-counter game, there is too much instantaneous control over the individual units during an airlift. Not only did my air-mobile units come into play faster than they should have, I could redirect the helicopters and their M60s or even select new landing zones in real time. The logistics of helicopter transport don’t quite fit the mechanics of Squad Battles.

The Queens We Use would not Excite You

22 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by magnacetaria in about a girl, review, TV Show

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Tags

Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, chess, Cold War, murray head, netflix, The Queen's Gambit

I love me a good drama about chess. I’m not alone. Films about chess prodigies get people excited.

Searching for Bobby Fischer, which I somehow had completely forgotten was based on a true story, had excellent reviews from critics and ranks 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Per Wikipedia, though, it doesn’t look like it did all that well in the theaters. Bobby Fischer also was very unhappy with it, despite never having actually seen the film. He was upset that others were making money though his name recognition without any compensation to him. Maybe the money issue (the profitability issue, no Fischer’s complaints) is why I can’t think of many chess films. I feel like I watched Fresh, but I can’t think of any others.

I was a little nervous when I saw the latest shot at this subject matter done as Netflix original content. While I was considering whether or not to give it a pass, a friend posted on Facebook that he was enjoying the show. He stated this from his perspective as a formerly semi-competitive chess player. I decided that was enough for me and I began watching the episodes entirely on his recommendation (and a quick pass through the Netflix teaser trailer).

I’m glad I didn’t pursue too thoroughly the reviews that were out there. After watching a few episodes and finding myself wondering if the games themselves had been reproduced on-line*, I came across a number of write-ups on this series in the mainstream media. The favorite topic seemed to be to interview present-day chess players to ask them if they felt the series downplayed sexism and exclusion as present in the game. Perhaps, one might speculate, the reason there aren’t many women grand masters is because the patriarchy conspires to keep women down?

I certainly have no basis to question the bad experiences of particular women. Bad behavior is everyone within the human experience. However, it seems unlikely that such an abstract and cerebral pursuit as chess could be skewed so decisively by sexism. That is, a woman who is the greatest player in the world would win her matches – and no amount of condescension should alter that. Well, I suppose it could in some cases, but not in all of them.

In any case, I avoided muddying my mind with this negativity and got into the show without prejudice. I am glad that I did.

It is an excellent show all around. It is a good looking** film with what is obviously a decent amount of money invested in period sets – it looks more theater than TV. It originally planned to be a feature film (we’ll get back to this point) but, as realized, it is another example of how the mini-series or limited-run series is much better suited for bringing a novel to film.

The acting is certainly a high point. The show stars Anna Taylor-Joy, who I’d seen before in The Witch, although I wouldn’t have made the connection without looking it up. I am always fascinated with actors whom I cannot recognize although, in this case, that says more about me than these particular actors. For example, I also recently watched Thomas Brodie-Sangster play Paul McCartney in Nowhere Boy. I never would have drawn the line from the historical UK singer to a fictional US chess champion. In fact, Taylor-Joy aside, many of the lead American roles are played, convincingly, by non-American actors. Perhaps my biggest shocker is Harry Edward Melling an actor I’ve seen in five Harry Potter films in the role of Dudley. He plays the the first of many chess champions to be defeated by the protagonist as she unseats him from his title as Kentucky state champion in her first-ever tournament. No clue.

Taylor-Joy’s Beth Harmon creates a personality that one might imagine could grace a female Grand Master. She mixes a bit of boyish autistic-spectrum personality traits as they might mix with a brilliant mind and beautiful body. Intellectually she recognizes the power of her sexuality even if she can’t quite fully understand it. I have to wonder if she borrowed some of the character from Saga Norén, a fictional detective from the the Danish/Swedish television series Bron/Broen, which I also happen to be watching at the moment. There were a few moments of The Queen’s Gambit that I swear I was seeing a version of Saga.

As must be these days, the film tackles our “big societal issues.” Drug use, racism, sexism, and homosexuality all feature in the plot. Mercifully, they don’t dominate the plot. I’m not sure that they don’t chip away at the central story just a little but the writers portray without preaching. One wonders if there is a minimum level of wokeness required to get a green light these days. If there is, The Queen’s Gambit successfully walks the line.

The other angle that got played up in reviews is the resurgent interest in competitive chess as a result of folks being locked up by their government. The series was created in 2019 and wound up being ready to go at just the right time. In fact, the timing was even more fortuitous than you might think.

The story is from the novel of the same name, published in 1983. In its day it drew critical praise, particularly for its accurate depiction of competitive chess (Searching… teacher Bruce Pandolfini helped in the writing and author Walter Tevis was, himself, a moderately-successful competitive chess player). In the year of its publication, New York Times journalist Jesse Kornbluth bought the rights for a screen adaptation and boasted substantial interest from Hollywood. Tevis’ death, however, put the kibosh on that project and the rights were sold to another studio.

In 1992, the rights were purchased by the eventual- miniseries writer (Allan Scott) but, first, a decades-long development was again derailed by an untimely death. By around 2007 Scott was working with Heath Ledger to direct a film where he would star with Ellen Page as Harmon. Production was imminent but Ledger’s death put another kibosh on the project. Another decade would be required to line up the support of Netflix.

From the source material, the link to historical chess players and matches was deliberately eschewed. In his author’s notes, Tevis wrote that he felt it “prudent to omit” Beth Harmon’s real-life contemporaries from the book. Her fictional career would most likely be interwoven with Bobby Fischer’s although it appears that she beat him to the punch with regards to bringing down the Soviet’s cold war chess empire. Like those in so many of the articles, this show may have been enough to get me hooked back into chess and, particularly, the great historical games that now can be readily reviewed on YouTube.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com

*My quick searches suggest that they are not, save for the final match.

**Spoiler Alert – I’ll give away a major plot point here, because the scene was so striking. Skip back if you’d rather not know. One very striking scene is at almost the end. Beth has become world champion and defies her government minders to stroll by herself through the streets of Moscow. Dressed in late-60s high fashion she looks like a living, breathing White Queen (the piece, not the monarch). The pristine appearance clashes with her surrounds as she enters the area where chess fanatics play each other in the park. Soon, they recognize her – not as a woman or as a foreigner, but as simply the world’s greatest player. It is a beautiful scene.

Small Things

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by magnacetaria in History of Games

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

blink-182, Cold War, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Vietnam, Vietnam

This is the sixty-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.

After playing two more scenarios, I don’t know if I have all that much useful to say.

I will, however, post this as a reminder that the library of user-made Squad Battles scenarios is, in fact, out there. The scenario pair of Night Patrol and Night Ambush are some very-targeted additions to what is on the original CD – not quite as small as that other ambush, but small nonetheless.

Very focused.

The concept behind these two scenarios is that a patrol consists of entering an area, accomplishing your missions, and then extricating yourself with minimal losses. This makes a major victory a bit harder when compared to a scenario that includes only the fighting part. As a matter of fact, I didn’t do so well. Part of the problem is that this style of mission leaves you at the mercy of randomness. If you lose your platoon leader, there is going to be little chance of pulling out a pinned unit. I don’t know what the author intended but I’m not going to play in a way that leaves my pinned-down comrades behind just to claim some exit victory points.

That said, I probably move too cautiously given my mission parameters. The penalties that I suffer make an important historical point. Small units could be tasked with behaving more aggressively than it seemed prudent to the officers on the ground. Sometimes it was because the higher-ups had a better plan and sometimes its because they didn’t “get it.” Either way, military operations work when orders are followed rather than second-guessed. If the mission is to get in and get out, one shouldn’t be awarded a win because minimizing losses caused you to take too long.

Whoa. That’s one big claymore!

The last comment is about something that amused me. In Squad Battles, friendly troops block line-of-fire. in other words, you can’t try to hit the enemy by shooting through gaps in your own lines. This restriction, apparently, extends to claymore emplacements. That doesn’t make much sense to me.

Return to the master post for the Vietnam War. The next article takes us from the small to the big.

You Can’t Say That!

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by magnacetaria in History of Games

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Cold War, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Tour of Duty, Vietnam

This is the sixty-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.

I gave a play-through of the Squad Battles: Tour of Duty scenario Hill 1338. At first glance, it doesn’t look like a scenario for me. It’s a meeting engagement in heavy jungle, which means little maneuver and poor sight lines. Fortunately, this scenario was designed well so as to make it interesting.

This is going to get ugly, fast.

Both sides have artillery support. The NVA have a decent sized mortar, or maybe two, somewhere back behind all that infantry. The Americans have off-board artillery on call. For once, the scenario design encourages effective use of artillery. The company commander and his radio man are in the rear victory hex (see screenshot) which has a commanding view of the enemy’s location and can bring fire more-or-less down upon him. The AI does not have the same line-of-sight advantage, but it also doesn’t seem to need it – NVA mortars had my command post dialed in for pretty much all 18 turns.

The lack of maneuver also isn’t a problem. The trail passes through the victory locations and can deliver all my units rapidly into the front line. Beyond the initial column-to-line deployment, it is a matter of maintaining a front, preventing flanking maneuvers, and following up on enemy weaknesses. This scenario did seem like kind of an easy win, but I tend not complain about that. I did manage to get my Captain killed when the NVA briefly broke through my lines. It wasn’t enough to prevent a Communist Major Defeat, though.

The fight, taking place in June, is something of a preliminary to “The Battle of Dak To,” come November. I suspect that this battle was included in Squad Battles: Tour of Duty, in part, to seize an opportunity to reuse assets from the Dak To scenario, included in Squad Battles: Vienam. For what it’s worth, looking up “The Battle of Hill 1338” does not immediately turn up information on this historical battle. A more successful search uses the term “The Battle of the Slopes.” The origin of that appellation I cannot find but it seems to have come from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the units that did the fighting.

I’m not surprised that John Tiller opted for an alternate title for his scenario. Maybe I’m reading too much into this but, even 20 years ago, that name sounds a bit dicey. These days, whoo boy! My palms are getting a bit sweaty just including that reference, taken directly from Wikipedia and other historical sources, in this post. Once again, I’d rather not get my blog banned by dwelling too specifically on potentially forbidden language.

As decent as the scenario turned out to be, it may actually be a poor representation of the battle in question. This was not a quick firefight resulting from two opposing units stumbling across one another on the march. It was something that played out over a 24 hour period, long and bloody.

The night of the 20th, Charlie Company of the 2nd battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry found the bodies of a missing Special Forces unit near the top of Hill 1338. Sensing that the enemy would not be far, Charlie and Alpha companies moved into supporting positions on the hill and camped there for the night.

On the morning of the 21st, Alpha Company began patrolling on the slope of the hill and, just before 7AM, triggered an NVA ambush. Doctrine called for company-level mutual support but the nearby Charlie was unable to reach the battle due to the dense vegetation and the ruggedness of the terrain. Similarly, the available air and artillery support was largely ineffective. This was not only due to the poor visibility (dense vegetation and rugged terrain, again) but the tactics of the NVA which had them moving within “belt grabbing” distance of the American positions. When playing, I sucked up some friendly fire losses and called in all the artillery support that was available. The historical command was less glib with American lives.

Isolated, Alpha endured repeated attacks throughout the day and into the night. Of the 137 Americans that went into battle that morning, 76 were killed and 23 wounded. NVA losses were estimated to be considerably higher per the official report but among the men who fought on the slopes, the actual losses seemed to be near par. After the fighting, only 15 dead enemy bodies were found. Even in the best analysis, this was a tough day for the Americans and their response was to ramp up operations so as to find and punish the NVA.

Return to the master post for more Vietnam War articles. The next article looks at a hypothetical pair of user made scenarios.

And I Wonder, Still I Wonder

04 Wednesday Nov 2020

Posted by magnacetaria in History of Games

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Cold War, Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Tiller, Seven Firefights in Vietnam, Squad Battles, Squad Battles: Vietnam, Vietnam

This is the sixty-seventh 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.

My walk, via gaming, through the late 1960s had ground to a halt as a result of my fixation on the Six-Day War. However, while making a map of Samaria has been soothing and mesmerizing, trying to pull and order-of-battle out of my, umm, tuchis without proper documentation is rather frustrating. Time to move along.

Barely more than week after the conclusion of the Six-Day Way the U.S. Army executed an night ambush against Viet Cong patrol in the vicinity of the U.S. base at Chu Lai. I suspect it would be an unremarkable encounter except that is was included in the U.S. Army publication Seven Firefights in Vietnam. Recall that this is a contemporary publication intended to provide lessons for officers slated to be deployed to Vietnam. Reading “Ambush at Phuoc An,” I take it as a instructive narrative on how to set up and execute a successful ambush.

Mostly successful, I should say. The trap was perhaps sprung a mite too early with a portion of the intended target still outside the killing zone. At this point, some perspective is in order. The ambush is figured to have killed three Viet Cong soldiers out of a force estimated at six total. The ambushing unit was a rifle squad of 10 men. The fight was without heavy weapons – the squad’s M60 was left behind as being too cumbersome and the rules of engagement forbid air or artillery support so close to a village.

Chose carefully. You must select a single action.

John Tiller created a scenario in Squad Battles: Vietnam and one kind of has to wonder why. I’m figuring he probably thought that if the other six “firefights” were modeled, so too should this one. The problem is, the scope and scale of this ambush just doesn’t line up with Squad Battles‘ capabilities.

The fifth play-through gave me the magic dice rolls. With minor losses, I was able to chase off the VC and disperse them into the jungle.

It’s a one turn scenario with one unit assigned to each side. The U.S. has set up claymores all around their ambush position but the VC really have only one move to make. They’ve got to enter the victory hex and face off against the ever-fickle dice. Depending on how badly the VC are mauled by the claymores and depending on how many shots they get off before the Americans can return fire, the scenario outcome is mostly determined for you. If the VC hold the victory hex and do enough damage, they’ll win. A draw comes from smacking the VC around pretty well, but not retaking the victory location. If you can assault the weakened VC squad and capture back the hex (see above), that’s a victory. But be careful. If your assault fails, that’s going to be a major loss.

Did I mention it the whole scenario is only one turn?

Again, it all seems a little pointless unless the point is simply completeness. It also demonstrates, particularly if you’ve read the Seven Firefights version, the inadequacy of the engine at this scale.

Return to the master post for more Vietnam War articles. The next article is one of the stock scenarios that turned out more interesting than it looked at first glance.

Where Women Glow and Men Plunder

17 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by magnacetaria in History of Games, movie, review

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Australia, Cold War, Men at Work, Vietnam

This is the sixty-sixth 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.

Around this time last year, a few months after I got my introduction to the Battle of Long Tan through a handful of Vietnam games, a major* film release was being readied. The picture is Danger Close, released in Australia as Danger Close: The Battle of Long Tan. For whatever reason, the extended title is not used on Amazon or in Europe (outside of the UK).

I went into it entirely blind. It got added to my “watch next” list based on a recommendation from Amazon – I was otherwise unaware that this film had been made. The Amazon blurb does not give any historical context for the movie. It says only that “Major Smith” is leading conscripts in Vietnam. This doesn’t tell me the nationality and “Smith” is generic enough that it could be real or a fictional character. Only after I started watching did I begin to correlate the details on screen with the historical battle. About five minutes into it, dates were displayed on-screen, confirming the connection.

For Australians, one assumes, the context is considerably more obvious. There, this is one of the iconic battles from their participation in that war. The anniversary of that battle is memorialized with a “Long Tan Day,” which also serves as a day of remembrance for all who served in the Vietnam War.

The first and surviving part of the title, “Danger Close,” is a reference to artillery support called in within the exclusion zone of the friendly unit itself. It is also termed “final protective fire” and, as that term implies, is only used as a last resort to allow artillery to prevent a unit from being overrun. Despite featuring it as a morally-questionable action within the film, the tactic is an accepted one and has been featured in a many a war film. We Were Soldiers (for the Lost Platoon) comes quickly to mind as does the fictional engagement portrayed in Hyena Road. This movie does illustrate the critical nature of artillery support. Watching the artillery sequences, the connection to the name of the movie become clear.

The movie also fills in details about this day of battle that the tactical games could not. The critical importance and difficulty of resupply is dramatized. So is the impact of the weather. The decision-making process (withholding reinforcements out of fear that the fight in the rubber plantation was a diversion to draw forces away from the base itself, so that the base could be overrun) becomes obviously about the cost in lives in a way that the factual descriptions of the battle (that I’ve read) have never captured.

Danger Close also features details that are cultural rather than military. The battle began during a concert by Col Joye and the Joy Boys accompanied by Little Pattie, both popular acts in Australia. While one company was in the field, being ambushed by a massive enemy force, the remaining soldiers, separated only by a mere 6 or 7 miles, were enjoying a rock-and-roll show. The Battle of Long Tan looms large in Australia’s self-image for its Vietnam era, and the presence (and, later, first hand descriptions) of a widely-recognized pop star helped a nation feel like they were “there,” more than segments from the nightly news ever would.

The narrowed interest in the subject battle saw the project funded through the Australian government. I’ve had a few favorite films from recent years which have been created through these “national” art projects. The combination of a lack of profit requirements and freedom from the Hollywood machine occasionally means a very good film. Note, this production, while Australia-centric, still uses principle actors familiar to the American audience. In fact, seeing an older Ragnar Lothbrok have a heart-to-heart with a young Vince Neil distracted me. It’s strange, because we see the same-old Hollywood actors portraying different characters all the time. Maybe its because I only know these two through their one role?

That minor (and possibility individual) issue aside, this was a very solid historical war film. In fact, I would easily call it one of the better war flicks I’ve seen recently. I won’t try to vouch for historical accuracy, because I know few of the details of the actual battle. It all seems realistic enough. From a genre standpoint, we may well feel like we’ve seen this one before; a feeling mitigated by the fact that the story is true. I would also call it the best “artillery movie,” I’ve ever watched, if there is such a genre**.

It saddens me to see, apparently, such poor performance. Part of it may be simply that it is unfair to judge a film on box office receipts when it was direct-to-DVD in the biggest consumer markets. A quick perusal of reviews classify the negatives into either a disklike of war movies overall or a criticism of the political correctness of portraying white Australians as heroes when fighting communists. I think that even the critics are pretty solid on that, if you like war movies, you’ll like this one.

Click here for the master post or move forward into the summer of 1967 and the smallest scenario I’ve seen for this system.

*Characterizing this film is difficult. Being Australian made and on a specifically-ANZAC subject, it didn’t have the commercial success nor the visibility of a Hollywood film. With a budget of $35 million AUD (about $24.5 US), this was not a small undertaking. For reference, this was about a third of the cost of We Were Soldiers (in actual, non-adjusted dollars) and more like a quarter of a Midway or a 1917. Financing came through the Australian government and it was probably never meant to earn back its cost. It did not, making a mere $2 million at the box office.

**Windtalkers? $115 million in 2002 money.

That These Dead Shall Not Have Died in Vain

05 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by magnacetaria in review, TV Show, voting

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1968, China, Cold War, ken burns, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, The Vietnam War, Vietnam

This is the sixty-fifth 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 long put off watching Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War. I had read about it shortly after it came out with many of the review suggesting that it sported a liberal bias. In this, I was very disappointed. I greatly enjoyed The Civil War. Whatever flaws that earlier documentary might have had, it rekindled my interest in Civil War history and encouraged me to seek out more serious treatments. A similar exposition on the history of the War in Vietnam would be welcomed, but what I read succeeded in waving me off.

The availability of the series on Netflix streaming didn’t entice me into changing my mind until after a visit from my father, who himself is a Vietnam veteran. He had watched it and while he did also consider it biased, he seemed to think it wasn’t so bad as to render it unwatchable. I figured I’d give it a go.

Although it was a few months ago when I started watching, this past month the show made the list of Netflix’s cuts. While I made an effort to complete the series, I did not succeed. I ended with Episode 8 (of 10), which features the time when the My Lai massacre became public. It’s a subject matter that’s never going to portray the U.S. in a great light.

But how biased is the series overall?

First off, I’ll concede the the filmmakers were probably making an attempt to be “balanced” in their presentation. I may even be willing to admit that they thought the result was a “balanced” representation of all points of view. The second point I’ll need to concede is that North Vietnam won the war. One should probably start off with this because it certainly justifies much “pessimism” when it comes to America’s escalating involvement in the country or any chance for a more positive outcome.

That all said, I certainly detect a leftward slant to this series. Most of the Americans who were interviewed seemed miserable during the war and are today filled with regret. Many speak of personally-witnessed atrocities and war crimes. Other featured soldiers are not interviewed because they died in Vietnam. Their life is followed through 1950s and 60s American, into the military, and to their deaths. For the Communist side (commanders and political leaders excepted), we only get to know a handful who remain alive to be interviewed. For the most part, despite the deprivations of war, they reflect back on their time at war with the U.S. as a positive experience. One 17-year-old even refers to it as a wonderful time.

Whereas the Americans are reluctant to serve, the voluntary service (even among draftees) of Communists is emphasized. There are even several bits on deserters where it is mentioned that they would return to their units of their own free will*. It is true that the communists’ atrocities and/or simply poor leadership is discussed, their side comes out looking much better in comparison to the Americans and the South Vietnamese**.

Again, I emphasize that there can be other explanations for this besides liberal bias. One is the “revisionist” instinct of so many in the pop-history business. We in America have grown up immersed in the “American” side of events and “balance” may entail emphasizing that which we haven’t heard before. Secondly, America’s mistakes are excruciatingly-well documented whereas today’s Socialist Republic of Vietnam continues to obscure and manipulate their own involvement in the war. Communist misdeeds in Southeast Asia are well known, but getting access to original source material admitting as much would never be easy.

That said, I still see liberal bias as a major factor.

I’ll now dwell on one minor element of the documentary, itself taking no more than a few minutes of screen time, but one that surprised me. Burns declares that Nixon committed treason in order to win the election and the narration cites proof of Nixon’s involvement. It’s a slice of history which has only recently been significantly fleshed out and this is one way of introducing it. This is not how I would have played it.

The documentary’s story, at that point, is about the election. Hubert Humphrey, LBJ’s Vice-President, had managed to squeeze out a primary victory at a vicious convention. Humphrey was, perhaps, an unlikely candidate from the get-go. Johnson, reacting to poor results in New Hampshire and poor polling around the country, had withdrawn his name from consideration for a second term. A major factor in those poor polling results was Robert Kennedy’s candidacy, but then Kennedy was assassinated. At that point, Humphrey, as Johnson’s proxy, had to fend off Eugene McCarthy, the anti-war*** protestor’s candidate, and George McGovern, the RFK proxy. Although he was successful, the turmoil sparked a third-party challenge from Southern Democrat George Wallace. As the days of October grew shorter, Humphrey’s chances looked grim – dragged down by Johnson’s failure to make progress in Vietnam.

In an effort to create an “October Surprise” (four years before the coining of the term), Johnson pushed hard to commence peace talks in advance of the election. Such a jolt was to be seen as vindicating Johnson’s policy and thus giving a last-minute bump to Humphrey. Obviously, given that the peace table remained out of reach and despite America’s long-time desire for a negotiated solution, there were powerful actors on all sides who did not want to see an acceleration in the peace process succeed. Nixon, running as an alternative to Johnson’s policies, would himself gain from one last failure of Johnson’s efforts. The absurdity of the negotiators being unable to meet, even as their countrymen (and women and children) were being slaughtered, because they couldn’t agree on the shape of the table, is convincing evidence that something more significant was going on behind the scenes.

Much is also made of the closeness of the election. Humphrey’s shortfall was less than 1% of the popular vote. Add to that the fact erstwhile-fellow-Democrat Wallace had 13.5%, and the left seems justified in claiming that the election was stolen from them. What this ignores is the Electoral College. Counting popular votes does not measure the “closeness” or even the legitimacy of an election result. It’s like looking at a football game, after the fact, and saying “while the Eagles may have won by points alone, the Rams had more completed passes. So the Rams should really be awarded the win.”

If the victory went to the side with the most completed passes, then both the Eagles and the Rams would play a very different game. If the outcome of a presidential election was determined by popular vote, both sides would run very different election campaigns.

Nixon had a commanding majority of the electoral votes at 301. While much is made of Wallace ‘s substantial take, even if all of Wallace ‘s electors**** went for Humphrey, the Democrats still couldn’t have won. Humphrey only won 13 states and Wallace 5, with the bulk (nearly half) of Humphrey’s votes coming from New York, Texas, and Pennsylvania.

It remains possible that negotiation news from Paris may have swung the election. Several large states, included New Jersey, Ohio, and California, had low-single digit vote margins. Certainly Johnson, himself, thought an active peace negotiation could swing the election so one must assume that the reverse is plausible. That said, in these swing states, the vote was in the couple-of-percent range, not the 0.7% which characterized the national total.

Exactly how much Nixon did and how unethical or even treasonous his actions were remains controversial to this day. It does seem reasonable to conclude that Nixon was in the wrong. Certainly in light of his impeachment, resignations, and disgrace, one hesitates to defend his actions. My point, which I emphasize once again, is that I think the role of a documentarian is to present the known facts, not jump to the conclusions.

It is believed that Nixon had people inside the Johnson White House to keep him apprised of Johnson’s Paris push, although their identities are not known. This is probably par-for-the-course in American politics where the party in power alternates but the core players, the foot soldiers of the bureaucracy, remain in place.

We also know that Anna Chennault was a Nixon supporter and had indirect contacts to Nixon through the campaign. We know that Chennault was actively working with high-level diplomats in South Vietnam. How much of her activities were her own versus being directed by Nixon’s people is at issue. Also unknown is the extent to which this actually altered the course of election and history.

Chennault was the daughter of a Chinese diplomat, who sent her to Hong Kong to escape the war with Japan. This placed Chennault in Hong Kong when the Japanese attacked and she subsequently fled to China to escape Japanese occupation. While living as a refugee, she began a vocation as a war correspondent. Introduced through a sister, who worked as a nurse for the Flying Tiger volunteer group, she interviewed group commander Claire Lee Chennault. After the war, Anna was married to the General who, at 54, was thirty years her senior and freshly divorced. Their marriage provoked further controversy in General Chennault’s home state of Louisiana, where miscegenation laws remained in effect.

The couple became active in international politics and they were vocal supporters of Chiang Kai-shek and the anti-communists of China. After her husband’s death in 1958, Anna Chennault became active in U.S. politics, supporting Nixon in the 1960 election. By the time of the 1968 election, Chennault was the chairwoman of the Republican Women for Nixon Committee. She also was in direct contact at a high level with members of Nguyễn Văn Thiệu’s government. Along with the South Vietnamese government and other Republican opponents of Johnson/Humphrey, she was under FBI and CIA surveillance on Johnson’s orders.

Anna Chennault did advise the leadership of South Vietnam that they would be able to better negotiate with a Republican president at the helm. The 2017 publication of Richard Nixon: The Life (6 months before the airing of The Vietnam War), cited notes and memos recorded by Nixon aide Bob Haldeman that would seem to confirm that Nixon directed Chennault with the intent of swaying the outcome of the election. Haldeman recorded Nixon as using saying that Chennault should keep “working on” the Vietnamese government to throw a “monkey wrench” into Johnson’s peace-talk drive. Perhaps the confirmation of this new information was part of what drove Burns to be so definitive in his citing of the evidence. Yet, it should be said that there is still not agreement that Nixon was deliberately acting against American interests. I think it was worth Burns’ screen time to say so.

Anna Chennault’s actions were said to be a violation of the Logan Act, an obscure and rarely used prohibition against private citizens negotiating with foreign governments. Only twice have violations of the Logan Act been charged and both were dismissed. The law is in the news today as it has recently been trotted out to use against Donald Trump. Perhaps the more serious allegation is that Nixon’s actions were treasonous in that he subordinated the interests of the Nation to his own election. Certainly history seems to bear out that it was in America’s interest to seek peace and extrication sooner rather than later.

However, what we know now of history also would make us question Johnson’s actions. He deliberately sacrificed America’s negotiation position in an attempt to bring the parties to the table faster. His purpose also seems, not to advance the interests of his country or the cause of peace, but rather to keep his party in power. We also know that those negotiations fell apart after Nixon’s election. It seems impossible that it was the delay in October that determined the success or failure of the Paris negotiations in late 1968 or early 1969. It also seems likely that Thiệu’s reluctance, both to accede to negotiations as well as to come to terms, was his own preference rather than a stance forced upon him by Chennault and Nixon. Assurances that Nixon would support him probably only helped to confirm his already-chosen course.

Finally, history proves that Thiệu was, in the long term, correct. While the Paris negotiations ultimately resulted in an American withdrawal, it also doomed The Republic of Vietnam as a nation. North Vietnam had no intention of allowing the country to remain divided. Their goal was simply to get American out of the way so they could isolate and defeat the South militarily.

The complexity of this incident, treated by Burns as simply “Nixon committed treason and Johnson had proof” sealed the deal for me on Burns’ bias. That said, there are voices that say The Vietnam War was biased toward the American view as well. Does this mean Burns has thread the needle? Or is it just more evidence of the cultural rift in today’s America? I’m sticking to my guns here. Wikipedia cites author Mark Moyar, author of Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (2006), with a list of critiques. His assessment is probably more meaningful than my own, assuming you buy into any of it.

The bottom line, for me, is I can’t see myself purchasing this series now that it has been removed from streaming. Maybe someday it will return to Netflix or be part of the Amazon’s free offerings, but until then it will just have to wait.

Refusing to return to chronological order, I next watched an Australian dramatization of the 1966 Battle of Long Tan. You can also return to the master post or get back into the gaming groove and the regular flow of time with a June, 1967 ambush.

art background banner conceptual

Photo by David Peterson on Pexels.com

*There are two separate segments. The first talked about “re-education,” after which the deserting soldiers, better men for their government-provided education, would decided to voluntarily return to their units. The implication is that others might not and would simply go on with their lives. A second soldier talks about comrades who would leave the front, walk days or weeks to visit their families at home, and the rejoin their units later. He specifically says that the military turned a blind eye to such behavior.

**As an example, Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, coup-conspirator, puppet master, and holder of several ruling offices in the South Vietnam government, is summarized with a single quote of his about Hitler. This colorful character, corrupt and fairly incompetent, is reduced to a 1-dimensional caricature. This serves the film’s narrative of America’s blunder, but does it educate viewers? Neither the North Vietnamese nor the Vietcong leadership are treated so simplistically.

*** Also known as the “Dump Johnson movement.” Oh, how blessed they would have been if their target’s name would have rhymed with “dump.”

****McGovern’s electoral college results remains the best showing of any third-party candidate in a U.S. presidential election.

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