1940: A detachment of French Chasseurs engage a detachment of Italian Fucilieri in a field somewhere in Europe, fighting over the one true prize - the two entrances to the gully road at the south of the map. The Italians have the numbers, but your French have quality. Or rather, the Italians had the numbers. The kindest thing you can think to say about your opposite number is that he is le imbécile. He decided to charge the vast majority of his forces across the open field at the north of the map, right into the jaws of your outnumbered, but machine-gun-armed, troops. He chose this option, gambling on you not having the required card for opportunity fire. He chose...poorly. His north flank has been Routed into disarray, and your brave troops swarm down the gully road to the entrance held by what remains of the Italian forces. He who controls the gully road controls Map 16. The Chasseurs must flow. It is the rarest of days, namely a day on which it is good to be French. But then disaster strikes. Your new hand consists of two artillery cards (and neither of you have a radio) and three Command Confusion cards. You have a lousy discard capability of one, and you don't even have a futile Order to issue so that you can trash some Actions and get new cards that way. You're looking at probably two turns of nothing but discarding a single Command Confusion before you can get the French War Machine rolling again. And two turns is optimistic. Anything could happen in those two turns. The Italians could rally their fleeing troops, or their mortar crew could finally draw a decent roll and hit your broken unit sheltering in the woods in the north (the worst place for a broken unit to be sheltering from mortar shells, btw). You are, as they say, en difficulté.
In February 1852, just three miles out from the coast of South Africa, the HMS Birkenhead grounded. The pumps were not enough. She was sinking. Among others, the ship was carrying troops for the war against the Xhosa tribe in South Africa. Some of these men were not seasoned veterans – they had been picked up in Ireland, having signed up simply to escape the potato famine. Yet, something strange happened as this ship sank. As the idiots who had painted over the chains and winches of five of the eight lifeboats went about their ordinary lives back in Liverpool, Colonel <PERSON> ordered his men to stand fast and allow the women and children to take the lifeboats. 342
Only the sea and the sharks awaited them, yet not a man – some as green as green can be – broke ranks. They stood fast, and they went down with the ship. And so was born the Birkenhead Drill, better known as 'Women and children first'.
I have never been to war. I don't know how I would go in the heat of battle. If the accounts are to be believed, no-one knows beforehand if they will be a hero or a coward. No-one knows if they will be like the soldiers of HMS Birkenhead or turn out to be something worse. But I am a man, so I have pondered this question. In fact, statistically, you and I are more likely to be descended from cowards. The heroes would have died. But like all men, I push this statistic aside and fantasise about being a hero. But I have no way of knowing, not really. What I do know is that I would, in battle, get a chance to find out. Battles, if the accounts are to be believed, throw up chaos. Battles are rarely, if the accounts are to be believed, perfect-information, ordered, everything-goes-as-planned events. Battles, if the accounts are to be believed, are about seizing unexpected opportunities better than your opponent does. The smallest things can ruin everything. A sentry who turns his head at the wrong moment. A loose shoelace. A misread map. Think Lord <PERSON>'s misunderstood message which sent the Light Brigade charging into the Valley of Death. Think Vice-Admiral <PERSON>'s decision to retreat his First Strike Force from the outmatched and outgunned Taffy 3 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. History is full of kingdoms that have been lost for want of a nail. If there's one thing that even a novice like me can assume about battle, it's that it's not tidy.
As it turned out, the French were not en difficulté after all. The Italians pulled a Time Trigger, and the French commander was able to discard his two artillery cards for their Dig-In actions instead. Suddenly his exposed troops, the broken unit in the woods and one of the units in the gully road, were able to place fortifications. See. 342