"Where's yer old baggage" Topic

The baggage train is often forgotten by table top wargamers, the best it gets is three wagons as an objective.

Today I played a Kreigsspiel based on Jackson exiting the Valley by Port Republic in June 1862. The guy who was my umpire (I was Fremont) asked me how I wanted to arrange my baggage. I had about 9 brigades, and I decided to concentrate it, with my weakest Bde as a rear guard after it, and a reserve bde is its guard. The rest of my command was in front. I'm glad it was – my rear guard was miles behind.

When the game finished and we went into the umpires' room we were staggered at how long the trains were. Shields had lost half of his in a rear/flank surprise attack, and in an attempt to protect the remainder had ended up leading his column with his wagons, which prevented his units helping a critical defence, as they were trapped behind their own baggage.

The size of the train outweighs the actual troops, yet rarely do we give even a nod during 'campaign' games. Perhaps we should.

Depends on how abstract you like your campaign. Professionals may talk logistics, but they get paid to.

I spend too much of my RL on logistics, when I line up my toys I want to fight battles.

However, you are right. Much of manouvering an army is not the pirouetting (Sp) of light cavalry brigades, it is all about how many days supply, what you can feed down roads, how to secure it, how to march divided and fight united without starving.

If you haven't read it yet, read Van Crefeld "Supplying War".

We used trains in a Napoleonic campaign – after a hard fought battle the French pulled back, and a division of my Austrian cavalry managed to scoop up a Corps train, which resulted in some major French losses due to attrition over the next few moves

Many years ago, as a simple exercise to show how big the war was, I did a flyer about 3rd Army Corps based upon the June 30th 1863 consolidated muster rolls.

In short, if you were to place the two divisions onto one road, marching in column (four men abreast), the infantry, HQ and artillery would take up 2.5 miles of road. The rest of the corps train, ordnance, commissary, quartermaster, 2 divisional ambulance trains, etc, took up another 17.5 miles of road, and THAT was if every single wagon kept to it's allotted space.

The amount of stores required to support an army in the field is immense. An army wagon hold 1.2 ton of goods if it is to carry it over any distance, as it needs to provide space/weight for the team's forage and the teamster's knapsack and rations. a single wooden packing case for ball ammunition holds 1000 rounds and weighs 98 pounds. Figure 100lbs for easy math. That's 15 boxes per wagon. 15,000 rounds. The Ordnance reserve for the AoP was 100rds/man in the wagons. That alone is 6 million rounds for 60,000 infantry. 6000 boxes at 15/wagon equals 400 wagons just for the infantry reserve train.

Each man was allowed 1lb of hard bread per day, which, for 80,000 men equals 40 tons of hardbread each day, every day (though they drew, normally, 3-day's rations at a time). that's another 60 wagons/day delivering hardbread. Every day.

This is a major reason why railroads were so important, and why so many battles and engagements occurred within 3-day's march of a railhead. Beyond 3-day's travel, the wagons had to replace goods with forage. A wagon could carry 3-day's forage plus it's load. A man could carry easily 3-day's rations. After that, you needed more wagons to get the same amount of goods to the army.

Anyway, it's an interesting discussion, and most folks have no idea just how BIG these ACW armies were and what it took to keep them in the field.

V/R

The need to screen and protect one's supply train was a major concern of Civil War commanders The Second Bull Run Campaign is a great example of what can happen when you lose your supply base – and Lee's pre-occupation with Harpers Ferry was due to his need to protect his supply lines and trains from that point.

On the other hand Pemberton's failure during the Vicksburg campaign was partly due to his attempts to find and destroy Grant's supply lines and trains – when they did not exist.

Protection of one's baggage train is a great little point of irritation to toss into a game, especially when fighting parties like Native Americans. Nothing can be as unsettling as to find your baggage train under enemy attack from a table edge you deemed "safe" because it was behind your troops.

She's at home. Where's yours?

I have a B-echelon for all mu armies.

Zippy wins the prize for spotting the title reference.

I wasn't suggesting we all become accountants, but it is a point to remember in any ongoing campaign.