"Frequency of Combat" Topic

I'm sketching out some ideas for a Platoon Forward/At the Sharp End style skirmish campaign. For partly mechanics and partly narrative reasons, I'm wondering how frequently table top encounters should be happening. Does anyone have any references or thoughts that might help?

Google is usually one's friend for such thing, but the huge disparity in how different people and organisations define days in combat has defeated me. There is also the added issue that a fair proportion of 'combat', whilst all too real and dangerous, doesn't necessarily make for a decent wargame (shelling, harassing small arms fire, mines/booby traps, snipers, etc). All this needs to be included in the campaign, but is probably better dealt with as 'tween game incidents.

Looking through my notes from a sample of unit campaign accounts for NW Europe, broad averages seem to be about 20% offensive ops, 40% defensive/static lines and 40% reserve/R&R/other. By making some _very_ crude assumptions about how often a rifle platoon would see 'meaningful' action in each of those categories, I came up with 67 engagements for Jun '44 – May '45. Does that feel about right?

You can always factor in the countless patrols and a few side-tasks like 2 GI's trying to bag a turkey or something, if you want to up the amount.

One "thing" every week or so seems a reasonable number.

Scroll to the bottom of the link to see the ten divisions with the most days of combat during WWII. It doesn't directly answer your question, but you might be able to extrapolate some data from it.

link

Edit for a link of all divisions:

link

" I came up with 67 engagements for Jun '44 – May '45. Does that feel about right?"

That sounds like an awful lot of gameable contacts. To 'only' suffer a cumulative total of 200% casualties (on the high side for NWE), your platoon is going to have to only lose one man per battle.

Thinking back to Jarys 18 platoon, I can only think of half a dozen (maybe up to a dozen) actual engagements. Similarly Foleys 'Mailed Fist', and he fought in some pretty big battles (Epsom, Hill 112, the Orne breakout, Le Havre, the Scheldt and the Reichswald).

I'd go with 12 actual battles (one per month), with nasty stuff happening in between (snipers, mines, mortars, air raids, traffic accidents, disease). Even then, with most rules you'll be taking 400% losses if not more over the 12 month period.

For gaming purposes, I would suggest that one table-top battle sounds sensible, and I have seen that used in some campaign systems.

As for the reality, it really depends on place and time. In some cases you could be spending months in trenches or reserves with little direct action.

Or you might find out that your regiment has been given the task of spearheading the assault to take yet another vital hill, and you will get thrown into combat four times within a week as the commanders try to force a breakthrough.

Or even worse, you might find out that your quiet sector of front is actually turning into a major battlefield as the enemy launches a major offensive, and your platoon finds itself getting into a new fight at least once a day.

Well, at the platoon level, most actions wouldn't be part of major battles right?

I think it depends on your timeframe for what being engaged means. I think of a couple of examples (in Stalingrad and at Falaise) where troops would be pretty continuously engaged for a couple of days, then out for awhile. So, how many skirmish engagements do you get in a couple of days – you might have quite a few? Then, do you do a bunch of those that happened in a hurry, or a sample from one of those and a sample from something a couple of weeks further out?

I think what was meant that your platoon might be in the "quiet sector" of St. Vith which now turns out to be part of a major battle…

Like Martin I was also thinking of Jary's 18 Platoon (probably my favourite account of small group actions), so I think Martin's calculation is pretty much spot on.

I think a big random factor ie dice roll should come into play for this ie from the platoon's point of view its a matter of luck how 'busy' they are.

In "Five Men in Normandy" I made it 1D6 days but random events can push it out longer.
But that defines action as "3 men get up to something".

shouldn't you have brawls incidents aswell ?

if so any good MP records to calculate frequency of those ?

Depends upon the side(s), theater, etc.

One decent battle a week, sounds about right, on average, though it could be more or less frequent, and carry on for several days, until the objective is reached (if ever), or the assaulting enemy gets tired/runs out of ammo/becomes demoralized, etc.

Some divisions saw more combat than others….and some units suffered more than a 100 percent casualties in the course of the conflict.

Looking at it another way it might be better to work out how many games you want to play in the campaign and play that many, each game being the time some important engagement happened. Then it would be a matter of randomising the number and type of smaller or non-combat events between games which would affect the forces in each succeeding game. Actual time elapsed becomes irrelevant.

Easiest way would be pick a British Infantry Battalion.
Contact the relevant Regimental museum and see about getting a copy of the war diary unit history etc..sometimes depending on who it is you can get this information free.

Then go through the war diary day by day and see how often something happens.

An example is shown here.

link

Click on war diaries and pick a unit.

I'd work this from the opposite end, figure out how many battles you can average before the force ratio becomes too imbalanced and work your tables backwards from that.

It seems to me there are two issues here"

The first, as 79thPA and BF Andy have suggested, is to base your strategy on historic events (or at least as close to those events as documentary evidence allows).

The second, as suggested by Weasel & Murvihill have suggested, is to base it on what is balanced for your gaming.

You can go for all of one or all of the other, or you can split the difference and find a happy medium.

Thanks for all the input; plenty of food for thought. As you've pointed out in different ways, I think part of the problem lies in trying to reconcile different sources. Division-level statistics can show hundreds of days in combat, and campaign narratives talk of weeks of intense combat or constant patrolling. A look at lower level accounts, however, does seem to suggest perhaps just one or two contacts a month on average.

My ideas are still gelling, but I'm thinking the way to pace things might be to break the campaign up into a number of operations (inspired by 5 Men in Normandy amongst others). So for NW Europe, for example, I might fight a 'Sharp End' style ladder of 6-8 engagements, but then cover the whole campaign with just 3-4 operations (Normandy, Low Countries/Bulge, Germany).