"The Dutch casualties at Waterloo " Topic
12 Posts
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Tango01 | 02 Feb 2015 12:49 p.m. PST |
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serge joe | 04 Feb 2015 12:22 p.m. PST |
Looks great thanks greetings serge joe |
deadhead | 04 Feb 2015 12:59 p.m. PST |
No hope by contemporary standards. Even today would be challenging without quick resusc and access to vascular surgery. Second from left has femoral artery gone. Quite why he is holding his head I cannot fathom, tell him to press very hard on his groin! Second from right, mid abdominal. Aorta gone? At first I thought he was holding his intestines……no, it is an overscale hand. We are "coy" with battlefield dead, are we not? No decapitation, rarely loss of a limb, fragmentation of bodies by shell or solid shot, evisceration, massive haemorrhage (not three bright red streaks down your overalls). Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down were particularly good at showing reality. |
Tango01 | 04 Feb 2015 10:10 p.m. PST |
Glad you enjoyed them mon ami Serge Joe. Amicalement Armand |
4th Cuirassier | 09 Feb 2015 3:22 a.m. PST |
Deadhead makes a good point. When you play the Total War games on a PC, every casualty becomes a dead guy on the ground. At the battle's end you can see where the most intense fighting occurred, as in a real battle, by looking at where the dead are. In our battles, typically this is not so; very few manufacturers produce casualty figures you can place on the table to show what's been happening. It's something of an omission. Mercer's Waterloo journal includes some pretty harrowing descriptions of horse casualties as well. |
Marc the plastics fan | 09 Feb 2015 4:03 a.m. PST |
Painting dead takes valuable time away from painting live units, so it is low down my priority. But I do have wounded to use as casualty markers (and I have a head start – using 1/72 plastic I have all those Airfix wounded French, Brits, Scots, cuirassier and Hussars to use :-) ) |
ScottS | 09 Feb 2015 9:21 a.m. PST |
It is an omission, certainly, but I'm not up to buying and painting an army twice over so that I have a "live" and "wounded/dead" version. |
Ottoathome | 09 Feb 2015 11:00 a.m. PST |
Any of you interested in the questions about this side of the hobby are advised to subscribe to "Saxe N' Violetes" for the upcoming year, or wait and get bonus issue #40 at years end which will deal with the subject of "Violence in Imagi-Nations." That is, the underlying question of death, and gore, and destruction that is inplicit in war games. It deals with all the questions of the links of the gruesome side of the hobby. Saxe N' Violets is a quarterly newsletter of the Society of Daisy a Yahoo group devoted to fun, fellowship, and humor and whimsy in the hobby. The bonus issue for Vol 9 was "Sex in The Imagai-Nation" and the next one as said above the much grimmer "violence" in the undertone of games. The issues are 8 tabloid pages both sides. In the issue in question the examiniation is of the question of violence and the gruesomeness of war and either its distancing or dealing with. To summarize, the articles say generally that War Games for us, the Wellsian style, the recreational war game, have everything to do with Toy Soldiers and nothing with real war. Just as the procedures we use, in say Napoleonics, to determine if we hit a formation of men with a 12 lb cannon has nothing to do with 12 lbdeers, cannon, powder, or the manipulation of same, so to the "hitting" of same has nothing to do with casualties. Others that war games has nothing to do with the production of casualties any more than the childs games of cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and so forth has to do with the scalping or killing of our playmates. One author pointed out that in a macabre and not unmoving way, the Scenes in the film "Glory" of the black recruits shooting each other in pantomime with their newly issued rifles, and the shock of their white officer at the scene, vividly demonstrates the difference. The former is playing at war, not real war. War games have nothing to do with war. They are simply grown men indulging in the glorious play of make-believe as a child does only in an adult way. We do not wish death, destruction, weeping, sorry, pain, and horrible pain, we are fascinated by the Military virutes, duty, honor loyalty, self sacrafice, discipline, and bravery. These are the virtues of civilization. We are besotted with the military chinoiserie of "boots, salutes, and banners, of deep oaths, and great moments and great men." I too like Scott S will not paint up one casualty or dead figure for my Imagi-nation armies. If I ever had a person who insisted on placing these things on a table top and gloating over it, I think I would not play with that person any more.
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deadhead | 09 Feb 2015 2:29 p.m. PST |
Perfectly reasonable. It all depends on how far you personally wish to take recreation of battles. I have only ever wargamed WWI infantry and WWII Airborne operations. In the first the rules never got my attackers beyond their own wire. In the latter the German Flak wiped out half the C47s and Wacos or Horsas before they unloaded their troops…….table size had much to do with it! "War games have nothing to do with war. They are simply…." is a very disarmingly honest way of putting it. Few of us would dare to express it thus. I like a lot of what is said above and admire Ottoathome for expressing it in that way. We have previously debated whether we should "game" current conflicts (but there are plenty of figures there), whether suffering on the scale of the Retreat from Moscow is a substitute for a chessboard, whether human casualties' plight on an abandoned battlefield should be considered. What I have seen of shattered humans, acutely, makes me think that is not for gaming….but for 28mm reproduction……that is the reality…if you can accept that was how it was in 1815 south of Brussels. Not middle aged fat gents, in parade dress, travelling in a coach, pretending to be elite youngsters who have walked the whole way there. Dunno. But a very philosophical question and worth discussing! |
Brownbear | 11 Feb 2015 5:23 a.m. PST |
for any one thinking that a wargame represent war i would just say "dream on". Even using dead figures doens't change this. And I agree with ottoathome; I never use casualty figures |
OSchmidt | 11 Feb 2015 6:28 a.m. PST |
Dear Deadhead Thank you for the support. I got a little harsh, but… I have seen friends dead. I do not mean those killed in battle, I have been spared that. and I don't mean old folks who die. When I was in College full time I was a police reporter for the Paterons Evening News at night, and very sadly some former classmates came across the morgue slab. These were violent deaths from the results of bad mistakes, drugs, crime. But it does not matter, the mangling and mutilation of the body is the same regardless where the bullet or knife comes from. The cheerleader you once dreamed of dating, the classmate shot in a robbery, and after a while ANYONE who winds up there. They were all human beings, they had lives, dreams hopes, tears-- the sun once shone on their face as bright and as warm as it does on mine. There is a drawing by Francesco Goya of Spanish peasants torturing horribly a captured French Solider- the title of which is "Was it for this that you were born?" I much the same hear that in my mind when I see pictures of casualties and mutilated corpses in books, or I ask "What sin was yours or your parents that you had to suffer so." The most horrible thing I ever heard about gaming was once on Ancient Battles Yahoo group a long time ago. The writer asked "What ancient battle would you like to see the most for purposes of war games rules research." Watch a battle? A real one? not something like in the movies? A battle where real men will suffer, and bleed and die? For researching Wargame Rules? I don't want to watch ANY battle. If I watched it I would feel even as spectator as shamed as a voyeaur,or somehow complicit in it. If I could, I would like to stand with Constantine on the Morning of the Milvian Bridge to see what it was he saw in the sky, and then I would like to go off and ponder the implications of that and he can have his battle. Please understand! I am not trying to pontificate or be self righteous, or holier than thou, but War Games, playing with Toy Soldiers is a wonderful hobby full of all good things and all wonderful times. It is intensely pleasurable, and brings so many benefits- from artistry and handicraft to imagination and dreams of grand and glorious things. I feel that people feel compelled to make a link between War Games and War because they fall into the great trap yawning for them. That is, that they think they are a military genius in the rough, and undiscovered Napoleon, that greatness and great things reside in their soul. That somehow they are the equal of Ghengiz Khan, Rommel, Alexander. That they are a great commander. There for the game must disappear and realism must take its place. That's why I do Imagi-Nations, am not competative at all, and mostly try and LOSE battles rather than win. It's far more important to have fun with my geeky-friends than that I win. Oh yes, we all love the panoply of battle of our miniature armies, the grandeur the color, what is the saying "As Terrible as an Army with Banners?" Remember that simile is made in Scripture to a woman all decked out in her finery. The metaphor is entirely apt. It's also why all my imaginations are burlesques, with bumbling generals, fawning courtiers, maids, barbers, and hairdressers who outwit their lordly masters, and lascivious countess' panting after handsome page boys. I've said it before. Everything in my games has more to do with comic opera than history. Like Die Fledermaus at the end, the whole pile of silliness and convoluted plot comes down to a misunderstanding and is blamed on an excess of Champaigne. I know history, been reading it since I was 12. I got several advanced degrees in it. Wunnerfulll wunnerfull… Send in the clowns, there's got to be clowns-- There BETTER be Clowns. Want to know what War is? I'll tell you. It was 1969, the Vietnam War years. I was sent by my editor to pick up a picture of a guy who was killed in Vietnam. So I went over to what we THOUGHT was his family's apartment. I knocked on the door and it was opened by a beautiful drop-dead gorgeous 19 or 20 something girl, eight months pregnant. It was HIS apartment! She smiled and said "Hi! Can I help you?" It suddenly dawned on me that this was his wife, -- and she didn't know… I mumbled out that I had come to the wrong place, bad address, and I bade my apologies as I left. As soon as the door closed I ran--RAN as fast as hit the stairs I saw out of the third floor hall window the car coming up and the two officers step out. I leaped down the stairs. They passed me on the way up. I ran as fast as I could to get out, but I didn't make it. As I hit the front door I heard the SCREAM of that poor girl surround me from three floors up! That scream was war. War games is a fun handicraft hobby. For me whenever I see casualty figures that aren't like Wolfe in the Painting of his death or Nelson dying on the deck of the victory, I hear echoes of that scream. Oh yes The baby died a few days after birth, the wife six months later of a broken heart. |
Marc the plastics fan | 11 Feb 2015 1:47 p.m. PST |
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