Grantville Gazette 38

But he could not blame the men. It wasn't their fault. They weren't to blame for Dettwiler's blunder. Von Allmen had warned his commanding officer about where he had deployed the army, had told him that Gremminger's troops, especially his cavalry, could make the distance from Zernez quicker than he realized. 'How do you know such things?' the general had asked. Thomas' simple reply was, 'Because I've played it out.'

That was the wrong choice of words, Thomas realized now, but it had been too late to fix the error. An hour later, their surprised army was falling back onto itself, desperate to find protection from Gremminger's men who had outflanked a forward advance of fifty pike with flailing sabers, relentless hooves, and snaphaunces. Dettwiler lost his leg and bled out before anyone could do anything . . . and his body was left behind in the chaos and worsening weather. Such a disgrace!

What Thomas should have done from the very start was to pull the general into his tent and show him what he meant, how the narrow road up from Zernez was not as narrow as everyone thought, and that a determined commander could push his troops a little harder and reach the critical road juncture in half the time. Thomas knew this. He knew, because he'd walked that same narrow pass but five months ago and had painstakingly mapped out the road himself on hexagon paper. He knew because he'd played out the ambush with dice and blocks. He knew, because he'd gone to Grantville and studied American methods of war.

He could have easily gotten copies of books that had come out of Grantville. Even in Switzerland, there were plenty of texts about American wars fought from the eighteenth Century up to the Ring of Fire. But that hadn't been good enough. Thomas had needed to see these Americans up close and in person. He needed to divine their secrets by being in their town, by seeing how they walked, how they talked. These up-timers had handled themselves in battle surprisingly well since their arrival. Breitenfeld. Luebeck Bay. The Baltic Sea. It came as no surprise to Thomas that a large part of their prowess in battle was their superior weaponry. The League of Ostend had learned of that power the hard way. But there had to be something more, something tangible and qualitative that could only be discerned by being among them. Thomas had to find out.

So last autumn he had been given permission by his rather reluctant father to visit Grantville (with 'quiet' allowances from the USE). General Dettwiler nearly dropped from his chair when he heard. 'The kalbfleisch is going off to learn war in a bookshop!' he had said, laughing, shaking his head and slapping his knee. 'Be careful not to cut your throat on their wicked parchments, for I would dearly miss my young, bookish, half-baked boy!' Thomas was happy that he could give the old mercenary such a cozy chuckle, but patiently took his leave before anything else was said. General Dettwiler was a skilled field soldier and mercenary and he had fought bravely on many battlefields. But he lacked imagination, and that, Thomas knew, was the future of warfare. With the arrival of the Americans, everything had changed.

He did not find what he was looking for initially. Day after day he pored over the books, much to the curiosity of the librarian Marietta Fielder, who watched him arrive each morning and then leave each night. There were dozens upon dozens of books and old war movies, some with amazing pictures and footage showing the allied offensive in the Argonne Forest during World War I, and the landings of the US 29^th Infantry Division at Omaha Beach, World War II. He marveled at the bravery of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, and sat glaring in terror at a mushroom-shaped cloud over a Japanese city called Hiroshima. Page after page and reel after reel of war stories and eye-witness accounts. It was slow going with his elementary knowledge of English, but he pressed on, with eyes blood-red and weary by each day's end. He could not find what he was looking for. What was he looking for? He asked himself again and again. What do I hope to find? He knew the answer, but was afraid to admit it. I want to learn how to fight. I want to learn how to beat Gremminger and his Ostend dogs! But the answers were not lying there on the pages of those marvelous books or in the bright images of those wonderful films.

He was about to 'throw in the towel,' as the American expression went. Then he saw two boys, only five or six years younger than he, sitting in a corner hunched over a table covered with a map, with tiny pieces of cardboard strewn around in hexagon-shaped locations. It was a map of Europe and Northern Africa. It was a better-looking map than many hanging in the richest homes in Zurich. The boys were talking, ribbing each other, throwing dice and checking charts and tables. Occasionally they would move the cardboard pieces, flip them over, add new ones to this country or that, and were having a grand old time generally. Thomas hadn't realized just how close he'd gotten to them until one of them spoke.

'Hey, man, you're hogging the light!'

Thomas had no idea what that meant, but he backed away. 'May I ask? What are you doing?'

He spoke in broken English, which neither seemed to understand fully. He tried again slower and with more care.

They nodded but were surprised at the question. One of the boys screwed up his face as if he'd bitten a lemon. 'We're playing a game.'

'A game?'

'Yeah. Have you never played a game before?'

Thomas nodded. He knew chess and was himself a pretty fine player, but he had never seen anything like this. 'What kind of . . . game?'

They looked at each other. Then one said, 'A wargame.'

Kriegspiel? He'd never heard of anyone playing that on a tabletop. Chess was considered an abstract form of war, of course, but this? This seemed much more complicated and exacting, and he was enthralled.

So he sat with them and watched for the next three hours, studying their moves and listening to them talk. When they took a break, he asked questions, studied the pieces. 'What do all these symbols mean?' he asked, and they pointed out each number, each symbol on the front and back of the counters. Some were infantry units; others, armor or artillery. The unit size of each counter ranged from Division up to Corps and Army. They were playing a 'Strategic-Level World War II' game, one that had been donated to the library by friends of a young man named Larry Wild who had died in a naval battle just over a year ago. Thomas was so fascinated by this game that he found himself talking to them about his own problems.

'What you need are some good pike and shot or Napoleonic miniatures rules,' said the boy named Joe Straley as he dumped his German counters into their plastic bag.

'Yeah,' said the other boy, Sandy Eckerlin, as he folded up the map. 'Something with a small unit count, something on the tactical level.'

Thomas shook his head. 'How do I find those?'

Sandy put the bag back into the game box and scratched his head. 'I don't know. Let's see if there are any on the shelves.'

Alas, there were not. Larry Wild's collection included many wargames, but no miniatures rules. 'Well, no problem,' said Joe. 'We can figure something out.'

For the next two days, they used one of the research rooms and hammered out some rules, decided that using a hexagon-based movement system (like the game they had been playing) was the best approach. A half mile per 'hex' seemed appropriate; the distances between Davos and Zernez and its surrounding smaller towns weren't excessive; thirty to thirty-five miles at the most. They discussed the kinds of weapons the armies had, the number of men, the appropriate movement speeds of foot versus cavalry versus cannon. Sandy recommended that they find some old army men and glue them to bases to serve as 'proxies' for Thomas' soldiers. Joe laughed. 'Are you kidding? Who's gonna believe German grenadiersposing as Swiss pike?'

'They don't have to be believed, Joe,' Sandy said, a little put out. 'It's just a game.'

The two days were up and Thomas had scribbled enough notes to fill a notebook. Before he left, he invited the boys to serve as his aides in camp, but their parents flatly refused. 'My son isn't going to Switzerland to get himself killed in no foolish war,' said Eckerlin's mother, and Joe's parents weren't very diplomatic about it either. Thomas understood. He thanked the boys profusely and before he left, Joe slapped a leather bag into his hand.

'Here, take some dice with you,' he said. 'There's an old twenty-sided in there and a few twelves and tens, but mostly six-siders. Larry Wild's old stash, used to slay dragons and orcs in D amp;D, I reckon. I don't think you'll be doing any of that, but they may come in handy.'

Indeed they did.

****

Gremminger unbuttoned his grey wool coat. It was still cold, but the sun was high, and across the snow-