From The Battlefield to the Tabletop

In this special episode of the Podcast, Paul Reed speaks with archaeologist and wargamer Alex Sotheran about his journey in battlefield archaeology and the evolution of wargaming. They discuss the significance of battlefield archaeology in understanding the human experience of war, the challenges faced in recovering human remains, and the impact of television on the field. Transitioning to wargaming, they explore its historical roots, modern developments in rules, and its potential as a therapeutic tool for veterans. The discussion highlights the social aspects of wargaming and the importance of community in this hobby.

You can follow Alex on Storm of Steel YouTube Channel and Bluesky.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Tonight we're joined by a special guest, Alex Sutheran. Alex is an archaeologist, he's an historian, and he's also a war gamer with a hugely successful YouTube channel on that subject called Storm of Steel. I first met Alex in a working man's club in Mexborough in 2019, I think, when he gave a talk on his work in conflict archaeology, and I've followed his channel online since he started it during that COVID period when we all did kind of different things. So in this possibly unique chat, we're gonna take our discussion from the battlefield to the tabletop. So welcome Alex.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Very much, Paul.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

It's an honour, in fact, it's not just a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Well, the honour's all mine, old chap, uh, because I've I've been looking for an excuse to kind of get a bit of war gaming into this uh this podcast, because it's you know it's it's one of those kind of levels I think of of histories I'm sure we'll kind of come on to. But kind of looking back to where I first came across you even before I met you in that that uh working man's club in Maxburgh, I remember you in the the series Finding the Fallen. So your background really is in archaeology, Alex, isn't it? I wonder if you can tell us how you ended up following that path.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

Absolutely. I mean, um I'm I'm I'm a professional archaeologist. I I currently work for the uh Ministry of Defence, well, Defence Infrastructure Organisation, but no one's ever heard of that. So well I just mentioned it's the Ministry of Defence, because every everyone knows who that is. So I'm I'm an archaeologist that covers the northern Scotland and looks after the rangers, basically, where the the uh military train. Uh but so I've been an archaeologist. Uh this is my you know my job at the moment, but I've been an archaeologist for over 20 years now. I think I started in field archaeology back in 2001. Uh prior to that I was at university, uh, did a degree at York. And prior to that, I'd I'd just really just done one or two days here and there as an archaeologist. But I was always interested as a kid, I was always interested in history. I was always kind of felt that I was more I I I liked practical things rather than reading, if that makes sense. And you know, there's nothing more practical than digging a ditch on a uh sunny afternoon, really. So archaeology kind of spoke to me from that point of view, and it's just that I think you know, the the the tangible part of archaeology is uh is the fact that you're literally touching touching history, you know, that when you find an artifact, the last person to have dropped it is the person who owned or made it, you know, centuries ago. So I I've always had that interest in archaeology, uh, and I've worked as an archaeologist across the world, various countries, uh not just uh in battlefield archaeology, uh which I'll talk about in a sec, but um, you know, I've done I'm trying to think of where I've worked, Iceland, Japan, uh Africa, uh well, that's uh lots of countries in Africa, isn't there? Uh Tanzania, I'll be more specific, East Africa, uh Singapore, but that was kind of through archaeology rather than as an archaeologist. But like, you know, lots of places. So I've seen a lot of the world, and I think archaeology is good for that, for let letting you see parts of the world that a lot of people probably wouldn't be interested in, you know, just some field in the middle of nowhere, oh yeah, island for four years, how can I forget? Uh uh so but I uh I I I've also since 2002, and I think this is probably the reason you know we're gonna talk really, is I've been involved in battlefield archaeology, uh First World War archaeology specifically, more so than anything else. I've done quite a lot of well, the military archaeology in my day-to-day job here at the MOD, but I my you know real emphasis and interest is in is in battlefield archaeology. And I've gotta say, Paul, you are slightly to blame for that.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Gosh.

SPEAKER_03 3:58

Now, back in when was it about 2000? You were involved in the uh with the diggers up at um Boozer, weren't you on that TV show? Now, I'd just started as a field archaeologist, and I think it must have been 2000, 2001, because I'd just moved to Ireland and I was watching that programme and thinking that right there is what I want to do. So you are in a roundabout way half to blame for me getting into battlefield archaeology. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

I mean, the joke is I'm I'm not an archaeologist, you're the archaeologist. I'm I'm just the historian. And and the nice thing, I mean, the privilege for me with the diggers is that they very kindly invited me onto what they were doing. I mean, as you know, they were not professionalists, professionals, they were they were amateur archaeologists, and they invited me onto that that dig to kind of to to watch it really, and and I got that opportunity to to kind of see what that kind of archaeology could tell us about a subject like the first world war. And then when you when you went on to do that yourself, I mean this was you know, the kind of work that you did in those early years, it's groundbreaking because conflict archaeology wasn't really a thing then, was it?

SPEAKER_03 5:12

Not at all, no, no, no. There was it there was very few people. There were the diggers out in Businger. Uh, I know some of the guys at the uh Flemish Institutes were doing bits and pieces of archaeology because we ended up working with some of those after I joined uh the group that I joined. But I the the way I got into it, I went to um Battlefield Archaeology Conference hosted by um Andy Robertshaw, and I think it must have been Martin Brown of the time, down at the National Army Museum. And one of the guys giving a talk at the time was um uh Alistair, whose surname escapes me, I've known him for 20 years, and his surname escapes me. He was doing a talk about On Show for years, which I'm sure you know, Wilson Villas. Um, you know, I think everybody who's been to the Somme knows Bulk and Villas, don't they? And Avril. Slightly. Yeah, and she has in her back garden, as most people who have been will know, has she got that communication trench that runs through the back garden, and they were digging it just as a team of volunteers, and basically, you know, Avril was putting them up and feeding them and watering them. And I talked to Alistair after that, Alistair Fraser, that's it, it's just come by to me. Um, I talked to Alistair after his talk and just said, Look, you know, I'm new in archaeology, I'm looking to do some battlefield archaeology. Is there a place for a volunteer? Heard nothing back for a long time, and then suddenly just out of the blue, uh Andy Robershaw dropped me a message and just said, Do you want to come out in April? So like picked up my trowel, said, Yeah, okay, I'll you know I'll turn turn up there. And that's kind of when I fell in with that that team. Uh, we then became known later. I think at the time they were called something like the trench team or something ridiculous like that, but we we changed the name to uh no man's land, and it kind of then kind of came a bit more formalized in that way, and we did some more some more work like uh around SARE and things in 2003, and we we ended up doing quite a lot of sites. We ended up working on the um the the the trenches in Tietvalwood. Uh that was about 2004. We ended up going there for about 10 years, two times a year, uh, just for a week. And all of this was literally busman's holiday stuff for us, really. Um, because we'd you know, we basically we went places where we were getting fed and given our labour for free kind of thing. You know, we got bed and board at Tietval, for example. So we were staying down at Miramon and a big Jeet, uh, and a load of people from Northern Ireland came across from the Somme Association who owned the wood. And so we had some really good friends out of the back of that. We had a really, you know, the team was uh really good, and then we there was a bit of a split in the team from No Man's Land, and some of us went off to do some bits and pieces, and you've mentioned it already, the finding the fall and stuff, which you can talk a little bit more about. Uh, that was paid work through a TV company. And if you want me to give you a bit of background on that, I can I can explain it a bit.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Because TV history is very different, isn't it? To kind of what you would be doing, I guess, when you were working in in Chat Val Wood and some of those kind of projects.

SPEAKER_03 8:21

Yeah, yeah, the the the the stuff in T of our wood, just to give you the background to that is like we you know, we we got involved with the Summer Association, as I said, they'd bought the wood, I think, in 2004, and they wanted to open it up to the public, obviously show off some of the trenches. So we we were asked uh because you know we were known in that area, kind of asked for uh to see if we'd be involved. But they also, as I say, brought along a load of volunteers as well from Northern Ireland who'd never done any archaeology. So within our team, within No Man's Land at the time it was, uh, about half of us were archaeologists, professional archaeologists, the other half were guys who'd, you know, were various different backgrounds. So we had like uh I'm trying to think, Steve was uh met police. Uh we had quite a few other different people from different backgrounds who weren't archaeologists, but because we had half of us were professional archaeologists, we were, you know, we we kind of steered it from a professional point of view so that everything that we did was ended up as a report, and you know, we put these reports out in the public. You can still find them today on the internet. So we tried to do everything that we did in our day jobs, even though we were doing it, you know, as a bit of a hobby. And as you say at the time, back in the early 2000s, uh, first world war archaeology in particular was just not a thing at all. It was really um, it was pretty much the diggers that were doing stuff, and as I say, the Flanders Institute and not many other people. We helped, I'd say we didn't we didn't do it ourselves, but we certainly, I think we certainly helped uh professionalise First World War archaeology, and you know, to we we we tried our best to do everything that we would do as a standard in the UK on the sites that we were doing. So as I say, you know, everything was recorded, all the fines were uh for weighed and uh uh vast quantities of uh of fines in many cases, you know, because the first world was full of fines, but then doing the finding the fallen stuff that kind of came off the back of you know these various other projects. But that because it was that was paid work, and that was kind of it was steered a little bit because the company that were uh were doing it were a Canadian company. So my mate, Dave Kenyon, was kind of he was like the project manager for the archaeological works. He was kind of tasked with finding Canadian sites that we could then excavate and they would then film and then it that got turned into eventually two um uh two series of uh about five or six episodes each, and I think some of them are kicking about on uh on YouTube.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Um yeah, there's uh there's a guy uploaded a lot because they're not available on any streaming service, but uh guy has uh put a few and I'm sure they'll remain for a short while before they disappear again, as with all those kind of things.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

But yeah, worth checking outright strike against it, yeah. You can find them there. But they uh but you know that that meant that we we ended up excavating quite a lot of different sites. Uh you know, it might have only been for like a few days, a week or so, but we were you know, we did a lot of stuff. So just off the top of my head, I mean we excavated at Put Corselettes, we excavated um at Vimy Ridge, just outside of the uh the the park, so it was in Farmers Land just outside. We were quite close to where the guys from the Durand group were working on their underground tunnel stuff, like literally round the corner from them. We found some of the early mine workings and some of the evidence for the bombardments, the uh Stokes Motor bombardment before the attack of uh 1917. Uh, where else did we do with the uh Bourlong Wood with uh as part of Cambrai and the hunting lodge that was used as the battalion HQ, we excavated that, found bits and pieces of tank as well. Um, and we photograph uh some of the some of those famous photos in the uh in the woods where you can see the hunting lodge in the background and the two tanks on the track. We found bits of those tanks and excavated that lodge. Um trying to think of other ones because there were so many.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Um I remember there was one at Lewes where the the dig got compromised, didn't it? And and somebody came and disturbed the human remains, which I guess is the fear of any archaeologist doing that kind of work.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

Yeah, absolutely. This was yeah, this one was it was we so we were up at Loose, it was Ushilly's Mines, Ushilly Mines, um uh just on the edge of the uh the craters uh that are just up in the woods up there. I'm sure you know this area.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

The Howans Olin area, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

That's right, yeah, yeah. I'd never I'm never able to pronounce that word. I'll try not to say it if I can avoid it, because uh I always make a mess of the German. Uh but yeah, we were so we we'd found uh this was the first time we went to we went there twice actually. The first time we found bits and pieces of human remains. Um one of them it was literally just the the legs of a guy and his backpack. It was British, you pretty much tell these things pretty quickly because you can tell boots or you know if they've got any accruautrements on them. This guy had a British small pack on it, just but literally it was it was his pelvis and his legs. So what we did, we we stayed up there till about 11 o'clock that night, excavating the body remains because we always said we don't go looking for bodies, we don't prospect for bodies, but if we find them, we treat them as we would any other archaeological site that we do in the UK, and we try to lift them in a day to get them out of the ground, you know, because we we know where they are, so you know it it doesn't always work out like that, but that was like our kind of uh what we wanted to do. And so we we this guy we we obviously there's no no chance of ever um IDing this fella, but we were able to lift the the bones and we you know cleaned up. I think we'd finished by about 11 o'clock that night, 11, 11.30. And a small village like that, everybody knows that something is going on, so we did have an audience throughout that night. You know, there were the people watching us kind of from the side, so it's just locals. But we packed up and went back home. Then the next morning we'd come back, came back up at 8 o'clock in the morning, and by the next morning, somebody had been up and down that trench with a metal detector and pulled out all sorts of bits and pieces because they'd just thrown them to the side of the trench, and there was things like Stokes mortars, you know you know, grenades, because it's full of metal, of course, you know, but they were just pulling stuff out, and obviously things they didn't want went on the side of the trench. And uh you know, thankfully, we'd removed the bodies, but what we had left behind, because we said we'll get them in the morning, is a Mauser rifle and a Liemfield rifle, which were underneath this chap. Um, and we said, Well, okay, we've got the important thing, which is the body, but we'll deal with the rest of the stuff. And those had disappeared overnight, and this is like as I say, lit it must have been within an hour of us leaving, uh and you could tell it was metal detective because there were literally holes dotted up and down the trench line where we'd already you know pulled our trench with a with a digger. So it's incredibly frustrating because the thing is we've identified several sets of human remains over the years, and we've got them from things like literally from a guy, one of the first ones we got was a guy he'd scratched his name onto the back of his dog tag, and it's a tiny little piece of tin, you know, that is so thin that without proper archaeological lifting, would have just been destroyed, it would fall into pieces in our hands. So, you know, had a metal detectorist found, you know, uh the the the the British guy we pulled out probably wouldn't have had a dog tag because they were, as you know, pressed uh material, so they would have disappeared, but a German one possibly could have still been around, which could have led to an ID for that body. You know, in that case, there's probably very little chance of it, but it's still there's still that problem that it it it could have happened, you know. So yeah, so it was incredibly disappointing. And what and what that meant was that we kind of reassessed how we did things, and that was kind of the point where we said, right, okay, you know, if something turns up, we work on it until it is finished and we get everything out from around that area because you might even be able to ID the mic the guy from the number on his uh Liam field. I know it's like you know, it's a bit of a needle in a haystack, but yeah there's a possibility, you know, that it might it might well be there. So we you know, so we kind of thought, right, this is what we have to do. Now, unfortunately, what happened was on the Thursday, we were going home on Friday, we found what turned out to be a mass burial of German soldiers. And so we ended up in the field basically on Thursday. We were going to be packing up on Friday, we'd got you know ferries booked on Friday night and that kind of thing. We were all going home for the weekend. But because we'd already said, well, we can't just leave these things up here because somebody with a metal detector, and then we know that it's turbine bones. So we worked on those through the night, and the team kind of took it in in um in uh what's it in turns? Basically, we you know, half of us stayed up, did a couple of hours work while the others went home and slept, and then they came back later on. And uh, I was one of the ones that stayed up overnight until about three or four in the morning. And it was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done in archaeology because you're trying to excavate remains, you're trying to record them, you're trying to do as much as you can and stay awake, you know, in the middle of a field in the middle of the night, because we just didn't have security, you know. Uh we didn't we uh we didn't think about it at the time. And then we uh the runner the for the the TV show sent out for uh he he went out to go and get some food and stuff for us and brought it back and uh we literally just had we had no washing facilities or anything, and we'd been up to our arms literally in dead Germans, and all all he could find was pizza and we had no cuttley, so it's it's the hardest I've ever worked, and it's probably the closest I've ever come to cannibalism as well. But I I'd try not to think about that too much these days.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

Yes. But but I guess that when when something's new like that, the the kind of whole approach to it, these are all things that you learn by by doing this kind of work, is that you know the thought that somebody would gate crash you know an archaeological project just for a few bits of who knows what. I mean, it's just extraordinary, really, when it comes to the recovery of human remains.

SPEAKER_03 18:48

Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's it's it's it was it's rust and dust, and it's going to end up on eBay or it's gonna end up on somebody's shelf or something, you know what I mean? For what? You know, the chance of identifying somebody from the First World War. And as I say, we you know, on that site, in fact, we identified quite a number of uh those Germans in that pit, and there was another one as well. There was another German laid out in a grave on his own. Um I think it's called George Martin, I think, if I remember correctly. And he was ID'd through his uh wedding rings that he were his parents' wedding rings that he'd got round his neck, uh, he'd been buried with. And so, yeah, these tiny little things like that, you know, that a metal detector would pick up, but also might just be cast to one side because it's not, you know, in inverted commas from the war, you know, because it's just a it's a you know, it's not a a rifle or a uh a grenade or something, you know. That so yeah, and it the set we actually went back to Lewis because we actually knew that I said that you know we tried our best to get as many men out of the that grave. We knew there was at least one more in there. But we so what we did, we marked it with Tarpaulin, got a GPS point on it, and when Yap Films, who did Finding the Fallen, came back and said, Do you want to do a second series? We said yes, but the whole team all together said we do, but we have to go back to loose because we know there's somebody in the ground still. It turns out there was about another three or four of them in the ground. But what happened was we were able to then employ some security to come up and look after the sites overnight, and we were enabled just to work in the daytime, you know, knowing exactly where those bodies were. We went straight to them and we were able to recover them, you know, and they are now buried in in German military cemeteries. I think they're down at Metz, I think, if I remember correctly. So, you know, they they they've they are now with their comrades, at least, you know, and we we were able to get one or two names in the in the you know the the bodies that we pulled out from various bits and pieces that they got in their pockets and things. So yeah, you know, it was a steep learning curve, shall we say? A little bit like the British Army between 1914 and 18. But you know, we we got there, you know, in the end, and that was uh it it w the you know there were stumbles, but you know, like you said, because things like this hadn't we hadn't done anything like this before. We were just kind of feeling our feeling our way in the dark, and it's very different now. Like, like for example, the hill hill 80 excavations would have been handled very differently to what uh uh what we were doing uh you know 20 odd years ago.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

I mean I saw it with uh with the diggers. I mean, you know, they never claimed to be archaeologists, they they were metal detectorists who kind of suddenly found themselves in a project that they couldn't even have imagined, the kind of scope and size of it. But then, you know, uh well a decade later, we were working with Simon Verdigum um filming uh his dig at Messines, which was his first really big dig, uh, to see the kind of methodology that he was using there and and the process and the security and and the way human remains were treated and what could and couldn't be done. Done in both in um Forgotten Battlefield and also in your series, they show the human remains being excavated, and then subsequently there was a kind of decision in television that that wouldn't ever happen again. So, which I think personally I think is not necessarily a good thing. We want dignity in death, but I think sometimes people do also have to be reminded of just how terrible death in the First World War could be, really, in terms of what it does to the soldiers that are buried in all those cemeteries.

SPEAKER_03 22:31

Yeah, I I see both sides because I mean, you know, from a professional point of view, from an archaeologist, there's a there is a certain morbid curiosity about dead bodies, you know, across everybody, really. So the the the profession as a whole have kind of tightened up a little bit on it. And you know, we in even in commercial archaeology or in you know professional archaeology, they they will put up boards around sites where there are skeletons, so you know the public don't see them as well, because you also don't know how people react to it as well, you know, there's all kinds of things like that. So it's it's a two-way thing. I I I understand what you're saying as well, and I kind of agree with you, but I also you know I see it from the other side of it as well, from the you know, my profession's side of things as well, and how we deal with it. But yeah, the the the the difference, I mean, Belgium it it it changed anyway. I think it was uh signatory of I think it's the Valletta Convention, which kind of made uh the archaeology much more um trying to think of the word because they were already professional, but m it made it commercial. So when we started working in Belgium, it was through the Flanders Institute, and they they were you know like a council archaeological uh group, so they would go and excavate things if they had a chance to do stuff, and they were very small, and they had they had a lot of workers who weren't archaeologists with them, but they had an archaeologist who kind of run the site. Whereas after, I can't remember the dates of it, but it'd be about 2010-ish, after then uh Belgium became more like the UK in that they have a commercial archaeology way of working where any scheme that goes in has to be uh excavated beforehand. And that was one of the things I was involved in to 2014 was the flux pipeline that went through a lot of the old battlefields. So I was doing some machine watching out there for a week or so uh just as part of uh I just got on that job, but there was a huge amount of First World War stuff done, and that was all done by commercial archaeologists, and that was something that was something that 10-15 years previously the institute probably just would not have been able to handle because of the vast amount of work that it would have entailed, but because you know they were in this new ratification of the I'm sure it's the the Valletta Convention, I could be wrong. Um, but they basically meant that they you know they have to look after the archaeology from a commercial point of view as well. So, yeah, huge changes just in Belgium in those, even in those 20 years, you know, that I've I've worked there back and forth.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

And and having seen the kind of progression of that archaeology, I mean, one of the things that I've encountered sometimes when I've I've spoken to people about this as an historian looking at archaeologists doing their their work and they say, well, what's the point of it? We know everything about the first world war, it's all written down, you know, we've got photographs and we've got everything. It's not like Roman times, etc. I just kind of wonder what you what you think about statements like that.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Well, that's always a question, isn't it? But the thing is, what they they there is a lot of stuff written about the first world war. Of course there is. It's a massive, you know, there's a massive there's there's there's vast quantities of of of written documentation on the first world war. But what they don't write about is the stuff that they leave behind, the rubbish, what they're doing with it, you know, all those little bits and pieces, the the the human touch of it, really, you know, the the the small stuff that is just everyday to everybody else. Like, so for example, let me give you an example here. We were up at Tierval, we're excavating there, and we dug a it was basically a dugout. I think it must have been used as a latrine at some point because there was a bunch of religious papers that had been ripped out of a religious pamphlet that were obviously being used for some kind of toilet paper.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Gosh.

SPEAKER_03 26:17

Now you don't find that in the poetry, do you? And that's not in the uh that doesn't come across in diaries and things. So, you know, we're looking really at the minutiae of of the war. The stuff, as I say, you you look at a uh you know, a shell crater, see what kind of things have been left behind in there. And it's only the same as with you know Roman Villa or any other archaeological site or or uh or feature. We're looking at the stuff that has been thrown away by people. I mean archaeology is literally si sifting through the ancient rubbish. Um because you know, once it's in the ground, they've they obviously they don't want it anymore. You know, if it was any good, they would have kept it. That's my uh my catch line when it comes to archaeology. But we, you know, jokes aside, we we also, you know, the the the point of of excavating the human remains in the way that we do from a professional point of view is as I'm already mentioned, you know, we we then are able to find those tiny little fragments that can put a name onto those bones. And you know, one of the most powerful ones, I think, was probably the first guy that we ever found, Jakob Honnes, uh German soldier from uh he he was at Serre, he'd been fighting at Serre in 1915 when the French had attacked, he'd been killed them. And we'd got from the the roles uh through work through Ralph Whitehead over in America, he'd done quite a lot of work on that. But I think it's the 112th Res uh Infantry Regiments, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

26th Reserve Division, the Verdenburgers, I think, aren't they?

SPEAKER_03 27:48

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And he uh Jacob had belonged to them, he would he was like 34 years old, been called back to the colours, and we we were just excavating, we were looking for something else, we're looking for Wilfred Owen's dugout, it was that's a long story, but uh that was down at Sayre uh on the Heidenkoff, and uh but we found you know three bodies, one of which was Jacob. And he uh the his he was a guy that was talking about where he'd scratched his name onto the back of his dog tag, and you know, without doing this, archaeologically we would have never found that dog tag because it would literally just disappear under somebody's hands, you know. We had to be incredibly careful to pick it out. Uh and the fact that he would he the the numbers on the dog tag had disappeared, so you know there was nothing left of that, but his scratching was on there, and it was uh these guys down at UECL uh looked at it, uh and it he his son was still alive when we got in touch with the family uh through our German contacts. His son was something like 93, but uh literally six weeks after we'd we'd got in touch with him, he died. So we were able, you know, this is a guy who's and I think he must have died. He he he he his father must have died when uh I can't remember the name of the son, but he he must have been about three or four, and we'll never have known his father. And his father's basically in this unknown grave in the middle of France, you know, in a f in a forgotten field, literally, until we came along and were able to identify him. And then at the end of his life, you know, we were kind of able to give him a bit of closure on where his father had been all those years. So, you know, so when people say, Well, you know, doesn't tell us anything, doesn't do anything, you can you've got to think, you know, archaeology is about humans. That's the human touch right there, really. You know, you can't get any more human than that. And you know, the thing with Jacob was was amazing because it was the first, I think it was the first that he was if it wasn't him, it was the there was a British guy there as well, but either one of them were the first uh remains that we were working on as archaeologists, uh, because all this the uh in Avril's it was just the trench, it wasn't uh there was no human remains in there. Uh but these were this was frontline stuff, so it was a bit different. So again, you know, it kind of gave us a bit of a uh you know a spurt from an archaeological point of view that yeah, you know, there is a lot more to this than you know we were kind of expecting anyway. But also, you know, it gave gave us our protocols as well as dealing with human remains when we found them in the field as well. And as I say, this kind of you know went on with other other things that came up like the metal detectoring and stuff. But we were also able to source photographs of Jacob and his house and things like that, and you know, photograph of him and his platoon and his brother in the platoon, and you know, you can't do that with a medieval skeleton. No, you I've dug, you know, hundreds of them at this point, you know, in in in uh various cemeteries and things across the country, and they will always remain a set of human bones, and that's all they will ever be. Very, very rarely will you actually find you know a named personality uh prior to about the 18th century.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

And you know, so you just don't get it in archaeology, and that again, the fact that you can look at a photograph of somebody who you have literally lifted out of the ground 90 years after their death, you know, it's still it's still mind-blowing to me now, and you know, sends shivers through me when I think about uh and with uh you know that kind of story with someone like Jacob, you're kind of retelling the first world war through through his his personal journey, aren't you, to that point where he disappears into that field in in northern France and and that echoes the the the terrible fate of so many families who who never knew what happened to these men.

SPEAKER_03 31:38

Exactly that. I mean, you know, there's so many there are so many remains sets of human remains out there, you know, so many bodies that were just never recovered, never identified, and you know, it you wouldn't it'd be impossible to identify every single body you find as a as an archaeologist. There are you know very few uh situations where that is a uh that's possible. Somewhere like from Elf was probably the closest that you would ever get to, and that was through DNA, and that's because they knew the names of a lot of the soldiers in there anyway, so they were able to contact families and things. Also, it's very expensive to do DNA testing, so we always have to do any identification through things that they have on them. So, and you don't always find stuff on, you know, one of the other guys we found up at Lewes, he'd got a bank book, and he was the only chap from that a particular unit whose bank who was from that town that that bank book was from. So we were then able to like put two and two together and say, well, you know, the the you know, we're not getting five here. This has definitely got to be this guy, pretty much. You know, who else would have a a bank account in that town that if they're not from it, you know, that kind of thing. So so there's a lot of you know forensic archaeology from that point of view as well that goes into it, thinking about it and stuff. But you're never going to identify everybody, but there's also a chance that you might identify the body that you're working on, so you just have to be very careful with it and you know really take your time and and and be as professional as possible around those remains because any tiny tiny little thing could give you their name, and then that gives them a grave. And I should say that they are no longer then in in just in a shell hole in in France for 90 years.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

And then later on, I think you you worked at Bullercore, I think, didn't you, with uh the project there, is that right?

SPEAKER_03 33:28

Mm-hmm. That's correct. That's through uh my boss, Richard Osgood. He's now my boss, he wasn't at the time, but he is now. He's probably regretting uh uh ever taking me on, but we we are where we are.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

I can't believe that's true.

SPEAKER_03 33:43

But yeah, he he set that up because I did work with him at uh Mame Woods. Uh that was another TV thing. Uh we were looking for uh just the uh that was with Gareth Thomas, the uh Welsh rubbery star, because I think one of his ancestors had fought at Mame Woods. So we were excavating there, and that was through what's called Operation Nightingale, which is a project I'm now involved with in work, where we get veterans suffering PTSD of various combat injuries uh involved in archaeology because it's very good as a uh as a route towards recovery, really. It's um because you know there's there's teamwork in archaeology, there is uh the the just scraping away with a trowel can take you away from you know all all world's ills when when the sun is shining on you, it's uh the attention to detail will take you away. And a lot of the guys that have come through the op nightingale stuff, and we've had probably several hundred at this point, you know, have always said there is a benefit to it from a mental health point of view. So this is something that I do in my day job anyway, so I do the one of these once a year. But Richard has set up uh the Buller Core project off the back of the Mame stuff, and this was really to go looking for the Mark II tanks that had attacked attacked there in uh April of 1917 in support of the Australians, uh, because there's quite a lot of aerial photos of them when they were destroyed on the I think I think most of them were destroyed in the in the fighting, weren't they? And you can again you can probably uh fill me in there a little bit, but I think there was something like eleven or twelve that went into action and pretty much all of them got knocked out, didn't they?

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Coming coming over the railway embankment at Bulla Corps, then moving into that it was a vast open space where that bit of the Hindenburg line was with no cover, and they were sitting sitting ducks for artillery fire, really, weren't they?

SPEAKER_03 35:32

Yeah, they certainly were, and it was snowing as well, wasn't it? And these things were painted. Well, we found out what colour they were painted because we actually found on the first year we'd we'd been to Bulla Corps about four years at this um uh by now, I think. But we found 12-foot length of track of uh 796 tank, which was uh if memory serves, it was commanded by Lieutenant Skinner, uh, and that had got bit literally to the edge of the Hindenburg line before being knocked out. We've uh our photographer, Harvey, was able to do some colour testing on the remains of the paint because there was still paint on it, uh, and it was a dark green, which was almost British racing green. Wow. Which kind of feels a little bit like taking a piss when the tank only does four miles an hour. But yeah, but I mean these things were rushed to the front anyway, because they were they were training tanks, weren't they? They're the Mar 2s, and I th and because they were being made by um uh down by Daniel Lincoln, it was uh Foster's was it? Foster's, yeah, that's right. And they're an agricultural company, weren't they? So they probably just had loads of green paint kicking around and just painted these things in this dark green, which when they're attacking in a snowstorm also almost gives them a black silhouette. So you know, literally a German artillery officer that can't hit a a target like that really needs to rethink his trade, I think. But it you know, so yeah, they they were it in uh Charles Bean's accounts of the battles afterwards, he was quite um dismissive of the tanks and their supporting role. And I mean, to be fair to them, they'd only just entered service less than six months previously, um you know, September wasn't it, 1916 that the first tanks were used. So they're still learning how to use these things, and you know, they as we all know, they were awful inside anyway, you know, really difficult to to operate. You can't hear anything, you can't see anything, you're getting carbon monoxide poisoning, all that stuff. But the for the fact that this one got all the way up to the Hindenburg line before being knocked out is a miracle in in and of itself. So I think he was a little bit harsh on these things, and we also found as well this is something that I've you know, in the 20 years I've done field archaeology on the battlefields, is I've never seen the casing of a shell. I've seen plenty of the the ends of shells, you know, the the fuses and the uh uh the the the front, I can't remember the name of it come to me, uh the the front end of the shell.

SPEAKER_00 38:07

Um the ram with the fuse on, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:10

Yes, yeah, yeah, that's stuff. Uh but the brass bit of it, because it's left behind in the gun, because you're not excavating gun positions, you know, that's like two miles behind the front lines, you never see it. But we actually found the six-pounder shell casing that had been that was in that tank, uh, and it had been fired, so they were actually firing their gun as they were going. And what was also interesting, because I'm sure you know this as well, Amy Paul, you you have a head stamp on the end of munitions, that had actually been made in April of 1917. So less than a week previously, this thing, this literally this shell had gone from Britain in a shell factory somewhere, out to France, stuck into a tank, and then in the attack. So you can kind of tell this real rushed kind of story about these tanks being pushed into into uh you know something that they probably just were not ready for. But you've got this incredibly brave crew that are fighting right to the end, using their weapons, you know, up against the the the German Hindenburg line, so they're doing their thing. So I kind of think Charles Bean gave them a bit of a a bad uh a bit of a bad shrift, really, for for what they they were doing, really.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Well, Charles Beam is the one that uh told us that that every Australian was a six-foot bronzed Bushman.

SPEAKER_02 39:27

So uh whereas Yeah, I mean I was trying to be nice. I'm not I don't want to attack him too much, you know, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:33

I mean they're beautifully written books. I mean, uh you know I've read them, read bits of them many times. They're not books you can read from cover to cover necessarily, but they're certainly accounts of the battles are great. But it's you know, every official historian or unofficial historian kind of has their angle, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 39:48

But uh and yeah, I mean he's an Australian writing about Australians that failed to do their job whilst being supported by British tanks. Who do we blame? The British tanks, of course, you know.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

The old British Tommies, but I mean, thankfully Monash didn't share that view. So when it came to 1918, he he embraced tanks and and really got the Australians to embrace tanks as well.

SPEAKER_03 40:11

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think they had yeah, they they didn't really like tanks so much after Bulloc, did they? But then yes, it kind of changed in 18. But I think the tanks changed anyway, didn't they, by 1918, anyway. They've got a mark fours and fives and all those things, and that in itself is interesting. But I mean, you know, we were kind of almost able to retell the story of Bullock again through archaeology, through you know, that human connection of that you don't see it written in the official histories, you know. So when you ask what what is battlefield archaeology for, there's another answer for you.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Yeah, well, I think that's an important part of it, isn't it? Really? Um so kind of kind of thinking that you know all the things that you've done on the battlefield, um, kind of I guess we're on our journey now from battlefield to to tabletop and war gaming. And I think a lot of people probably perhaps don't know what war gaming is, so I guess you know, from the point of view of this discussion, it's probably a good idea to kind of define it some. It's it's computer gaming, shooting people up on Call of Duty and stuff like that. But there's there's a much older tradition of war gaming involving tabletops and then figures on those tabletops, isn't there?

SPEAKER_03 41:19

That's right. I mean, the first uh real war game, I suppose, was the Kriegsbil that the uh Prussian high command were playing in the late 19th century. That's kind of where it kind of originates. But then H. G. Wells wrote a book called Little Wars, which was basically to allow uh uh it I think it was it was for l uh for boys and certain types of girls, is what he he actually says in it. But basically to get your toy soldiers out. Wouldn't pass most of these days, but but um uh it was it was to get your toy soldiers out and basically blast them with uh matchtick firing cannons and things, and it was a very simple set of rules, but then that kind of developed in the really after the second world war and in the 50s and the 60s, probably more 60s, with a lot of the veterans from the second world war and also the explosion in plastic soldiers of the airfix stuff. So, you know, I'm sure a lot of people listening to this will be will be aware at least of airfix soldiers. And there was a lot of people like Donald Featherston, uh Charles Grant, uh quite a few others that were writing around that Tony Bath. I can't remember who else. There's there's a list of these.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Peter Young, another one, wouldn't they breathe? Peter Young, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Patty Griffith is as well, he was also involved in it from that. And they started developing rules um basically for playing for refighting battles on your tabletop. And a lot of these things, because these were ex-military soldiers, a lot of them were, you know, they've probably done war games anyway, just not in name on uh in their military times, because you know, any exercise that you do is a war game, really. Uh it's just you know, with bigger soldiers, um, real soldiers. But uh, you know, so it it it kind of probably came from that, really. You know, a lot of these guys, I say, were ex-army, ex-military, should I say, and um they started to kind of codify rules for games. A lot of these things are still in place today, you know, a lot of this stuff we just cannot get rid of, unfortunately, in some cases. Uh, but you know, I think they were working out things like you know how fast a a Prussian line regiment would march in two and a half minutes, and then work out what your ground scale is on your six uh foot by four foot table, and how that's how many inches that unit would move in a turn, kind of thing. Obviously, not taking into any account anything that would happen to that unit in that in that movement, but that's another story. But so it kind of yeah, and it and now the hobby is massive, it is huge. And and again, even if people aren't aware of wargaming, they're probably aware of Games Workshop or or Warhammer as it's known, which is on the high streets of pretty much every town here at U at least. The UK and across and it says multinational corporation, but they're massive. Now that's more fantasy wargaming, so that'd be more like uh Lord of the Rings style stuff. So you have elves and orcs and that kind of thing, but they also have sci-fi versions of it as well, which are very, very popular. But there is a whole side of wargaming which is historical wargaming, which is what I'm interested in. And when I say historical, I mean literally everything from Paleolithic up to uh future wars, you know. So every anything anywhere where somebody's got anything more than a pointy stick and jabbed it into somebody else, you can war game pretty much, you know. So, you know, that's kind of like the I suppose that's the the the the potted history of war gaming up to now, really. Uh and it is it is huge. I mean you we mentioned just before we came on that we we saw each other at Salute last, which is the I think if not if not one of the biggest, it's probably the biggest war gaming convention, at least in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

One of the oldest, I would have thought, as well, I think.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

Yeah, it's just fifth, I think it's 53 years it's been going this year. Gosh. Uh and I think they had something like six thousand, six or seven thousand people through the door last year. So it's incredibly popular, and that's you know, that's just the people that go to that one show. That's not the people across the country, but you know, war game as well, who don't go to salute. But it's also pretty big in America as well. You know, it was a British uh invention because we've got HG Wells and all the other guys in the 60s were British pretty much, but it has you know it's it's got a big following in America as well. And yeah, I mean the hobby itself is uh at its core, you are recreating battles on the tabletop using uh toy soldiers, and there are various different scales from everything from 54mm high figures down to six millimeter and two millimeter high figures, depending on the scale of the game or the battle that you're fighting, and you do it with various different rules. There's lots of different rules out there that you know various uh people will argue uh to the death about which are the best and which are the worst, and everybody has a list, but uh, but this also involves uh painting those figures, researching the figures, uh researching the uniforms, researching the vehicles, the tanks, all that kind of stuff, and painting it all, making the scenery, all that kind of thing. You know, it's it's a vast hobby in and of itself. It's not just about playing the game, you've got to kind of prepare stuff before you get to that playing of the game.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

And I think that's what will surprise a lot of people is that you know, I look at the stuff on your channel, and you've got some amazing scenery that you've created for for all the different kind of periods that you you war game, and and that scenery I think since like I mean, when I war game first as a kid in the 70s through all the different airfix books and um uh when there was a book called Battle for War Gamers and stuff like that. Uh it was kind of you know, you cut you cut roads out of bits of card and rivers out of blue card, and you just use the airfix plastic British houses as as anything like that. But but now, I mean, particularly with 3D printing, you can just about have anything that you want, can't you? And these tabletops can be amazing.

SPEAKER_03 47:10

Yeah, if you can imagine it, you can print it, basically, as long as you've got somebody who can who can sculpt it in you know, whatever 3D. Uh it's it's a massive revolution, the the 3D printing. And as you say, you go to a show like Salute or Partisan uh up at Newark, and the amount of work that people put into those tables uh to show them off literally for a day, is it's mind-blowing, you know. The the you you it's uh I'm always humbled by the amount of uh stuff that's out there that you just think, oh you know, you could dip into any kind of period, and literally every period in history is covered at some point by war gaming, and somebody will have probably played it as well, and probably have a display show of it partisan or something, you know. So these these weird little you know, like Indian revolutions from the 16th, 17 16th uh century or something, somebody's wargaming it, you know. Uh and it's so yeah, it the I I try to stay there is a there's a name for war gamers who are butterflies who you know will just pick and choose lots of different bits and pieces. I try to stay within three main periods, and that's the first and second world wars and the Napoleonic Wars. Most of that kind of goes back to my childhood, you know, watching Waterloo on a Sunday afternoon, uh, and just getting interested in the Napoleonic Wars through that, and the again the Second World War through watching stuff like Bridge Too Far and those kind of films and things. Uh the one that stands out is probably the first world war. And you know, that I got interested in that after getting involved with the first world war archaeology.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

So, I mean, that the when I look at I mean I uh the kind of the periods that are wargamed and the stuff that's on your channel, World War II is a big, big kind of thing, isn't it, really, for war gaming now. And on one level, that's uh it's not easy, but it's easier to do because it's a mobile war, there's a lot of kind of stuff out there, uh the the battlefields are kind of you know fairly simple, they can be crops, vast open fields in Russia, D-Day beaches or whatever. But wargaming the first war potentially is a bit more problematic, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 49:20

It can be, and it's always kind of been seen like that, which is quite I I I think it does a massive disservice to it. I I I I always think back to it's um Charles uh not Charles Grant, it's um Don Featherstone's book, and I think it's called something like Wargaming Through the Ages. I had a copy of it. Uh I I got rid of it a while ago because I was just having a clear out, but I was looking through it and and it basically it gives a chapter to you know a wargaming period. So like you have the Roman period, it's got like the chapters of 20, 30 pages. Uh the the uh you know uh Napoleonic Wars is a 40 page long chapter, you know, the Franco-Prussian Wars gets another 20 pages, second world war, 60 pages, first world war four pages, you know, and it's kind of like it almost says, uh, well, you can do aeroplanes and you can probably do the stuff in 1914 and the stuff in 1918 when things are moving, but everything else they're just kind of looking at each other for three years. And yeah, you know this, Paul, and I know this, and probably people who are listening to your podcast know this, that the stuff in between, to me, it's the most interesting bit anyway, but there is so much movement and so much development and tactical development and uh weapons development that's going on. It's probably been one of the you know the most developed or both most uh the the highest level of developments of uh any modern war, I would have said, uh, just because of the stuff that was happening and just being tried out because of the situation of the trenches. And there is an issue in that you know, when you have trench warfare, you kind of want to have your trenches dug into the ground. You can't always do that with a uh a six by four flat table, but there are some companies out there that do trenches that are slightly that are raised above the ground, and they kind of had a bit of a slope into the front of them, so they look as though they blend into the table a bit more. And I use some of the ones from a company called Early War Miniatures, they make some of the best ones, I think. But there's plenty of them out there, so you can kind of simulate the trenches if you want to, it's not perfect, but there are also a lot of people who make trench boards anyway with the trenches dug into the ground, so they look a little bit more uh, shall we say, realistic than the other ones that are above ground, but that does take a lot of work, and also you've got to store those things as well, you know, big uh two-foot by two-foot board with a trench in it, it's uh takes up a lot of storeroom. But a lot of people, I'm gonna say a lot of people, I mean a lot of war gamers have that kind of perception that the public have of the first world war in that basically everybody gets out of their trenches, walks towards German machine guns, and everybody's dead within ten minutes kind of thing. And again, you know, as you know, as I know, and as the listeners know, that can't be further from the truth, you know, especially from after mid-1916 onwards. Uh so I got into the first world war stuff through the first world war excavations through working on the battlefields, and I I thought because I started to learn more about the war itself and how it was fought and those developments and you know the the the the tumultuous time that it was. It I thought this is actually ripe for war gaming, this is perfect for war gaming. And I I then went out and bought myself a ton of Peter Pig's 15mm uh first world war figures, literally off the back of you know, excavating. And I think it was actually some TV money that uh that paid for them.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

So good use of it, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:49

Battlefield archaeology uh paid out at the end. Uh but then you know I looked around for other rules as well, and there was um there was also the two fat lardies uh set of rules called Through the Mud and the Blood, which is really open my eyes to their kind of rules as well. And you know, they're a company that write rules and have done for 20 years, just over, I think, so 20th anniversary. But they are my favourite rules writers, and Through the Mud and the Blood is one of my favourite games. It took a long while for me to get my head into it because it wasn't as I was talking about the old war gamers, it wasn't a traditional war game in the sense that they'd written in the 60s, which a lot of people were still kind of reusing their stuff. They'd completely changed how things operate, and it was really about command and control and um and about what they called big men or you know the leaders, so the corporals and up, and it was all about you know those people and getting getting the other ranks to do stuff, and it and it blew my mind that you could do this with war gaming, and you know that it fits really well with the first world war, and what at least what I understand as the first world war, you know, and the fighting that went on.

SPEAKER_00 53:55

And and the purpose of the of the rule sets for those who you don't know really know what war gaming is, is that sorry, getting on myself. No, no, no. I mean it's uh it it's it's it's it's not like uh we're not doing the HG worlds with match matchsticks anymore, firing them or making kind of noises that we did when we were kids when we were fighting these kind of battles with unpainted airfixed figures. But uh you can't help it, but you can't help it no. Uh but it it's to kind of give a structure and I guess to replicate things like fog of war and chance, and for that you're using dice, aren't you, normally, and and other mechanisms.

SPEAKER_03 54:28

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so yeah, you you you are using um I mentioned it, you know, like the the marching length of a Prussian line infantry regiments, you know, you can work out how far they're supposed to move, and you can say, right, okay, they're well a six inches on the tabletop. So each turn they will move six inches, your opponent can do the same. You generally the most basic war game would be you were playing turns, you're playing against a player, you will probably have a move phase in which you move your units, you will then have a firing phase which you fire those units. You may have a melee phase if anybody's in close combat, you might have a morale phase where you roll to see how they are, what they're doing, you know, if they're if they're going to stand and fight or if they're gonna start falling back or whatever. And a lot of war games kind of are centered around those. They they they they that's the most basic way of explaining it. You're kind of moving through turns, so it's a bit like a board game where each person is taking a turn and they're able to do a certain amount in that turn with those units. And these have you know the the rules have massively developed over the past 50, 60 years that this has been going on. Uh as I say, the the very simple early rules were literally that you move, you fire, you you do your uh you do your melee, you charges or whatever, you know. Uh but things have kind of moved on a little bit and people try to do things a little bit differently these days.

SPEAKER_00 55:51

And in those days, people took turns, didn't they? It was like, you know, I go, you go. So it was almost like a like a gentleman's war. After you, old chap, but I think it's your turn to charge. Whereas I think the more modern rules try to replicate the reality of a battlefield where no one no one gets to choose the circumstances of battle.

SPEAKER_03 56:09

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. Is I go, you go. So it's basically I would move and fire in everything on my turn, then you would get to do the same thing on your turn, and then we go back and forth until the battle is decided. But now, as you say, there's a lot of rules where where friction and fog of war is being taken into account, friction in particular, and this is where, from my point of view, the two fat lardies who uh wrote Through the Munda Blood and Chain of Command and a few other games that I play, this is where I this is where I plant firmly planted my flag because I'm interested in the fog and the friction of war, and they very you know that they very much emphasize that in their games. So even down to I mentioned you know, sometimes you'll have a unit that will smooth six inches, you know it's going to move six inches every turn. In a two-fat Lardies game, you roll dice to see how far you get, and what that replicates is not only the the troops either not wanting to go forward or going further forward than you expected, but also it's the when the enemy interrupts them because the you know it kind of makes time a little bit elastic, whereas in the older rules, the I go you go, it's like well, this is 15 minutes worth of real time, so everything happens in this 15-minute block, and then you do something in your 15-minute block. Whereas in two fat lardies rules, it's like, well, this could be a minute, this could be 10 seconds, this could be 20 minutes, you know. You don't you don't know how long that bound of time is going to be. So it makes it it it applies friction to a tabletop, which is difficult to do, but it also applies the fog of war as well, because you don't always have all your troops on the table from the start of the game. Again, traditional war games, you would have your entire army on the table, and they would have their entire army on the table, so you'd know where everybody is, you know where everyone's moving about. Whereas with uh two Falaris in particular, they used their older system was a system of what's called blinds, where you would have cardboard pieces on the table, and the enemy doesn't know what they are, and they may be dummies, you know, they might be a unit, it might be a platoon of British infantry, or it might be a dummy unit, and you don't know that until you spot that blind. They now have different systems for that. So now in Chain of Command they have a thing called a jumping off point where you play a little game before the game to get your jumping off points, but you may not use all those jumping off points, you may just you know be uh you're not sure if the enemy has got something in that jumping off point, and so it's it that adds your friction and your fog of war into the game as well, really. So, yeah, I mean, you know, there's a massive development in in wargaming rules these days, and there are so many to choose from, it is mind-boggling how many there are out there. I mean, there's you know, I've mentioned two fat lodies, they're probably they're not the biggest company, but they're a very well-known company. I mean, one of the biggest companies is a company called Warlord, and they have a second world war game called Bolt Action, which is very, very popular. It's kind of popular because it's easy to get into, you can basically buy a box of figures and the rules for about 100 quid, and you g you you'll you know, once you've built the figures and painted them or whatever, you you'll have enough for a game, and then you add to that from other figures and things. So that's quite partially why they're popular, but they also cover other periods as well. So yeah, I mean it it's a thing that if you start to dip your toe into, you you kind of you could probably end up spinning around a bit and getting lost a little bit, but there is a lot of companies that do make box sets to get people started in the hobby, and I recommend it to anybody because it's great fun.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

And the the there is a kind of the the fun element to it with with the modelling, with the gaming, and some people there are tournaments, aren't there, where people kind of battle away for for trophies and prizes and all that kind of stuff. But you know, the kind of way that you describe how these more modern rules operate, they're kind of prompting players, whether they realise it or not, to make the same kind of battlefield decisions that real commanders would would have to do. That if you make the wrong decision and you you know you don't have reserves, or you send the men up the wrong flank, or you send them out into the open where the enemy's in trench, the outcomes are going to be similar outcomes to if you were trying to do that with real people and and therefore you know end up causing huge casualties, for example, to your to your side. So that's kind of where it gets interesting, isn't it? Because that makes it applicable to something else, a kind of a learning process with with history where we can learn about history in another way.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:44

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. And I think again, you know, to champion the two fatal aris in this, this is very much their ethos is looking at period training manuals so for through them under blood. It's one of the very few war games out there that actually uses you know the organizations of the time of those platoons. And it is very much about getting your junior officers and your sergeants in the right place at the right time so that when their card comes up, they can command a certain number of units around them. Otherwise, those units on their own generally don't do a huge amount. So it's it's really about having to think about it. And this is as you say, this is you know, it's it is the the situations that those lieutenants, the second lieutenants and sergeants found themselves in in you know 1718 when they were trying to get their platoons uh to coordinate to attack German strong points, for example. And you have to think about that, and if you do it the the the rules don't make you do that, but they nudge you in a certain way that if like you say, literally, if you don't do that, then you will end up you know with more casualties than you can count. Otherwise, if you try to get that coordination going on and get everything in the right place at the right time and just you know bide your time and wait until the right moment, you can you know achieve your victory. And again, this is something that appeals to me from their writing and from the the Tsufalati stuff, more so than a lot of other games where that kind of that side of it, they're they're more like games rather than than uh tactical simulations, I guess. And I prefer the tactical simulation side of things. So you mentioned like tournaments, that's you know, bolt action, you can play it as a tournament because you will have a certain set of points worth of uh as an army, so you can fight against an army that is also of equal points, and the two should be you know in averted commas balanced, but again, the two Falari stuff, there's no balance in it. You know, you are fighting unequal from the from the get-go. You just have to make the best with the with the cards that you're dealt, basically.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

And that's that's what real war is. I mean, you know, no no no unit in the first world war ever fought a battle in perfect circumstances where they had exactly the right number of men, exactly the right number of guns, tanks, everything else to defeat the enemy in front of them. War doesn't work like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:10

No, no. I mean, you know, there is the uh three to one adage that you know you you have to outnumber your your uh enemy three to one to be able to destroy them. How many times does that happen? I mean, look at Waterloo. They were pretty equally matched in numbers, uh, the British and the French armies. That's not uh that's not a uh three to one advantage, is it, on the on nobody's side. But still the battle was fought, you know what I mean. So yeah, reality doesn't always reflect what the uh you know what the doctrine or at least what the uh the the the the rules of war are supposed to be. And this comes across, as you say, with a friction that's built into these rules. And it's the thing that interests me the most about the first world war, or one of the things that interests me the most is that command control communication, the issues that they had, because you've got you know what is literally a modern war, but no way of talking to the men once they were over the bags, and you know, you you can emulate that a little because then you've got to rely on your junior officers and your sergeants to get those men forward. You know, it's not like uh battalion commander can see what's happening once everything's kicking off. So, yeah, it's um it's more of a simulation than a game, but it's still a game and it's still great fun, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:25

And and the interesting with the simulation side of it is that it's not it's not just uh you know crazy war gamers like us that do this, but armed forces across the world are again, just like in the past, are adopting war gaming as a way for military personnel to learn about future war, you know, whatever that is. And and with going back to kind of the Great War, with what is happening in Ukraine with trench warfare, there, lessons of trench warfare, all of a sudden, hundred years on, suddenly become applicable again. So the kind of warfare that you know is depicted in the games on your channel and all these different rules suddenly becomes something that is of interest to modern service personnel as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:06

Absolutely. I mean, yeah, we we on our on the training ranges of the MOD they have been digging trenches for the last few years. You know, a lot of this is going on, like you say, literally going back to the first world war because of how they've seen the fighting, the lessons learnt from the fighting in in Ukraine that is you know literally happening now, which 20 years ago would have been unimaginable. But right now it's you know it's a thing that is happening that is that we are uh gathering information from and using for the future because that's how the future war is going to be for, you know, the the the old future war kind of thing. And yeah, the you know, the military do use war gaming as well at various levels. I mean, as I say, you know, I kind of joked earlier, but you know, any exercise is a war game because they are you know they're they're working out what the outcomes are going to be of you know certain uh certain contacts with. enemy so that is literally a war game they're just using live soldiers to do it but they also do it at staff college as well you know where they're where they're taught various exercises and things like that as well so yeah the the military use it they they generally don't push toy soldiers about but they uh you know I it's been persuaded once and once or twice and uh uh a a friend of uh a friend of mine uh tom he's uh uh major in the Irish army he's currently in Shrivenham at the moment at Staff College and he's a you know he's an absolute crazy war gamer he loves it and he tries to get his officer mates to uh to join his his massive games of bolts action every so often and they're brilliant when they do you know and and you know a lot of uh veterans that I've worked with as well have you know had an interest in war gaming I've always kind of half toyed with the idea of setting up a you know veterans wargaming association somewhere uh during one of our Operation Nightingale project things because I think people would benefit from it because you know they've already got that interest from a military point of view. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:06

I think that'd be a great idea yeah because I mean I kind of think you know going back to what you were saying about Op Nightingale and and how that's beneficial for for ex-service personnel particularly those struggling with with PTSD and mental health issues that you kind of see that those kind of phrases being used more and more with war gaming as well there was a report I think in Yorkshire recently about a club set up for for for for guys who are struggling with mental health and and the painting side of it which again is about attention to detail isn't it was all kind of really good and and useful for people with uh with those kind of issues.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:42

That's right yeah it's I think they're called Dad's war room I think um I was just into an interview with him on uh another podcast Yorkshire gamers podcast um which is a war gaming podcast and they they have yeah which I think it's in Hull I think it is and it's a couple of guys and literally just set up in a almost a village hall they got a load of um uh basically figures in for some people to paint if they don't want a game and and they said they you know they didn't know they set it up didn't know what to expect and they were flooded with people that came down just to see what was happening and and it's going from strength to strength by the sounds of it and and yeah as you say they they were doing it very specifically for mental health reasons you know or for for for trying to help people with mental health issues and you know these things like like Operation Nightingale you know you can never look at these things as a as a full recovery from a mental health but it's it's a pathway towards it you know and it helps and and if you can help somebody just for a couple of hours on a Wednesday or Thursday night or whatever just not think about other things and you know just to get their head into you know doing something hobby wise I think it's a brilliant brilliant thing to do I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:50

Yeah I mean they they're kind of building blocks in our lives aren't they really that we're with people with similar interests similar backgrounds uh sharing you know perhaps similar issues and you can learn a lot from each other and understand a lot from each other through the process of archaeology war gaming and you know kind of a lot of other things besides and it's not just guys it's not just young men like you and old geezers like me doing war gaming. I'm 50 Paul I'm 50 I'm not young anymore well you're younger than me but uh uh but there's I mean war gaming is to a degree you know dominated by female gamers and and and particularly painters I mean I look at some of the channels that are presented by female figure paintings painters and they are just incredible kind of artists in in in what they do.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:36

So it's quite a broad church isn't it yeah I mean traditionally it was it was relatively um uh a male orientated hobby uh but with things like you know Kane's workshop and and I think also just the explosion is stuff like Dungeons and Dragons and that kind of stuff as well or you know the re-re-explosion of it in the in the last few years has really kind of opened the doors uh to more women into the hobby and you go to salute or something there's a real mix in demographics down there and I think it's brilliant you know I think the the more people that are involved in it from every walk of life is fantastic and uh uh it it I I guess historical wargaming is still a little probably male oriented today it's more like the science fiction and the um fantasy stuff that's is is a bit more mixed but we are you know we're still getting there's quite a lot of women in in uh historical wargaming as well and one of the standouts is probably Annie from um Bad Squiddo Games which I know you're aware of and she basically makes uh 28mm figures of women from history so that covers everything so you know talking like um you know female Viking warriors and uh what else we have female snipers and also you know she does um very she does specific personalities as well uh she did a range on the SOE recently I think didn't it and resistance uh amazing figures absolutely amazing work yeah they're beautiful the sculpts on them are fantastic they're really nice the only problem is I don't play games in 28mm otherwise I'd have loads of them I do a smaller scale but uh yes I mean you know there's there's space for for all these people and for uh for Annie to have an incredibly successful career out of it and that is her career you know that's all she does is is sell uh female uh toy soldiers to people amazing it's just yeah brilliant really brilliant so I mean a bit like I mean I'm often recommending books to the listeners of this podcast and and sending them off to spend far too much of their money and wargaming can be very much like that can't it's it's a massive rabbit hole uh I don't know about that but it's a massive rabbit hole though isn't it war gaming but a good place to start I would say is your channel Storm of Steel Oh well thank you I mean yeah I as I say I mean my the the main the things that I'm mainly interested in is Second World War First World War and the Napoleonic Wars so I cover those mostly in the channel with bits and pieces other you know other bits and pieces like Vietnam War and things uh but yes I also try to do like painting tutorials and things and some bits and pieces of history as well and and also just um I try to make some videos on how to play games specific sets of rules and just because there are some rules you might read them first time round and just not really understand how they work. So I try to you know some people learn through watching and and listening rather than reading so I try to do that as well with rules I do rules reviews so I can talk about you know what I like about sets of rules and things. So I cover quite a lot of stuff on the channel as much as possible really just around and also I just pulled a video art and it was it was uh of the Hammerhead war games show so I basically went round all the tables and filmed them and then got a couple of interviews with people and things and I did that at Salute as well so you can kind of have an idea as to what is going on at these conventions and people who you know live in Australia who can't get to them very readily get to see them as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:04

And there's a lot of those conventions there right across the country.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:07

Oh there is there is there's a lot there's uh there's almost I think at least one one every month if not every few weeks so it is said and they start early February I think is the earliest one in up here at least at Vapnatak in York and then you have uh the one that's just gone which is Hammerhead with there's Partisan which is my favourite which has some of the best tables on it the best eye candy there's also the other partisan which is in October later in the year then you've got salute in the middle of the year uh April time you've got tons of other ones again all the way up from you know from Cornwall all the way up to the top of Scotland uh there is you can go to conventions almost every week really.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:49

And if someone wants to get an idea they can go along and wargamers are pretty friendly people aren't they if you never you had no idea what this is about and you're interested in history and you want to see history expressed in a different way a kind of show is quite a good place to start.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:02

I'd say so yeah uh it can feel a little overwhelming but it is worth going to just because uh there's so much going on and they are very crowded because you know us wargamers we like a good bargain so we always turn up for the uh the bring and buy these things they're always crowded but um yeah I mean they're worth just popping in and and and most of them probably cost somewhere about five pounds uh entry fee and that just goes back straight back into the show to help them run it again the following year and and I think to be honest ever since I've been going to wargami shows in since the 80s I think they've they've never changed their prices they've always made about five pounds uh so I don't I don't know how they're doing that but um yeah I mean that's the way to do it and then you know if there's anything because you you have the games on display uh a lot of them are what's called participation games so you could actually sit down and play for half an hour just to have a a quick game or something then one at Hammerhead I think everything was a participation game so you could have just gone there ever and spent all day just playing game after game after game and on top of that you also have all the traders so people selling the figures selling the paints building the brushes selling the vehicles and also selling the rules as well and as you said Paul I mean the very friendly welcoming inviting Bush I mean we it's always good to get new people involved in war gaming from you know every age from from teenagers up really everybody is welcome and and you'd be uh you know almost urged to sit down and play a game if you're walking past the table you know they they want people to play the games that they've they've put on so you know don't be fearful of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:43

No and the visual side of it I think is something who's never seen anyone if somebody listened to this has never seen a game like this go along and just to see the kind of visual uh spectacle really of some of these games because they are absolutely stunning to see how people have recreated some of these battlefields is it's really truly amazing. Yeah and I mean there's so much research that goes into them just to to get you know the like you say the look of the battlefield right even the the the lay of the land is correct you know all these kind of things just the details that you you see on these tabletops and it is it's absolutely mind blowing you know I'm you know I've been a war gamer since I was I don't know you know twelve thirteen years old and I still I still have uh I'm still blown away by the amount of work and and and uh detail that people put into their boards just to show them off for a day you know in a in a where in a big uh big old ex-hanger down in Newark you know it's amazing like brilliant that's brilliant well we'll put links to your channel of course and I'm gonna there's a video where you where you're talking about um war gaming the first world war which I'll embed onto the webpage for this episode so people can find you that way too but I mean thanks for this chat Alex absolutely kind of amazing to talk about two really important kind of elements of the layers of first world war history from the as we've said from the battlefield to the tabletop and kind of the the things that join them together really.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:11

Oh well again you know I'm I'm honoured to be be on this podcast it's uh it's on my podcast list and I I do love listening to it so you know uh it's nice to be invited on and uh and yeah I'm happy to talk about I could uh talk the uh the the legs off a a donkey if you wanted to about battlefield archaeology or about war gaming really I don't know how much uh how much uh uh you've you've got to uh space you've got to save on your computer but uh well who knows one of these days we might end up doing some kind of old frontline convention ourselves and bringing war gaming into that as much as the history because we have ways to do it now.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:46

I mean Nick from Two Fat Lardies goes there every year and sets up a fantastic demo game for World War II so you know about time we maybe did something like that for the first World War. So who knows? But thank you mate I'd say we'll put all those links to you and uh thanks for joining us on this and I'm sure this won't be the last time that we talk and unless I hope we've pushed a few people across that line who might think about doing a bit of war gaming or modelling as a result of this podcast. That that I see that's a victory in and of itself I think yeah thanks Alex cheers mate no worries thank you Paul you've been listening to an episode of the Old Frontline with me, military historian Paul Reed. You can follow me on Twitter at Somcore you can follow the podcast at OldFrontline Pod. Check out the website at oldfrontline dot co.uk where you'll find lots of podcast extras and photographs and links to books that are mentioned in the podcast. And if you feel like supporting us you can go to our Patreon page patreon.com slash oldfrontline or support us on buy me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com slash oldfrontline. Links to all of these are on our websites. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon.