It was issue 20 of MW that got me interested in wargaming... or perhaps more accurately opened my eyes to playing toy soldiers in more ways that using Charles Grants Charge rules to fight out battles with Airfix soldiers, using the relative colour of the figures to define sides; the blue/grey side, WWI and II Germans, Romans, Confederates, Napoleonic Prussians, and the Sheriff of Nottingham, vs the green/yellow side, WWI and II British, Doughboys, US Marines, Napoleonic French and British, RAF and USAF Personnel and Robin Hood.... and like many long running institutions the magazine has had it's ups and downs over the years.
I rather like it's current iteration, not least because of the seam of nostalgia running through it.
This month's trip down memory lane was an interview with Charles Wesencraft.
I can't say that Wesencraft fits into the pantheon of writers that I spent reading in the library on Saturday mornings - flitting between section @350 and @650 - military history and sports and games - those names include Featherstone, Funcken, Grant and the other one whose name I can never remember and whose rules were unplayable (I shall remember the name at 3am tomorrow morning) but I was aware of his book on Practical Wargaming. It might have been the title that put me off. Growing up reading General Jumbo, I was more drawn to titles such as Advanced Wargames....
Anywho....
The interview with Wesencraft was really interesting because of his involvement with Battleground.
I recall that it was shown on a Sunday morning, and I watched at least three of the programs when they were first broadcast.... you'll forgive me if I eat another of these Madeleines.... and was so excited that I forced my father to watch one of them with me - he had been a national service man and had read more military history than anyone I have ever known (he read at least three books a week - ok a lot of them were novels of the Sven Hassel type, but mainly they were campaign histories of the second world war). He was perhaps less impressed by the program than I was - or maybe it was the through of another Sunday of mowing the lawn, roast beef dinner, Upstairs Downstairs, and eeking out the milk as there would be none until Monday.
I often wonder how influential that series of programs was?
Certainly if you look around at the number of people involved in 'the industry' today who would have been in and around puberty at the time it surely must have had an influence. If for no other reason than here was a secret pleasure akin to Stamp Collecting, Trainspotting and drawing up lists from a seed catalogue (I realise it is fashionable to talk of getting women involved in 'the hobby' but let's face it is a very male pastime, and the women who get involved are probably boycotting vodka because of the Russian law that doesn't ban anything) - on television.
I can't say there is a direct link between getting a first box of 1/32nd Desert Rats at the age of four, through getting boxes and boxes of random 1/72nd soldiers, to the revelation of Battleground, to the discovery of the books in the library, to trying to bring some sort of purpose and order to the ice cream containers of soldiers beneath my bed, to buying Miniature Wargames and casting aside my foolish childish pleasures in favour of attempted lead poisoning and aerosol/super glue/paint thinners lung. But then there is rarely a direct link to anything... sorry Sigmund....
What I really liked about the Wesencraft interview was his good natured modesty. As when he claimed to have known he had written a best seller because he found the book on the shelves of Newcastle library.
It's curious to think of 'that generation' of wargame pioneers in perhaps the way the media portrays WWI veterans, as a dying breed. And the interview was littered with names that instantly evoke a Proust-like reaction in me, Terry Wise and Paddy Griffiths, or indeed elsewhere in the magazine John Treadaway and Arthur Harman... oh nostalgia ain't what it used to be....
Speaking of which, I haven't looked at a copy of White Dwarf in over a year. But today I happened to be in Boyes buying my lad a model aeroplane and I happened to pick up a copy of the new White Dwarf weekly, I was shocked... it actually contained writing... it actually appeared to be trying to convey something of meaning and interest to the reader.... I was so stunned that I actually looked at the cover price and considered buying it... I still very may shall..... Dwarves were an army I owned a very long time ago, and indeed may actually still own when my mother comes out of her neurotic episode and admits what she has done with them - obviously I wont own them if she has burned them like she claims....
Oh and while I am waxing lyrical about the dim and distant past I wonder how many people found the Germans in the WWI Airfix box, who were surrendering with their hands up, very useful spectators for Subutteo. A thin strip of paper, felt tipped with the appropriate colours, threaded between their hands and they were good to go. The MP's in the USAF box were ideal police, as were many of the ground crew - if you bit the spanners out of their hand and wrapped a paper scarf around their wrist. I doubt people knot scarves around their wrists at football matches these days - or indeed wear rosettes.
Still it's nice to see Miniature Wargames back on track after the wilderness years under that Andrew chap. I am sure he was a very nice man, but... oh I don't know...
Let me eat my cakes....
peace:)
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