THE BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 4

Category: The Battle Of Hook's Farm

Figure 5a shows the result of Red's move. His two effective guns have
between them bowled over two cavalry and six infantry in the gap between
the farm and Blue's right gun; and then, following up the effect of his
gunfire, his cavalry charges home over the Blue guns. One oversight he
makes, to which Blue at once calls his attention at the end of his move.
Red has reckoned on twenty cavalry for his charge, forgetting that
by the rules he must put two men at the tail of his middle gun. His
infantry are just not able to come up for this duty, and consequently
two cavalry-men have to be set there. The game then pauses while the
players work out the cavalry melee. Red has brought up eighteen men to
this; in touch or within six inches of touch there are twenty-one Blue
cavalry. Red's force is isolated, for only two of his men are within a
move, and to support eighteen he would have to have nine. By the rules
this gives fifteen men dead on either side and three Red prisoners to
Blue. By the rules also it rests with Red to indicate the survivors
within the limits of the melee as he chooses. He takes very good care
there are not four men within six inches of either Blue gun, and both
these are out of action therefore for Blue's next move. Of course Red
would have done far better to have charged home with thirteen men only,
leaving seven in support, but he was flurried by his comparatively
unsuccessful shooting--he had wanted to hit more cavalry--and by the
gun-trail mistake. Moreover, he had counted his antagonist wrongly, and
thought he could arrange a melee of twenty against twenty.

Figure 5b shows the game at the same stage as 5a, immediately after
the adjudication of the melee. The dead have been picked up, the three
prisoners, by a slight deflection of the rules in the direction of the
picturesque, turn their faces towards captivity, and the rest of the
picture is exactly in the position of 5a.

It is now Blue's turn to move, and figure 6a shows the result of his
move. He fires his rightmost gun (the nose of it is just visible to
the right) and kills one infantry-man and one cavalry-man (at the tail
of Red's central gun), brings up his surviving eight cavalry into
convenient positions for the service of his temporarily silenced guns,
and hurries his infantry forward to the farm, recklessly exposing them
in the thin wood between the farm and his right gun. The attentive
reader will be able to trace all this in figure 6a, and he will also
note the three Red cavalry prisoners going to the rear under the escort
of one Khaki infantry man.

Figure 6b shows exactly the same stage as figure 6a, that is to say, the
end of Blue's third move. A cavalry-man lies dead at the tail of Red's
middle gun, an infantry-man a little behind it. His rightmost gun is
abandoned and partly masked, but not hidden, from the observer, by a
tree to the side of the farmhouse.

And now, what is Red to do?

The reader will probably have his own ideas, as I have mine. What Red
did do in the actual game was to lose his head, and then at the end of
four minutes' deliberation he had to move, he blundered desperately. He
opened fire on Blue's exposed centre and killed eight men. (Their bodies
litter the ground in figure 7, which gives a complete bird's-eye view of
the battle.) He then sent forward and isolated six or seven men in a
wild attempt to recapture his lost gun, massed his other men behind the
inadequate cover of his central gun, and sent the detachment of infantry
that had hitherto lurked uselessly behind the church, in a frantic and
hopeless rush across the open to join them. (The one surviving cavalry-
man on his right wing will be seen taking refuge behind the cottage.)
There can be little question of the entire unsoundness of all these
movements. Red was at a disadvantage, he had failed to capture the farm,
and his business now was manifestly to save his men as much as possible,
make a defensive fight of it, inflict as much damage as possible with
his leftmost gun on Blue's advance, get the remnants of his right across
to the church--the cottage in the centre and their own gun would have
given them a certain amount of cover--and build up a new position about
that building as a pivot. With two guns right and left of the church he
might conceivably have saved the rest of the fight.

Next: THE BATTLE OF HOOK'S FARM 5
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