Mimi and Toutou go forth - A book review

Every once in a while you read a book that makes you think:

·     This is weirder than most fiction I ever read.

·    And why has no one made a movie out of this?

“Mimi and Toutou go forth” is such a book. It deals with the battle of Lake Tanganyika (even the name of the battle seems too weird to be real. But it is) in 1915. This battle was fought between British and German Navy ships and resulted in a British victory.

Why and how a battle was fought on the worlds second largest, oldest and deepest lake (not to mention it lies nearly 800 meters above sea level) and how those ships got there in the first place is a tale whose epic proportions are only rivalled by its absurd details.


In the not unlikely case you have never heard of the Battle of Lake Tanganyika, perhaps it helps to know that it was an episode of the Great War in Africa. The Germans controlled the lake through two warships sailing on it one of which, the Gotzen, had been specifically designed for that purpose. This also gave them control of most lines of supply in that arena, since the area consisted mostly of impassable bush, jungle or rivers, everything being connected by the lake, stretching southwards for some 400 kilometers all the way from current Burundi. 


A British great game hunter named Lee came up with a bold plan to transport two heavily armed motorboats to the lake, basing them from the Belgian side and use those to break the German hold on the lake. A British officer named Spicer-Simpson who in many ways was more caricatural than many a caricature commanded this tiny fleet and the rest, literally, is history.....

Giles Foden recounts the details of this incredible story in brilliant tongue-in-cheek prose, serving a bizarre episode of history rich with colonial arrogance and jingoistic madness with a pleasant dose of humour.  

He finishes with no less amusing details about the book and the movie "The African Queen" which were loosely based on these events. So apparently someone did make a movie out of this. It is just a shame the most amazing events were omitted from book and movie alike to serve the public an easier and more believable tale with some romance in it. And to such an extent that few would guess the book was related to the battle of Lake Tanganyika. 

For last, however, he saves the harsh present. Hitching a ride on Liemba, the last surviving ship of that battle, he recounts the hard lives people in that region still have to live, the fleeting benefits of "civilisation" and colonialism and most of all the transience of events once great but now forgotten by nearly everyone. A sobering finale. 

Nevertheless the book is a great read and I'd recommend it to anyone. 

The War Game by Charles Grant: A review

A while ago I received a venerable copy of “The War Game” by Charles S. Grant as a present. Mine was a good-looking hardback, still accompanied with its dust jacket and printed in 1971 (I was six years old at that time), which likely makes it a first edition. Always something to be enjoyed by us analog bibliophiles, although the magic of first editions will fade from our lives with the advent of the E-book, but that is another story. It also has one of those other fascinating elements of vintage books: a dedication. It was at one time given to “Robert, with love and best wishes from Mummy, Daddy and Sarah”. One wonders if Robert is still among us and whether he is still playing? We will probably never know.

I started the book under a wrong impression, which was that The War Game was a book about wargaming (or war gaming as it was then and perhaps still is correctly spelled). While this is not entirely untrue, it is actually more of a ruleset than a compendium. It can however be read as such when you take mr Grant’s 18^th century rules as a metaphor for war gaming in general and a pleasant read it is.

It is a well looking 190-page book with black and white illustrations, many of which feature the author’s prettily painted own 30mm plastic troops. He laments their disappearing from the market but does not disclose their manufacturer, but my best guess is they are Spencer Smith figures which fortunately are available again these days, cast in metal instead of plastic. The tabletop photos especially have a very Classic look about them and not just because they are in black-and-white. Stark wooden surfaces (presumably painted green) carry blocky Styrofoam hills, paper trees and scratch-built cardboard houses, all populated with huge 48-men units marching about. It’s Nostalgia with an Imperial “N”.

The book starts with a preface by Brigadier Peter Young, then a brief history of war gaming by the author himself. It quickly gets to the core of the matter and addresses the author’s rules for playing war games in the “Horse & Musket” period; the 18^th up to the middle of the 19^th century. All the different elements of the game are dealt with in a clear and systematic manner. Indeed, one might wish to see such accessibility in modern day rulesets! Infantry, cavalry, musketry, Melee and Artillery and its effects are dealt with. Morale is then addressed, as are terrain and buildings.

The rules are clearly from a time when hurry and stress had a lot less impact than nowadays. Players of the 60ies and 70ies took their time and who can blame them! Imagine playing with regiments consisting of 48, single-based, figures a piece! Moving the units around alone must have taken hours. The author also does not eschew little details, like the extra 1-and-a-half inch infantry move when in column! Musketry involves some serious number crunching: numbering your soldiers and your sub-units, counting number of firing sub units, rolling dice for hits, subtracting distance modifier, rolling for casualties, removing said casualties, all this with different modifiers for range, firing troop formation, target formation et cetera. The author then illustrates his rules with a battle, starting with the history, the translation to the tabletop and a narrative of how it played.

The book then gets to grips with the basics of terrain construction, its effects on the game, the use of maps in creating games and special rules like pioneers, river transports and campaigns. It ends with a final game scenario, Bunker Hill 1775, where all the elements from the book are brought together to create a fine battle scenario I really should play one day.

I encountered some surprisingly creative ideas in this ancient tome. Roundshot guns actually had a minimum range in reality (something I have never seen modelled in rule sets these days) as the cannonball was shot at an upward angle to land just in front of the target and then bounce horrendously through them. The author uses a measuring stick showing the parts where the ball is airborne and where it moves low enough above the ground to do damage. For canister he uses a metal-wire soldered Canister Cone, displaying the areas where canister had the most, less and least effect. Similar wire templates are used for grenade effects.

Houses were apparently built by him as a loose outer box, representing the intact building and placed over a slightly smaller ruined version of the same house. Just by lifting off the outer box, you created an instant ruin! Brilliant in its simplicity!

The book ends with the traditional index, but preceded by an endearing summary of manufacturers of figures and equipment of the late 1960ies. 

Mythical names like Les Higgins Miniatures and Hinton Hunt Figures are given, complete with address. 

Last but certainly not least a heart-warming mention is given to Airfix Ltd. (Haldane Place, Garratt Lane, London SW 18) “whose inexpensive plastic war game figures (20mm to 25mm – they do vary) have started the career of many a junior and not a few senior war gamers.” 

Anyone knowing my preference for 20mm plastic figures will understand why THAT brought a smile to my face.

Even though it may not become your ruleset of choice for Horse & Musket, “The War Game” is an enjoyable and valuable addition to any war gamer’s library.

MacDonald of the 42nd

Last week I received, as a late birthday present, "MacDonald of the 42nd" by Donald Featherstone. It is a remarkable if nowadays apparently little known book. 

In 1895 a grizzled old Scottish dock worker sat down to write a letter to his employer pleading for a better job. To bolster his case, he recounts the story of his life to stress the nessecity to give him a break, so to speak, and give him better pay and more reliable hours The letter, for all its lack of grammatic style, reads like an abbreviated Flashman novel. 

Hector MacDonald and his brother run away from home at age 14 and join the 42nd Regiment of Foot, the "Black Watch". Three of his brothers already serve in the same regiment. In the years to follow, Hector receives his training, becomes a bugler, serves in the thin red line in the Crimean War and a few years later in the Great Mutiny, leaves the army after India and moves to the US, where he serves in the Union army at both Bull Runs and a number of other battles, only to wander home to Bristol to become a dock worker. 

Featherstone has extrapolated from this letter, based on a lot of research, a lively story of Hector's life that runs from his leaving home up until he leaves India. It shows in shocking detail the often incredible hardships a Victorian soldier had to deal with. If you as a wargamer ever worried that your tables are less realistic because you never paint supply wagons, tents, porters and other supporting personnel, stop worrying. When arriving in the Crimea the 42nd had neither and slept in the open on the ground!

The book is filled with vivid first-hand tales of famous and less famous actions. You see the Russian cavalry thundering towards Hector. You see him, kilted and all, advancing through the Indian jungle, engaging rebels with the bayonet, worrying about the safety of his brothers after a battle and marching for days and weeks on end through the Empire that Britian once was.

Hector MacDonald was a real person, his existence proven not only by his letter but by his death certificate as well. The letter shows, unfortunately, that Hector's plea was in vain and that he died some years later still a dock worker at the Bristol docks.

A fascinating book and a gift all the more touching since the friend who selected the book for me died a week before I received it as a gift from his wife. Thanks pal, one more good thing to remember you by. 

Wellington: the years of the sword

While I had never before encountered the name of Elizabeth Longford, finding this little book of hers in a magnificent secondhand bookstore in Den Bosch for a few euros proved a pleasant coincidence. 

In some 600 pages the youth and earlier years of Arthur Wellesley´s life are narrated in lively detail. From his distant parents, his youthful ambitions as a violinist and his stay with the Ladies of Llangollen (a curious pair that might have been Europe´s first acknowedged lesbians) to his years in India, his striving for command and his first successes there and his first brief political career, the campaigns in Portugal and Spain and his ambassadorship in Paris you will get a interesting take on this strangely modest and at the same time deeply arrogant man. His thoroughness and competence set off against his often awkward social behaviour, clunky marriage and blunt speech must have been a challenge for his contemporaries to deal with. It left him with numerous admirers nevertheless, male as well as female for whom his awkwardness obviously meant nothing in the light of his enormous successes.

The storytelling is colourful, filled with anecdotes and manages to describe the battles and crises in absorbing detail. It takes a skilled writer to create tension while describing a plot everybody knows already, but mrs Longford pulls it off in her book with the same success as for example Jonathan Parshell in "Shattered Sword", his book about Midway.

The book ends with the Hundred Days and the Waterloo Campaign, after which Wellington terminated his military career and entered politics. But that, as has been said elsewhere, is a different story for a different book.

While I am not particularly interested in the Napoleonic period I was still curious for Wellington, having read more about the man who lost the battle of Waterloo than about the man who won it. This has now been thoroughly and pleasantly corrected. A recommendable book!

Incidentally Elizabeth Longford was connected to Wellington by more than interest alone, since she was actually married to one of the Pakenhams, descendant of Lady Wellington, nee Pakenham. Wikipedia has some more things to tell about her.

Wellington: The years of the sword by Elizabeth Longford

Paperback: 672 pages
Publisher: Panther Books Ltd 1971