Band of Brothers.. or Nest of Vipers?

This post concerns command and control problems. You may not think that an appropriate subject for our games or you may just not like playing with command and control restrictions.  I believe the culture of command of the contending forces are as important as the morale levels and armament of the engaged sub-units. And I like simple command and control rules. Your mileage may vary.

When playing wargames, we assume that the commanders of the same nation are pulling together as a team. It seems like what should be happening. But a close look at many actual armies in combat shows a different reality. Most armies of any size have at least two factions among the officers. An intense example is the Confederate Army of Tennessee, where many of the officers came to despise their commander Braxton Bragg. They twice urged Jefferson Davis to fire Bragg. Both times Davis resisted the incipient rebellion. The anti-Bragg feeling went all the way down to much of the rank and file, as evidenced by ranker Sam Watson’s memoir, “Company Aytch”. In common with most Tennessee troops, he hated Bragg. During the final rout on Missionary Ridge, Bragg was roughed-up by an angry Rebel sergeant. He tendered his resignation and Davis accepted it, though Bragg was still used as a staff officer in Richmond, able to continue his feud with various officers from afar.

All internet images removed from this post, sorry.

Interesting you say, but what does this have to do with our games? Let’s go back to Bragg and the Army of Tennessee to see what effect this discord had on the army. At the best of times and with good intentions, subordinate commanders could misinterpret orders or not be ready to execute them, leading to mistakes and delays. But officers who despised their leader and assumed they knew better (sometimes without valid reason) often refused to follow orders they thought wrong. Frequently, when Bragg did have a decent idea (he was not bereft of them, despite what some historians maintain) he could not get his army to execute them in a timely way. Several times Union forces escaped from tight spots because of this. Any game, operational or tactical, of this army after the Kentucky campaign of 1862 should reflect this problem. A detailed simulation might include what faction officers belonged to, though that last is a bit much even for me.

Now you say, Bragg’s army was an aberration. While an extreme example, consider the Army of the Ohio (later Cumberland) under Buell. The atmosphere there was so poisonous that division commander Davis murdered Buell’s friend “Bull” Nelson in front of many witnesses, including the Governor of Indiana. 

Many officers and rankers applauded the killing. Davis was arrested but never prosecuted. He returned to division command in a couple weeks and was promoted to corps command before the war was over. Buell’s mismanaged and troubled force then went on to fight the battle of Perryville, where most of the army stood by while the smaller Confederate force savaged the Union left wing.

The Army of the Potomac had at least two factions: the conservative, anti-abolition officers who were McClellan’s protégés, and all the others, such as abolitionists and those who just didn’t fit in with the first faction.

Even the elite Army of Northern Virginia had factions. There were the officers of each state, Virginia foremost among equals and more equal than the others. Within each state there were those who had embraced secession in the first wave and those who had hung back until after Fort Sumter. There were those who questioned Jefferson Davis’ leadership and those who didn’t.

In all of the cases above, consider issues of seniority and just plain personal animus. Confederate General Marmaduke killed General Walker in a duel during the 1864 battle of Little Rock. Prickly A. P. Hill was arrested by Stonewall Jackson and later, after transfer to Longstreet’s corps, was arrested there too. Testy George Meade had a loud, public and profane argument with his superior, Joe Hooker early during the Gettysburg campaign. When messengers arrived to tell Meade he had replaced Hooker, he feared they had come to arrest him.

Ok, you say, this is something unique to American Civil War armies, right?  Consider the Russian army of the Great War. There were two main factions, the so-called “reformers” (most with Russian names like Samsonov) and the “conservatives” (most with Baltic German names like Rennenkampf). It is little wonder that Rennenkampf’s First Army did not move swiftly to the aid of Samsonov’s Second Army, which was encircled and virtually destroyed.

Think also of all the times in the Peninsular War that various of Napoleon’s marshals did not aid each other, each finding their own situation more important.

If I haven’t lost you yet, you might ask how do I propose to replicate this on the table top (or map)? I’m not sure, though I think those considering campaigns and/or battle scenarios should ponder it. I will write in terms of the Bloody Big Battle rules, which are the rules of choice in my group the last few years. An army with a high degree of internal hostility should at least be considered passive to show the possibility of officers refusing to follow orders. And if the unrest goes deep into the ranks, perhaps units should also be rated as fragile, despite training/morale ratings. An example of this is Bragg’s army at Chattanooga. Bragg wasted his dearly bought victory of Chickamauga making war on his internal enemies and reorganizing the army to reduce their bases of support. It succeeded at that but utterly failed to ready his troops to face Grant. The result was his army breaking and running when in a position that, properly held, should have allowed boy scouts armed with rocks to repel assaults. 

Ignore the talk about poorly-sited works. Cleburne held his part of the ridge and took 1,000 prisoners in the process. The collapse along the rest of the line was mainly due to extremely poor tactics and the corrosive effect of the internal dissension in the Army of Tennessee. If you leave the last out of the equation, the Rebels should win most games of Chattanooga, a battle where they were routed.