Amazon
By Dr. Stephen Bull
Published by Pen and Sword Military
436pp
Published in 2012
5 out of 5 Stars
Books on infantry tactics are often books written by military professionals that are dense on theory and jargon, or they get so into the weeds that one wonders what the book was about in the first place. I am happy to say this book doesn’t share that problem.
Dr. Bull is well known to many in the military history field as an author, historian, and museum curator, as well as a stint on BBC. He even hosted the wonderful show Battlefield Detectives - One of the few History Channel shows I haven’t thrown a remote at the TV over!
This book is a testament to the careful scholarship and superior use of contemporary artifacts that is a hallmark of Dr. Bull’s scholarship. The book carefully looks at training methods, tactical experiences, and the effectiveness of both weapons and training on the battlefield from the British, German, and American perspectives. It’s a rich cornucopia of information, how it demonstrates not just what the tactics were, but how they worked and how they were a product of their nations at the time.
I like how Dr. Bull separates the chapters, one for each army, starting with the Germans, then the British, and finally the Americans, with separate chapters for the unique problems of urban fighting and anti-tank warfare, and another on “tank co-operation” (We call it combined arms here in the States.) The appendices are extremely informative as well, having tactical manuals and tables of organization and equipment for US, British, and German infantry formations from the Squad to Company level.
What really sets this book apart from other “tactics” book is that it’s not just a sterile study of the tactics and a cold evaluation of their effectiveness or not, but it relates the experiences of those under fire actually trying to carry out the things they had been trained to do. It talks equally well about the manpower shortages of trained infantrymen all three armies experienced and plenty of little anecdotes, such as GIs using purloined explosives to save the trouble of digging a foxhole.
The writing is solid and reasonably paced. It doesn’t bog down in minutiae but has plenty of minor asides that relate well to the purpose of the book. This is, to me, the standard of good military history. It’s also got a wealth of diagrams, all taken from primary sources to illuminate the points being made in the text. My only nitpick is the font size. It’s a bit on the small side, but that won’t be a factor if you buy this thing for an e-reader.
Why Would a Wargamer Need This Book?
Why wouldn’t you, I ask? This book
has it all, a detailed and solidly written study of WWII infantry tactics
illustrated by diagrams and 13 appendices on wartime tables of organization and
equipment for the three combatants covered in this book.
But the main gold of this book is how it talks about how the armies fought and how they approached fighting at the company level and below. For rules like Chain of Command, Battlegroup, or board games like The Last Hundred Yards, or the Lock n’ Load Series, this is the book you want. It will get you thinking of the period tactics and show ways to “execute them on the table.”
It’s also a great catapult for further reading on the topic, with such books as Blakowski’s Beyond the Beachhead and Closing with the Enemy by Doubler are just two of the secondary sources used for this book. It’s a who’s who of some of the great WWII historians of the last 30-40 years. There’s a lot to be mined here for further reading, to put it mildly.
The contemporary diagrams are awesome to illustrate to a gamer HOW these armies thought, at least in an ideal circumstance, various activities were carried out on the battlefield. Dr. Bull does a great job of illustrating where experience matched, or sometimes didn’t match reality.
He also spends a lot of time on training and how the various armies trained for combat and how that training matched experience. I really like the way this book takes a whole picture to the approach, and the book is accessible to everyone, even laymen.
The book is currently available on Kindle for $9.99, but hard copies are a little hard to come by, as I got sticker shock looking at what Amazon.com is asking for used copies online, but for most users, Kindle will get the job done.
–
At Epoch Xperience, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse Epoch Xperience’s service on our parent site, SJR Research.
–
(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)