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Post by ranger2518 on Apr 28, 2008 19:52:48 GMT -5
This point is most cogently exemplified by engaging in a boardgame exercise in which the umpires impose short turn-limits.
My Army ROTC detachment held one such on a Saturday afternoon using Avalon Hill's Stalingrad with the opposing force commanders and staff in rooms separate from the board, where each side's observers had five minutes to relay sightings, orders, and results. I took the part of the Soviet force's G2.
I didn't even have time to get a complete order of battle from my forward observer when we started, and thirty minutes into the exercise it became clear that I and the subunit commanders were falling further and further behind events, to the point that C3I fell completely apart...and as I later found out, we actually were ahead of our Axis opponents.
All this, mind you, without having to shout orders over cannon fire.
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Post by marklemon on Apr 28, 2008 20:28:23 GMT -5
The story of the Alamo naturally lends itself to Monday morning quarterbacking, or "what-ifs", to be certain. Santa Anna had the benefit of knowing when he would attack, and could set all the pieces and plans in place accordingly. The men inside the Alamo did not know when it would come -- and when it came in the pre-dawn darkness, they went from sleep to the midst of the confusion of the battle and a fight for thier lives. Beyond falling back to pre-set positions, I doubt there was much of a cohesive plan as the men stumbled from sleep to full-pitched battle in the dark. You also have to consider that these men were not battle-hardened, trained soldiers. When you look at the roster of defenders, you see they were lawyers, farmers, merchants, schoolteachers. Knowing that, you have to admire what the defenders managed to do. But lacking proper military training and experience, I think the only tractic at play was one of just fighting as long and as hard as they could for as long as they could. In that, they certainly succeeded. bluesdog, I agree with every word of your post- you have captured the essense of what I feel happened. No implementing "plan B," after "plan A" failed, no signalling men to shift from one position to another in any organised way...no pre-planned "breakout," just a violent, jarring awakening from an almost coma-like sleep after almost two weeks without any significant rest...stumbling over each other to grab weapons, shot pouches, or boots, scrambling as fast as they could to their positions, and a chill running down their backs as, in each one's mind, came the thought: "well, this is it..God help me.." The rest was a short, hard-fought action at the walls, the breaching of the north, northwest and southwest walls, falling back, almost by instinct, to the long barracks. (As the men were untrained volunteers, there must have been many other unknown movements by individual defenders, who opted to go over the west wall and other points). The brutal, hand to hand fighting in the long barrack and church, then..that's all.
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Post by stuart on Apr 29, 2008 0:50:14 GMT -5
Exactly so and as I said in my last post that's basically what I've been arguing on this subject for some time. In general terms speculation is a good thing, its what we do here, but where problems arise are when it strays into wishful thinking. In this particular case do the defence plans which Mark rightly questions arise from trying to apply an inappropriate level of tactical awareness, or a burning desire that the heroic defenders can be credited with a making a better fight? I can also recall on the old site when we were discussing the question of Mexican casualties, how some posters firmly "believed" that the actual numbers were much higher than the ones we were looking at, and the same (with bells on) goes for the question of the executions, with or without Crockett. It has been argued for example that those executed were sick men from the hospital. I understand that argument as presently presented, but respectfully disagree for reasons I've been through before, but again as I recall its one which originally arose to "excuse" the fact that a handful of the garrison had been so mean-spirited as to surrender and there was similarly an almost pathetic suggestion that if Crockett really was one of those executed it could only be because he was too badly wounded to fight any more. I could go on, but you get the idea. We can and should go on thinking and speculating about a whole raft of things from the flags flown over the Alamo to the motives of Sam Houston [or James Grant for that matter ], just so long as we follow rather than lead the evidence
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