Gratuitous Snow Shots

We are having an unusually active winter, here at the end of February. I took the opportunity to drive down the road to the Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park, and take a few photographs. No one there, except me, the squirrels, foxes, and deer. And a VERY chatty visitor center attendant, who must be going stir crazy from lack of human contact. So…no real historical content to this, other than the location, but I hope it’s enjoyable, nonetheless.

A bad photo of Hindman Hall, lair of the chatty ranger. They have a pretty nice interpretive tour inside. There used to be an enormous diorama in the center of the hall, but it’s now gone. I wonder what happened to it.

Blacksmith’s shop.

Many snows have fallen since 1862.

Snakity snake.

This hill was repeatedly stormed.

This is a one room schoolhouse.

Yes, another building.

This is the end.

Crossfire Videos

For those of you who, like me, are interested in Crossfire, there are a few excellent videos on the subject posted up to YouTube. Not being a WordPress Pro subscriber, I can’t embed video, and can only provide you with lowly links, but I assure you they’re well worth checking out!

 

The fellow from the Lloydian Aspects website has started a series of short videos on Crossfire. They’re each +/- three minutes long, and broken down by subject. He does a great job with the videos (including some really cool stop motion animations), and is an excellent presenter.

Here’s the first video in the series.

Then, the indomitable War Panda has created a couple of videos which go into greater detail (including the explanation of some interesting house rules) on Crossfire. If you’re familiar with WPs blog, you should be excited to get a good look at his gaming table and terrain.

 

Here’s War Panda’s first video.

Both of these videos are several steps above your average wargaming YouTube fair-I don’t think you’ll find yourself becoming bored. Check them out!

 

D-day, Then and Now

Check out these super cool then and now photographs of the beaches and towns of Normandy on D-day.

 

Shortest Arkiegamer post, ever!

 

Edit—-

Another great selection of then and now photographs, this time hosted at the ibtimes.

Pea Ridge: 152nd Anniversary (Reference Photos)

The battle of Pea Ridge occurred on March 7-8, 1862, but they ‘celebrated’ the anniversary this weekend, which was the 15th-16th. There was a small collection of reenactors doing demonstrations, and, as the highlight, the national park brought out their functioning 6 pound smoothbore and had it fired a few times. It’s always great to go out and wander the 4,300 acres (4300!!) of the park, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to get some reference photos for my wargaming efforts.

The demonstration area was in a field south of the Old Wire Road, near Elkhorn Tavern. It being March, the sun was low in the southern sky, so, unfortunately, most of these photos are back-lit. I’ve tried to do some ‘correction’ in Photoshop to reduce some of the high contrast shadows, without totally blowing out the highlights.

Anyway, I hope some of this proves useful to someone, somewhere.

This gentleman is portraying a Missouri State Militia member. He gave a brief tour of an action that occurred just north of Elkhorn Tavern-an artillery duel between a four gun Illinois battery and 22 Confederate guns. The engagement produced a Medal of Honor winner. I’m sure you can guess the ultimate outcome. Excellent presenter. That fellow in the back isn’t a reenactor, just your typical rural Arkansan of a certain vintage.

 

Model 1841 6 Pounder. Your barrels can’t be too bright, or too brassy. These 6 pounders were prevalent in the early war, but were soon supplanted by larger smoothbores.

Union limber. I’m sure the ‘6 Pounder’ wasn’t on the back, back in the day. Note, the top of the ammo box is NOT padded. I’ve been painting them as if they were for my miniatures. Ugh.

Bad timing, on my part by a fraction of a second. Still, here’s the lanyard being pulled.

They fired the gun twice while I was there. VERY cool. The piece actually belongs to the national park, not a reenactment group. The ranger gave a detailed presentation while the crew went through their drill before firing.

Here’s a dropbox link to a video I took of the artillery piece firing. I was using my little hand-held Lumix camera, so it’s a little jerky, at times.

There was a presenter for each side. Both were great at their job. And not overly-well fed, like some of the other troops.

I probably mix up differing pants and jacket colors too often in my miniatures, if this is anything to go by. Also, note how light the un-dyed (I assume) fabrics can be.

Volley fire

Here’s a video of Confederate volley fire.

Union presenter. Also great.

War face. Note the variety in shades of blue and indigo. I believe these guys were portraying the 24th Missouri Infantry, but I could be mistaken.

Union column approaches

Every Confederate wants to see the Yankee rear, right?

Video of the Union reenactors firing by file.

PhotosNormandie

I logged into my Flickr account, tonight, which is something I haven’t done in a long time. While I was on the site, I stumbled across PhotosNormandie in my contact list. PhotosNormandie is a resource I had totally forgotten about. It is a sprawling photographic archive from the Normandy campaigns of ’44-’45.

It’s quite useful as a reference for terrain, building, equipment, and uniform details. It’s also great as a stark reminder of the reality which we attempt to game. Anyway, go have a look, if you’re interested in the campaign-you’re bound to see some interesting photographs (many of which are extremely good photographs, to boot).

Nafziger Orders of Battle Collection

A friend of mine (Hi Frank!) made me aware of a great resource, yesterday. The Nafziger Orders of Battle Collection is hosted by the Combined Arms Research Library, and is freely available. I’ll quote the library website’s summary of the collection:

“The Nafziger Orders of Battle Collection contains a compilation of 7985 individual orders of battle from 1600 to 1945. It began with Nafziger’s interest in Napoleonic Wars, and steadily grew to other areas because of the gaming public’s interest in these highly detailed historical orders of battle…..Nearly all orders of battle break down to the regimental level.”

This may be one of those things that every historical wargamer in the world, except me, knows about already, but I thought I’d put up the link just the same.

Pea Ridge Visual Reference

I live a short distance from the Pea Ridge American Civil War National Battlefield and went there this morning to kick around and get myself inspired for the upcoming ACW wargaming hijinx.

The park is a great place to go for a hike or bike ride, as the the grounds cover hundreds of acres. Wildlife is abundant-usually you see dozens of whitetail deer. This trip a large variety of colorful butterflies took center stage. The prairie grasses, rolling landscape, and managed woodlands are all great environments to move through.

Anyway, there is a variety of split rail fencing to look at, various cannon, and the Elkhorn Tavern reconstruction, which I may try to scratch-build at some point. I thought I’d put together a small visual reference for the future.

Without further to-do, here are three types of split rail fence on display at Pea Ridge.

Split Rail Type 1

Split Rail Type 1

Split Rail Type 2

Split Rail Type 2

Split Rail Type 3

Gate connection. This may be totally ahistorical. It does, however, work.

Gate Connection: Part Deux

And here is the scene of the heaviest fighting-Elkhorn Tavern.

Elkhorn Tavern

 

Elkhorn Tavern – West Elevation

Elkhorn Tavern – South Elevation

Elkhorn Tavern – East Elevation

Elkhorn Tavern – North Elevation

Elkhorn Tavern – Artist’s Depiction (note the difference in the porch canopy compared to the photographs and the lack of ground floor railing)

And last, but not least, some cannon, which I am too ignorant to identify. I do know (well, guess, really) that they are NOT 12 pound Napoleons.

I have no idea what sort of cannon this is. It’s rifled. Its carriage is a deep olive green. Barrel is of brass. It has a flared muzzle.

The Virtual Photography of Lyle Jansma

Over at the Smithsonian Museum’s Air & Space Magazine website, they’re hosting virtual cockpits of various vehicles done through (presumable) photo collage. The quality is very high. This is probably mainly of interest to military modelers and the idly curious, but I presume there’s some crossover between those audiences and the historical wargaming clique.

Here’s the link.

Pea Ridge National Military Park – Arkansas

The Battle of Pea Ridge is an American Civil War battle that took place about 30 miles from where I live in Northwest Arkansas. At this battle, the outnumbered Union Army of the Southwest defeated the poorly led Confederate Army of the West over two days in March of 1862. Which puts paid to the apologist notion that the Confederacy was ‘unfairly’ defeated by overwhelming quantities of men and material from the densely populated and heavily industrialized north. In any case, the Union’s victory here cemented their control over Missouri and north Arkansas. Well, except for the utter lawlessness of raiders and other irregulars on both sides of the conflict.

Enough of my amateur history lesson. The battlefield as it currently stands is quite lovely to visit. An 8 mile hike is an excellent way to cover the ground-you’ll see beautiful oak forests and pass through groves of cedar trees only to emerge into golden fields (well, in winter, anyway) to see miles of rail fencing and dozens of cannon arrayed in their historical positions. There’s also a ring road around the entire site, if you prefer to travel by car, but I don’t think you get as good of a sense of the tactical situation the commanders and soldiers faced from the seat of a car.

Of course, my little trip to Pea Ridge today has me thinking about yet another conflict to game. Yikes.

You’ll have to excuse me succumbing to the lure of iphone photo filters on a couple of these shots.

Row of cannon deployed at a woodline.

Herds of white tail deer inhabit these fields.

Elkhorn Tavern, which sits at a strategically important road intersection.

 

Recommended Listening

I’m on a podcast binge, of late. Here are a couple of history-related shows that I can recommend for listening while jogging, cooking, driving, painting, and other zen-like zone out activities. Don’t zone out too much in the car, though!

• The Napoleon Bonaparte Podcast is an interesting (and detailed) listen. The show is hosted by an Australian named Cameron Reilley, and the resident expert is J. David Markham, who has written a couple of books on the emperor. I suspect that they have a considerable pro-Napoleon bias, but I think that’s fine.
• I’ve recently started listening to the British History Podcast, which is quite good. The podcast starts with the pre-history of Britain (like 30,000BC) and intends to run all the way up until modern times. Jamie Jeffers is the man behind the mike, and he has a compelling speaking voice. Some of the humor is a bit forced and dorky, but overall the production is quite slick.