The secret war gaming history of literary giants

Reference has already been made in previous posts here on Vintage Wargaming to the contribution of well known literary figures to early wargaming. These include Robert Louis Stevenson, A.J. Symons, H.G Wells and even Guy Debord.

Less well known is the involvement of a small group of academics and authors in Oxford in 1939, based on the Inklings group and their meetings at the Eagle and Child, and a young subaltern from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment. Even less well known is the contribution their wargaming may have made to some of the most famous and well loved books of the second half of the 20th Century.

The academics and authors were J.R.R Tolkien, the Rawlinson Professor of Anglo Saxon, and C.S. (Jack) Lewis, Fellow and Tutor of Magdalen College. Both men had served on the Western front in the First World War, Tolkien with the Lancashire Fusiliers, and Lewis with the Somerset Light Infantry. Tolkien was invalided out in 1916, while Lewis went to France in 1917. Their experience of war left a lasting impression on both men, and Tolkien’s obsession with trenches is reflected in his later work in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The subaltern was a young officer called Peter Young, who seems to have visited Oxford at irregular intervals to buy military footwear (including commando boots) from the well known Oxford outfitters Walters of the Turl. It may have been on one of these occasions that Peter Young attended a meeting of the Inklings – whether by invitation or accidental presence in the pub on a Tuesday morning is unknown – and met and befriended Lewis and Tolkien

For different reasons all three men sought an escape from their personal experiences of war. It seems that they evolved a complicated fantasy medieval world, where they fought at irregular intervals a mixture of a role playing and wargame campaign, punctuated and inspired by alcoholic intake at the Eagle and Child. Each man ruled an independent kingdom with castles, peasants and armies. Their name for this game was “Donjons and Flagons”, and it was fought using the patriotically incorrect (for the time) Elastolin composition Ritterfiguren (knights) bought by Lewis and Tolkien from Boswells in Broad Street. The embarrassing source of these figures from Germany may have been one of the reasons for the very sketchy detail that has existed to date about this game.

It is interesting to speculate whether this interest in mythical worlds contributed to Lewis’s development of the Narnia books between 1949 and 1954, Tolkien’s writing of the Lord of the Rings trilogy which was published in 1954 and 1955, and even to the Seven Years’ war campaigns described in Charge!

Intriguingly a recent discovery among J.R.R. Tolkien’s papers in Merton College Library (he became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature in 1945) suggests there may have been an additional element in this game – re-enactment. College Librarian M. R. Benn has discovered a previously unrecorded envelope containing two documentary fragments – a faded photograph, inscribed in Tolkien’s handwriting, “Peter Young playing the game, in the garden of 20 Northmoor Road, September 1939”, and the other a bill for hire of three medieval costumes from Walters of the Turl, also dated September 1939.

With permission of the College, the photograph is reproduced below

Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson at Play, from Scribner's Magazine December 1898

I am afraid I can't remember whose blog it was I spotted this link on yesterdayto Bob Beattie's posting of this famous article about RLS and his wargaming activities.

Written by Lloyd Osbourne it incorporated a large extract from RLS's wargames campaign diary, with"mimic war correpondent" reports.

For ease of reading I am reproducing it below.

Something different...

I don't think I have seen much in print, on the internet or on forums about people taking the Situationist International as a starting point for wargames, but there is a first time for everything.

I am indebted to Richard Barbrook for piquing my interest in the Game of War by Guy Debord, with some pictures of Minifgs S Range Hapsburg and Ottoman figures on a gridded terrain.

At first sight reminiscent of the gridded wargames of Gerard de Gre and Joseph Morschauser, it turns out that the Game of War was designed as a board game. Richard's set using these figures is very visually appealing.

The Class Wargames site has much more information on Guy Debord and the Game of War, including a fascinating 25 minute film, viewable as five five-minute segments, a description of the game, and its rules. Figure wargamers may be interested or reassured to see Mark Copplestone's name in the section on players of the game.

Any short summary I could try to give here would not do justice to the material so if you are interested I would suggest you visit the web site through the link above.

If you are interested in seeing more on gridded wargames Bob Cordery is currently pursuing the subject of Joseph Morschauser's rules and mechanisms over on his Wargaming Miscellany blog.

A.J. Symons

by Derek Atwell, from Wargamer's Newsletter 94, January 1970.

Following on H.G. Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson, there is a strange gap in the literature on our pastime.

'Little Wars' is short, practical, and eminently readable: it seems strange that a flood of Wellsian War Game Clubs did not instantly spring into action. Instead we find almost a Dark Age lit only by the rules of Captain Sachs in this country and those of Fletcher Pratt in the States.

With this in mind, it was with considerable interest that I read:-

October 20th, 1921 – For the first time explained to Symons Rules for a Strategic War-Game.
November 4th, 1921 – First practice game on Swinton – Cirencester Street
November 19th, 1921 – Most considerable game yet. 3.30 p.m. – 9.00 p.m.
November 21st, 1921 – First campaign of THE WAR GAME commences. 1st Cavalry and 2nd Infantry Divisions on each side involved.

Here at last was proof positive that H.G's little masterpiece had not entirely fallen on stony ground.

A.J.A. Symons is less well known than R.L.S. or H.G. Yet his book “The Quest for Corvo” is in its way a masterpiece.

The 1921 WAR-GAME was the brain-child of Captain Harold Fisher, who had met A.J. at a debating society of all unlikely places. A glance at the list of debates shows that the Psychology of Crowds was one subject. which suggests that our modern morale rules would have been seized on with enthusiasm. The arrangement was that Fisher devised the Rules and A.J. spent his time trying to circumvent them - at which he was remarkably adept!

To return to the War Game; it was played on a 1" Ordnance Map; a session of 4-5 hours was likely to result only in the pushing back of one section of the line a mile or two. A campaign taking several months. To quote yet more from Julian Symons most interesting biography about A.J. "For a year this game occupied a good deal of my brother's time, and his characteristic passion for verisimilitude in games is well expressed by the typed reports of Campaigns which accompanied the War Game, as well as the Race Game. Now the latter game is concerned with Horse-Racing and one of A.J.'s reports is published; although he must have been very young at the time, it sparkles with all the polish of a really top-flight racing journalist. Who knows if the missing Campaign reports might not rival Robert Louis Stevenson's classic account of the affair around the Sandusky; of the sad end of the editor of the Yallobelly Record. He was hung by order of Lloyd Osbourn.

A.J. was a man of many interests; he had written books on Emin Pasha and the explorer Stanley; he was an expert amateur forger! Co-founder of the Wine and Food Society and a born club secretary. With all these interests and talents had he been with us still; one could visualise a Colonial Wargame Convention; the rules would be complex, written orders might well have been forged!

In the alcoves would be Palm-Trees; the doors would be guarded by immense Africans with fearsome tribal tattoos and assegais; as befits the organiser of The Wine and Food Society the menu would have been unforgettable certainly and possibly indigestable. This I am not inventing, it is the menu that he did lay on for an African dinner.

Paw-paws - Peanut soup - Turtle Fins - Egg-Plant and Mango Fool - Corn on the Cob. Of course they should have washed it down with Palm .Vine; actually the wines were more suitable an exclusive cavalry Regimental dinner or perhaps a similar affair at Sandhurst?

Many readers will rightly say that there is little about wargaming in this article. If I have done no more than introduce a few readers to the 'Quest for Corvo and Julian Symons1 - A.J.A.Symons. His Life and Speculations - published by Eyre and Spottiswoode 1950, I shall be quite content.

HG Wells, the English Novelist, playing an Indoor War Game