Oh Camel ye faithful

Adventures with the Western Desert Force in WW1

The affair of the Wadi Senab : 11th December 1915

By way of a rules test we decided to take ‘From shako to coal scuttle’ by Nordic weasel games for a spin in the ww1 western desert. You can find some background briefing on the little known ww1 western desert campaign and this scenario here The Senussi campaign

The Senussi were a religious grouping of Bedouin and Arabic desert dwellers who had fought the French, the Italians, the ottomans, and each other for several years in the Libyan and North African coastal regions. Stirred up by the Turks (who also rather nicely provided arms and equipment and some serious training) they were incited into action during 1915. Replete with many tales of daring - do the campaign was conducted by a cobbled together imperial force including Indians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, territorial yeomenry and literally anyone else not doing anything. It was to demonstrate both the best and worst of British leadership and military prowess. 

Unfortunately, despite its rich pickings for war gamers it has been somewhat neglected ; fear not! TSOG has ridden to the rescue. Once you’ve had a bit of a read of the background brief read on…

Early in the campaign the British established a forward base at matruh and commenced combined operations. One of the first encounters was at the wadi senab on 11 December 1915.

General Wallace split his forces; sending the mounted column and guns inland whilst the foot advanced along the coastal road.

The Imperial units set up at the positions on the map. As luck would have it the first Sanusi units to activate were the Ghar’barge ones on the left hand side (Senussi units come in three sorts ; highly trained mutafizia, tribal Ghar’lib, and Ghar’barge from the desert). This caused the imperial units to immediately veer to the left. As later developments will show, this provided an unintended advantage for the imperials in that it kept them from being mown down by the unseen Ghar’lib in the wadi. 

The first turn was spent with the Senussi firing wildly at the armoured car and leading yeomen. Those Senussi who didn’t engage in such timid behaviour leap up and started running towards the Imperial line shouting loudly as they went. Major Wigan remained unaware of the much better quality Senussi on the right (‘they’re only blinds and could be anything’ quoth Major Wigan). Deciding to ignore the potential threat, the yeomen turned almost as one and moved toward the left hand enemy units. 

Several turns elapsed where close range charging from the yeomen was responded to with close range counter charging and firing from the Senussi. It should be noted that these units were only partially armed with rifles and equally likely to obey or disobey orders; failure to obey resulted in them screaming off toward the nearest enemy in a fanatical attempt to close and kill. Several rounds of combat occurred along the battle line with honours being shared fairly equally. 

The Senussi unit to the left are about to cement themselves in Bedouin folk lore by fending off a charge from both the yeomen units and living to tell the tale.

The armoured car attempted to reverse out from between the sandy boggy area and immediately damaged a rear axle. It kept moving and firing but the mechanic was not amused as he was going to have to get out and fix it. ‘It’s got a reverse gear, we can use that’ he exclaimed haughtily. 

One sand dune was set to become a constantly fought over terrain feature before eventually falling to the Senussi.

The Imperial commander was having trouble trying to work out what to do with his guns. They moved too slowly to be able to race down the length of the board and escape, so inevitably had to unlimber and attempt to fight off the Senussi on their own. It was clear that the poor quality Ghar’barge had dragged the yeomen off the road and absorbed much of the damage. This action therefore removed the yeomen from the potentially devastating field of fire of the better quality tribal Senussi yet to emerge from the wadi.

The group at the bottom spent their time rather ineffectually firing at the armoured car while alternatively advancing then being driven back by the hail of machine gun fire. It was fun but was it war?

It was clear that the right hand side of the board was probably more dangerous for the imperials than the left-hand side. As the better quality tribal units emerged from the wadi and closed with the artillery, there was a growing sense of doom in the imperial camp. At this stage the Senussi brought their machine gun to bear. The threat from the armoured car however was so great they decided to use it in an attempt to penetrate the armour and knock out the vehicle. It didn’t happen but it was noisy.

In the ongoing fight over the sand dune one unit was routed off the playing area and disappeared back into the desert. This did not help save the yeomen as they were quickly replaced with another Arab unit that cleared the sand dune once more.

At this stage the yeomen were starting to feel the effects of a long and bitter encounter. One unit was withdrawing to the rear of the column despite not suffering many casualties. The lead yeomen were reduced to 50% and took shelter behind the armoured car along with major Wigan. Due to a lack of targets the tribal Senussi and machine gun found themselves in the open and equidistant between the armoured car and the field guns. They were driven one way and then the other under the hail of shells and bullets. Unfortunately for the British the shelling caused not much more than a few scratches. 

The advanced English group were now completely separated from the rear of the column. The artillery were desperately trying to work out how they could stop the oncoming Senussi with just a couple of yeomen, a squadron of Australian Light-horse, and an apparent absence of shells that killed Senussi. More importantly, the Notts battery had never loosed a shot in anger previously; so even firing the guns was a bit problematic (‘the big cylindrical looking thing goes in the bottom end lads’).

The sand dune was finally claimed by the Senussi with the yeomen retreating back to support the guns. Both yeomen units had been very roughly handled.

At this stage Wigan decided that as discretion was the better part of valour, cowardness was the better part of discretion, and decided to lead the armoured car and the remnants of the yeomen off to link up with the main force.

To the right in the pic below the battered but still mobile Ghar’barge units can be seen still surging after the retreating English.

This unfortunately left the balance of the column to defend themselves against the bulk of the Senussi until help arrived. To the sound of mutterings such as ‘the bastard, where is he going?’ and ‘calls himself a commander … I’ve had better commands from madam Lazonka at the pussy cat palace in soho’ major Wigan absented himself from the affair (yes, we realise that this pic makes it look as if Wigan was leading his men into a bowl of  cheezels…but we can assure you they were all eaten by the Senussi before he got there).

The Senussi commander at this stage decided to bite the bullet (or the cheezels), identify what he could for intelligence purposes, and bugger off to rejoin the main army. This decision and the fact that we had reached the end of the 12 allotted moves saved us working out how the hell the artillery was going to survive until the main column bailed them out.

The guns can be seen circling the wagons (well, the draft horses anyway) with the yeomen retiring back to provide support (alright …fleeing in panic back to provide support). The aussies have gone forward to buy time. Note in doing so they sustained 2 casualties and 4 points of disarray.  So the next turn would have seen them flee back to the guns to rally. The situation could be best described as a bloody fiasco, or officially, a good test of the initial British deployment programme subject to future operational modifications.

A good run through of shako to coal scuttle. We got through 12 action packed and dramatic moves with a definite result.  One realisation is that it’s a dice rich set of rules. If you like rolling dice these are for you : we rolled thousands of them. 

The next test is to try a bigger battle. So on to day 2 of the Senussi campaign…another wadi and another ambush (the British just don’t seem to learn, do they). This time they are strung out along a coastal road and have to fight with their backs to the Mediterranean. 

In this forthcoming affair the British will learn that

1. Fighting with your back to the Mediterranean is better than the other way around,

2. The shrapnel shells are in the boxes labelled shrapnel,

3. Australians have big horses and you can hide behind them,

4. Never divide your forces in the face of a bigger and unknown enemy,

5. Sending the entire battalion is better than just sending the lead company even if you do think that one British tommy is worth 1000 hostile savages,

and

6. Never believe what you read in wargames blogs.