"Hokushi Jihen"
Sino-Japanese War Scenario #1:
Incident at Marco Polo Bridge Scenario v1.1
Designed for:
Norm Koger's Operational Art of War
Designed by John H. Ebert
Many thanks to all who have critiqued and complimented my work on this scenario. A follow-up to it is well under way (depicting the campaign for the Peping-Suiyan Railway in Inner Mongolia immediately after this campaign), and ought to be released before too long.
Many who will ultimately download this file have probably seen it already; as most will notice, the changes made are not particularly great. But, for the sake of those who might be reading this for the first time, I will keep some of the previous designer notes.
This particular operation, the campaign to capture the Chinese city of Peiping (Today’s Beijing) was chosen as the basis of a scenario because it is the logical starting point for a designer that intends to continue creating Sino-Japanese war scenarios. It is also geographically contained, orders of battle are reasonable sized, TO/E's are documented fairly well, and in duration the campaign is quite short. It’s just the sort of scenario I feel TOAW needs more of (not that there’s anything wrong with a monster 300 turn scenario…but a quick ten turn scenario is fun once in a while)
3. Historical facts, contemporary shortcomings:
Though I think this scenario is pretty decent and is as good a representation of this battle as one is likely to find, the scenario fails as a "perfect" simulation in a variety of ways, as you would expect. For one thing, it is simply impossible to ask the computer to make the Chinese units behave in all cases as they did historically, although the 1.04.08 patch and a little work on objectives and unit postures has produced some improvements over the first game.
As an example of what I have been, so far, unable to produce with TOAW, I submit the following quotation from Frank Dorn’s book, The Sino Japanese War 1937-41 that:
"Unlike other armies, when the Chinese gave ground they usually did so in great retreating leaps of 50 miles or more."
Happily, changes made to TOAW since this file was last written have made retreat calculations somewhat less cataclysmic and lethal for the retreating units. As a result, the current scenario plays a little differently (and more accurately) precisely because Chinese units are now able to more or less survive their retreats.
Historically, the majority of the Chinese who participated in this operation survived the campaign by retreating north to Nankow or south to Paoting and Machang. These Chinese strongholds were not attacked until the Hokushi Jihen, or North China Incident, had been satisfactorily settled.
4. Questions of Balance
Yes, the game is a bit hard for the Chinese player…but then again, that’s historical. What wasn’t historical was the Chinese putting up much of a fight. Had they done that, they might have been able to convince the Japanese militarists to take a second look at unrestricted mobilization. The 1.04 update to TOAW and my subsequent tweaking makes this version of the scenario a goodly bit more challenging to the Japanese if a few "what ifs" don’t go their way and the Chinese player fights with real determination and intelligence. Unlike a lot of excuse-making weak sisters, I consider this to be a proper historical setting, as well.
While I appreciate the perspective of some players and designers that a scenario’s victory requirements mustn’t necessarily be historical (i.e. a popular school of thought is that a gamer must do markedly better than his forces did historically in order to gain victory) I have never been one to allow a non-thinking game to deeply judge the results of a long campaign based solely upon some arbitrary "score." As such, I leave it to each player to evaluate his or her performance at the conclusion of the scenario. If, at the end, you feel you have done the best job you could have given what you had to work with, then you needn’t feel insulted or flattered by anything the computer might say…after all, TOAW only allows for one side to actually win, otherwise a simple "draw" is the result…and not the many shades of victory and defeat that color each and every campaign.
The Second Sino-Japanese War is an excellent example of this. In nearly every way and by any objective standard of victory, the Chinese lost this war very, very badly (with the exception of a couple campaigns, i.e. Changsha)…although, in point of fact, they "won" by default when, on September 9th, 1945 at 9:00am, General Ho Ying-Chin presided over an instrument of surrender signed by Neiji Okamura, commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Forces in China. He who laughs last laughs best. But more on this later.
Many thanks to Mark Royer for his assistance in putting right some of the fudging and guesses I had been forced to make in the previous version of the scenario. Other contributions via e-mail are similarly appreciated.
5. TOAW Soapbox
I’d like to briefly and indirectly take up an issue in the hopes that anyone who might feel compelled to "educate" me as to how "evil" the Japanese were during this war might consider taking a long walk of a short pier, instead.
Part of what makes the study of history so enjoyable is the fact that history is precisely what we are studying…past events. Several letters writers have expressed "indignation" or "outrage" over the fact I chose to use a respected Japanese-authored biography of the Japanese foreign minister, Koki Hirota, or the often China-critical biographical history of the war written by General Stillwell’s close friend and colleague (Frank Dorn), as opposed to "more Chinese sources."
None of these dissenting voices seemed to notice that I did, in fact, use the official English history of the war as written by the "exiled" Republic of China, (Taiwan). They also ignore the fact that author Frank Dorn was actually in China during the campaign this scenario attempts to re-create, and frequently heaps scorn and dissenting comment upon the "official" Chinese version of events.
All things being equal, his scorn for and criticism of the "official" Chinese spin has more credibility in my mind than any combination of Chinese tomes, considering the course of events after the war and the volume of reading I have done using sources written before, during, and after the war. .
I personally feel that hotheaded "outrage" or "indignation" over events some six decades old is a bit much; such feelings might more appropriately be replaced with "solemn remembrance" or something dignified and intelligent. Too much to ask, perhaps, but this is how Americans at large tend to deal with things like the Pearl Harbor bombing.
Most people today are able to distinguish between past and present, and are thus able to enjoy historical study and simulation without guilt or a feeling of "betraying the memories" of war victims, Chinese or Japanese, civilian or otherwise.
Some people, however, are unable not only to study the past without excessive emotion, but also are not skilled enough critical thinkers to separate the surviving remnants of wartime propaganda that still litter the historical literature from true tales of actual atrocity. The result is muddled, uncritical, and excessively rancorous rhetoric on the part of those demonstrably least in the know. More than any past victims, it is these contemporary know-nothings that excite my sincere pity.