The Sentinel

Abbo’s Archive Each week we feature the work of the late, great Sentinel journalist John Abberley. This piece was triggered by a report saying toy soldiers are no longer considered an appropriat­e present for children

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EVERYBODY was keen to persuade me that what was happening on several battlefiel­ds crowded with tiny figures was much more than a game of soldiers. I didn’t see anyone firing bricks or matchstick­s. The only sound was the rattle of a dice.

All the same, Stoke-on-trent Wargames Group seemed to take a boyish pride in their armies, assembled in dingy rooms above a shop in Longton. Between 40 and 50 grown men crowded round the tables.

No-one knew where a game might lead — or how long it was going to last. The Battle of Borodino was the longest at Longton. It lasted eight months.

I wanted to ask whether any of the players went down with battle fatigue, but I doubt whether the joke would have been appreciate­d.

I’m sure no-one set out deliberate­ly to baffle me, but my head started spinning when a chap named Pete mentioned that in their version of the Battle of Waterloo, three members were playing Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington and God respective­ly.

It became obvious, in fact, that the final result of this table-top Waterloo might not match the historical facts.

Amid all the complex calculatio­ns and furrowed brows, I was ready for a breather, but Pete insisted on showing me more mysteries in another darkened room where people seemed to be talking a lot.

It turned out that these fellows were immersed in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and describing the adventures of giants, hobgoblins, trolls and orcs.

When Pete told me that some members had been known to storm out of the room after their character was killed off, I was ready to make a hasty exit myself. It was getting weird.

It was a relief to be taken back to the small but perfectly-formed model soldiers on the battlefiel­ds. Things were much calmer there.

But I still wanted to know something about the psychology behind these war games. One member said it was the result of growing up with John Wayne films, though he might have been kidding.

The chairman, a spot welder, assured me they had no interest in glorifying war or violence.

It was all about the logistics of battles and modelling soldiers. Why, he smiled, they even had a female member whose nickname was Frog.

I was glad to get out into the night air and leave them to get on with the Battle of Waterloo.

It might have been a lot more fun, I felt, if they’d put the dice away and fired matchstick­s.

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