winterbadger | sad news for wargamers and historians (Reply)

Paddy Griffith, a British historian and wargamer, has died. What follows is a remembrance of him published by Howard Whitehouse, another UK gamer and lover of history.

I heard today that British wargames pioneer Paddy Griffith has died of a heart attack.

I am hugely saddened by this news. Paddy was my mentor, not only in terms of designing wargames but as a writer. He told me, "You have a book in you," and promptly told me what it was, then published it - 'Battle in Africa', back in 1988. I took his point. That was six books ago.

We were friends for 27 years, although we probably only ever met on a handful of occasions. Those meetings were eventful, hilarious, and filled with food and wine. He once insisted I take him to the 'Big Chicken' in Marietta, Ga, because Marietta loomed large in his ACW studies, and the idea of going to a fast food joint designed like a giant hen appealed to him.

Paddy was a believer that wargames should be fun, and that tight rules could strangle a game. He was an early proponent of Scienec versus Pluck, and wrote me a wonderful letter telling me how his force had been isolated, run out of ammo, and wiped out. He loved the whole thing. We played a game at my apartment in Atlanta where I kept removing his scout elements from the table. He thought that was brilliant. "I just hope some of them come back, sometime."

I remember staying at his house in Nuneaton and playing a series of demented two-player games involving drawing accurate maps of places I was only vaguely aware of (C17th Lancashire) then being caught out because Paddy plotted his movement on a real map while I moved on my fictional landscape. "That's how it was for the Scots in 1648" was his rationale! We finished that evening in his garden, shooting an air rifle at a model of a cantilevered bridge. Wine was involved.

He and I wandered the North Georgia and Chattanooga battlefields of the ACW on one occasion. He was a terrific companion and extremely knowledgable. Paddy believed it was important to throw stones at long-existing ideas which had ossifed into orthodoxy.

When I was slow in responding in a BPEM game (as mayor of a Spanish city under siege by Napoleon's armies) he inflicted a variety of disasters on me. Eventually, he had me killed. That served me right.

I'll miss him enormously. My condolences to Genievieve and Robert, their son.

Howard