The men

Twenty-five men in five tanks, and you are one of them. Each has a name, a hometown, a temperament, a trade, and a running account of how frightened he is. This chapter is about the men: how they are made, what stress does to them, what they do when it is too much, how they learn, and what your commanders think of you, which is the number that decides whether an order gets obeyed.

Who they are

Every crewman has seven traits: nerve, composure, awareness, intelligence, discipline, aggression and sociability. He has one skill, for his seat. He has a name, an age, a hometown and a line of background, and one quirk, which changes nothing in the simulation and everything in how he talks to you. The men are generated for each campaign and they are fictional; any resemblance to a man who was there is chance.

A green draftee of 1942 sits in the middle of every trait and low in every skill. A veteran, which in Tunisia means the enemy, is steadier, more aware, more disciplined, and much better at his job. A seasoned crew has fought before and sits halfway between the two. Your campaign’s men start green; a single scenario may field any of the three. A disciplined commander gives you directions as bearings; the rest say north or south-west and leave you to work it out.

You, in tank one, have wounds and nothing else. Your nerve is your own.

Stress

Every man carries a stress figure, from none to breaking, and every frightening thing that happens near him adds to it. How much depends on the thing, on how close it was, on whether he saw it or only felt it, on his composure, on how long his crew has been together, and on how much he has been through before.

From least to most: a period spent in contact; an anti-tank gun spotted; an enemy tank spotted; a shell landing near; the ready rack running empty under fire; being sent into a known kill zone; a Tiger spotted or reported; a friendly tank hit; the tank immobilised; the tank hit without penetration; a near miss; a friendly tank brewing up; a close assault; a casualty in the tank; the tank penetrated; and, worst of all, the commander killed.

Stress comes off slowly when there is no enemy in the tank’s knowledge, faster when the tank is well away from any contact, and not at all under fire. It does not come off because you said something kind on the radio.

Reactions

Every second, every man rolls against his stress. Below a threshold set by his nerve nothing happens. Above it the chance grows with how far past it he is, and a disciplined man holds out longer than a careless one. When the roll goes against him he reacts, and the reaction is minor, major or extreme by how far gone he is.

A frozen man does nothing for some seconds. Any man at the extreme may try to bail out in a panic, and the commander’s discipline is what stops him. Every reaction is written down, and reacting does not make a man less frightened.

Stress also takes the edge off skill. Every man works at less than his skill as his stress climbs, and a man at breaking is half the gunner or driver he was in the morning.

Skill cohesion and trust

Men learn. Every action a seat performs with an enemy in knowledge, a shot, a round loaded, a move, a contact gained, adds a little to that seat’s skill, more for a clever man, up to a cap per battle and a cap for life. A crew that fights and lives gets better.

A crew also has a cohesion figure, one for the five of them, that starts low for men who trained together and at nothing for men thrown together from the depot. Every period survived with an enemy in knowledge adds a little; every casualty takes a good deal away; and a replacement joining costs the crew a fifth of what held them together. Cohesion damps the stress every man takes and shortens the commander’s fire command. It is what a veteran crew has and a rebuilt one does not.

And each man holds a trust: a crewman’s in his commander, a commander’s in you. Trust begins in the middle and moves on what happens after your orders. A period in contact that ends with no casualty after following an order raises it a little. A casualty soon after a move or an engage order lowers it a good deal. An order rejected as impossible lowers it a little. Your tank moving ahead of the platoon into contact raises every commander’s trust in you; ordering a withdrawal from a losing fight raises it more; a tank lost while your own tank is out of contact lowers it most of all.

What a commander is told

Every period the simulation writes each commander a short disposition and gives it to the language model that plays him: his stress band, steady to breaking; his trust band, hostile to loyal; his losses this battle; the contacts he holds; whether he would refuse a risky order, which takes both a stress past his threshold and a trust that has gone; and whether he has stopped reporting. That is all the model knows of his mind, and the numbers themselves are never in it.

In camp

In a campaign, between battles, your commanders come to see you. At most two of an evening, each about the weightiest thing the day did to him, in a fixed order of weight: a man of his crew killed or evacuated; his own promotion that morning; a stranger from the depot joining his crew; his trust in you gone hostile; coming out of the last action shaken; an order of yours his tank could not carry out; a kill credited or a decoration earned; and some evenings, nothing in particular. He says what he came to say. You answer in your own words, twice at most, and he takes it as the man he is and goes, heartened or satisfied or unmoved or stung, and his trust in you moves by which. A man promoted that morning is heartened before you say a word. A man you did not see before the platoon moved out is unmoved. Nothing else about a visit moves anything.

In the Reference: §8.1, §8.2, §9.1, §9.2, §9.3, §9.4, §9.5, §9.6, §9.7, §9.8, §9.9