What do they do at a War College ?

 

The answer to this question is practically everything. Everything to do with war, its prevention and a lot else.  There are a huge number of very specific courses tailored to highly defined courses and groups of students. I share a building with one big group of International Students who do courses designed to help their navies deal with things like maritime security in coastal waters (responding to drugs and people trafficking, terrorism, smuggling, piracy, climate change – things like that). There are research institutes that specialise in studying China and Russia, maritime law, humanitarian disaster relief etc etc etc and they all offer short courses, that are nearly all unclassified. I’m in a unit that does historical research on navies that feeds into today’s experience and we support some of the main courses that ordinary staff college students go through. So I do an Elective on ‘How to grow a Navy’ over 10+ weeks, which will probably be my last bit of sustained teaching ever, so I’m glad it’s full and going well so far. Good to end on a high note – I hope it continues. We in this Hattendorf historical unit run our own courses, but because I am now only half-time I only do a bit of that.

I do quite a lot of ‘visiting artiste’ gigs with the other main departments.  The main one I have been dealing with has been the ‘Joint Military Operations’ department which is the most professional and war-fighting department of them all but which only operates at the unclassified levels and has full International involvement along with US students from the Navy and all the other services. Historical insights have things to offer here.

 Last week, for example, I was involved in one of their ‘war games’ . The idea is that they look at past campaigns, learn lessons and look at whether they apply today. I sat in on their re-run of the Falklands campaign, which lasted over a week. There are really complicated rules to how to run the game but the students are free to approach it (as the UK or Argentine side) as they wish, knowing of course as they do, what really happened).

They take it very seriously as you can see from the two pics with a lot of animated discussion about  the best options. Eventually the Brits ‘won’ again ( not that that’s the point of the exercise) but in a different. Way. Its then followed up with a big review of everything that was done the best way forwards. My point was that I didn’t think either team paid sufficient attention to the domestic and international limits they were operating under, or the legal constraints, which they took in good part.

Otherwise its been a quiet but busy period with the final despatch of my last book to the Publisher and then the Easter weekend. Not of course in the US Easter is the event it is in the UK. No days off, although people do take leave. Mine was unexpectedly busy with an easter family party on the Saturday, with a decided Swedish twist. This seemed to revolve around singing little verses about sea-faring issues between slugs of Aquavit. (Not entirely sure what that has to do with Easter but there were loads of eggs around too). The following day I had an Easter Sunday brunch with friends at a former Hyatt Hotel on Goat Island where Cherry and I used to stay in days gone by when I was over here for big conferences.  The other major event of the holiday was my getting scammed – my laptop was locked and to clear it I unwisely took up the invitation to phone a number I thought came from Microsoft. This was a mistake. I should have done immediately what the family said from the other side of the Atlantic, and just hard-stopped the laptop. No real harm done as far as I can tell, but I had to get my laptop cleaned, and block my bank accounts and change all important passwords, which took a few stressful hours, especially during a holiday weekend. Since then, I’ve had lots of phone calls on my US phone, quite a few from China, all of which I ignore, and have turned it to silent.  This didn’t contribute much to the festive spirit. 

However, I recovered with a walk round the bird reserve at Sachusett Point on Easter Monday. Saw a few birds, though not as many as I probably should have done. I did spot six White-tailed deer though, quite like our fallow only a bit bigger and less spotted. It was a gorgeous day though with the usual cold wind.

               Otherwise all is well. A few leaves are appearing on the bushes and from my back porch  I can see that the first cruise liner has turned up in the bay, so Spring is here at last and the Summer in sight.