Limited Info Wargaming

Reading Death Valley AAR and the comments from Roger about why he 
held back (not knowing that he had Chris on the ropes).... in an odd 
episode of synchronicity, I was watching TV last night and saw a 
really neat program on the battle for Goose Green. 

In it, they talked about the shortcomings of the UK commander (how he 
got sucked into the battle at A company's position rather than 
maintaining the big picture and ended up getting killed... think he 
still got a big medal though...). 

But one of the most interesting points they brought out was that when 
the Argentinians in Goose Green (the village) surrendered, they did 
so because they felt they had failed to hold some of the key 
objectives which the UK took and so they were defeated and surrender 
was the sensible course. After the UK commander was killed in the 
fighting, the Paras rallied and took some key objectives to allow 
them to surround Goose Green. But THEY thought they'd failed in their 
objectives (to capture Goose Green). They offered the Argies a chance 
to surrender out of moxie/bluff, and the Argentinians bit. 

Turned out to be a damn good thing too. Instead of finding 100 or so 
Argentinians, they found many times that number in Goose Green. Urban 
combat there would have been rather a shock for the Paras. 

So it just goes to show that where intel is limited, people make 
vastly different decisions about how to procede.

T. 

PS - The doco was pretty well done and gave good credit to some of 
the Argentinian soldiers. And it had a soft spot in my heart because 
the Paras were all lugging SLRs (FN C1 to me.... the weapon I trained 
on!) and they had weight issues with weapons and ammo..... (something 
I can relate to, having carried FN C1/C2 and the 7.62 FMJ ammo)