Chaplains in PG

[thomaso827]

Most of my Army career was spent as a Chaplain Assistant. I ended up teaching military history at the Chaplain School in the last 2 years before leaving in '95. So one of my pet projects has been to add a chaplain character/counter to games. Easy enough for US and perhaps British as there is usually 1 assigned to a battalion. I'm afraid I'm not up on other armies, and was a bit surprised when I found Lutheran chaplains in Falschirmjaeger units in WW2. The easiest thing I can think of to include a chaplain in a game where there is 2 or more companies from the same battalion present is to take a spare Captain or LT counter, one without a Leadership rating but that has at least a 1 to help rally troops. If this seems a bit too much for many games, then perhaps an included officer can be used as a chaplain if you draw one that meets that leadership criteria. He's not a combat leader but is there working with those who have broken or who are on the verge of breaking. The Catastrophic Leader Loss rule should probably be incorporated with use of a chaplain in such a game. Adding a Padre to any of the British games might be an interesting way to try this out, or to just about any of the larger Airborne scenarios. I don't have any experience with the Campaign rules yet but I could see something along the same lines in one of those. Any other thoughts?

Tom Oxley