Chess on the battlefield
Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2020 5:24 pm
Here, in a clip from a Russian film, Zvezva (2002), a young war volunteer offers Chess as a key transferrable skill 
There seems to be a slight implication that the use of chess skills on the battlefield are minimal. This is, of course, nonsense. Here is a counter example from a young war correspondent writing about his crossing of the battle lines between the Soviets and the Whites bearing an important offer of a peace settlement from Lenin to Estonia:David Robertson wrote: ↑Mon Feb 24, 2020 5:24 pmHere, in a clip from a Russian film, Zvezva (2002), a young war volunteer offers Chess as a key transferrable skill
[NB some of the ellipses below are mine and some are the original author's]
We had nothing whatever to show that we had any right to be there ... We saw a long column of cavalry, with a small group of officers riding at the head of it. We marched on... We marched on... and then there occured a fantastic miracle... I was walking along .. hoping that the moment of meeting would bring the right words, when it seemed to me that there was something familiar in the look of the young officer in command. I stared at him. He stared at me. He suddenly shot forward, pulled up his horce and exclaimed, "What luck! Now we can have that other game of chess!"
I had last met that young officer ... when we had played a memorable game of chess, in which, at a moment when he had obviously been winning, I had been fortunate enough to bring off a smothered mate. Nothing is more galling than such an ending to a game that had seemed won, and he had at once demanded his revenge. We had been interrupted even while we were setting up the pieces and had never met again until now. It never for a moment occurred to him that I had not as much right as himself to be where we were.
So chess is a useful battlefield skill, though this extract perhaps illustrates that being comparatively weak at the game might actually be more advantageous. This is certainly good news for me.
A Learned Forum, such as this be, will no doubt soon identify the name of the young reporter so I set that as, hopefully, an intiguing puzzle. The only clue I give is that his apparent left-wing inclinations are both surprising and (on his own account) inaccurate.