I Remember #PowersBoothe and #RedDawn

Actor Powers Boothe died this week. Although he had a long career in Hollywood, the movie I remember him most in is Red Dawn:

In 1984, the year Red Dawn came out, I was just entering my senior year of high school. As a wargamer, I had read many books and played many games about the Cold War. Red Dawn fit right into my world of 1984.

Amongst the many books about the Cold War I had read, General Sir John Hackett’s The Third World War: August 1985 stands out in my memory. I read this one over and over again because I wanted to learn how the Cold War in Europe would go hot! The other book that I remember well is War Day and the Journey Onward (Whitley Streiber & James Kunetka). War Day tells the story of America after the mushroom clouds. It came out the year after the movie The Day After which I had watched in fascination (and with a bit of fear). I kept asking myself, what would I do?

In 1983 and 1984 I also got several wargames that shaped how I viewed the Cold War. Most importantly, I got a copy of Harpoon II. H2 was my first game in the Harpoon-series of modern naval combat and is a system I still enjoy today. This was how the Cold War at Sea was going to be fought! At this same time, I started collecting (and playing) Assault-Tactical Combat in Europe: 1985 which taught me modern combined arms combat. At the operational-level of war, NATO: The Next War in Europe landed on my gaming table. I also played more than a few games of Firefight (the 1984 TSR version) and even built up a collection of Supremacy (nukes and lasersats!).

Red Dawn released in August, 1984. This would of been just before my senior year started. I seem to remember going to see it in the first week of release.  It really hit close to home because it took place in Colorado – where I was living. I saw so many of my friends in the movie it became very real in my mind.

All my Cold War mania culminated at Thanksgiving with the release of the Twilight: 2000 roleplaying game from Game Designer’s Workshop. This game, by the designer’s of my beloved Traveller RPG, put the players as members of a US military unit cut off in Europe after the Cold War Goes Hot. This RPG mixed role-playing and the military together in one package. It also allowed me to use the knowledge I had gained from books and wargames and bring it to life. Eventually, T2K would go so far as to link to wargames like Harpoon 3 for naval combat, Last Battle: Twilight – 2000 for ground combat, and even Air Superiority for the air war.

In many ways, Powers Boothe’s character in Red Dawn, Lt Col Andrew ‘Andy’ Tanner, was the T2K character I always wanted to play. For some reason, I drew great character inspiration from this scene:

Col. Andy Tanner: [using a crude diorama, the Wolverines prepare for an assault on the Calumet Drive-In, which is now a Russo-Cuban “Re-education Camp”] All right. Four planes. Cuban bunker, Russian bunker. munitions dump, troop tents. Four machine gun bunkers. Back here by the drive-in screen are your political prisoners. We’ll cause a diversion over here… cut holes in the wire here, fire on all these machine gun positions. The B-Group comes across this area in a flanking maneuver… and when you reach this bunker, you lay down grazing fire on this defilade. I think that’s pretty simple. Anybody got any questions so far?
Aardvark: What’s a “flank?”
Toni: What’s a “defilade?”
Robert: What’s “grazing fire?”
Col. Andy Tanner: [out loud, to himself] I need a drink.

Courtesy IMDB

Rest in Peace, Mr. Boothe.