The Wargamer

SP:WAW-CON 2003

We spotted them not long after we had passed through the security checkpoint. A pair of Stuarts, looking as if they'd just emerged from the trees lining the right shoulder of the road. We started to slow down as we got closer, then we saw the Jagdpanzer, right behind them and our little convoy quickly pulled off onto the shoulder and shut off our engines. Every eye was riveted to the scene before us, taking it all in, before we all bailed out and headed for the grassy slope bordering the road. Bright flares of light from between the Stuarts and our lead vehicle told me someone up ahead had wasted no time in getting a few quick shots off. It was just after 0930 on a bright Sunday in April, and our day was starting off with a bang.

The opening lines to a spellbinding, gritty tale of battle somewhere in Europe during WWII? They could be, but this wasn't Europe, the year was 2003, and it was actually the start of SP:WAW-CON 2003.

SP:WAW-CON 2003 is the title chosen for the first annual convention of members from the Matrix Games, Steel Panthers: World At War Forum. The site for the event, this year, was the Ordnance Museum at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland. The two Stuarts, one an M3A1 in British desert cammo, the other a rare M2A5 in olive, and the Jagdpanzer in gleaming black, all beautifully restored, were the first of many exhibits our little band of brothers (and one wife) would experience and enjoy that day.

Although we had hoped for a larger turnout, less than a dozen of us actually showed up. The plans for the event had sprung up just two months earlier, when M4Jess (a Washington D.C. native) and I (a transplanted NY'er now living in Baltimore) invited anyone in the forum, who wanted to join us, on a trip to visit the museum. Given such short notice, it's understandable that only a few could schedule the time for the trip. Our next convention however, is already in the planning stages, this one to the Patton Museum at Fort Knox, Kentucky, probably in June of 2004, and many forum members are already planning their vacations around it.

Those who did attend included the legendary "Wild Bill" Wilder, who flew up from his home in Georgia and combined the event with a visit to his brother Mike who lives in Baltimore, Jeff Norton, a member of the U.S. Army who was stationed at APG for a few years, the infamous M4Jess, his buddy Don S, who hails from sunny Florida and does classified things for the Navy, Robot, a retired trucker from Covington, Kentucky, his wife Sue, Sven, another U.S. Army member who lives on base and volunteers at the museum, and Bernie (yours truly), a home improvement contractor.