PREFACE TO STAFF LIBRARY - 29th Infantry Division



Ground Combat Doctrine

in WW II

I: Introduction

( 1. Purpose.— This summary supports an introduction to command and staff functions and combat orders as they were routinely applied in the 1940’s. Careful study of these materials and completion of the study exercises will prepare you to create and operate a simulated battalion or regimental command post, at a large tactical or at a living history demonstration, and will broaden your understanding of the US Army’s practice of operational level warfare in World War II.

( 2. Scope.—This document examines the ground combat doctrine used in WW II, how it developed out of the experience of 1914-18 and changes in technology, and how it met the challenges of global war. A general familiarity with doctrine and its development will make clear quite a few mysteries that confront living historians without a background in military studies.

The discussion presented here ties together several themes that shaped the way the major powers fought. These include:

a. The disastrous experience of WW I. The United States did not enter the conflict until 1917, and was not a decisive player until 1918; Britain, France, Germany, and Russia endured more than four years of stalemate and slaughter, and it affected each nation in different ways and shaped the attitudes and beliefs they brought to the inevitable renewal of war barely two decades after Germany’s surrender in 1918.

b. Changes in technology. The critical changes involved three paths of development: motorization, aviation, and communication.

Motor vehicles were used widely but not decisively in WW I. On the Western Front, distances were fairly short during the stalemate and trench warfare. Horse and mule transport works adequately over shorter distances (from railhead to depot to front). The problem is fuel efficiency: horses and mules can live on grass and forage; they work on feed. Feed is heavy and relatively inefficient in terms of hauling power and range. Beyond a certain critical distance, most of the space in a supply wagon would necessarily be carrying feed. Gasoline powered vehicles transform combustible fuel into work much more efficiently, and it is easier to refuel than to wait for animals to feed and rest. WWII involved much more rapid movement, and wagons could not support this kind of movement. War necessarily became mechanized in the ETO.

Aviation developed new capabilities, largely in transport capability. This was especially critical in the Pacific theater, which saw forces scattered across thousands of miles but requiring constant logistical support.

The war also saw the introduction of robust and reliable frequency-modulated (FM) radios that traded limited range for tactical flexibility, plus advanced teletype (twx) equipment for transmission of large volumes of text.

II. HOW THEY THOUGHT: DOCTRINAL REVOLUTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS

( 3. Dreams of Peace, thoughts of War.—The headlong nature of the US Army’s abrupt shift from peace to war is generally well known but widely misunderstood. A year before Pearl Harbor, the Army had just begun shifting from the obsolete doctrine of 1917-18 to reflect the changing reality of war. What is not usually mentioned is that our Army was not alone.

Europe’s experience in WW I created a paradox for military thinkers. The huge losses resulting from trench warfare obviously required a change in philosophy, but there was a sustained battle over exactly what that would be. As is usual in more recent times, there was the air war school (championed by Emilio Douhet and Billy Mitchell), which promised to skip the huge bloodletting with bomber strikes directly at the industrial, transportation, and population centers of the enemy. This approach has consistently failed for 75 years, but at the time (and without the bitter experience of failure) it seemed promising. It was the myth of the easy solution, the silver bullet—and it offered the added charm of drawing scarce funds for the development of air power at the expense of other arms.

France, and particularly England, were burdened in the years between the wars with a series of pacifist governments that were loath to allocate scarce resources to build armies during a world wide depression, despite the obvious threat of a rearming Germany. In the United States, by contrast, there was not even the perception of a serious threat, and military development in practical terms was in a two-decade funding coma.

But, however bored the politicians might be with pleas for money, times like this create active thinking.[1] (If your operating funds do not allow for fuel and ammunition to train, at least you can dream.) As the dreams started turning nightmarish in Europe with the Spanish Civil War and other dress rehearsals for the disaster on the horizon, new ideas multiplied; and eve as America as a whole slept, US military thinkers were hard at work planning for the war they could clearly see approaching.

( 4. Changing Horses.—In the matter of ground warfare, there was a bitter struggle between innovators and traditionalists here and in Europe on the matter of mechanized warfare. The tank had been introduced with some success late in the last war, but the reasons for the success (which was limited by maddeningly conservative doctrine and outright stupidity[2]) were fought over for years.

The dominant side until late in the revolution—particularly in the United States—considered the tank to be an infantry support weapon, a mobile machine gun nest with some large-caliber capability that would allow advancing infantry to meet the deadly hail of defenders’ machinegun fire by bringing protected rapid-fire weapons along (albeit at the slow pace of dismounted infantry)—in essence, mobile pillboxes. The concept of tanks as a separate arm seemed frivolous and dangerous, since tanks left to themselves would simply lumber around and leave the infantry to its fate.

The cavalry was similarly disgusted by the tank—not only because it lacked equine grace, but also because early tanks were subject to breakdowns (okay, so were later tanks), they guzzled precious fuel supplies, and they were noisy and smelled bad. (Yes, mules shared the last two features with tanks, but at least they were lovable.) There was also the never-quite-voiced fear that, should the tank prove successful, horse cavalry would be discarded. The First World War was fought largely without decisive cavalry actions, and cavalrymen were frustrated and fearful of obsolescence.

The tank had to find a home. In the United States, buying large quantities of something so expensive required an official, high-ranking cheering section. Instead, proponents were middle-tier officers (not young, exactly—the postwar promotion rate had slowed as usual to a crawl) like Boudinot and Chaffee. Patton, thoroughly frustrated, returned for a while to the cavalry after making a good combat start with tanks in 1918.

( 7. Fits and, Finally, Some Starts.—Development of mobile warfare doctrine proceeded overseas, with time-outs for practical exercise. The Germans and Soviets quietly participated in the Spanish Civil War (on opposing sides); later, the German leadership cooperated with the Red Army by a sort of consulting agreement with Marshal Tukachevskii in developing tank doctrine, with favorable results in a subsequent border skirmish with Japanese forces occupying Manchuria in nearly forgotten battles. Both countries combined aggressive design efforts with doctrine development, often trading ideas through the Nazi-Soviet rapprochement that ended in 1941.

The Soviet experiment went briefly aground when Tukachevskii was purged and shot – Stalin used his coziness with the Germans as an excuse. His acolyte Vladimir Pavlov continued the work, however, after his mentor’s disappearance from the scene.

German developments continued, against a conservative[3] tide of traditionally inclined senior officers, largely through the intercession of Chief of the Army General Staff Ludwig Beck[4], the enthusiasm and arguments of Heinz Guderian, and action by Hitler himself.

In France, upstart Colonel Charles de Gaulle pushed for reform, eventually pushing some doctrinal innovations through a hidebound Army leadership. In design of tanks in particular, the French had a decided lead over the Germans (as did the Red Army), but German doctrinal overhauls were more sound.

In England there was more resistance. Despite the writings of B. H. Liddell Hart, British doctrine remained largely stuck with the old dichotomy of heavy tanks for support of infantry and light vehicles for reconnaissance. This would change quickly with the fall of Poland and France.

In the United States, proponents like Chaffee, Boudinot, and Patton could rave and plead until they dropped from exhaustion, but there was no real political will to invest in ground forces until after the fall of France, and then half-heartedly. Doctrine was tested to a limited extent in the field, but generally used surrogate tanks—dressed-up light trucks. Actual equipment was generally surplus WW I gear long victim to mechanical wear-out, and there was insufficient fuel to train or validate ideas.

Nevertheless, despite occasional charges of backwardness in the United States, military thinkers had been paying attention; while they did not have the wherewithal to assemble modern armies, they were watching and waiting.

( 8. From Theory to practice.—When war broke out for real in September 1939, nothing went as smoothly as propagandists would have it.

Germany pulled of a miracle in the interwar years. The victorious allies abolished the feared General Staff, credited for more evil than the legions of Hell could muster. The resulting, shrunken Truppenamt had to make do as well as it could. Many of the best officers in the next war matured in Truppenamt positions. But by the mid-1930's, the German political leadership gambled (correctly) that the exhausted French and British were unwilling to enforce the terms of the last war; accordingly, the Germans simply ignored the Treaty of Versailles and rearmed.

But the Wehrmacht was in fact not much more advanced in thinking than the French Army (though much more aggressively positioned psychologically) in 1940, and the mechanized coup that broke the Anglo-French armies was a late rebellion by progressive officers like Guderian and Manstein authorized late in the planning process; there was still a strong conservative sentiment in all the armies involved. France had started to organize large mobile formations of tanks and light cavalry, but their employment was halfhearted and part of an overall confusion of leadership. The greatest advantage enjoyed by the Wehrmacht was not in number of quality of armored forces (the French had more tanks and generally of superior design) but rather in French unwillingness to act decisively with the available resources. In particular, communication in the French forces still relied heavily on couriers—radios were not trusted. This created a deadly situation in which the German operational tempo and flexibility were faster than the French – later this would be called the “decision loop”, in which one army reacts slowly to developments, then finds that by the time they have set a move in motion the enemy is already doing something else.

With the confidence gained in Poland and in France—a confidence not entirely justified—the Wehrmacht moved from victory to victory with daring operations against inept and disheartened opponents.

The Red Army had started a broad and ambitious reorganization — the execution of Tukachevskii had not slowed it down. Part of this sea change came from active theoretical preparation by knowledgeable officers like Pavlov, part from the disastrous performance of the Red Army in the 1940-41 Winter War against Finland. The result was that the Soviet forces were in the worst possible state when the Wehrmacht invaded in 1941 — neither the old Red Army nor the new one, but somewhere in between. In particular, the numerous and generally good quality armored force was still unprepared for the German onslaught, and suffered early defeats. The immediate answer was, typically, the execution of Pavlov as a scapegoat for the infallible Party; also typically, his reforms continued at a rapid pace. The Wehrmacht was unable to finish off the Soviet Union before the Red Army recovered and stalled the invasion, and then shifted to the offensive.

( 9. The Basic Reforms.—What was going on in world armies, and what was the essence of the reforms in land warfare?

At the tactical level, the problem was how to incorporate the expanding capability for mobile warfare. Technological change often presents challenges to armies that have mastered yesterday’s battlefield. The impact of the machine gun in 1914 and the method of assault across beaten zones between entrenchments led in the US Army to the “square” division of four regiments. The reason was the practicality of a two-brigade assault practice. One brigade went over the top under cover of machine gun and artillery fire, advancing until the attack ran out of steam, at which time the second two-regiment brigade moved forward over the exhausted leading units to continue the advance. While this generally didn’t work wonders, there was no ready replacement for the tactic and organization.

The objective of all this effort was to achieve a breakthrough “to the green fields beyond” where mobile warfare (albeit at foot-mobile speeds) could resume. Huge effusion of blood was invested in the idea with limited results. The failure of the Somme offensive, which resulted in 1.5 million casualties with little tactical gain, along with a widespread mutiny in the French Army (news of which was suppressed at the time) caused the Allies to settle into the trenches again to wait out the winter of 1917-1918 and wait for the arrival of the Americans.[5]

The Somme also saw the debut of the tank, but the machines were very slow and primitive, subject to breakdowns, and used in very small numbers over terrain unsuited to their employment.

After the war, armies settled back into complacence and low national priority. Millions of lives and incredible expenditures of treasure had resulted, many governments hoped, in a new era of peace. By the mid 1920’s developments on the international scene undermined that comfortable belief, and with the onset of world economic collapse only those nations with an eye to future mischief had the will to invest in an obsolete concept like war.

When reorganization came, it was almost too late.

The first phase was influenced by a “never again” mentality with respect to the terrible trench warfare of 1914-18. France in particular invested intellectual (if not much material) capital in promoting mobile doctrine. Paradoxically, the horror of trench warfare, with defense predominant, prompted a love affair with the offensive.

By the outbreak of war in 1939, several trends were finally gaining momentum in the US Army.

a. Organization for war on the move. Part of this was the robust concept of “two up and one back”. The square organization based on trench warfare and limited objectives was not suitable for mobile operations because it (1) held back too much combat power and (2) in the advance against an enemy of uncertain strength and dispositions would cause half the force to be engaged before the battle was “developed”. In the attack against known positions, two maneuver units in the lead allowed maximum combat power forward while leaving a third of the force in reserve to guard against surprises or to exploit success. When advancing against uncertain opposition, a one-up, two back deployment allowed the commander to avoid having the majority of his force engaged and immobilized before scoping out the battlefield and the enemy.

Change came slowly in the United States — National Guard divisions, for example, still had a square organization the year before Pearl Harbor. Once the emergency was declared and serious mobilization began, change was headlong and often contradictory. Many doctrinal points were unresolved by the formal entry into the war, and would have to be wrung out, uncomfortably, in North Africa as bad ideas became obvious under fire.

b. Defense in depth. The rapid improvement in firepower brought about by the introduction of efficient machineguns and improved artillery equipment and delivery techniques, along with the advent of armored concentrations, made the traditional “main line of resistance” obsolete. Mobile forces and artillery concentrations could blow a hole in any linear defense if enough could be brought to bear, and once loose in the rear these forces would wreak havoc.

The answer was defense in depth. The idea relied on the sudden turn of technology and tactics that allowed a defender to control a critical point without physically occupying it. By dispersing multiple strong defensive positions in depth, a defender could hope to force the attacker to ricochet off strong points in a deadly pinball game.

c. Task organization. Initial plans for mobilization (RAINBOW 5) called for a huge, heavily mechanized force of some 250 divisions. It was soon evident that even the giant industrial potential of the United States could not possibly produce such a result in a timely manner, particularly because our concept of operations included gigantic sea and air establishments[6]. The US Army would to an extent have to compromise on its strongest theoretical articles of faith.

For example, the infantry division that finally entered combat was a light, bare-bones organization of three regiments plus a division base (headquarters and support units plus division artillery). In practice, however, this is a deceptive description of the formations that entered combat. The infantry divisions were supported by attachment of separate battalions of tanks, tank destroyers, and antiaircraft (generally dual-purpose: a bullet is a bullet, whether it is shooting into the air or at something on the ground), and carried by a vast fleet of trucks organized as separate transportation battalions. In essence, when committed to combat the US infantry division was not a light formation but rather a motorized division with heavy mechanized resources.

The principle revealed here is task organization: that is, instead of dissipating valuable resources across 100 divisions, these resources (tanks, tank destroyers, etc.) were organized as separate battalions and doled out on a fluid basis to tailor divisions to a particular task. This reflected to an extent the old infantry-support role for tanks, but allowed the support to be selective and concentrated for a particular mission.

Figure 1: Type infantry division. To this sparse organization were attached at discretion assets from corps. The 29th Division, for example, received one tank battalion (747th), one tank destroyer battalion (821st) and one air defense artillery battalion (419th). Division artillery (DIVARTY) was organized as a headquarters (Headquarters and Headquarters Battery), three 105mm howitzer battalions (direct support) and one 155mm howitzer battalion (general support).

The division minus the three maneuver regiments is called the “division base”, and is uniform for all infantry divisions. When attached combat units are placed under control of a regiment, the regiment is designated a “regimental combat team” (RCT).

Figure 2: The infantry regiment is in some ways a miniature division minus some of the combat service support: a regimental base plus three maneuver battalions. The US infantry regiment also has a unique asset: cannon company, a 105mm howitzer unit of four tubes, manned by infantry soldiers (not artillery). This is the regimental commander’s “pocket artillery”; it was often backed up by one of division’s three DS battalions. Cannon company’s howitzers were designed for indirect fire, but like all such weapons they could be used in direct fire missions.

The AT company was equipped with 57mm towed guns, of limited use against heavier tanks, but very effective against thinner-skinned vehicles.

The I&R (intelligence and reconnaissance) platoon in HHC was used for scouting.

In practice it was common for an infantry regiment to be reinforced by tank, TD, AA, and transportation support as part of an RCT.

Figure 3: The infantry battalion is, again, a scaled-down regiment, with a battalion base and three maneuver companies. The “A&P” (ammo and pioneer) platoon is filled with soldiers who carry ammo and move dirt; this was often a dumping ground for soldiers of limited talent.

The armored division was initially organized on something like the German model, with two tank regiments and an armored (halftrack) infantry regiment. Battalions of the regiments were cross-attached (one tank regiment would become a regimental combat team (RCT) by acquiring an armored infantry battalion from another regiment, and giving up one tank battalion at the same time to produce three powerful tank-infantry combat teams. At battalion level companies would be similarly cross-attached to form teams).

Only the 2nd and 3rd Armored Division were so organized (“heavy” armored divisions); subsequent divisions as they formed comprised three tank battalions and three armored infantry battalions organized under three tactical headquarters (Combat Commands A, B, and Reserve — CCA, CCB, CCR). This allowed for flexible cross-attachment and task organization (though modifications to the TOE were necessary to correct deficiencies that became apparent after D-Day. In particular, doctrine called for these divisions to be held in corps reserve and used to create and exploit penetrations in enemy positions; circumstances came to require armored divisions to form part of the defensive line, a mission for which they were unsuited. Lack of wheeled transport to carry the large tonnage of supply necessary to sustain an armored division led quickly to the permanent assignment of two quartermaster heavy truck companies to each division.

Figure 4: Armored division (1943 TOE). Only the division base is recognizable here: similar to the infantry division, but with the light ordnance company enlarged to an ordnance battalion because of the huge vehicle maintenance burden, and the upgrade of the reconnaissance company to an armored reconnaissance battalion. Division artillery is reduced by one battalion, but all are self-propelled.

Instead of three regiments as maneuver units, the division has three headquarters: CCA, CCB, and CCR. These are filled out by apportioning the three tank and three armored infantry battalions – theoretically on a changing basis as the mission requires, but in practice as stable combined arms teams[7]. CCR is generally fairly small (the armored division is organized for the attack and exploitation, which – according to the opinions of the force development geniuses at Army Ground Forces, reduced the need for a large reserve).

As noted above, the problem of moving the division combat service support elements led to the assignment of two heavy truck battalions to each armored division.

Bear in mind that the armored division was not supposed to man the MLR – in theory. In practice, it was necessary to put armored divisions forward.

A tank battalion was quite large, with 17 M5 light tanks, 6 M4’s with the 105 gun, and 53 M4 tanks with the 75, plus an 81mm mortar platoon in half tracks. Armored infantry battalions moved with half tracks, and had organic 60mm and 81mm mortars, 9 57mm AT guns, and 3 105mm howitzers, all SP.

The lowest tactical organization is the corps, consisting generally of 2-4 divisions. The planners assumed at the outbreak of war that armored divisions would be distributed to corps to provide a breakthrough and pursuit force. This concept was already obsolescent when it was promulgated, and tended to disperse armored forces more than commanders would have preferred. In the event, German tactics and Allied preponderance of force after D-Day made this a less serious error.

Figure 5: Typical corps. Here three divisions – one armored and two infantry – are placed under a corps headquarters. A cavalry group (the ancestor of the modern Armored Cavalry Regiment) is assigned to screen the corps front and provide security, and an ad hoc grouping of artillery battalions provides a corps artillery group (these might include heavy artillery like the 155mm gun/howitzer, both towed and SP, not found at division level); battalions from corps artillery were frequently attached to divisions at the commander’s discretion. Also at corps level was a pool of available separate battalions of tanks, tank destroyers, antiaircraft artillery, and trucks. These might routinely be doled out to divisions as needed.

In theory, this doesn’t seem to have the appeal of a “Panzer Korps”, but the comparison is illusory. Once the trucks, tanks, and TD’s had been assigned to infantry divisions, they became in essence motorized infantry with significant armor assets and lots and lots of artillery.

( 10. Comparisons.—There is an army of myth confounding simple comparison of Allied (US) and German doctrine. This confederacy of oversimplifications stretches across all arms of service, and muddies our explanations of what happened on the field.

a. The school of hard knocks—. Many of the differences in doctrine resulted from experiences and outcomes, 1914-1918. Losing a war tends to force an Army to rethink and correct the perceived flaws that caused failure. Winning a war but suffering horrendous casualties and economic devastation leads to conservatism and a desperate desire to quit winners and avoid doing it again.

Both French and German experience encouraged strategies that avoided infantry charges into machinegun and artillery fire. France in particular suffered the effective loss of a generation of its young men, and such a “victory” was cold comfort. Their postwar response was somewhat contradictory. The French thinkers blamed static trench warfare for the disaster, and vowed never again to let that happen. The result was, paradoxically for a country full of graveyards, an emphasis on the offensive, on sweeping thrusts across the green fields, decisively ending the next war without falling back on years in muddy holes. At the same time, they constructed huge fortifications on the Franco-German frontier.

The Maginot Line is much misunderstood. In fact, it was never penetrated by the Germans, nor was it expected to defend all of France. Politicians and the press derided the French for building a huge fortified line and forgetting to finish it. This is an astonishingly ignorant interpretation. The purpose of the Maginot line (supplemented by a similar Belgian project) was to force any invading German army to fight where the French and Belgians had grown accustomed to fighting invaders since Julius Caesar and Attila the Hun—the plains north of the French-Belgian border, where every hill and river ford bears the tread of the legions.

As noted earlier, the French entered the armored race early, and produced quite a lot of good equipment. Their doctrine wavered, as did that of the competition, between infantry support and sweeping cavalry maneuvers run on gasoline instead of oats.

The battle of France in 1940 was lost because (1) the Belgians were halfhearted, never really completed their part of the fortified line, and weaseled until the last moment in hopes of avoiding treaty obligations without paying a price; (2) the Germans knew exactly what the French were planning (they were not secretive about it) and changed their old Schlieffen Plan to emphasize a mechanized sweep out of the Ardennes, a bold action quite incomprehensible to the sclerotic French command; and (3) often overlooked, the French mistrusted newfangled radios and relied on couriers on motorcycles; the Germans used radios and so remained inside the French decision loop (q. v.), changing details of execution before the enemy had quite figured out what they were doing the day before.

b. As noted, the American experience in WW I was almost entirely in 1918—they did not experience the nightmares of Verdun and the Somme that sapped the energy and competence of the 1914-17 Alliance. Americans are traditionally optimistic; the French and British were like stunned mullets, trying to figure out how to win a war without watching more hundreds of thousands fertilize fields of poppies. Thus, the AEF (known as the "Ass End Forward") drew most of its experience from the maneuvers and breakouts at war's end and did not emerge with the debilitating pessimism that dogged the other allies between wars.

We may wonder many decades hence how the United States managed to mobilize a huge army from nothing and develop their own effective doctrine in so short a time. There are really two reasons. First, the period of peace had nurtured newer, younger leadership that thought and planned and prepared. But just as important, the large population and enormous productivity of the United States allows it to overwhelm challenges while plotting ways to win efficiently.

III. THE COMMAND AND THE STAFF

( 10. Staff Theory.—The modern staff system derives from the reforms of the legendary Field Marshal Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke (1800-1891 — the Elder), whose reforms of the Prussian General Staff system laid the groundwork for modern Army staff organization and procedures. Von Moltke was a rare military intellectual of incomparable insight and good sense, and his mark is everywhere in military science.

Moltke had the fortune (for good or ill) of developing his system in theory and then testing and modifying it in conflicts of increasing complexity (some grand schemes work well in theory but tank disastrously in combat, as Moltke understood perfectly). He is given credit for the comment that “no plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main strength“, a truism that reenactors seem to interpret as an admonition against reliance on planning in favor, one supposes, of intuition. In fact, he used this statement to underscore the principal goal of thorough military planning, which is to examine to the extent possible all outcomes. His planning (and that of professional staffs in general) was invariably extremely detailed and thorough.

A central thesis is that there is a maximum point of effort (noted earlier by Clausewitz), and this objective must be the focus of planning and executing a battle or a war. “Burning powder” has no part in this except as a way of applying force. Much of the planning process involves identifying the critical objectives and avoiding the waste of resources on anything else. Selecting the objective is a complex process, not (generally) a stroke of the eye. It is a painstaking examination of possible courses of action and their possible outcomes, and comparing them to establish a final operational concept. Variables include (1) the manpower available, its readiness to fight, and availability of replacements; (2) the enemy, his strength, dispositions, and intentions, and the terrain of the battlefield; (3) friendly situation and possible curses of action; and (4) support requirements, including supply and transportation. As we shall see, these four variables are distributed to four principal divisions of the staff (S-1 – personnel; S-2 – intelligence; S-3 – operations and plans; and S-4 – logistics).

But we should recall that Moltke was constrained by several realities, one of which had to do with command. The commander in chief of the Prussian Army was the Kaiser; army commanders were often princes of variable talents. The General Staff had as a major duty the gentle need to guide less professional soldiers away from unprofitable courses of action. In the US Army, officers routinely rotate through staff and command assignments commensurate with experience and grade, so the relationship between command and staff is somewhat less stark than in Moltke’s world.[8]

( 11. Staff and Command Relationship.—Some points to bear in mind concerning the relation between staff and commander:

a. Decisions are for the commander. The task of the staff is to provide the commander with information and recommendations that inform a sound operational concept. Responsibility lies with the commander.

b. Orders come from the commander, not from the staff. The staff’s role is advisory; they do not occupy a position in the chain of command. Staff officers sometimes forget this.

c. The staff exists to serve the line commanders, not the reverse. Staffs sometimes acquire a bad habit of generating requirements for lower units (usually useless reports that might make the staff’s job easier, but which complicate the functions at lower levels that have fewer overhead resources to respond).[9]

( 12. Learning How to Do It.—These manuals are packed with text, full of instructions and definitions and procedures and standards. But soldiers don’t learn by reading and memorizing FM’s, and neither should you.

The best way to learn is always by doing, and that’s a good place to start. The Staff Manual included in the library is a handy start. It goes through the steps described in FM 101-5 in sequential format using an example derived from a Command and General Staff College exercise in 1943. The exercise begins with the mission specified for the organization (a battalion) and proceeds through the staff estimates and the commander’s estimate, then proceeds to the warning order and the final combat order. It doesn’t have all the details, but it doesn’t have to — those are in your reference FM’s. Give it a read so you begin to understand how the process works.

In Army schools, procedures like this are usually introduced by an instructor along with outside reading (usually the pertinent Field Manual(s)), followed by team exercises. In many cases, one member of the team will be the “commander” and others fill principal staff roles.

It’s not rocket science — it’s actually harder in some ways than rocket science because an equation has limited possible solutions. Combat is scientific up to a point, but the moment will generally arrive when the commander must make the best choice he can to solve an equation with missing variables.

I can’t say it’s “fun”, but it’s interesting. Welcome to the Army.

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[1] The Army of today is largely the result of intellectual frenzies during the 1970’s – the Army’s “hollow years”.

[2] A fine illustration of this problem: In late 1941, the British were fighting a desperate battle against the Germans in North Africa. One weakness was the slow rate of fire of British light artillery compared to the comparable German batteries. Nobody could figure out why it took so long to get off a shot from, for example, the standard 25-pounder. They filmed a firing drill as prescribed by the manual, and soon discovered the reason. The last required maneuver before firing a round involved the No. 4 crewman running back 40 yards, facing about and kneeling, at a cost of precious seconds. Only one old colonel realized what this was about. “Don’t you know?” he laughed. “He’s going back to hold the bloody horses!”

[3] In the 1930’s, a Soviet delegation visited Germany to view the design technology of their new friends. At that time, German designs lagged so far behind Soviet designs that the team assumed they were being shown old equipment as a deception.

[4] Beck was too flexible a thinker; he was shuffled aside just before the war and ended up swallowing a pistol in the aftermath of Valkyrie in 1944.

[5] Memories of the Somme haunted the British Army for decades after 1917, and contributed to a pessimism that hampered strategic boldness. Especially among the upper classes — a young man commissioned right out of University found by war’s end that most of his close friends were gone. In France, the entire Class of 1914 at the military academy of St.-Cyr died. The United States Army was spared this agony – troops did not arrive in large numbers until early 1918 – and so began the war in 1941 full of piss and vinegar in comparison to the European armies.

[6] The United States industrial base flooded battlefields with motor vehicles (including around eighty thousand tanks); however, we also built, manned, and equipped with aircraft some one hundred fifty-one aircraft carriers, and at peak production launched one Liberty or Victory class cargo vessel every 48 hours.

[7] This is actually the origin of the much later Reorganization Objective Army Division (ROAD) TO&E that was in force through my entire long career. The ROAD division had a division base, three brigade HQs, and generally about ten battalions. The types of battalions assigned determined the designation of the divisions (Armored and Mechanized divisions simply had different proportions of tank and mech infantry battalions). The division commander could mix and match as he wished to fit a given mission.

[8] It is important to note, however, that the mobilization in 1940-41 and the headlong deployment of the Army overseas disrupted the normal career progression. Promising officers were often catapulted multiple grades as new divisions were formed and shipped out. Experienced and talented staff officers were in short supply and worth their weight in gold.

[9] When long ago I was a tank company commander, I was once berated by the battalion S-4 about my consumption of diesel fuel (seventeen tanks and three personnel carriers burn a lot of it). On several occasions over a month I was obliged to cease operations because I was short fuel. The S-4 cited the tables in the TM for the M48A3 tank, indicating that my fuel consumption was twice what the table said. I shrugged and replied that out of fuel is out of fuel, and if he would lend me the manual I could perhaps burn it and get a few yards farther.

This infuriated the S-4 (who was a Major), and I was hauled in front of the task force (battalion) commander. He listened to the S-4 and then heard me out about the fact that we were operating across country every day, over hills and through dry paddies with dikes that had to be rolled over at considerable cost in time and diesel. He pondered the question for a moment, then asked: “do the fuel gauges work?” I replied that they worked very well. “Can you tell when you’re low on diesel?” Again, yes. He turned to the S-4 and said “get the goddam diesel up to him and don’t bother me with this bullshit.” Staff worried about the table in the TM, when the only thing that mattered was whether there was fuel in the vehicles.

This same staff officer got momentarily annoyed at the high deadline rate for searchlights, which were mounted on every tank and which were notoriously prone to failure. This wasn’t a big problem, since for various reasons we never used them. The result as a requirement for a daily searchlight report, with number operating and number deadlined for maintenance, and changes from the last report. Several days later, when my company was in a heavy firefight, this idiot called me on my tactical radio net (not the logistics net) complaining because I had not submitted the report that day. In the course of the conversation he could clearly hear heavy machine gun and main gun fire (actually, he could hear it without the radio from the battalion CP), but what counted was his report. Having other problems at that moment (one platoon leader and three other soldiers wounded and medevac inbound, plus enemy fire), I briefly offered an idea of what he could do with the report. Suddenly another voice entered the conversation — the brigade commander, who had been circling overhead, watching the fight and listening on the battalion radio net. The S-4 was relieved on the spot.

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A major stumbling block to progress was the coterie of senior Red Army leaders who had fought in the Russian Civil War and become close to Stalin. These officers clung to what worked long ago, including massed infantry attacks. Loyalty was important to Stalin, but gradually these fossils were swept away (some retired, some shot).

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