Thursday, December 19, 2019

The Infantry

American infantrymen in the Ardennes, 1944.
Set aside the bombers, the battleships, the aircraft carriers, the cruisers, the destroyers, the tanks, the armored personnel carriers (APC), the fighter jets, the big guns of the artillery, and all of the other trappings of modern war. All of those are simply there to support the infantry.

Ships can't occupy ground nor can aircraft. Tanks and APCs are virtually helpless in built up areas and forests. Visibility out of them is not that great and if you poke your head out of a hatch, count on some gravel agitator with a rifle to blow it off. A timber beam knocked from some ruined building is just the thing to immobilize your mighty steel beast. Gasoline in a bottle is nice for toasting tankers stuck in a broken down tank.

So what's an armor chap to do? Bring your own infantry, of course. Keep the enemy grunts from messing with you until you're back in the open and fight other tanks as is proper. (Though not the original mission of the tank which was to punch holes in the line - for the infantry to exploit - and then roam through the enemy's rear areas messing with his supplies, communications, and REMFs.*)

But Sarge, you might protest, Japan surrendered because we nuked them, twice. Carrier aircraft and Army Air Force bombers put paid to them. And submarines, don't forget the submarines sinking everything with a Rising Sun flag. No infantry necessary!

Ah, who do you think captured the islands where the B-29s launched from and could emergency divert to? Carriers and submarines need bases too, who captured those? The infantry, that's who. (Worth noting is that Marines are specialized infantry, for those who think the term "infantry" only applies to the Army. It doesn't.)

In days of yore it was the man with his shield and sword (or spear) who fought the battles and won the wars. Sure the cavalry galloped around and made themselves a nuisance but they couldn't storm a town or hold a building. Not to mention how expensive maintaining a man and a horse in the field was. Which is why many of the cavalry were some kind of noble or rich dude back in the day and which is why there weren't too many of them.

But Sarge (I hear your plea) what about the steppe barbarians, the Mongols, the Huns, and others of that ilk? They were mounted, they were cavalry, amirite? Yeah, but where are their empires now? Defeated in the long run, by infantry.

Now missile weapons (bows and arrows, slings, even just a guy chucking a rock) are useful at a distance. But if they walk to battle, yup, just a different kind of infantryman.

There are many weapon systems with massive amounts of firepower, that can move fast, and travel far, but once they get there what do they do? Aircraft can land and carry infantry you might say (even drop them from the sky) but what happens if the enemy shoots down your airplanes. Even if they don't, the guys they landed need to be relieved by marching infantry (legs as the airborne calls 'em) otherwise they eventually get worn down. They have to surrender or die at that point. Think Arnhem and a Bridge Too Far.

Infantry will always be necessary to defeat an enemy, eventually even the biological, chemical, and radiation effects wear off and you'll need to send your grunts in so that their infantry can't reoccupy the ground.

One could make the argument that most of the armed forces required by a nation are solely there to support the Poor Bloody Infantry. They don't get much in the way of headlines, but their importance can't be underestimated.

(Source)

God bless the infantry!





* REMF = Rear echelon mother fire truckers. Not a complimentary term by any means. But try fighting a war without them!

44 comments:

  1. You can't, as you pointed out, win the war without the Infantry!

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  2. The old saying goes, "You can bomb, burn, and destroy land, but you don't own it until you stand an 18 yr old with a weapon on it!

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    1. @Retired cop/

      --Or as a really sharp (youngest in the AF) Chief Master Intel SGT once said to me: "Capt, when is the AF ever gonna learn that you can't 'occupy' a piece of gnd with a bomb!"

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  3. Excellent post, as usual. I'm losing the sight in one of my eyes and it aggravates reading. I've attached a thing which I never do because yeah, infantry.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_battles_involving_the_United_States
    I remember about 14 years ago posting the numbers of men in the REPL/DEPL and they were in the hundreds of thousands. War is nothing like the movies and for a long time young men simply get fed into a meat grinder. That was the infantry. An 18 year old man was basically sent off to die gallantly but most usually horribly. It is why the anti-war movement was so determined to end war. An awful lot of stupid people just failed to understand that sometimes one must fight an evil. Those who hate war have lost sight of evil.
    For decades I wore the uniform, as you did and my parents lived in Arlington. I went to Fort Myer just about every time I visited there and most visits I would visit with the tomb of the unknowns.

    4 generations of service pretty much ended with me. I would not invite my daughter to enter the service and none of my sisters or brother has either. I don't believe 9/11 broke the tradition but perhaps the Obama generals managed to kill off any idea of serving our country in uniform. I found the risk acceptable to fight and possibly die but we've basically gutted the idea that the infantry would be honored if they one day paid the last full measure.

    Yeah, it was about a week ago that I posted my grandfather's crossed rifles. Maybe 1 in a thousand Americans knows what that was.

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    1. Sorry to hear about the eyesight Cap'n, I've had my own vision adventure over the past year but mine seems to be improving.

      Great-grandfather, grandfather, father, myself, all three kids - five generations, don't know if the grandkids will continue the tradition, might be nothing left to defend when they reach that age.

      I remember the stories of replacements getting to the front, going into combat and being killed with none of the guys in the platoon ever knowing their names. War is hideous but there are worse things, far worse things. Like you say, sometimes evil has to be faced and defeated. Reminds me of Churchill in his "Their Finest Hour" speech...

      Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

      We may be facing such a thing now, both from without and from within.

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    2. "Nothing left to defend". There will be something to defend, you might not like it or agree with it but it will be there and the leaders will want to defend it.
      After reading that statement from Churchill and looking at Britain today I wonder how he'd feel?

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    3. I stand by my statement, though I get what you mean.

      As to Britain today? After the recent election there may yet be hope, we shall see.

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    4. I hope that the doctors find that your eye problem is correctable!

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  4. Can a modern war be won by infantry only?

    A war is won by a well constructed mutually supporting system and the various parts of that system all have a role in victory.

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    1. Nope, wars cannot be won by unsupported infantry. But a war cannot be won without infantry, they're what I like to call the key ingredient.

      At the end of the day, you still need to hold the ground. Only infantry can do that.

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    2. A defensive war can be held by unsupported infantry, if the unsupinf has light artillery like rpgs, light mortars and such, and they are in a defensive position with the ability to duck and scoot and hide.

      Examples are: The Vietnam War. The Afghanistan Wars (all of them, from day 1 to today.) But the problem is, when a defensive infantry army goes on the open attack, it gets slaughtered. Tet is the perfect example of that. But a defensive infantry can be used offensively if they fight like they are defensive, which the Viets proved by moving forward underground, moving and fighting in new forward dug positions, and so forth.

      But these are rare occasions.

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    3. Don't confuse a guerrilla war with a "regular" war. The Spanish guerrillas ran the French ragged from 1808 to 1813 but they couldn't win the war, they could just keep the French from winning it. A stalemate is what they had until the British Army with their Portuguese and Spanish allies (in regular army units) actually drove the French from the Iberian Peninsula. In short, the Spanish guerrillas were indeed supported.

      The wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam have been (and in Afghanistan remain) guerrilla conflicts. They could seemingly hold out forever, but in Vietnam the enemy were by no means unsupported. Without Chinese and Russian assistance (and the incompetence of our own government) the Communists could have never won. When they invaded for the final time the cowards in the U.S. Congress violated the terms of the treaty we had with the South Vietnamese and cut all support to the South.

      As for Afghanistan, that's a whole different ball of wax, we were idiots to go in and are idiots for remaining. If we really were determined to "win" that one, we could, but the cost to the innocent civilians in that benighted land would put us on the same level as the Nazis in WWII. I think we would have to, quite literally, kill them all.

      And for what?

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    4. I would call the "key" ingredient...Logistics. Because without that, the infantry are useless.

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    5. Ah yes, truly, truly, I say unto thee, "without logistics, all the combat arms are useless."

      Good point and it anticipates a future post, like maybe tomorrow.

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    6. And, actually without logistics ALL the combatants are useless.

      Just as an FYI, in my one Real World event, I had a company of infantry along and they came in handy.

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    7. True dat.

      I forgot that you once had access to an entire company of infantry.

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    8. All the times the infantry lost, they were left swingin' in the breeze alone. So yeah, to win takes more than the PBI.

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    9. It's a team, it takes a team. But I suspect you knew that.

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    10. Yeah, there is no I in team, but there is meat! Hence the need for those REMFs. And when that team isn't constrained, they work very well together.

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    11. It's the constraints which tend to foul things up.

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  5. As to what you said, yep, oh so right.

    But as to the Mongols... well... that's a more complex situation than just saying 'Mongols are only Cavalry.'

    Yes, straight off the Steppes, the Mongols were pretty much straight cavalry. Cavalry/semi-Dragoon (mounted infantry) really. By the time they hit the Eastern European, or the Great Wall, they had already broken down into the classic cavalry army.

    They had...

    Light mounted horse archers/swordmen. This was the tease. Run them around, stir up the defending forces, and suck them into...

    Heavy mounted horse wearing heavy armor, with armored horses, with lances, spears and heavy weapons like maces and longer straight swords for hacking, usually hidden behind a terrain feature like a hill or trees or behind smoke. Basically acted just like, well, heavy cavalry. While they were fighting the enemy, the light horse were shooting the enemy in the sides and back, and the...

    Medium horse, some armor, heavier weapons, bows and such, rode deep behind the advancing enemy and attacked the enemy's strongpoints, and fought the enemy's main formation from the rear, while...

    Mounted dragoons, equipped much like the medium horse, either rode with the medium horse and did the foot part of attacking enemy strongpoints, while others did the traditional infantry advancement into the cavalry fight, while...

    Basic infantry, from light to medium, served to protect the attacking heavy horse and foot, and protecting the rear of the Mongol horde(s).

    The Mongols, once Genghis (or, more accurately, Chinghis) Khan came about, really bought into the idea of the 'combined arms' army. What made his armies so different was his insistence on mobility, even by straight foot infantry. Much like the Roman Legions, mongol infantry was fast on the march.

    Well, until they became decadent and slowed down... long after Chinghis kicked the bucket.

    And saying everyone in a Mongol horde was mongol was like saying the Norman Invasion of England was done by Normans. Yes, but... one thing that Chinghis insisted on was incorporating his new people into his army as he advanced. So, well, you have Tibetans, Eastern Rus, various Chinese, other peoples, all in his army. The Norman Invasion, by the way was Normans, Bretagnans, Burgundians, French and so forth.

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    1. Concur on the whole "Mongols are complex" thing. The Great Khan was certainly an innovator, ruthless as Hell to boot. And, woe is me, I never thought to look into the Mongols having infantry, mea culpa, and I claim to be an historian...

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    2. Be fun to be standing on the beach during the Norman invasion and yell, "Hey Norm!" Just imagine all those Frenchies turning around and saying Quelle? Je suis occupé!

      Sorry. It's not as funny as I think it is.

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    3. I dunno, it gave me a chuckle. (I could actually picture all those guys turning as one...)

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  6. My Dad the SeaBee had great respect for "The Foot Soldiers" as he called them. And he well understood the difference between Marines and the Army.

    As he said, "The Marines secured the island, and we went in and got it ready for the Army". A bit harsh, perhaps, but so was the Pacific Campaign.

    And he often talked about the endless train of supplies coming in from "Home", and how important it was to keep "Our Guys" supplied with enough to do their job.

    Anywhoo.....I agree about boots-on-the-ground, and all it takes to get them there, and support them.

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    1. Ah, the age old rivalry between the Marines and the Army. Heard more than one story there.

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  7. Don't disagree being a combat engineer back in the day. Infantry first, engineer second.

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    1. One might argue that the engineers were a big factor in winning the Battle of the Bulge. Blowing bridges to deny them to Peiper's tanks went a long way towards stopping that threat!

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    2. My point exactly! There’s no branch of the military tnat isn’t needed. Period...dot....eod

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    3. @WSF/

      Dad, being an old Inf type always spoke VERY highly of the combat engineers..

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  8. And Ernie died with his beloved Infantry. Worse ways to go.

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    1. He did indeed, they mourned him like a brother too.

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    2. (Don McCollor)...the first crude marker on his grave said "At this spot the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April 1945."...no man could receive a higher tribute...

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    3. A good man. You're right Don, no higher tribute.

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  9. @OAFS/

    Since your post is about "The Infantry" I'll just add that among Dad's many decorations (several for valor) the one he was proudest of was his Combat Inf Badge. FWIW...typical of many in his generation I'd guess..

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    1. The infantry have ever done the heavy lifting. The CIB is something to be proud of.

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  10. The next war in Europe will be a civil war, clash of civilisations, Islam versus the rest. It will be an infantry war, 99pc. America? Yours is coming too. Dearborn is the nucleus of your cancer. May you be victors in your own land.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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