Lessons of Combat

The Marines who came back from Guadalcanal could have told them. So could the 32nd and 41st Division troops who fought at Buna. But by last week it was evident that the American troops in Tunisia had to learn for themselves the hard and inescapable way--in bloody combat. They had proved an old Marine maxim: "No troops are much good in their first battle."

Said a sergeant veteran of Tunisia to New York Timesmsm Drew Middleton: "Listen, brother, when we get back in there against those krauts we're gonna be just twice as good. You know why? Because we know this thing ain't no fool's game now."

There were signs that the U.S. armed forces were finally getting down to war. A lot of the old training on which U.S. troops had been fed for two years was being revised to a sterner pattern and the lessons of combat were being brought home. The Infantry Journal devoted several pages to a what-I-should-have-known-but-didn't symposium. Sample comment (from the South Pacific):

An Army battalion commander: "If I could train my men over again, I would put officers and men in slit trenches and drop bombs near by to overcome fear. We were all scared to death at first. . . . I would observe which leaders are no good and replace them on the spot--not later." A rifle company captain: "I would have some maneuvers on which men were deprived of food, water and comforts. I would then relieve those who couldn't take it." A Marine major: "Get the recruits so they are used to overhead fire." A Marine colonel: "The greatest problem is leaders and you have to find some way to weed out the weak ones." Another: "Pick your officers for common sense. Field Manual knowledge is fine, but it is useless without common sense."

How to Train Troops. The man in charge of training U.S. troops, Lieut. General Lesley J. McNair, had warned 16 months ago that casualties would be too high, that the Americans might get their ears pinned back the first time they met the Germans. Nobody knows better than "Whitey" McNair that combat is the only military test for anything--soldier, tank, plane or rifle--but last week General McNair was still busy narrowing the gap between training and battle. His solution: "Drill them into such a state of discipline that the men, in the excitement of battle, will instinctively do the things which they have been taught to do in the classroom, on the drill field and on maneuvers."

General McNair's memorandum revealed that U.S. soldiers in Tunisia had been taken in by German booby traps. Most of these soldiers had undergone two years of constant maneuvers, yet they failed to take cover properly. Men lost their lives to Stuka dive-bombers because they were slow in digging foxholes, and their reconnaissance was poor. Tankers allowed themselves to be lured into range of German 88-mm. guns, which could outshoot U.S. guns, just as British tankers had been outfoxed before Tobruk.

New training methods have been taken up, but slowly. General McNair made it clear last week that henceforth he would tolerate nothing but the most realistic methods. The use of live ammunition, with machine-gun bullets being fired 30 inches over the heads of crawling troops, will be intensified among all infantry outfits. Ground forces must dig their own foxholes and get in them while a tank rumbles overhead, and soldiers will make sure their foxholes are big enough and stout enough.

Until recently the Army has been a football team carefully drilled in its plays but still to be tried in its first game. Now it has added scrimmages to its training schedule. But for even the best trained of outfits the first battle is still the first--and men will still die for failure to learn their lessons.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.