Review (Guest): On Infantry

5 Star, Force Structure (Military)
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John English and Bruce Gudmundsson

5.0 out of 5 stars Infantry won WWII, English explains why, August 13, 2000

By Sam Damon Jr.

John English is a brilliant tactician and historian who has written THE masterpiece on the origins of Infantry. I would have English describe infantry to about the Vietnam era and have Col Dan Bolger take the coverage from there to the future in his own book Death Ground: American infantry in battle. Bruce Gudmundsson was attached to the updated English book to attempt to bring the work up to date.

Taking the masterpiece for what it is, it delivers an important lesson mechanized maneuverists do not want to realize—that the German “blitzkrieg” died in the forests and cities of Russian when it met infantry that would not crumble if surrounded or cut-off from comfortable supply lines. Using a defense-in-depth, a nation on a total war footing can absorb and defeat another less committed nation that hopes to use a smaller force to penetrate and collapse. Many, maybe even most people mistake the German defeat in Russia–and hence WWII—with the cold Russian winter, and this is incorrect. The next critical—perhaps most important lesson and contribution English makes to the defense of freedom is—that a mechanized “combined arms” unit is ONLY AS GOOD AS ITS INFANTRY. When terrain and weather go sour, artillery and tanks will reach a point where they cannot contribute–and the entire battle then falls on the infantry. When this took place in Russia–the German infantry was NOT up to the task with inadequate numbers, clothing and bolt-action rifles. English points out and lesser historians should take note–that the German war machine was good together but not really that good because its PARTS were weak. When combined-arms technotactics could not be employed in the forests of Russia, the battle rested on the German infantry and it failed.

The cryptic lesson here is that we need GOOD infantry in large numbers and we don't get it by placing them into the back of armored vehicles in less than squad sizes, shut off from what's going on because they can't open a hatch out and see because we put a turret on the vehicle and we are afraid it will rotate into them. The Army made this mistake with the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, is trying to correct it with its vehicle for the new Brigade Combat Teams while the marines are about to repeat the error with a huge autocannon turret on their next generation amphibious assault vehicle. The second lesson of English is still being ignored—those that do mechanized combined arms don't value infantry action—they ride too long in their vehicles and get ambushed by missiles and RPGs fired from enemies hiding in key terrain that should have been taken first by the infantry. To do this you need a large amount of aggressive, not complacent infantry. As the Russians found out in Grozny, when their armored vehicles became flaming coffins, the battle then falls on the infantry to clear out enemies hiding in urban terrain.

This is not to say English believes in a “Super Infantry” since we saw in Mogadishu the best light infantry in the world get shot up because it was without armored fighting vehicles to shield it from enemy fire. What English is saying is that we should start with quality infantry when building forces and not in the process of creating combined-arms organizations ruin the infantry capability by reducing numbers, battle awareness and use as a separate maneuver element.

On Infantry should be required reading for ALL U.S. military personnel coupled with Bolger's Death Ground. I'd like to see the book updated to the present with a fresh perspective for the 21st Century where we apply English's lessons to the future battlefield.

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Review: Firepower In Limited War

5 Star, Force Structure (Military), Insurgency & Revolution, War & Face of Battle

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5.0 out of 5 stars Best examination of intelligence-firepower disconnects,

April 8, 2000
Robert H Scales
Major General Bob Scales may well be the Army's brightest light and this generation's successor to General Don Starry and Dan Morelli (who inspired the Toffler's book on War and Anti-War). First published by the National Defense University Press in 1990, this book reflects deeply on the limitations of firepower in limited war situations, and the conclusion is a telling indictment of our national intelligence community and our joint military intelligence community, neither of which is willing to break out of their little boxes to find a proper response to this statement: “The common theme in all five case studies presented here is the recurring inability of the side with the firepower advantage to find the enemy with sufficient timeliness and accuracy to exploit that advantage fully and efficiently.”
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Review: Fighting for the Future–Will America Triumph?

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Force Structure (Military), Insurgency & Revolution, Military & Pentagon Power

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5.0 out of 5 stars Speaking Truth to Power,

March 7, 2000
Ralph Peters

Ralph Peters draws on over 30 years of experience and at least ten years of published thinking to bring us this capstone book. It is, with Brigadier Simmon's book on RACE TO THE SWIFT, and one or two others (perhaps MajGen Scales book on The Limits of Firepower–can't hit what intel can't find, and anything by Martin Van Crevald), one of the top ten books in military thinking today, and absolutely essential for any officer or any political appointee responsive for national security, to digest and redigest. Ralph speaks truth to power, but power doesn't want to listen. Anyone who has a son or daughter eligible for national service should be reading this book, because the reality is that we are perpetuating a military machine totally unsuited for the conflicts of today and tomorrow, and it is our children who will die because of our silence at voters today.

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Review (Guest): The Soldier’s Load and the Mobility of a Nation

5 Star, Force Structure (Military)
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S.L.A. Marshall

5.0 out of 5 stars The Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation, December 20, 1999

By Thomas K. Durham (Del Rio, Texas) – See all my reviews

Copyrighted in 1950, my dog-eared, water-stained copy of this book has been with me now for 18 years, and the lessons it contains, learned the hard way by the men who fought and led troops through the first two world wars, are just as valuable today as they were on the eve of the Korean War. It examines what some might consider a mundane subject (what a soldier carries, and should and should not be expected to carry into battle) in a way that says a lot about our culture and the American way of war. Marshall's observations may seem elementary, but the fact that he had to set them down on paper just a few years after WWII is proof positive that the minions of political correctness were alive and well fifty years ago, and that institutional memory is definately of the short term variety. Anyone who leads troops and has not read this book should be dismissed from the service, and anyone who does not reread it every two years should be put in charge of nothing more challenging than changing the marquee at the base theater. Unfortunatly my own experience has led me to believe that it remains unread by many who consider themselves professional soldiers, lending more than a grain of truth to the the saying “Common sense is an uncommon virtue.”. If you enjoy Col. David Hackworth's column, you will like this.

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