A ten-year battalion commander's course in 64 pages

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	• World War II Infantry Tactics (2): Company and Battalion (Elite) Stephen Bull Osprey Publishing, 2005 - 64 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Seems to Miss the Essence of This Subject

Dr. Stephen Bull, a British museum curator and author of two volumes on WW1 trench warfare in Osprey's Elite series, attempts to outline the essence of Second World War infantry tactics in two new volumes in the Elite series. In the first volume, Dr. Bull addresses squad and platoon tactics of the US, Britain and Germany. Although this volume is graphically attractive and appears comprehensive, it essentially drives by the subject at a high rate of speed, accepting questionable popular theories and failing to draw appropriate conclusions. Indeed, while Dr. Bull's grasp of weaponry appears sound, his grasp of small unit tactics seems superficial and fixated on "sexy" topics like snipers and hand-to-hand combat.

Dr. Bull draws his material from three sources: official training manuals from the period, veterans accounts and secondary works. In the first section, Dr. Bull addresses the soldier's experience (casualty rates, combat fatigue, physical demands); this section really isn't necessary for discussing tactics but appears influenced by John Keegan's Face of Battle methodology. At any rate, Dr Bull uses a variety of anecdotal evidence from different British and American infantry units to suggest that infantry losses in 1944-1945 were as heavy or worse than that experienced in 1916-1918. Dr. Bull misses the point - it is not the quantity of loss as much as the quality of losses that really matters. As three D-Day veterans told me, "our leadership bled away rapidly in combat." Replacing ten privates who took three months to train is fairly easy, but replacing one combat-experienced NCO or junior officer is much tougher. At any rate, while it is clear that "the poor bloody infantry" always suffers the most, it is not clear how this section adds to a discussion of tactics. It would have been more appropriate to discuss the training of squad and platoon leaders - and how this differed between the three armies - than to discuss individual soldier issues better left to the Warrior series.

The next section on Training has some useful material on camouflage, physical training, individual movement techniques (IMT), and battle drills, but also includes garbage on hand-to-hand combat "techniques," including kicking, eye-gouging and "anti-hair pulling tactics." Basics are ignored: how much marksmanship training did the average WW2 infantryman get before battle? What was medical care like? I bet the average British or US platoon was better fed than the average German platoon in 1944-1945. The author also ignores other important (but mundane) issues such as noise/light/litter discipline, mission preparation, rehearsals and tactical adaptability. The section on "The Squad Ethos" parrots the near-axiomatic notion that soldiers only fight for their buddies and ignores the fact that officers and NCOs have other motives. If officers sought to protect their men, they could not order attacks that risked heavy losses. Officers are, in fact, usually motivated by some kind of higher purpose (ideology, careerism, etc). The section on squad organization and weapons details the US, German and British squads, although there is little effort to distinguish between "leg," mechanized and airborne squads. Nor does Dr. Bull ever mention that squads are mere tactical building blocks - they normally do not conduct independent operations. The whole idea of "squad tactics" is a bit artificial, since even squad-size patrols or ambushes are usually part of a larger unit operation.

The heart is this volume is the seven pages on squad offensive and defensive tactics, and it focuses almost exclusively on the hasty variants. I was amazed that Dr. Bull hardly mentions patrolling or ambush tactics - the bread and butter of small unit infantry operations. Deliberate assaults, with external fire support or engineers, are ignored and there is virtually no mention of tank-infantry cooperation. Somehow, in his ellipitical way in approaching this subject, Dr. Bull obscures the fundamental essence of offensive tactics, which is find 'em, fix 'em, flank 'em, f--- 'em. Bull is also a little flippant with terminology, comparing an assault to "temporary insanity" - a proper assault requires a very rationale thought processes, not a bunch of out-of-control impulses. Bull quotes one apparently trigger-happy veteran who talked about the "excitement of constantly stuffing fresh ammunition into the magazines and blazing away" - not a good example. I think Dr. Bull has confused infantry tactics with Telly Savalas' character in "The Dirty Dozen." As for defensive tactics, Dr. Bull suggests that advance posts could be "within about 2,000 yards of a main position" which is nonsense - well beyond range of organic weapons and how could they communicate? LP/OPs should be within range of one's own weapons - about 300-500 meters at the squad level.

The section on the Platoon almost appears to be an afterthought and it is only 23% of the volume, and half of that focuses on snipers. Key questions, like how support weapons should be used or squads employed (the two up one back standard) get remarkably little attention. Several of the color plates are also a bit suspect. The plate depicting a US rifle platoon in the defense shows a position with no forward security (LP/OP) and located on the crest of a small hill (not the "military crest"), which means the men would be skylined and highly vulnerable. Both the platoon leader and platoon sergeant are depicted at a considerable distance from the machinegun team, but experience showed that the platoon leader would locate himself close to this vital weapon. The plate on the German defensive position in Normandy is also a bit deceptive, since it suggests that the Germans typically burrowed holes through hedgerows for all their riflemen. I visited the remnants of a German company-size position near St. Lo in Normandy in June 1989 and was surprised at the relative crudity of the position. Even after 45 years, it was obvious that the Germans had cut simple holes through the TOP of the hedgerows.

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Author's Reply

It is admittedly highly unusual for an author to submit a review of his own work - but having seen the one currently attached to 'Squad and Platoon Tactics' I feel that the book buying public would be ill served if I did not attempt offer an alternative.

What Mr Forczyk does not appreciate are two key points -

First this is one of two volumes, so pretty well everything that he believes to be 'missing' is actually in volume two, for example armored infantry, tank cooperation, support weapons, mines etc. This is currently with the publisher, to appear in early 2005. Secondly when there are daft pieces of advice given these are direct quotes from actual manuals, or period instructions from actual battles, or eyewitness accounts. It matters not a jot whether I, or Mr Forczyk, believe these instructions would produce poor tactics - these are direct descriptions of the real thing, by people who were there, or by officers who produced the training literature. Likewise the illustrations are produced from manual drawings, or sketches by veterans. This book is about things as they were - not as we now might like them to have been.

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A ten-year battalion commander's course in 64 pages

My private library has a number of military manuals and books on military science. "World War II Infantry Tactics: Company and Battalion" is a condensed, image-rich guide for the military historian, World War Two gamer, and the scale modeller. Dr. Bull examines both the theory and practice of British, German, and American armies in Western Europe between 1939 and 1945. Don't look in here for the latest and greatest cutting-edge infantry tactics--Stephen Bull wrote about what happened in the past. That's history, folks! A battallion commander would need about a decade of military education and experience to apply the lessons in this thin little book.

Line and block charts dipict the organization of line infantry battalions--one from the three countries. Germany seemed to have a battalion for every purpose, so the charts are a bit generic--but give a clear picture of the parts if a battalion. Dr. Bull shows how the different parts worked together through text and pictures. The color plates on pages 33-40 are easy to understand. Showing how the British and Germans conducted urban warfare is valuable to understanding why American infantry doctrine until Iraq was to stay out of cities--and blast the cities into rubble. City fighting can be more costly than taking down a fortified enemy postion. Dr. Bull didn't mention non-combatant civilians or guerrilla activity--but neither did US Army doctrine of the period, at least not for the line infantry battalion commander. Bull did cover machine guns, mortars, anti-tank techniques, land mines and booby traps, mototized and "armored" infantry, and tank-infantry cooperation in detail. World War Two combat was combined arms--the infantry was never alone (though the World War Two infantry veterans I spoke to swear they were the Army's step children).

"World War II Infantry Tactics" spotlighted that German, British, and American infantry tactics were surprisingly similar. Surprising, perhaps, to someone who didn't consider that humans were conducting the same sort of activities over the same terrain with similar hardware--but there were significant differences between the three nations. At the basic squad eqipment level, the Germans had a belt fed light machine gun and severl 5-shot bolt action rifles and one or two submachine guns, the British BREN gun fed from a "30-shot" box mangazine and was teamed up with several 10-shot bolt action rifles and a submachine gun or two, and the Americans had one or two Browning Automatic Rifles (20-shot magazine) and bunches of the 8-shot semiautomatic Garand M1 rifle (and occassionally .45 caliber submachine guns and semiautomatic M1 carbines). The basic "fire volume" was about the same, even though the American Browning Automatic Rifle didn't have a quick-change barrel like the other two squad automatic weapons. America got into the war about the time that the anti-tank rifle was being retired for being ineffective against tanks, and American infantry generally had the workable 2.36-inch rocket launcher (AKA "Bazooka") and the M9 and M9A1 anti-tank rifle grenade when they began seeing large-scale combat, so they didn't have to have the elaborate anti-tank teams that the British and Germans were forced to cobble together with improvised anti-tank weapons. Fighting a tank while armed with just a crowbar--so that your buddy with a can of "petrol" can heave it atop the engine deck of an enemy tank so that a third man can puncture the can with rifle fire and a fourth can ignite the flammable fuel with a hand grenade or perhaps a bundle of smoldering rags is different from waiting until the enemy tank passes by your Bazooka position until you can get a flank or rear shot! The early-war infantry 37mm anti-tank guns were not very effective on late-war light tanks--and just about everybody had medium tanks in service during 1942.

"World War II Infantry Tactics: Company And Battalion" is concise and compact. If I were briefing "battalion commanders" in a WWII war game, I'd want them to have read this book first. I learned a few things that I hadn't known before, and I have dozens of other books on this very subject in my collection!

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Excellent graphics, good general introduction

For a 64-page book, this is an outstanding value. I have several hundred books and manuals on military subjects, including a number of War Department, Department of the Navy, and Department of Defense manuals. I purchased "World War II Infantry Tactics--Squad and Platoon" as a guide for building minature World War Two small units. I already knew quite a bit about US Army and USMC squads and platoons from World War Two--and I am very familiar with the current stuff because of my 23 years of military service--but I don't know everything. British infantry squads have different assumptions and "character" than American squads. They don't fight the same way, they don't look the same in the field, and even if they had the same equipment they'd use it differently. I'm not as familiar with German infantry squads, but what Dr. Bull wrote is comprehensive and accurate. If you need more detailed information, you'll have to collect a bigger library. This book is on the squad and platoon--for order of battle information, go to books dealing with divisions and regiments. A note about rifle squads and platoons in the US Army and Marines--they usually go into combat with less than their full TO&E allotment of personnel. During World War Two, the general attitude was that anybody could be cannon-fodder foot soldiers. Because of this attitude, special soldier units such as Ranger battalions had to be formed to make up for lack of skilled infantry rifle companies. General McNair trained the average infantry Joe as well as he could, but the emphasis for quality personnel and other investments went to the Army Air Force and then to Engineer, Armor, Artillery, and Airborne units--with the infantry getting low priority. Audy Murphy, the most-decorated American soldier of the war, was rejected by the Marines and the Paratroopers for being to small, skinny, and lacking education, proving that the metrics used for predicting success weren't perfect. Dr. Bull didn't cover Marines in this volume, which is okay--the USMC rifle squad differed radically after 1944 from the US Army infantry squad even though the US Army had more soldiers in the Pacific war than there were Marines. The training, tactics and mind set of Marines and Soldiers from the same nation differed sufficiently that plugging a few into the other service's rifle squad resulted in disaster--they don't interchange well even today. Organization, equipment, and tactics exist to serve doctrine. "World War II Infantry Tactics" details the differences between infantry rifle squads and platoons from three nations. I'd like to see Dr. Bull write on the squads and platoons from the USSR and Imperial Japan, as well as France, China, and the smaller nations.

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