Customer Reviews

On Infantry: Revised Edition (The Military Profession)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent discussion (historical and schematic) of what goes on at the nitty-gritty level of infantry combat; the squads, platoons, companies, and battalions. It shows how various systems succeed or fail at tasks such as flexibility, manouver, combat cohesion and morale, and why the German army was generally qualitatively superior to both Western and Eastern rivals in both world wars.

That being said, the authors tend to overemphasize the capabilities of infantry on its own -- particularly unsupported light infantry, and particularly in the theoretical section which concludes the book.

While rightly critical of the excessive logistical tail some modern "armies of drivers" drag around, they lose sight of the fact that foot infantry by itself totally lacks operational mobility -- 20 miles a day vs. over 200 for forces with their own organic transport. And they neglect the degree to which infantry alone lacks even tactical mobility on a battlefield saturated with automatic weapons.

It's no accident that the armies which actually do a lot of fighting -- the Israelis, for instance -- structure combined-arms teams around honking great monster tanks like the Merkava III or the M1A2 Abrahms, 70 tons or so of massively protected lethality.

Mobility means the ability to move, but tactical mobility means the ability to move _under fire_.

This poses a genuine strategic dilemma; forces light enough to move rapidly _strategically_ are often too heavy to be mobile in the tactical and operational sense -- you can fly light infantry quickly to the other side of the world, but they can't move when they're actually fighting.

Still, an excellent book on the whole.

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.

This is one of a series of surveys by Bruce Gudmundsson on different combat arms. (This book also has John English as a co-author.) As always, Gudmundsson's books are informative and delightfully easy to read. In this book the authors examine the evolution of infantry tactics resulting from the massive increase in firepower as muskets gave way to rifles and then to automatic weapons, in addition to the vast array of supplementary infantry weapons (i.e. grenades, anti-tank weapons, mortars, etc.).

They start off by looking at the effects of dispersing troops in open order to mitigate casualties and different armies' responses to this organizational and mental requirement. As the machine gun speedily became ubiquitous early on in World War I, some armies adjusted rapidly and easily, such as the Germans, while others lagged behind, e.g. British, Americans. English and Gudmundsson examine and compare the tactical infantry doctrines and small-unit organizations of the French, German, Russian, British, Japanese and American armies of World War II. Also examined are the Chinese Army from the Korean War and the Vietnam-era American army. In each case, they utilize real battlefield examples to demonstrate how this doctrine was actually put into practice, how effective the chosen tactics were, and their strengths and weaknesses (e.g. the American army's reliance on firepower instead of expert technique). They also examine the importance of psychological conditioning in preparing infantry soldiers for 'the emptiness of the battlefield'. The concluding chapter then briefly examines how different modern armies have organized their infantry arms, e.g. by reducing mechanization & heavy equipment.

This was a great survey on infantry organization and tactical doctrine. I highly recommend it as a brief introduction to the infantry arm. A more detailed study by Gudmundsson of the evolution of small-unit tactics can be found in 'Stormtroop Tactics'.

Books such as English's "On Infantry" are difficult to review because it is wise to examine source material in conjunciton with the text. I ordered this book a year ago and have been working on this review since.

Due to the scope of this book, I'll only talk about the evolution of the infantry squad as English and Gudmundsson outlined throughout "On Infantry." Please note that there are multiple interpretations.

The infantry squad had its roots in ancient times as an administrative unit, a sort of "family grouping" with a big brother serving to mold the younger soldiers. The authors pick this up in the first chapter, "The Open Order Revolution," in the period between 1854 the Crimean War) and 1914 (the outbreak of World War One.) A combination of rifling (extending range) and repeater mechanism (increased fire volume) rendered the earlier means of command, control, and concentration of combat power a certain means to defeat; the enemy would shoot the closed-ranks regiments to pieces in minutes. Dispersion while mutually supporting the rest of the regiment or brigade forced the very junior leaders to assume responsibility for what had been the regimental commander's decision-making, as the battlefield became "empty" in the face of the hail of accurate rifle bullets. Rapid fire weaponry, which included both the machine gun and the quick-fire field piece (one with a recoil mechanism that limited the necessity to relay the gun after each shot--and often used recoil energy to eject spent cartridge casings, increasing the rate of fire), only added to this revolution--and made the old Napoleanic tactics pure suicide.

The squad (often thought of as an American invention) became a tactical unit during the Great War, and its evolution from administrative element (for guard duty, for fatigue details, for grouping into mess elements for distributing rations or for issuing supplies) into a tactical element possessing independant internal manuever and fire elements is spread out through "On Infantry"-- but the most important chapter is 7, "A Corporal's Guard." Oddly enough, the French Army almost got it right during the Great War, and was one of the three models for the modern infantry squad. The French put an automatic rifle in the squad and formally divided the squad into two elements--one grouped around the automatic rifle for fire support, and one for manuever with "ordianry riflemen." The French squad leader went with the maneuver element and the assistant squad leader stayed with the automatic rifle--but the French failed to exploit this innovation. French Army regulations stipulated that the squad was indivisible and that the smallest element capablie of being assigned an independant task was the platoon. The Germans did it right (funny about those Germans) by exchanging the squad's automatic rifle for a light machine gun, keeping the squad leader with the LMG and making that element the main killing system, with the assistant squad leader running a manuever/assault element of riflemen that supported the machine gun's tasks. The Germans called this universal squad the Einsheitsgruppe, and then proceeded to reinvent the wheel due to deterioration in their non-commissioned officer cadre due to casualties to form a second, "guerrilla" formation armed (on paper) with the assault rifle and grenade launcher. Simplified tactics also reduced the ability of the squad for independant action--for a single objective (ie, taking or holding a single small building) the minimum maneuver element was the platoon or even battalion. It should be noted here that even though--on paper--the 1944 German Volksgrenadier squad was supposed to have eight men, it was more common for the actual strength to be four, five, or six. There was no assistant squad leader, and Germany relied upon indoctrinating every soldier to take charge of the situation and continue the mission even when leadership personnel became casualties. The third squad formation is one I was most familiar with, the USMC's three fire team rifle squad standardized in March of 1944. Derived from the Chinese Communist practice of grouping three men around a single automatic weapon, this system was first tried out by the Marines in the Second Raider Battalion under Colonel Carlson. Three independantly-maneuvering four-Marine "fire teams," each organized around the Browning Automatic Rifle, achieved a balance of mobility and firepower which could be controlled under chaotic battlefield conditions that was hard to improve upon. Too bad that it was squandered in mostly frontal attacks against an enemy whose defense was basically an area ambush, a trap that sucked in attackers for annihilation. It is a credit to the Marines and their lowest-level tactical organization that they managed to prevail over the Imperial Japanese infantry's defensive webs--something like the fly overpowering the spider after getting entangled in its web.

There are other subjects covered in "On Infantry," but for brevity, I've just covered the evolution of squad organization. This evolution was impacted by such things as changing American Army drill--instead of forming the squad as two ranks of four men, the "new" squad of 1940 formed as a single file of 12 men--or any other number. Another factor in the evolution of the squad was conversion from foot mobility to motorization--the twelve-man squad of 1940 became a six-Soldier dismount team aboard a Stryker or Bradley. Due to low priority given to "bayonets on line," these dismount teams may number a mere two soldiers at times. Infantry squads always suffer attrition-often administrative attrition (mess duty, guard details, "give me a guy for a patrol,") and frequently casualties due to non-combat accidents, illness, or combat injuries. This messes up tactics because it isn't unusual for a rifle squad to be missing as much as 2/3rds of its strength in combat. The American idea of men as interchangable cogs in a massive machine ignored the human element, but this has changed due to combat experience. When a bunch of "weekend warriors" who have limited training time, but have known each other for years and have built mutual bonds of confidence out-fight "better-trained" active-component soldiers in both war games and actual combat, something is obviously wrong with regarding the infantry squad as an ad-hoc grouping of individuals. Sports teams train together to develop team work. The best individual players tossed into a game as a mob will almost always lose to a team of mediocre players who are lead by a competent coach and who play as a team. Infantry combat is a "team sport" rather than an individual event, and the long-overdue recognition of this simple fact is one reason why American infantry out-fights the Iraqi "insurgents."

An extensive bibliography and a very useable index enhances "On Infantry." This well-read book is an important part of my small unit tactics library.

John English's "A Perspective on Infantry," and its revised edition, have been enduring residents on the bookshelves of military professionals since first publication in 1981. English's topic is the tactical role of infantry on the twentieth century battlefield. As a Canadian officer, his focus was primarily on the wars in which Canada participated, but this is not a history of the Canadian Army. His narrative closely examines the evolution of infantry organization and use in the American and British armies, and in their 20th century opponents such as the Japanese and German armies.

English discusses, in very accessible prose, how changes in warfare and technology tended to drive changes in basic infantry organization down to the fire team and squad level, and how infantry was used on the battlefield. He relies heavily on the historical record of the two world wars, but other conflicts are referenced. English's prose is straightforward and matter-of-fact, even sometimes moving, as in his description of the heroic performance of the U.S. First Marine Division in the breakout from the Chosin Reservoir in 1950.

English was a professional writing primarily for other professionals. The reader without military or historical background may not fully appreciate the value of this work.

The extent to which integrated joint and combined operations have come to dominate the actions of the U.S. military and to a lesser degree of its NATO allies is an event largely postdating this edition, as is the degree to which netcentric warfare is now commonly used. Nevertheless, the basis of the infantry continues to be the human soldier: on that basis, "On Infantry" endures as a very worthful professional read.

While most certainly a descriptive look at the role of infantry in the 20th century(excluding late conflicts such as the Gulf War), the author focuses far too much on the singular role of infantry weapons and squad composition for success. He very lightly looks at the overall strategy of conflicts, so it is quite ironic that he focuses on the tactical brilliance of the Japanese and German troops during WWII, without realizing the sole purpose of warfare is to win wars. His chapters on the Japanese are probably the most troubling when he discusses their small unit abilities while failing to mention the inevitable devastation that their human wave tactics caused on their infantry units and war plan as a whole.

The 1st edition of this book, under the title A Perspective on Infantry, came out in 1981, and was written by John English. This Revised edition was first published in 1994, and was the work of Bruce Gudmundsson. The purpose of the book is to survey the changes in the formation, armament, and tactical use of the Infantry, especially in the Platoon and Squad, from World War I onward in the American, British, Chinese, French, German, Israeli, Japanese, and Russian armies. It is not a well-conceived or clearly written book, but the information is there for those who care about it. The text reads like a provisional draft. It lacks focus, and has a mushy feel to it. The entire book needs to be reconceived and rewritten.