During World War II, S.L.A. Marshall was busily engaged in recording the history of the war and had developed a method of capturing data from soldiers within a short time of the conclusion of various battles. As he was doing this, he started realizing that there was a problem with our infantry and the way they were fighting the war. He pulled his thoughts together into this book and excerpts of it were also published as a series of essays that appeared in the "Infantry Journal" in 1947. The problem that he identified was that U.S. Infantry forces were not fighting as coherently as they should have been and consequently were either not winning battles fast enough, or were defeated unnecessarily.
While he called the book "Men Against Fire" the much better title for it is the subtitle of "the Problem of Battle Command." This book is really a call for action on how to train American infantrymen to fight the battle. The book starts out with Marshall's thoughts on why Infantry are the important elements of the Army at this time and likely to be so in the future as well. To put this in context, these words were written in the 1946 and 1947 when many military theorists were supposing that the Nuclear age had ushered in an era where Armies are no longer needed as sending over some bombers or missiles armed with nuclear warheads will finish things off. It is quite interesting to read his thoughts in 2012 as the U.S. is still engaged in Afghanistan and the U.S. Army is just completing a transition from a heavy mechanized force to one that is heavily Infantry-based! What is particularly interesting is that his arguments still resonate and were proven correct in many of the conflicts that took place in the intervening 65 years!
Marshall's main prescriptions are that the way to train and treat the infantryman is to realize that he is human and that, as a human, he needs social clues and the understanding of groups to be able to operate. This is especially true in modern battlefield conditions where the infantryman who's been shot at, finds the nearest little scrap of cover and hides as much of himself as possible. The battlefield is empty as neither side shows themselves. So, why and where should he go? Who and how does he get direction from? Etc. These thoughts are the strongest parts of the book and as a veteran myself, these are the thoughts that ring the truest for me. Marshall has some very practical and eminently sensible suggestions on what the NCO's and officers should be doing in a battle. Those suggestions should be followed closely.
To make his point even stronger, Marshall cites a fantastic statistic. According to him, based on his research with veterans of many battles moments after the battles ended, most infantrymen do not fire their weapons. He actually claims that only about 15% of the infantrymen use their weapons and fire them. When I read this I was very skeptical as it did not seem right to me either logically, or based on my own experiences. To clarify this point, he relates this only to the individual riflemen and points out that and crew-served weapons did not display this problem. There is an introduction to this book that must have been written after Marshall's death as in it this problem is resolved. Marshall made up the statistic. It was never discussed or researched; it was simply made up as a way to shock the readers into paying attention. I suppose Marshall intended this as a pedagogical device, but I know that this one factor alone made me think twice about the rest of the contents of the book and still leaves a bit of a bitter flavor in my mouth - can I really believe what he says?
Leaving aside this problem, what else does Marshall discuss? Well, he suggests several different ways in which leaders need to behave to get action from their troops. Starting with training in more realistic conditions; communicating both front to back and laterally; Making sure that your words are sent along to all your soldiers and understood in the way that they were meant to be; communicating with adjacent units whether or not they are part of the larger unit that you belong to; communicating constantly and loudly; treating your soldiers like human beings; and much more is dealt with in the rest of this relatively slim volume.
If you are thinking of becoming a leader of troops who will become embroiled in a battle, or are already in such a position, this book is a must read. Even if you are not, but are interested in how to lead people, this book will help. I also found many other interesting little tidbits in it that still ring true even though we are almost 70 years removed from its writing. The only one that I will quote here goes like this: "There is something almost fatally quixotic about a nation which professes lofty ideals in its international undertakings and yet disdains to talk patriotism to its citizens, as if this were beneath its dignity." Those are words to remember in 2012, in the United States.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2012
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Top reviews from other countries
JWH
Deeply Flawed Yet Still A Relevant Classic
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 13, 2015Richard
love it, if anyone can falsify his data
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2015
Dermie X
It might be a lie but it needed telling
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2010
