Isegoria

While the supply discipline of the United States Army is regulated by the pressure to give troops all the comforts the middle-class American has learned to expect, S.L.A. Marshall explains (in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation), the Russian Army, composed of men who have lived hard in their civilian environment, can operate in war on a minimum subsistence level without making its people feel abused:

As the Quartermaster General M. F. Kerner has pointed out, this means that the Communists have a relatively simple logistical problem,_ despite that we commonly think of the tran::portation of supply as being the weak link in the Soviet military system.

Many of Kerner’s revelations about how they improvise in the supply and technical field are highly significant. He continues:

“In my own experience I almost never saw a Russian military truck driver with the equipment to repair his tires. Hundreds of times I have watched these drivers patch up their punctures with the help of an empty oil can, a piece of crude rubber and the help of a heavy stone from the roadside. Piercing the upper part of the can, they filled the bottom with gasoline. Then they cleaned the tire tube, laid the crude rubber patch over the hole, and placed the stone on top. By setting fire to the gasoline, the patch was vulcanized to the tube in ten minutes.

“Fuel for the tanks was usually stored in huge cast-iron drums on trailers attached to the tanks and kept rolling along behind.

“When a tank was out of order, the troops improvised a repair shop in the forest by felling three trees, trimming their branches, and arranging them crosswise to make a lever for lifting the motor or any heavy part of the tank. Bridges were made entirely of timber. If the region was wooded, horses and oxen from local farms were commandeered to transport the trees; if there were no woods, the nearest wooden structure, whether a private home or a public building, was demolished and used for lumber.

“Russian engineers were trained in time of peace to construct wooden bridges, even massive bridges as high as 30 feet, such as those over the Don and Rivers. In the exigency of war, these engineers could put up a bridge with no other tools than axes, hammers and clamps.

“Every army has a system of priorities for supplying its fighting troops. But Soviet transportation, controlled entirely from a central office in Moscow, had a system of such sharp penalties inflicted for minor negligence that a small delay in loading and unloading operations was treated as a serious transgression. The personnel of all forms of transportation came under the jurisdiction of military tribunals which performed their duties right at the front, often trying and sentencing the offender within 24 hours of his dereliction.

“Staff training consists, as far as possible, in practice rather than in theory. During the war, military trainees had to study the current battles, analyze the mistakes made, and even visit the front to accustom themselves to actual combat. All branches of the army, including medical personnel and quartermaster corps underwent this same training.

“Little mail was transported to the front. A dilapidated three-to-four ton truck, no longer useful for priority materiel, sufficed to take care of the mail for a whole division. It was generally accepted as a mere weakness for the soldier at the front to want news of home, and the men were discouraged from writing. As in all other matters concerning the individual, the Russian soldier’s feelings were of no consequence.

“Their success with logistics, in sum, is due not to extraordinary skill and efficiency, hut rather to an endless ability to forage for themselves, to withstand the onslaught of the elements and to make do with whatever comes to hand.”

[…]

This is what [a German general] said: “The Russian will not be held back by terrain normally considered impassable. That was where we made some of our early mistakes. Gradually we learned that it was in just such places that his appearance, and probably his attack, was to be expected. The Russian infantryman could not only overcome terrain difficulties but was able to do so very quickly. Miles of corduroy road were laid through swamp within a few days. Beaten tracks appeared through forest covered in deep snow. Ten men abreast with arms joined, in ranks 100 deep, prepared these routes in 15-minute reliefs of 1,000 men each. Following this human snowplow, guns and other heavy weapons were dragged to wherever they were needed by other teams of infantrymen. During winter, snow caves which could be heated were built to provide overnight shelter for men and horses. Motorization was reduced to an absolute minimum, only the lightest vehicles being used. The horses were tough and required little care. The uniforms were suitable but the men were never over-clad. Mobility came of the mass of men which moved all loads, doing the work of machines when machines would no longer work.”

Overloading has always been the curse of
armies, S.L.A. Marshall explains (in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation):

Today we stagger along under a burden of soft drink machines, mammy singers and lollypops. In Wellington’s time, it was the soldiers’ wives and the regimental women which hindered movement.

While a prisoner in Srain, Baron Lejuene penned this arresting picture of military impedimenta in his time:

“First came the captain in his scarlet uniform, mounted on a very fine horse and carrying a big open parasol.

“Then came his wife in a pretty costume, with a very small straw hat, seated on a mule, holding up an umbrella and caressing a little black and tan King Charles spaniel on her knee, whilst she led by a blue ribbon a tame goat, which was to supfly her night and morning with cream for her cup o tea.

“Beside madam walked an Irish nurse, carrying slung across her shoulder a bassinet made of green silk, in which reposed an infant, the hope of the family.

“Behind madam’s mule stalked a huge grenadier, the faithful servant of the captain, with his musket over his shoulder, urging on with a stick the long-eared steed of his mistress.

“Behind him again came a donkey laden with the voluminous baggage of the family, surmounted by a tea-kettle and a cage full of canaries, whilst a jockey or groom in livery brought up the rear, mounted on a sturdy English horse, with its hide gleaming like polished steel. This groom held a huge posting whip in one hand, the cracking of the lash of which made the donkey mend its pace, and at the same time kept order among the four or five spaniels and greyhounds which served as scouts to the captain during the march of his small cavalcade.”

An army has to take absolute measures
against looting, S.L.A. Marshall explains (in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation), or provide a moving conveyor belt which will carry junk to the rear:

Otherwise, what is likely to happen is best illustrated by the classic tale of Sergeant Bourgoyne, a member of Napoleon’s army at Moscow.

When the army quit Moscow on October 19, 1812, Bourgoyne hefted his pack and decided that it was too heavy. So he examined its contents to see what he could discard. According to his Memoirs, he found “some pounds of sugar, some rice, some biscuits, a partly full bottle of liquor, a woman’s Chinese dress embroidered in gold and silver, a bit of the cross of Ivan the Great, my own uniform, a woman’s large riding cloak hazel-colored and lined with green velvet, two silver pictures in relief, one representing the judgment of Paris on Mount Ida and the other showing Neptune on a chariot, several lockets, and a Russian prince’s spittoon set with brilliants.”

But having found the pack too heavy, Bourgoyne could not get out of his mind the visions of the lovely women in Paris who might be seduced by some of these objects. So he did not lighten the pack. He went on his way for another month carrying his treasures. Then at the Battle of Krasnoe he lost everything, including his sixteen rounds of ammunition which he had been unable to fire because the weight of the prince’s jewelled spittoon, and the other loot, had made him less than half a man.

[…]

Under conditions of far greater stress, Maj. Robert K. Whiteley, Medical Corps, noted this trait in human nature as he witnessed the organization of the “Death March” from Mariveles to Camp O’Donnell in the Philippines on April 10, 1942.

There was virtually no leadership in the camp and each man had to think things out for himself. Most of the men were extremely weak from malaria and dysentery. They were told at the start that the march would be about 120 miles, and they were warned that those who fell out would be killed on the spot.

Said Whiteley: “I was surprised at the inability of average men to weigh the relative importance of things and discard every object which meant increased danger. Many started out carrying extra blankets, shirts, drawers and extra shoes. Some carried sewing kits, mirrors, framed pictures, clocks, flashlights and cameras. These weights put many of them in the ditch. They paid. for the mistake with their lives.” They were not the first soldiers to do this; nor, I fear, will they be the last.

The kind of foe the US Army might meet in the next major war, S.L.A. Marshall explains, in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation, was outlined by Lieut. Gen. Sir Giffard Martel, chief of the British Military Mission to Russia in World War 2:

He wrote: “The rank and file [of the Red Army] were magnificent from a physical point of view. Much of the equipment which we carry on vehicles accompanying the infantry are carried on the man’s back in Russia. The Russians seem capable of carrying these great loads. They are exceptionally tough.

“Many of them arr1ved on September 6 and slept on the ground. It was bitterly cold and a little snow had fallen. The men had no blankets. But when we saw them on September 7 they were getting up and shaking themselves and seemed in good heart. Not a word was said about the cold. Two meals a day seemed to suffice for these troops.”

This was the discipline to which Russian soldiers were being submitted during a training maneuver.

There is other abundant testimony as to how this extraordinary physical vigor and ability to endure against adverse climate which is to be found in the average Russian individual redounds to the strength of tactical forces. I have dealt with many German generals who commanded on the Eastern Front. They said, as did Martel, that the Russian seems to be inured to unusual cold, just as he seems conditioned by nature to living with the forest, and using it in all possible ways to advance his own fighting and baffle his enemies. One of these generals told of surrounding a Russian regiment along the Volkhov in the 1941 winter campaign. The Russians were in a small forest. The Germans decided to starve them out. After 10 days, German patrols found that the enemy resistance had in no wise lessened. Another week passed; a few prisoners had been taken but the majority of the entrapped regiment had succeeded in breaking through the German lines in small groups. The prisoners said that during these weeks the encircled force had subsisted on a few loaves of frozen bread, leaves and pine needles. The weather was 35° below zero. According to the prisoners, the junior leaders had never even raised the point that this cold and hunger were a sufficient reason for surrender.

General Eisenhower wrote of his own feeling of shock on hearing Marshal Zhukov say that the Russians did not bother to clear minefields; thev marched their infantry across the mined area and took their losses.

In 1943, southeast of Kremenchug, the Germans were holding a bridgehead in such strength that they felt certain of holding against the attack which they expected the Russians to loose the following morning. But by night the enemy fanned out over their rear area and collected hundreds of their own civilians, herding them forward at rifle point. When the attack began, this mass was driven forward as a cushion to absorb the German fire. As they were mowed down, the Russian infantry rolled over them and into the bridgehead.

Said Colonel Joachim Peiper, who had fought through three years on the Eastern Front: “On defense the Russian surpasses any soldier I know. Excellent choice of ground, unimaginable diggings combined with good camouflage and unusual depth in the fighting zone are among his characteristics. Every infantryman carries anti-tank grenades. Snipers are effective up to 800 yards. The infantrymen are tough, persistent and given to weight carrying. In a retreat, they will hand-carry their dead to obscure casualty figures.”

Peiper recounted how during the 1941–42 winter, the Russian command published an order decreeing death by the firing squad for any soldier so careless that he allowed himself to becomefrostbitten. Some men suffered this misfortune but were afraid to report it. The Germans came across them in the lines with their hands completely frozen. They were bundled in anything they could get to keep warmth in their bodies. A nail sticking out between the fingers of the right hand enabled them to work the rifle trigger.

The Eisenhower story about the Russian mine-clearing method is topped by Peiper’s account of how the Reds dropped sabotage crews behind the German lines during this same winter. They were flown over in old double-wing planes. While the planes glided ten feet or so above the snow the troops were pushed from them without anything to cushion the shock. The greater number were cracked-up and subsequently died of freezing. The survivors carried out the order.

This came from another witness, General Hasso-Eccard Manteuffel, who later commanded the Fifth Panzer Army on the Western Front: “Their advance is unlike anything ever seen in operations between western armies. The soldier carries a sack on his back with dry crusts and raw vegetables collected on the march. The horses forage where they can. You can’t stop them like an ordinary army by cutting their communications, for you rarely find any supply columns to strike.”

In War as I Knew It, Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. wrote:

No soldier should be compelled to walk until he actually enters battle.

[From that point forward he should] carry nothing but what he wears, his ammunition, his rations and his toilet articles.

[When the battle is concluded] he should get new uniforms, new everything.

These are perfectly practical rules, S.L.A. Marshall declares, in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation:

The only amendment that might strengthen them would be to add that rations and ammunition should be specified only in the amounts which reason and experience tell us the soldier is likely to expend in one day. Beyond that, everything should be committed to first line transport. This includes entrenching tools, since twenty heavy and sharp-edged spades will give better protection any day to an entire company than 200 of the play shovels carried by soldiers. If we are dealing with mountain operations or any special situation where first line transport will have difficulty getting through, it is wiser to assign part of the troops temporarily to special duty as hearers and carriers, excusing them from fire responsibilities. If we are ever to have a wholly mobile army — mobile afoot as well as when motorized on the road — the fighting soldier should be expected to carry only the minimum of weapons and supplies which will give him personal protection and enable him to advance against the enemy in the immediate situation. He should not be loaded for tomorrow or the day after. He should not be “given an axe in case he may have to break down a door.” It is better to take the chance that soldiers will sleep cold for a night or two than to risk that they will become exhausted in battle from carrying too heavy a blanket load. It is wiser to teach them to conserve food, how to live off the countryside, and the importance of equalizing theuse of captured enemy stores than it is to take the chance of encumbering them with an overload of rations. It is sounder to teach them to worry less about personal hygiene and appearance during the hours in which they are fighting for their lives than to weight them down with extra changes of clothing. It is more prudent to keep them light and thereby assist them to maintain juncture than to overload them with munitions and weapons in anticipation of the dire situations which might develop, should juncture be broken.