These impressions of the US military from foreigners who have served alongside US troops reveal that the Americans are friendly, generous, professional, and physically strong — but not quiet in the field, and not able to drink like their allies:
- When I went boom thanks to an IED, it was a US helicopter that medevaced me.Its hard to put it down in words, but the thought that they’d rush out to save a foreign soldier really stuck with me. The flight medic was professional, and incredibly compassionate. Whenever I think about it, I get overcome with a sense of gratitude, it often brings me to tears.
I know what they did was just par for the course in terms of being part of the coalition, but for me it will always be an incredible act that really gets me on a personal level.
- Swedish special forces (Lapplands Jägare) mid 90′s.US forces that we trained with are very, very good (Rangers). They failed our jump test though, even with duct tape to tie shit in their harnesses down it was rattling, fuck even just the M16 made enough noise to fail, the non-folding stock of those also got in their way somewhat. That is the shit we’ll nit-pick about them, really they are just good.
[What's a jump test?]
You jump, and if there is any rattle or noise in your equipment you fail. It’s to make sure you don’t give your position away by simply moving around and making noise, or hinder your and your teammates observation. Also, if something rattles it isn’t secured as well as it could.
It’s probably more important in the silent Nordic forests where you could easily hear the enemy before you can see them than in areas where the US rangers usually operate. I had the same test in the Finnish Defence Forces. Also the Ranger mentality is a bit different I suppose. “No sneaking around, fuck shit up!”
- As a US Marine, I’ll say one thing. I will never try to out-drink a Royal Marine again. That was a bad life decision.
LRRPs in Vietnam had the jump test.
We certainly have some true light-infantry troops in our military, but we generally prefer to bump into the enemy and call in massive airstrikes.
It has been 95 years since American troops first served alongside Australian forces, at Le Hamel on the Fourth of July 1918, and against the Hindenburg Line in September and October. Lt Gen Monash wrote of the 2nd American Corps, which was placed under his operational command in late September 1918, that there was no questioning American bravery; however in their determination to get at the enemy, there was a failure to understand the need for mopping-up work (to prevent assault from dug-in positions to the rear).
I read somewhere that a lot of American troops in WWI had about six weeks of training, one average. It’s no wonder that many of them didn’t understand the finer points of warfare. Courage was about all they had, but as Monash pointed out, they had plenty of that.
You might check out the “noise discipline” section of this.
The noise discipline section is interesting:
A second-hand anecdote from the British Army in Northern Ireland in the 1980s: A special team (Based on my reading I would guess a “Close Observation Platoon”, but they were typically vague about exactly who they were) would get into a bath in the barracks fully dressed before going out on patrol on a wet night. The explanation they gave is that they didn’t want to look conspicuous by unconsciously gravitating to sheltered areas, but it might have had an influence on noise as well.
I so miss the Nighthunters mod for Quake 2.