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.
I’ve believed this stuff for years. I said so to a vet who smashed his knee jumping for cover. He landed wrong, felt his knee go, and then the weight of the pack came down. So he’s limping for life.
I told him I thought carrying a quartermaster’s shop on your back under fire was a bad idea. He said it was a good idea. Sometimes transportation breaks down.
This probably won’t ever be decided. Play different lose different.
S.L.A. Marshall earlier made the point that training with a heavier load didn’t improve soldiers’ ability to march with such a load, which caught my attention. I suspect that lifting weights would help, but that was almost unthinkable at the time.