Isegoria

S.L.A. Marshall decried (in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation) the senseless competition between the armed services in arranging special privileges and comforts for their separate forces when engaged in joint operations:

Consider what happened all too frequently in Pacific operations during World War II! The Army went ashore relatively light even when setting up a garrison operation. Because of the shortage of shipping space the men slept on the ground, with a blanket or so and a shelter half; they cut foliage for bedding. This would all have been tolerable if a Navy or Seabee unit had not set up next door with cots for sleeping, good housing and a ship’s store, complete with free beer. (Though it may have happened the other way, with the Navy taking the spitty end of the stick, I never heard of it.) The soldier compared his own lack of luxury and skinned-down installations with the luck of the people next door. The result was the demoralization of the service which felt itself discriminated against by higher authority, and forced by the country to suffer unnecessary hardship. In the beginning the Army had stuck to the policy of shipping luxury goods only when there was stowage space beyond that required for essential military cargo. It was soon compelled to depart from this sound principle and give shipping priority to welfare goods. The load continued to increase as one service vied with another in trying to make its men feel especially favored. That we did not pay an exorbitant price for this encumbering weight was only because we were meeting an enemy already short of shipping and other resources.

ln our times, S.L.A. Marshall explains (in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation), “we have permitted military thinking to become clouded by what social workers, psychiatrists, business counsel, public-relations advisers and morale experts have to say about what is proper in an army organized according to American standards, meaning the standards which are upheld in American institutions of a quite different nature”:

The military leader has become an unhappy worrier, confused and buffeted between rival groups of medicine men, each vending some special magic. He is told that a new order has arisen, that the rising generation is somehow different, that industrial change has revolutionized the military problem, that how he is presented to the public cuts more ice than what he really is and how he thinks, and that modern science and business methodology can rub a lamp and come up with the perfect answer to every age-old military problem.

[…]

From the viewpoint of the businessman, and of his particular friends in political life, the wartime Army is a great business institution, and a shining mark for the sale of any product which can be given even the pale shadow of a legitimate purpose. They press upon command to accept all manner of things which it would not normally consider. Public sentiment — “nothing is too good for the boys” — moves in the same direction. That these pressures are hard to resist is well understood by everyone who was familiar with the World War II atmosphere in Washington. That they are ever likely to become less is a wishful thought hardly sustained by the passage of postwar events.

On the day before the Third Army was to attack into Brittany, S.L.A. Marshall explains (in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation), General Patton was visited by Generals Lord, Stratton, and Eyster of Communications Zone:

They wanted to know how he was set as to supply and what he would expect of the rear establishment. He said, “Gentlemen, I’ve got three days of POL, ammunition and food. That’s all we need for the start. It’s up to you back there to get the rest of it up to me.” He then outlined the operation as he expected it to develop. Brittany was to be cut off. One flank was to turn toward Brest, and the other was to advance on and over the Loire River. In short, he foresaw that his army would be in continuous motion for at least three weeks. The records show that he made the shot just about as he called it. His critics sometimes say of Patton that he did not know logistics and that this was his handicap. That is at best a negative truth. What he didn’t know about the supply problem never slowed the movement of his armies. He respected the controlling principle. He would not overload his own forces. He demanded all the support that could be had from those who were in position to help them along. He may have missed a tree here and there but he kept his eyes on the forest.

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.