Training for War

by Tom Kratman

  Similarly formations: picture a platoon, normally of four vehicles, trying to bound forward by sections of two vehicles. That’s fine, as far as it goes. Ah, but what about when the platoon is down to only three vehicles? Then it doesn’t work so well anyway, and hardly at all in the same way. The three vehicle platoon moves either with an inadequate overwatching force—one vehicle—or the section on overwatch is two vehicles and the single track sent ahead to bound feels alone and abandoned, advancing most reluctantly.

  So under normal combat conditions—because, again, normal is understrength—the bounding overwatch drill has less benefit than you expect and need, and all the time spent on drilling such movement tends to be wasted. On the other hand, a company bounding forward by alternating its platoons can work because even if a bounding platoon has taken some losses, it is still capable of covering its own front and has enough sub units left to give each other moral support to go forward.

  Time to execute the drill in battle is another consideration. Some things don’t have to be conditioned in order to be done. Even in battle there is often time to give more than one-word drill commands. Before deciding to train something as a drill, consider if there would normally be time to give orders to have your troops act more appropriately than a drill would allow.

  Then, too, one should prioritize. Ask yourself if the drill a matter of life and death for an individual, victory or defeat for a higher unit? I don’t mean simply that under some rare circumstances a well-executed drill might be life or death for us or the enemy. I mean is a precise conditioned response virtually always that important?

  Sometimes it is. Reaction to a near ambush is that kind of circumstance. So is using a Bangalore torpedo2 to breach an obstacle, especially when attacking a position held by an enemy with a very responsive artillery support network . . . if surprise fails you and you must clear a path quickly.

  At a lower level, the individual level, there are also a few tasks like that. The whole field of combat demolitions is dangerous enough to justify drilling troops to do it perfectly every time. The time to put on a gas mask is about that critical, too. Although, as a little experiment in the downside of drills and SOPs, sometime have your troops come under a chemical attack when they are advancing at a crawl under fire, with inadequate cover and concealment. Watch how our boys, already well-drilled on immediate action for a chemical attack, stand up despite the direct fire to put on their masks.

  “Only the very simple can work in war,” as Clausewitz observed. Complex drills simply won’t work, even leaving aside that the time required to condition something goes up with that something’s complexity, even as the probability of conditioning it drops.

  As suggested above, your enemy is probably not a fool. He will adapt to your drills very quickly, given a chance to study them.

  The final problem with basing one’s tactics and training around drill is that there is a mindset, common in many armies, which has no understanding of war as the chaos it is. To these people everything is controllable, everything is predictable. They will forget that war is about prevailing against an armed enemy, who does not think about himself as a target set up to give you the best possible chance of success, but instead will do everything he can to thwart and destroy you.

  In peacetime maneuvers, these people and their units often do well, even better than those who see war more clearly for what it is. They then stretch the idea of drill beyond the legitimate limits it has, and try to make everything a drill, everything precise. Skills and purely measurable factors assume an unmerited importance. Worst of all, leaders and troops are not trained to think. Their moral faculties are not developed.

  After the First World War there, the victorious French Army developed some very standardized drills for higher formations. The German Army examined these division level drills in wargames on maps and came to the conclusion that they were, most of the time, more effective than the more chaotic approach the Germans had favored. Nonetheless, the Germans didn’t adopt the French methods. The French continued to drill; the Germans continued to treat war as uncontrollable chaos and trained their army accordingly.

  France fell in six weeks in 1940.

  And now, just to prove that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, I’m going to break the filters I gave above and suggest one drill for heavy units, tank, mechanized infantry, motorized infantry, plus other vehicle mounted units, that meets almost none of them. This is a drill—in two variants—for underway fueling, feeding, and arming.

  In the first of these, four trucks—a mess truck, a fuel truck, an ammunition truck, and a trash truck—line up on the road, either to one side or, if the road’s wide enough and the fuel truck has two nozzles, in the middle of it, and the troops go through on their vehicles. At the first truck, the mess truck, the squad leader holds up the number of fingers for the people he has to feed. The mess folks on the truck dish out that many meals, covering one of the meals for the driver, who can’t stop to eat. The non-driving personnel begin wolfing their food down like ravenous, wild, mad, rabid beasts. The driver continues on to the next truck, fuel, and stops the track. He then tries to imitate the others (nomnomnom), while someone plugs the fuel nozzle into the vehicle and the fuel folks oversee the pump. Meanwhile, the squad leader sends one private jogging to the next truck, with a written list of the ammunition needed. When the vehicle is fully fueled, or as fully fueled as it can be made, in times of logistic austerity, the driver puts down his chow and moves up to the ammunition truck, where the ammunition is waiting. This is tossed over and dumped on the floor of the track, pending a rest halt or assembly area where it can be properly stowed. Someone bends down and does the best stowage he can, under the circumstances. The driver might or might not get a bite at this time. The ammunition placed below, the track moves on to the trash truck. While going there, all the trash from the previous day, plus the garbage and paper plates from the meals just consumed (I mentioned “ravenous, wild, mad, rabid beasts,” did I not?) and tosses it over in passing.

  The second version is basically the same, except that everybody is moving the whole time. Yes, it takes a little practice. But, with practice, a mechanized infantry company can be fed, fueled, rearmed, and have its trash removed in ten or eleven minutes, while never becoming a stationary target for enemy artillery.

  Why do this as a drill though? Good question. Try this: much time in training is wasted by stopping, starting, and building up momentum and inertia. This way cuts way down on that. Too, like Collins’ example of passing out ammunition on the route march to the line of departure, something that simply feels real, and, chrome-like, adds that sense of, “this is what it will be like,” which tends to carry over past the minor event to the major exercise, validating the exercise. Additionally, it has the effect of inculcating in the mind of every man in a heavy, mobile unit that speed is their best asset, more than guns and armor.

  As for the disadvantages noted in battle drill, they don’t generally apply to this, since it is not an exercise in using force to overcome force, against an intelligent, self-willed enemy.

  Vignette Nine: sometimes the best way to learn to understand and defeat your enemy is by walking in his shoes:

  The mission was deliberate attack at the company level, but it was an OPFOR mission, in this case to simulate a Soviet motorized rifle company conducting an assault from the march. MILES would be used.

  Well, thought Hamilton, I don’t think it would be unprincipled to use the actual Soviet drill for this. Rather, unless we do use that drill, we’ll be in violation of the conditions for the problem.

  So he called together his lieutenants and explained to them they were going to simulate a Soviet unit—“Oh, yes, boys, you are going to command the company in rotation for this.”—doing things the Soviet way, as the only way to properly test their sister company, the platoons of which would be defending battle positions.

  And that was what they did for the day; they practiced doing
things the Soviet way. This involved rolling in column to about twelve hundred meters away, forming platoon columns as they closed, dismounting just out of small arms range, forming on line, and walking forward firing from the hip. It culminated with the platoon leaders calling, “Into the assault: FORWARD!” and the troops shouting, “Urrah!” and then charging at the run, screaming like Furies and firing like maniacs.

  The first platoon of the other company wasn’t expecting that. They ran.

  Wow, thought Hamilton, I sure didn’t expect that.

  The second platoon of that company ran, too.

  Uh, oh., thought Hamilton; I think we have just discovered that our units are going to run for their lives if they ever have to face a Soviet Army doing even the simplistic crap it’s been trained to do. I see no end of bad in our future.

  The third platoon was going to run; Hamilton was with them while one of his lieutenants commanded the company. He could see them getting ready to bolt. They didn’t, but only because the battalion commander declared an artillery-delivered FASCAM (FAmily of SCAatterable Mines) minefield right in front of Hamilton’s company. Never mind that as a battalion commander he lacked the authority for FASCAM on his own hook. Never mind that the entire divisional artillery could not have delivered it so instantaneously, if that had been all they had to do.

  (In other words, that battalion commander, faced with someone using realistic conditions, decided to adopt an unrealistic condition to avoid what he apparently felt was personal humiliation. For shame.)

  The rest of the story is that, when it became Hamilton’s company’s turn to defend by platoons, the sister company had learned to do the same Soviet battle drill, possibly with a couple of improvements. Hamilton’s first platoon…stood. Hamilton’s second platoon…stood. Hamilton’s third platoon stood—and without the battalion commander giving them an impossible FASCAM obstacle.

  I think, thought Hamilton, that the difference isn’t so much in the quality of the companies. I think it’s that my men were inoculated by seeing the Soviets from the inside, first.

  Notes:

  1 Note: if this sounds familiar, yes, this part of the talk, which I’ve been giving for years, was modified for inclusion in Carnifex.

  2 Note: I’m not actually sure Bangalores are still in the system. There are limitations, however, to the MCLIC, the Mine Clearing Line Charge, sufficient to justify making your own, even if they’re no longer in the system.

  V

  Training individuals and the chain of command.

  The Army’s record, I know, and the Marines, I’ve been told, is not all that good here. We waste a lot of time. We misdirect a lot of time. Worst of all, we centralize in such a way as to remove from non-coms, especially squad leaders, their historic responsibility to train their own troops. A side effect of that institutionally directed irresponsibility is that the squad leaders are often a lot weaker than they ought to be.

  Vignette Ten: Knowledge is power.

  Camp Swampy, 1986.

  When Hamilton was a young puppy of a lieutenant, his company commander made him promise that, when he took command of a company, he wouldn't change a blessed thing for at least six weeks. Instead, he solemnly promised, he’d do a lot of LBWO, asking questions, and then analyze.

  He did that for the first six weeks of his first command. In the process, he saw all kinds of interesting and eye-opening things: People sleeping in the barracks on duty time, squad leaders who really didn't have the first idea that they were responsible for their troops, in toto, squad leader time consisting of people playing ping pong in the dayroom. And this was in one of the better companies of that battalion, Hamilton’s predecessor having been a first class officer, in general (though he never made general).

  Hamilton didn't really blame the squad leaders or platoon sergeants. And his platoon leaders were all brand new. The officer corps had castrated the NCO corps decades prior. They were so used to being told what to do, all the time, to having their time managed by higher, that the idea that they were responsible was just alien to many, maybe even most, of them.

  So Hamilton called everybody from squad leader on up into his office and gave a little speech, more or less to this effect:

  "Boys, I've been in the Army about nine and a half years by now. I think probably every year, sometimes twice, some company commander or other would announce, 'People, I'm sick of this fucking off in the barracks. We're gonna account for every man, every minute. We're gonna tighten up the training schedule...We're not gonna let a minute go to waste...”

  “Yeah...no. That usually worked for about ten days until the next crisis came upon us and some new priority popped up; then we went right back to what we'd been doing.

  "We're going to try something different. Rather, we're going to try a few things different.

  "Item one: Look at your new training schedule. Note where it says 'sergeants' time'? Right; it doesn’t; it's gone. All time that I don't specifically take is sergeants' time. Now flip it over.

  "Item two: Remember where it used to say 'opportunity training'? Note that now it says 'mandatory opportunity training.' That means you are going to do it; trust me on this. I'm testing Friday afternoons. If your guys fail, we'll retest Friday night until Saturday morning, if that's what it takes. Yeah, it's micro-managing. For the moment.

  "Item three: Where's the time coming from for this? Go back to what I said in item one; I'm not putting anything on the schedule that isn't _my_ major event. So you now have a lot of time.”

  The first week they didn't believe him. He had the first sergeant select two men from each squad, randomly, and used his platoon leaders and platoon sergeants to test. The men failed. So the dirty bastard kept the whole company there retesting until about 23:30. Next week, two of the squad leaders believed. Their people passed. The rest stayed until about 22:30. The next week it was four, until maybe 21:00.

  It took six weeks but, by that time, they all believed.

  Hamilton kept it up for another six weeks after that. Allegedly, one – at least one; might have been more – of his squad leaders had troops coming up to him and saying, in one case literally, "Forsooth, Sergeant, I am in desperate need of getting laid. Sadly, if we don't pass the muthafuckin' CO's test Friday, it won't happen again this week, either. So please, PLEASE teach me this shit.”

  After that twelve weeks was over there was another little prayer meeting in Hamilton’s office. The gist of that was, "Okay, now you know you can do this; you can train your own troops without being told where and when to do it. The next step is that now you're going to decide what your squad needs. Right. Now give me five Soldiers Manual tasks, three if they're exceptionally hard. Yeah, that's each of you. Yeah, I'm still going to test Friday night."

  That program, in conjunction with some other things, worked pretty damned well. By well I mean that when the annual hands on Skill Qualification Test1 rolled around, the rest of the battalion shut down for two or three weeks to prep. Hamilton’s crew didn’t. Instead, they went to the field, did a best squad competition, some deliberate attacks, couple-three live fires, some patrolling, some anti-armor ambushing...and basically had a good time. They came in from the field rather late the night before it was their turn to take the SQT (which in that battalion was done much like an EIB test, _very_ anal). Hamilton told the boys, "Oil your rifles, knock the mud off your boots, get a good night's sleep. See you out here in the morning.”

  Seven people in that company didn't max the test. That was something over two thirds of all the maxes in the battalion, which is pretty good considering he had less than ten percent of the battalion. The top nine squads were Hamilton’s, ten counting company HQ. The top three platoons were his, and nobody else was even close. All his squad leaders acquired a pretty vast level of prestige with their own troops and within the battalion, overall.

  After that, he still collected their tasks, but just spot checked occasionally. The sergeants were doing it, all individual training, entir
ely on their own hook. And from there he could put in a date and time for a given inspection or any other event related to his squads and be quite confident it would get done, efficiently and well.

  (Oh, the next year, where he paid zero attention to the upcoming SQT, only four of the men didn't max it.)

  Vignette Eleven: Be innovative if you want your troops to learn innovativeness. Be determined if you want to develop determination in the men.

  Hamilton thought the boys were ready for a plus up – a toughening up – in the condition for Mission Essential Task: Conduct Deliberate Attack. What he had in mind to do was a night assault river crossing with his own company and two smallish platoons attached from a different company (E, aka AT), where the large platoon from Echo Company would play the Opposing Force. The site chosen was the old site for M113 water operations. It had a couple of advantages over other places, notably having slow moving water, a causeway through the middle, and a complete lack of alligators, which is always nice. Crossing the causeway – deemed to be a bridge for the exercise – would be one of those not real bright moves. Besides, the optimum way to take a bridge is both sides simultaneously.

  Hamilton requested a dozen RB-15s, 15 man rubber boats, which could hold one hundred and eighty men, which was about right. The Engineers promised him seven, which could hold one hundred and five. Then they changed this – rather late in the game – to seven RB-7s, seven man rubber boats, which could hold forty-nine. What showed up on his figurative doorstep was four RB-3, one of which leaked, which could hold nine…to get about one hundred and eighty men across the stream…under fire.

  So Hamilton finds himself standing there, glaring at these freaking four (minus one; don’t forget that leak) miserable RB-3s. He wonders if the battalion commander who declared the nonsense FASCAM is behind the shortfall, but, No, Tuffy’s not that bright.