I'd like to mount a small historical defense of the oft-maligned Army replacement system. In WW2, the individual replacements often were casualties within 24 hours of arriving, often after spending many boring days or weeks in a replacement depot with little or no training. The defense of the system is that the US Army was able to keep its divisions in the line constantly at an effective (not full) strength, hardly ever having to withdraw them for replenishment. [Which was good, since Ike almost never had any reserve divisions to replace shot-out ones on the line.]
What most divisions and regiments learned was to hold their replacements for some refresher training, and to cycle them in when a company came off the line for a week or so. When things got too hot, then this got tossed out the window.
In short, it worked well enough, but only from the higher command's point of view.
Anyway, back to the '90s. SACEUR's going to have even fewer divisions to rotate then Ike did, but with at least as high a casualty rate. Towards the latter half of the Battle for Poland in '97, both sides are going to need a lot of replacements, really quickly.
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My Twilight claim to fame: I ran "Allegheny Uprising" at Allegheny College, spring of 1988.
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