Quote:
Originally Posted by copeab
The US viewed solders as interchangable pieces and had a disgraceful method of replacing dead/wounded soldiers with new ones.
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In the line, no less! Good God, where would we have been without our crushingly superior industrial capacity? How many [expletive deleted] green infantrymen did we sacrifice on the altar of our impatience? Even today, I wonder what would happen if we needed to replace thousands of infantry in short order.
This, by the way, is why I advocate for a National Guard three times the size of the current National Guard with few infantry units but lots of MPs and engineers. When there is a massive requirement for infantry replacements, the junior enlisted guys and the buck sergeants can be run through a 90-day infantry school with better results than one would get with raw recruits. Raw recruits then either replace the Guardsmen or go through a 6-month infantry school, including at least one JRTC rotation, so they actually know [expletive deleted] something before being required to hit the lines.
When will we ever learn from the Germans?