Poll: Military Service

[Mohoender]

I agree about weather but it does play an important role in any kind of combat including land combat.

Napoleon I experienced it during the Berezina. When the retreat started out of Russia he had about 400.000 soldiers, at the end they were only about 10.000 survivors. Most of them lost to weather conditions. By the way do you know why Trees had been planted on the side of roads in France? That was done by that same Napoleon to provide shades to his marching troops. Then, the french army would not be as exhausted as the ennemy. Next war we might not have them anymore, the government is taking them out because of cars. Trees are crossing the roads too often and people die crashing their cars in these wild trees . A small piece of advice then, if you visit France in a hot summer, get out of the Highway, driving under these trees is very nice and, when you have them, you can take of your air condition.

That was a major point during the Finnish winter war. Russians were ill prepared for that winter and soldiers were freezing to death.

When hitler invaded Russia, he could have won if not for the harsh winter of 1941. Again, you can find pictures of german soldiers frozen and still holding their weapons in firing position. After 1942, Germany built cavalry units again as Russian cavalry was able to defeat panzer units (Soviet cavalry was able to go through the German panzer line and they put a mess on the rear areas). Not that strange, a horse can charge in a harsh cold while the panzers were stuck in ice, the turrets often unable to move. Later, they were stuck in mud for months (again the soviet cavalry did fine). After the Kursk battle, Von Manstein was in turn able to put up a good defense using that same winter against Russians.

Your boys had a hell of time at Bastogne (Belgium) when Germany launched its last offensive in winter 1944. That failed but it come close to disater if that hadn't been for the Big Red One (I think it's them, correct me if I'm wrong).

Vietnam is another exemple and I believe that summer heat had been an issue during the first gulf war.