JasonC

In the thread on Russian doctrine in CM, we went through how the Russian attack, especially their Rifle formation branch.  That method applies the principles of attrition warfare, depth, firepower, relentlessness, last man standing stuff.  German doctrine on infantry attacks was entirely different.  SlowLarry asked about it in the previous thread, and rather than bury an answer there, I am moving that part of the discussion to its own thread, here.
 
Elements of German attack doctrine apply to panzer forces as well, but the focus here will be on infantry division attacks.  Which may include StuG support or similar, generally divisional artillery FOs, battalion and company mortars - and squad infantry up at the pointy end.  Obviously there are some requirements of overall odds, suitable terrain, fire support, and enemy strength that are needed for infantry formations to attack successfully.  But the German doctrine uses everything differently, because the focus of their attack doctrine is positioning and articulation of forces - maneuver warfare stuff  - not primarily force ratios and losses and attrition thinking.
 
In the German doctrine, the chief element of the offense is surprise.  The idea is always to hit where and when one isn't expected, to catch the enemy napping, unprepared, with the wrong dispositions to deal with your chosen point and method of attack.  To achieve that, the focus is on information on the one hand, and adaptation on the other.  Adaptation includes mobility, heightening your own safe, feasible shifts of forces and weights, and restricting those of the defender.  Those can then all be used to arrange many on few fights at chosen points, which once won, further disarticulate the enemy force.  His elements are supposed to become less able to help each other, to find their proper combined arms targets, or to have the conditions of terrain and range and such they need to fight effectively. Some local advantages may be "cashed in" for dead enemy to move the overall forces in your favor, but most will be focused instead on continually reducing the enemy's options and moves.
 
In the ideal case, this ends with a surrounded and trapped enemy unable to move an inch without taking murderous fire.  Fire lanes into open ground wrapped around an enemy position are like ropes binding his legs.  Once all sides are covered around a given enemy this way, his "movement allowance" has been reduced to zero.  His ability to pick what firefights he will engage in has therefore disappeared.  You can decide whether to engage him, and he can't make an equivalent decision.  By fire and movement principles, that is as good as a kill.  An artillery barrage can then be laid on that immobilized enemy to destroy him at leisure.
 
In short, the idea is to surprise the defender, hogtie him, and fight the remainder of the battle with him in that condition.  Needless to say, this places considerable greater demands on the attacking commander than the comparative straightforward methods described in the Russian doctrine thread, and it can readily be screwed up, and will fail if it is screwed up.  The German approach in the matter was to take risks and generate chances for lopsided wins, and expect enough of those to pay off, to defeat the overall enemy more efficiently than the attrition method. The Germans don't ever want to fight fair - meaning no even engagements of like arm vs like arm without a big edge in their favor from one factor or another.  If there isn't yet such an edge, maneuver for one before engaging too closely.
 
That difference in approach is easily stated, but what does it mean in practice for infantry attack methods?  Three ways, really, each with some variations and subject to mixing with the others, at different distance, time, and force scales.  The three ways are (1) broad front, recon pull, aiming at envelopment (envelopment for short), (2) the coup de main, which is effectively trench raid tactics on a grander scale, and (3) infiltration tactics proper, which stresses getting well into the enemy defended zone, by slow and stealthy processes, before the main engagement occurs.
 
Broad front recon pull means that a skirmish line of infantry sweeps forward like a single wave, and finds *all* the enemy positions.  Not just one or two of them to chew on, but locating the entire enemy front line.  Weak outposts are driven in by this wave to find the real enemy positions, the ones with enough strength to stop a single thin infantry wave.  Besides finding the enemy, this leading wave is expected to pin him in place, to "find and fix".  That works by not pressing hard anywhere, sitting down in the cover nearest the enemy but not physically held by him.  Then reaching out by fire - from the LMGs the squad infantry brings forward, first of all - to cut up the enemy side of the field with fire lanes, around each body of cover on his side of the field.  The goal is to freeze in place as much of the enemy force as possible, by making lateral movement far too risky, several hundreds yards deep into his own positions.
 
Then a reserve and assault group, which has been kept back out of that leading wave, picks targets found and isolated by it.  The goal is to find gaps in the defenses already, and to widen promising fissures by destroying specific bits of the defense, to get deeper into it.  The reserve maneuvers in the German "backfield", sheltered by the leading wave and the knowledge it has provided as to which locations are clear of the enemy, which routes already traversed drew no enemy fire, and the like. It sets up opposite its chosen targets.  It brings with it heavier weapons - StuGs, FOs, 81mm mortars - and infantry weight in numbers.  These supplement the fire of the elements of the scouting wave nearest the chosen target, and "escalate" the pressure on those chosen enemies.  Meanwhile the rest of the battlefield is being ignored.  The scouting wave is just waiting in the ground they took and preventing easy lateral movement by the enemy, to help the position chosen for the point of attack.
 
The overloaded point is thus destroyed.  Now a new wave spreads from that point, into the deeper parts of the enemy defense.  The scouts nearest follow in the wake of the now leading reserve, and form a new reserve behind the entry point.  The new spreading wave finds the new enemy positions, and the process is repeated.  The goal is to roll up the enemy defenses or break through them, always fighting only the new few that matter for the moves the attack is making next.  But the attacker lets enemy weakness dictate where those points of attack should be.  Always, hitting where they ain't, and trying to get into them before help can come from either side, or from the enemy rear and reserves.  
 
Speed matters in this, because the enemy learns where the main point of attack is, as it gets going, and he will try to adapt.  The attack wants to adapt too, faster, with better information.  The scouting wave is also a counter-recon screen blinding the enemy as to one's own deployments.  If a reserve is arriving at A, the point of main effort wants to already be over at B by the time they get to the front.  Think of a running back making the defensive linebackers miss - it requires anticipation of enemy moves, faster reaction to new information.  It helps if ranged weapons can also disrupt enemy movements - StuGs get missions like interdicting all movement across a certain road, pairs of HMGs put down fire lanes with a similar intent, an FO may plaster the only cover point that allows movement from the east side of the map to the west side.  In other words, the role of fire is as much or more to restrict enemy movements as it is to hurt him directly.  
 
Every area of open ground on the enemy side of the field is analyzed for its usefulness on cutting up enemy moves, and locations that can see each are determined, heavy weapons teams maneuvered to such positions long before the attacker knows he will need them.  Enemy moves are systematically taken off the board by firepower threats into such open ground areas.
 
Frequently the scouting wave may start with a bias or direction, too.  E.g. as a wing attack on the left 2/3rds of the field, with the intent of turning the enemy's left flank.  Such routes or plans are made with an eye to being the least expected and likely to be the least defended against, *not* on the principle of the most promising terrain or routes for the attacker.  Otherwise put, since the first principle of the attack is surprise, "most promising" normally equals "least expected" - even if it means crossing dangerous ground - as long as that can be done quickly.
 
The infiltration method can be thought of as a more extreme version of this on a wider scale and with less of an emphasis on fixing the enemy, and more on using stealth to find his gaps.  Night actions, fighting in fog, use of smoke sometimes, are used along with this approach.  The idea is to sneak into the enemy position.  As much as possible, as deep as possible into his whole defense scheme, before first trigger pull.  And after first trigger pull, the triggers are used as a distraction - look, look, over here, there are some Germans over here - while the haymaker is winding up from the other hand.  The same principle of removing enemy moves by a tactically defensive stance and fire lanes to cut up enemy positions, executed by advanced wedges, is used here too, just like the scouting wave did in the previous method, once it went to ground.  
 
There is a critical mental shift involved in this understanding of the value of positions pushed forward.  They do not need to assault straight onto enemy positions. They do not need the weight to do so.  They don't need the weight to shoot down enemies in good cover, nor do they need to press home to root him out of his holes.  All they need to do is prevent him from leaving his present positions, without being cut up by ranged fire into the open ground bits he has to cross, to leave that cover and get to some other body of it.  Anything isolated in this sense, by having all its useful safe moves taken away, is "hogtied".  No reason to run up against them or fight that at all.  They are already in a prison cell, and artillery can execute them later if need be.
 
There is also a new principle in true infiltration methods - to just bypass, wherever possible, rather than fight.  Any position that can be ignored should be ignored.  If there is a route that blocks LOS to that position, maybe someone watches it or at least prevents easy moves out of it, but for the rest, they might as well be on the far side of the moon.  Consider anything that can't see you already defeated by poor positioning.  Bypass and press deeper, all the way to the back of the defense.  German infiltration attackers do not expect to keep the enemy in front of them.  They expect to have enemies on all sides of them.  Then blind them and pin them in place, and move between them.  You can see how limited visibility conditions are critical to the full application of this method.
 
I passed over the coup de main.  It is about surprise in the purest sense.  Here, instead of waiting for recon pull to tell you everything about the defense, you need to guess it.  Rapid, more limited scouting may be used, and there are certainly leading half squads going first - the usual drill.  But you just guess where the enemy is and isn't going to be; you pick a key point you think you can get to that will put some portion of those enemies at a disadvantage, and then you drive like hell for that key point.  Faster than the enemy can react.  Others are trying to pin him where he is - heavy weapons from back at the start line, e.g., or a 105mm artillery barrage that discourages anyone from getting up and walking around from over on the right side of the field.  But the basic idea is just "get there first with the most", where you picked the "there".  Win at that point by weight of numbers and the right combined arms brought to that fight for the enemy faced, and do so before the enemy can adapt his positions to that new info about what you are doing.
 
The follow up can be another such adaptation, or just to exploit what was taken in more of the "fixed them, then pick the next spot to overload" method described in the first approach.
 
Coup de main differs from the broad front recon in that it is less driven by what the scouts first discover, more by your command push decision.  But you are trying to base that on a guess as to where the enemy will be weak and won't be expecting you.  If your guess is wrong, you back off and try something else, don't turn it in to an attrition attack on enemy strength.
 
The coup de main effort can be materially aided by having armor behind it, or as a second best, good approach terrain over a wide area (e.g. large continuous woods or city).  It expects to win at the chosen point by getting a many on few fight there and winning that fight before the enemy can even the local odds.  For that to work, it can't be the case that all the enemy weapons bear on the chosen point.  You need to pick both the concentration objective and a route, such that only a modest portion of the enemy force has any chance to contest your approach, at first.  Then you just want to go down that route so fast that "at first" equals "until the fight for that objective is over", because they only differ by 2 minutes (5 max, 2-3 a lot better).
 
Now, in all of this, you still have to pay attention to combined arms, meaning having 81mm mortars around and HQs to spot for them if there is going to be an enemy gun or HMG position, and a StuG or a panzerschreck up close if there is going to be an enemy tank, and 105mm or 150mm artillery fire if there is going to be a big block of woods full of Russian tommy gunners.  Or you can put HMGs on fire lanes on 3 sides of those woods and just go around them, never into or by them.  Remember, if they can't see your main force, and they can't safely move to change that, they are already dead (hogtied, same thing).  They just don't know it yet.
 
I hope that helps explain the very different way German infantry attacks.

In the thread on Russian doctrine in CM, we went through how the Russian attack, especially their Rifle formation branch.  That method applies the principles of attrition warfare, depth, firepower, relentlessness, last man standing stuff.  German doctrine on infantry attacks was entirely different.  SlowLarry asked about it in the previous thread, and rather than bury an answer there, I am moving that part of the discussion to its own thread, here.
 
Elements of German attack doctrine apply to panzer forces as well, but the focus here will be on infantry division attacks.  Which may include StuG support or similar, generally divisional artillery FOs, battalion and company mortars - and squad infantry up at the pointy end.  Obviously there are some requirements of overall odds, suitable terrain, fire support, and enemy strength that are needed for infantry formations to attack successfully.  But the German doctrine uses everything differently, because the focus of their attack doctrine is positioning and articulation of forces - maneuver warfare stuff  - not primarily force ratios and losses and attrition thinking.
 
In the German doctrine, the chief element of the offense is surprise.  The idea is always to hit where and when one isn't expected, to catch the enemy napping, unprepared, with the wrong dispositions to deal with your chosen point and method of attack.  To achieve that, the focus is on information on the one hand, and adaptation on the other.  Adaptation includes mobility, heightening your own safe, feasible shifts of forces and weights, and restricting those of the defender.  Those can then all be used to arrange many on few fights at chosen points, which once won, further disarticulate the enemy force.  His elements are supposed to become less able to help each other, to find their proper combined arms targets, or to have the conditions of terrain and range and such they need to fight effectively. Some local advantages may be "cashed in" for dead enemy to move the overall forces in your favor, but most will be focused instead on continually reducing the enemy's options and moves.
 
In the ideal case, this ends with a surrounded and trapped enemy unable to move an inch without taking murderous fire.  Fire lanes into open ground wrapped around an enemy position are like ropes binding his legs.  Once all sides are covered around a given enemy this way, his "movement allowance" has been reduced to zero.  His ability to pick what firefights he will engage in has therefore disappeared.  You can decide whether to engage him, and he can't make an equivalent decision.  By fire and movement principles, that is as good as a kill.  An artillery barrage can then be laid on that immobilized enemy to destroy him at leisure.
 
In short, the idea is to surprise the defender, hogtie him, and fight the remainder of the battle with him in that condition.  Needless to say, this places considerable greater demands on the attacking commander than the comparative straightforward methods described in the Russian doctrine thread, and it can readily be screwed up, and will fail if it is screwed up.  The German approach in the matter was to take risks and generate chances for lopsided wins, and expect enough of those to pay off, to defeat the overall enemy more efficiently than the attrition method. The Germans don't ever want to fight fair - meaning no even engagements of like arm vs like arm without a big edge in their favor from one factor or another.  If there isn't yet such an edge, maneuver for one before engaging too closely.
 
That difference in approach is easily stated, but what does it mean in practice for infantry attack methods?  Three ways, really, each with some variations and subject to mixing with the others, at different distance, time, and force scales.  The three ways are (1) broad front, recon pull, aiming at envelopment (envelopment for short), (2) the coup de main, which is effectively trench raid tactics on a grander scale, and (3) infiltration tactics proper, which stresses getting well into the enemy defended zone, by slow and stealthy processes, before the main engagement occurs.
 
Broad front recon pull means that a skirmish line of infantry sweeps forward like a single wave, and finds *all* the enemy positions.  Not just one or two of them to chew on, but locating the entire enemy front line.  Weak outposts are driven in by this wave to find the real enemy positions, the ones with enough strength to stop a single thin infantry wave.  Besides finding the enemy, this leading wave is expected to pin him in place, to "find and fix".  That works by not pressing hard anywhere, sitting down in the cover nearest the enemy but not physically held by him.  Then reaching out by fire - from the LMGs the squad infantry brings forward, first of all - to cut up the enemy side of the field with fire lanes, around each body of cover on his side of the field.  The goal is to freeze in place as much of the enemy force as possible, by making lateral movement far too risky, several hundreds yards deep into his own positions.
 
Then a reserve and assault group, which has been kept back out of that leading wave, picks targets found and isolated by it.  The goal is to find gaps in the defenses already, and to widen promising fissures by destroying specific bits of the defense, to get deeper into it.  The reserve maneuvers in the German "backfield", sheltered by the leading wave and the knowledge it has provided as to which locations are clear of the enemy, which routes already traversed drew no enemy fire, and the like. It sets up opposite its chosen targets.  It brings with it heavier weapons - StuGs, FOs, 81mm mortars - and infantry weight in numbers.  These supplement the fire of the elements of the scouting wave nearest the chosen target, and "escalate" the pressure on those chosen enemies.  Meanwhile the rest of the battlefield is being ignored.  The scouting wave is just waiting in the ground they took and preventing easy lateral movement by the enemy, to help the position chosen for the point of attack.
 
The overloaded point is thus destroyed.  Now a new wave spreads from that point, into the deeper parts of the enemy defense.  The scouts nearest follow in the wake of the now leading reserve, and form a new reserve behind the entry point.  The new spreading wave finds the new enemy positions, and the process is repeated.  The goal is to roll up the enemy defenses or break through them, always fighting only the new few that matter for the moves the attack is making next.  But the attacker lets enemy weakness dictate where those points of attack should be.  Always, hitting where they ain't, and trying to get into them before help can come from either side, or from the enemy rear and reserves.  
 
Speed matters in this, because the enemy learns where the main point of attack is, as it gets going, and he will try to adapt.  The attack wants to adapt too, faster, with better information.  The scouting wave is also a counter-recon screen blinding the enemy as to one's own deployments.  If a reserve is arriving at A, the point of main effort wants to already be over at B by the time they get to the front.  Think of a running back making the defensive linebackers miss - it requires anticipation of enemy moves, faster reaction to new information.  It helps if ranged weapons can also disrupt enemy movements - StuGs get missions like interdicting all movement across a certain road, pairs of HMGs put down fire lanes with a similar intent, an FO may plaster the only cover point that allows movement from the east side of the map to the west side.  In other words, the role of fire is as much or more to restrict enemy movements as it is to hurt him directly.  
 
Every area of open ground on the enemy side of the field is analyzed for its usefulness on cutting up enemy moves, and locations that can see each are determined, heavy weapons teams maneuvered to such positions long before the attacker knows he will need them.  Enemy moves are systematically taken off the board by firepower threats into such open ground areas.
 
Frequently the scouting wave may start with a bias or direction, too.  E.g. as a wing attack on the left 2/3rds of the field, with the intent of turning the enemy's left flank.  Such routes or plans are made with an eye to being the least expected and likely to be the least defended against, *not* on the principle of the most promising terrain or routes for the attacker.  Otherwise put, since the first principle of the attack is surprise, "most promising" normally equals "least expected" - even if it means crossing dangerous ground - as long as that can be done quickly.
 
The infiltration method can be thought of as a more extreme version of this on a wider scale and with less of an emphasis on fixing the enemy, and more on using stealth to find his gaps.  Night actions, fighting in fog, use of smoke sometimes, are used along with this approach.  The idea is to sneak into the enemy position.  As much as possible, as deep as possible into his whole defense scheme, before first trigger pull.  And after first trigger pull, the triggers are used as a distraction - look, look, over here, there are some Germans over here - while the haymaker is winding up from the other hand.  The same principle of removing enemy moves by a tactically defensive stance and fire lanes to cut up enemy positions, executed by advanced wedges, is used here too, just like the scouting wave did in the previous method, once it went to ground.  
 
There is a critical mental shift involved in this understanding of the value of positions pushed forward.  They do not need to assault straight onto enemy positions. They do not need the weight to do so.  They don't need the weight to shoot down enemies in good cover, nor do they need to press home to root him out of his holes.  All they need to do is prevent him from leaving his present positions, without being cut up by ranged fire into the open ground bits he has to cross, to leave that cover and get to some other body of it.  Anything isolated in this sense, by having all its useful safe moves taken away, is "hogtied".  No reason to run up against them or fight that at all.  They are already in a prison cell, and artillery can execute them later if need be.
 
There is also a new principle in true infiltration methods - to just bypass, wherever possible, rather than fight.  Any position that can be ignored should be ignored.  If there is a route that blocks LOS to that position, maybe someone watches it or at least prevents easy moves out of it, but for the rest, they might as well be on the far side of the moon.  Consider anything that can't see you already defeated by poor positioning.  Bypass and press deeper, all the way to the back of the defense.  German infiltration attackers do not expect to keep the enemy in front of them.  They expect to have enemies on all sides of them.  Then blind them and pin them in place, and move between them.  You can see how limited visibility conditions are critical to the full application of this method.
 
I passed over the coup de main.  It is about surprise in the purest sense.  Here, instead of waiting for recon pull to tell you everything about the defense, you need to guess it.  Rapid, more limited scouting may be used, and there are certainly leading half squads going first - the usual drill.  But you just guess where the enemy is and isn't going to be; you pick a key point you think you can get to that will put some portion of those enemies at a disadvantage, and then you drive like hell for that key point.  Faster than the enemy can react.  Others are trying to pin him where he is - heavy weapons from back at the start line, e.g., or a 105mm artillery barrage that discourages anyone from getting up and walking around from over on the right side of the field.  But the basic idea is just "get there first with the most", where you picked the "there".  Win at that point by weight of numbers and the right combined arms brought to that fight for the enemy faced, and do so before the enemy can adapt his positions to that new info about what you are doing.
 
The follow up can be another such adaptation, or just to exploit what was taken in more of the "fixed them, then pick the next spot to overload" method described in the first approach.
 
Coup de main differs from the broad front recon in that it is less driven by what the scouts first discover, more by your command push decision.  But you are trying to base that on a guess as to where the enemy will be weak and won't be expecting you.  If your guess is wrong, you back off and try something else, don't turn it in to an attrition attack on enemy strength.
 
The coup de main effort can be materially aided by having armor behind it, or as a second best, good approach terrain over a wide area (e.g. large continuous woods or city).  It expects to win at the chosen point by getting a many on few fight there and winning that fight before the enemy can even the local odds.  For that to work, it can't be the case that all the enemy weapons bear on the chosen point.  You need to pick both the concentration objective and a route, such that only a modest portion of the enemy force has any chance to contest your approach, at first.  Then you just want to go down that route so fast that "at first" equals "until the fight for that objective is over", because they only differ by 2 minutes (5 max, 2-3 a lot better).
 
Now, in all of this, you still have to pay attention to combined arms, meaning having 81mm mortars around and HQs to spot for them if there is going to be an enemy gun or HMG position, and a StuG or a panzerschreck up close if there is going to be an enemy tank, and 105mm or 150mm artillery fire if there is going to be a big block of woods full of Russian tommy gunners.  Or you can put HMGs on fire lanes on 3 sides of those woods and just go around them, never into or by them.  Remember, if they can't see your main force, and they can't safely move to change that, they are already dead (hogtied, same thing).  They just don't know it yet.
 
I hope that helps explain the very different way German infantry attacks.

Claims aren't kills. Kind of the entire point. Russian air to ground kill claims destroyed the entire German army several times over, which must be why their ground forces had such an easy time of it and just walked to Germany without losing a nail...

Several questions... First to Doug.
 
Don't use "fast'.  Running troops are very vulnerable, and the problem is not one of minimizing exposure time.  Fast should only be used in your own "backfield", to reposition a reserve inside a friendly town, for example, or to route-march down a road out of LOS of the enemy until you near a jumping off point - with friendlies ahead to ensure there is nothing enemy along the route.
 
The normal move order for advancing troops is "quick", in short dashes, which they can complete in a minute or less.  Before firing starts you can even use "move to contact", to have them all stop and get down as soon as fire is opened.  Inside woods or similar cover, and for heavy weapons teams that can't keep up "quick" without becoming exhausted, just use "move". But don't use that command (or "fast") once under fire.  If they can't "quick" they should probably not be moving at all, but sometimes "slow" to crawl 20 meters to cover may be necessary. While under fire already, mind.
 
The big mental adjustment is to just completely drop the idea that the problem is one of movement in the first place.  You aren't trying to get somewhere.  You are trying to keep the company alive and in good order, and presenting firepower to the enemy.  The only reason you are moving is (1) you don't have spots yet and (2) infantry firepower is higher at closer range.  If you don't have fire superiority in small arms terms, you emphatically would not want to close - you would just be driving up enemy firepower faster than your own.  Only if reason (2) is going to operate in your favor by a large amount does reducing the range benefit you.  Because you are not trying to solve a problem of movement or get anywhere.  You are trying to win a war of attrition by killing the enemy, preferably before he kills you.  
 
The biggest reason to walk towards him, therefore, is (1).  If you don't have any targets where you are, either you are expecting a change on the enemy side to give you some presently (whether from a movement of his, or from hiding guys coming off hide to fire, or similar), or you have to move to get to locations that can see enemies.
 
Next, do you prep fire at a merely suspected treeline?  If you have artillery fire support to burn and not a lot of time, you can fire at likely enemy positions directly along your planned path of advance, and follow that barrage as it walks along your route.  But usually you won't have enough fire support for this.  Indirect FOs are commonly put on only the single most likely enemy held position, either the objective or a point with good cover near the clearly most important route to the objective.  There needs to be a very high chance of a significant number of enemy under the barrage footprint to justify firing off a full module of ammo at a map reference, with no known target.
 
Otherwise, you can have an FO of a "reactive" artillery module call for fire on such a treeline and have the minutes counting down, while you advance.  If you don't find enemy, then you adjust the aim point of the barrage farther on.  You hold the barrage in readiness, in other words, a few minutes out, ahead of the advance.  As soon as the enemy threat becomes actual, you just stop adjusting (or make one final, adaptive adjustment to where the enemy is thickest) and let it count the rest of the way down and land on him.
 
Faster response comes from the on map HE weapons - the 82mm mortars, SU-76s, T-34s.  They don't "area fire" without a target.  They get LOS to that suspected treeline before your infantry steps out.  They are "overwatch", you only advance the infantry at positions your overwatch can see.  When the infantry reach a body of cover, they clear it of any enemy and check it and occupy its forward positions and look out at whatever they can see.  Then the overwatch displaces forward to that body of cover, or to peek around it, at the next LOS blockage.  When the overwatch is in place again, the infantry steps out again - not before.
 
Note, this is not a matter of the overwatch HE shooters helping the infantry move.  The infantry is clearing LOS blockages the HE shooters can't see through.  If you could already see the enemy and he couldn't evade or get away by ducking, you'd sit right where you are and casually murder them all with HE fire, from range.  It is only because the enemy is hiding or behind LOS blockages that anybody needs to advance in the first place.  Then the threat of your infantry walking right over them forces them to reveal themselves and fire.  If they don't, then your infantry finds them anyway, at a point blank range with maximum firepower etc.
 
You say the trickiest thing is what to do with the infantry heavy weapons.  They are like the HE shooters above - overwatch, and the 82mm mortars in particular are the most important weapons in the whole battalion.  HMG teams, ATRs, and snipers are also part of the overwatch element, along with the mortars, FOs, supporting armor.  The difference with the infantry heavy weapons is just that they are cover-loving like the squad infantry, rather than cover-blocked like armor.
 
That just means the normal place for the infantry heavy weapons is the last place the squad infantry just cleared.  Squads check out that woods, no enemy.  OK, so the HMG and mortar can set up there.  What can they see from there?  Well, why did you pick it as a place to reach and clear, if it couldn't see stuff that mattered to the next step of your planned advance?  An avenue of advance is, precisely, a sequence of cover positions each of which covers the move to the next one, by having observation of that next step in the chain.
 
If the range to the next little step is 80 yards, no you don't need to fetch up your 82mm mortars.  At that range, the infantry squads are their own cover fire.  But at 300 or 400 yards, their rifles and LMGs aren't going to do diddly; the infantry heavy weapons need to come up and cover that move, instead.
 
Of course defenders try to separate you from your overwatch.  Meaning, pick spots that can see your leading infantry, but that every part of your side of the field can't easily see.  That's normal.  Take all the spots they can't cover that way first, the locations they could only see from that "up" position on the front treeline or a top the hill, or from the forward line of buildings.  Those spots your overwatch *does* sweep, so those are where you head *first*, with the squad infantry.
 
Once you "own" those, you pick next locations because the squads can cover themselves (short distances, good cover), or you bring up the heavy weapons.  So if the enemy is on a reverse slope, first take your own side of that slope.  Get squad infantry up into the first cover positions on the slope, to spot what is immediately beyond.  Plan your next "move" after you determine all that, with your heavy weapons safely in your dead ground but near the crest, so they can pick whether to engage.
 
Every move the enemy picks has a counter.  If he is "up" and can see everything, then you "counter" with overwatch firepower from range.  If he is "back" and hiding and can't see much, you advance to take the ground he thereby ceded to you, and then you pick just a few of him to "overload".  He usually can't pick *both* to be hidden and also to have all his weapons bear on any of yours.  So you either rely on full overwatch to take on the whole enemy position, or you set up a many on few, then another, and pick your way through only a few of the enemy positions, enough to open a route and dislocate his defense scheme.  You don't get to decide which of those approaches to use.  The enemy sets up one way or another, and you have to use the appropriate "counter" to his chosen mix of "up" and "back" positions (wide LOS and forward slope each, vs narrow LOS and reverse slope each).
 
The next point for Doug should go without saying, but don't rush onto the enemy position.  Movement doesn't take ground - fire takes ground.  You normally clear a position by plastering the enemy on that position and them abandoning it as too hot (or routing away, or dying where they stand) before you send anyone there yourself.  Send shells and bullets, not bodies.  Only send bodies yourself when there is nothing left by bodies in the other sense of the term, as defenders.  OK, occasionally you may "assault" when the remaining defenders are heads down and cowering, but when it doubt, wait and shoot some more.  Get someone into cover at grenade range, or at least good SMG range, first.  It is usually the 3rd unit that "assaults", while one is taking reply fire and occasionally pinned as a result, and the second is firing back continually and keeping the enemy head's down (and freeing the first to add its fire etc).  Never quick or walk at an equal number of enemy shooters - you are just giving them free kills and are not a danger to them at all.
 
It may help to visualize the later stages of the attack, that you are trying to set up.  Every covered position 400 to 500 yards from the enemy with any LOS to any of his positions has MG teams along its forward edge, and HQs spotting for 82mm mortars farther back, hiding behind that cover, and FOs and ATRs and snipers.  Every covered position within 200 yards of the enemy has squad infantry lining every forward spot, with rifles and LMGs at the ready, the men rallied, even if a few have been hit and are down etc.  Supporting armor is peeking around a few of those (either kind), ready able and willing to toss in direct fire HE at any MG that the forward infantry discover.  Then the nearest cover "emits" small teams that "bound" forward at "quick", to any shellhole or house or clump of trees they can find, 75 yards from that enemy.  Then 30 yards from that enemy, after any spots at the 75 have "filled up" with teams that made it.  Anybody shoots at and stops those teams, the whole company sentences to death by firing squad and executes said sentence immediately.  Then another few teams repeat the procedure - as many times as the enemy likes, until they are dead or shut up and go to ground.  It only ends when there are squads rallied with SMGs at the ready at 75, and a few grenade throwers get to 30, alive.  They throw, and throw a little more, and then enemy has stopped firing.  Now someone moves "quick" into the actual cover they used to be firing from.  Same procedure if those get shot.  Repeat until they don't.
 
It isn't fast, isn't meant to be, doesn't have to be.  There is no panicking.  No "oh no, someone is shooting at us, we must DO SOMETHINK!!!"
 It is combat, being shot at is normal.  The something one does about it is shoot back.
 
I hope that helps Doug...

Several questions... First to Doug.
 
Don't use "fast'.  Running troops are very vulnerable, and the problem is not one of minimizing exposure time.  Fast should only be used in your own "backfield", to reposition a reserve inside a friendly town, for example, or to route-march down a road out of LOS of the enemy until you near a jumping off point - with friendlies ahead to ensure there is nothing enemy along the route.
 
The normal move order for advancing troops is "quick", in short dashes, which they can complete in a minute or less.  Before firing starts you can even use "move to contact", to have them all stop and get down as soon as fire is opened.  Inside woods or similar cover, and for heavy weapons teams that can't keep up "quick" without becoming exhausted, just use "move". But don't use that command (or "fast") once under fire.  If they can't "quick" they should probably not be moving at all, but sometimes "slow" to crawl 20 meters to cover may be necessary. While under fire already, mind.
 
The big mental adjustment is to just completely drop the idea that the problem is one of movement in the first place.  You aren't trying to get somewhere.  You are trying to keep the company alive and in good order, and presenting firepower to the enemy.  The only reason you are moving is (1) you don't have spots yet and (2) infantry firepower is higher at closer range.  If you don't have fire superiority in small arms terms, you emphatically would not want to close - you would just be driving up enemy firepower faster than your own.  Only if reason (2) is going to operate in your favor by a large amount does reducing the range benefit you.  Because you are not trying to solve a problem of movement or get anywhere.  You are trying to win a war of attrition by killing the enemy, preferably before he kills you.  
 
The biggest reason to walk towards him, therefore, is (1).  If you don't have any targets where you are, either you are expecting a change on the enemy side to give you some presently (whether from a movement of his, or from hiding guys coming off hide to fire, or similar), or you have to move to get to locations that can see enemies.
 
Next, do you prep fire at a merely suspected treeline?  If you have artillery fire support to burn and not a lot of time, you can fire at likely enemy positions directly along your planned path of advance, and follow that barrage as it walks along your route.  But usually you won't have enough fire support for this.  Indirect FOs are commonly put on only the single most likely enemy held position, either the objective or a point with good cover near the clearly most important route to the objective.  There needs to be a very high chance of a significant number of enemy under the barrage footprint to justify firing off a full module of ammo at a map reference, with no known target.
 
Otherwise, you can have an FO of a "reactive" artillery module call for fire on such a treeline and have the minutes counting down, while you advance.  If you don't find enemy, then you adjust the aim point of the barrage farther on.  You hold the barrage in readiness, in other words, a few minutes out, ahead of the advance.  As soon as the enemy threat becomes actual, you just stop adjusting (or make one final, adaptive adjustment to where the enemy is thickest) and let it count the rest of the way down and land on him.
 
Faster response comes from the on map HE weapons - the 82mm mortars, SU-76s, T-34s.  They don't "area fire" without a target.  They get LOS to that suspected treeline before your infantry steps out.  They are "overwatch", you only advance the infantry at positions your overwatch can see.  When the infantry reach a body of cover, they clear it of any enemy and check it and occupy its forward positions and look out at whatever they can see.  Then the overwatch displaces forward to that body of cover, or to peek around it, at the next LOS blockage.  When the overwatch is in place again, the infantry steps out again - not before.
 
Note, this is not a matter of the overwatch HE shooters helping the infantry move.  The infantry is clearing LOS blockages the HE shooters can't see through.  If you could already see the enemy and he couldn't evade or get away by ducking, you'd sit right where you are and casually murder them all with HE fire, from range.  It is only because the enemy is hiding or behind LOS blockages that anybody needs to advance in the first place.  Then the threat of your infantry walking right over them forces them to reveal themselves and fire.  If they don't, then your infantry finds them anyway, at a point blank range with maximum firepower etc.
 
You say the trickiest thing is what to do with the infantry heavy weapons.  They are like the HE shooters above - overwatch, and the 82mm mortars in particular are the most important weapons in the whole battalion.  HMG teams, ATRs, and snipers are also part of the overwatch element, along with the mortars, FOs, supporting armor.  The difference with the infantry heavy weapons is just that they are cover-loving like the squad infantry, rather than cover-blocked like armor.
 
That just means the normal place for the infantry heavy weapons is the last place the squad infantry just cleared.  Squads check out that woods, no enemy.  OK, so the HMG and mortar can set up there.  What can they see from there?  Well, why did you pick it as a place to reach and clear, if it couldn't see stuff that mattered to the next step of your planned advance?  An avenue of advance is, precisely, a sequence of cover positions each of which covers the move to the next one, by having observation of that next step in the chain.
 
If the range to the next little step is 80 yards, no you don't need to fetch up your 82mm mortars.  At that range, the infantry squads are their own cover fire.  But at 300 or 400 yards, their rifles and LMGs aren't going to do diddly; the infantry heavy weapons need to come up and cover that move, instead.
 
Of course defenders try to separate you from your overwatch.  Meaning, pick spots that can see your leading infantry, but that every part of your side of the field can't easily see.  That's normal.  Take all the spots they can't cover that way first, the locations they could only see from that "up" position on the front treeline or a top the hill, or from the forward line of buildings.  Those spots your overwatch *does* sweep, so those are where you head *first*, with the squad infantry.
 
Once you "own" those, you pick next locations because the squads can cover themselves (short distances, good cover), or you bring up the heavy weapons.  So if the enemy is on a reverse slope, first take your own side of that slope.  Get squad infantry up into the first cover positions on the slope, to spot what is immediately beyond.  Plan your next "move" after you determine all that, with your heavy weapons safely in your dead ground but near the crest, so they can pick whether to engage.
 
Every move the enemy picks has a counter.  If he is "up" and can see everything, then you "counter" with overwatch firepower from range.  If he is "back" and hiding and can't see much, you advance to take the ground he thereby ceded to you, and then you pick just a few of him to "overload".  He usually can't pick *both* to be hidden and also to have all his weapons bear on any of yours.  So you either rely on full overwatch to take on the whole enemy position, or you set up a many on few, then another, and pick your way through only a few of the enemy positions, enough to open a route and dislocate his defense scheme.  You don't get to decide which of those approaches to use.  The enemy sets up one way or another, and you have to use the appropriate "counter" to his chosen mix of "up" and "back" positions (wide LOS and forward slope each, vs narrow LOS and reverse slope each).
 
The next point for Doug should go without saying, but don't rush onto the enemy position.  Movement doesn't take ground - fire takes ground.  You normally clear a position by plastering the enemy on that position and them abandoning it as too hot (or routing away, or dying where they stand) before you send anyone there yourself.  Send shells and bullets, not bodies.  Only send bodies yourself when there is nothing left by bodies in the other sense of the term, as defenders.  OK, occasionally you may "assault" when the remaining defenders are heads down and cowering, but when it doubt, wait and shoot some more.  Get someone into cover at grenade range, or at least good SMG range, first.  It is usually the 3rd unit that "assaults", while one is taking reply fire and occasionally pinned as a result, and the second is firing back continually and keeping the enemy head's down (and freeing the first to add its fire etc).  Never quick or walk at an equal number of enemy shooters - you are just giving them free kills and are not a danger to them at all.
 
It may help to visualize the later stages of the attack, that you are trying to set up.  Every covered position 400 to 500 yards from the enemy with any LOS to any of his positions has MG teams along its forward edge, and HQs spotting for 82mm mortars farther back, hiding behind that cover, and FOs and ATRs and snipers.  Every covered position within 200 yards of the enemy has squad infantry lining every forward spot, with rifles and LMGs at the ready, the men rallied, even if a few have been hit and are down etc.  Supporting armor is peeking around a few of those (either kind), ready able and willing to toss in direct fire HE at any MG that the forward infantry discover.  Then the nearest cover "emits" small teams that "bound" forward at "quick", to any shellhole or house or clump of trees they can find, 75 yards from that enemy.  Then 30 yards from that enemy, after any spots at the 75 have "filled up" with teams that made it.  Anybody shoots at and stops those teams, the whole company sentences to death by firing squad and executes said sentence immediately.  Then another few teams repeat the procedure - as many times as the enemy likes, until they are dead or shut up and go to ground.  It only ends when there are squads rallied with SMGs at the ready at 75, and a few grenade throwers get to 30, alive.  They throw, and throw a little more, and then enemy has stopped firing.  Now someone moves "quick" into the actual cover they used to be firing from.  Same procedure if those get shot.  Repeat until they don't.
 
It isn't fast, isn't meant to be, doesn't have to be.  There is no panicking.  No "oh no, someone is shooting at us, we must DO SOMETHINK!!!"
 It is combat, being shot at is normal.  The something one does about it is shoot back.
 
I hope that helps Doug...

Several questions... First to Doug.
 
Don't use "fast'.  Running troops are very vulnerable, and the problem is not one of minimizing exposure time.  Fast should only be used in your own "backfield", to reposition a reserve inside a friendly town, for example, or to route-march down a road out of LOS of the enemy until you near a jumping off point - with friendlies ahead to ensure there is nothing enemy along the route.
 
The normal move order for advancing troops is "quick", in short dashes, which they can complete in a minute or less.  Before firing starts you can even use "move to contact", to have them all stop and get down as soon as fire is opened.  Inside woods or similar cover, and for heavy weapons teams that can't keep up "quick" without becoming exhausted, just use "move". But don't use that command (or "fast") once under fire.  If they can't "quick" they should probably not be moving at all, but sometimes "slow" to crawl 20 meters to cover may be necessary. While under fire already, mind.
 
The big mental adjustment is to just completely drop the idea that the problem is one of movement in the first place.  You aren't trying to get somewhere.  You are trying to keep the company alive and in good order, and presenting firepower to the enemy.  The only reason you are moving is (1) you don't have spots yet and (2) infantry firepower is higher at closer range.  If you don't have fire superiority in small arms terms, you emphatically would not want to close - you would just be driving up enemy firepower faster than your own.  Only if reason (2) is going to operate in your favor by a large amount does reducing the range benefit you.  Because you are not trying to solve a problem of movement or get anywhere.  You are trying to win a war of attrition by killing the enemy, preferably before he kills you.  
 
The biggest reason to walk towards him, therefore, is (1).  If you don't have any targets where you are, either you are expecting a change on the enemy side to give you some presently (whether from a movement of his, or from hiding guys coming off hide to fire, or similar), or you have to move to get to locations that can see enemies.
 
Next, do you prep fire at a merely suspected treeline?  If you have artillery fire support to burn and not a lot of time, you can fire at likely enemy positions directly along your planned path of advance, and follow that barrage as it walks along your route.  But usually you won't have enough fire support for this.  Indirect FOs are commonly put on only the single most likely enemy held position, either the objective or a point with good cover near the clearly most important route to the objective.  There needs to be a very high chance of a significant number of enemy under the barrage footprint to justify firing off a full module of ammo at a map reference, with no known target.
 
Otherwise, you can have an FO of a "reactive" artillery module call for fire on such a treeline and have the minutes counting down, while you advance.  If you don't find enemy, then you adjust the aim point of the barrage farther on.  You hold the barrage in readiness, in other words, a few minutes out, ahead of the advance.  As soon as the enemy threat becomes actual, you just stop adjusting (or make one final, adaptive adjustment to where the enemy is thickest) and let it count the rest of the way down and land on him.
 
Faster response comes from the on map HE weapons - the 82mm mortars, SU-76s, T-34s.  They don't "area fire" without a target.  They get LOS to that suspected treeline before your infantry steps out.  They are "overwatch", you only advance the infantry at positions your overwatch can see.  When the infantry reach a body of cover, they clear it of any enemy and check it and occupy its forward positions and look out at whatever they can see.  Then the overwatch displaces forward to that body of cover, or to peek around it, at the next LOS blockage.  When the overwatch is in place again, the infantry steps out again - not before.
 
Note, this is not a matter of the overwatch HE shooters helping the infantry move.  The infantry is clearing LOS blockages the HE shooters can't see through.  If you could already see the enemy and he couldn't evade or get away by ducking, you'd sit right where you are and casually murder them all with HE fire, from range.  It is only because the enemy is hiding or behind LOS blockages that anybody needs to advance in the first place.  Then the threat of your infantry walking right over them forces them to reveal themselves and fire.  If they don't, then your infantry finds them anyway, at a point blank range with maximum firepower etc.
 
You say the trickiest thing is what to do with the infantry heavy weapons.  They are like the HE shooters above - overwatch, and the 82mm mortars in particular are the most important weapons in the whole battalion.  HMG teams, ATRs, and snipers are also part of the overwatch element, along with the mortars, FOs, supporting armor.  The difference with the infantry heavy weapons is just that they are cover-loving like the squad infantry, rather than cover-blocked like armor.
 
That just means the normal place for the infantry heavy weapons is the last place the squad infantry just cleared.  Squads check out that woods, no enemy.  OK, so the HMG and mortar can set up there.  What can they see from there?  Well, why did you pick it as a place to reach and clear, if it couldn't see stuff that mattered to the next step of your planned advance?  An avenue of advance is, precisely, a sequence of cover positions each of which covers the move to the next one, by having observation of that next step in the chain.
 
If the range to the next little step is 80 yards, no you don't need to fetch up your 82mm mortars.  At that range, the infantry squads are their own cover fire.  But at 300 or 400 yards, their rifles and LMGs aren't going to do diddly; the infantry heavy weapons need to come up and cover that move, instead.
 
Of course defenders try to separate you from your overwatch.  Meaning, pick spots that can see your leading infantry, but that every part of your side of the field can't easily see.  That's normal.  Take all the spots they can't cover that way first, the locations they could only see from that "up" position on the front treeline or a top the hill, or from the forward line of buildings.  Those spots your overwatch *does* sweep, so those are where you head *first*, with the squad infantry.
 
Once you "own" those, you pick next locations because the squads can cover themselves (short distances, good cover), or you bring up the heavy weapons.  So if the enemy is on a reverse slope, first take your own side of that slope.  Get squad infantry up into the first cover positions on the slope, to spot what is immediately beyond.  Plan your next "move" after you determine all that, with your heavy weapons safely in your dead ground but near the crest, so they can pick whether to engage.
 
Every move the enemy picks has a counter.  If he is "up" and can see everything, then you "counter" with overwatch firepower from range.  If he is "back" and hiding and can't see much, you advance to take the ground he thereby ceded to you, and then you pick just a few of him to "overload".  He usually can't pick *both* to be hidden and also to have all his weapons bear on any of yours.  So you either rely on full overwatch to take on the whole enemy position, or you set up a many on few, then another, and pick your way through only a few of the enemy positions, enough to open a route and dislocate his defense scheme.  You don't get to decide which of those approaches to use.  The enemy sets up one way or another, and you have to use the appropriate "counter" to his chosen mix of "up" and "back" positions (wide LOS and forward slope each, vs narrow LOS and reverse slope each).
 
The next point for Doug should go without saying, but don't rush onto the enemy position.  Movement doesn't take ground - fire takes ground.  You normally clear a position by plastering the enemy on that position and them abandoning it as too hot (or routing away, or dying where they stand) before you send anyone there yourself.  Send shells and bullets, not bodies.  Only send bodies yourself when there is nothing left by bodies in the other sense of the term, as defenders.  OK, occasionally you may "assault" when the remaining defenders are heads down and cowering, but when it doubt, wait and shoot some more.  Get someone into cover at grenade range, or at least good SMG range, first.  It is usually the 3rd unit that "assaults", while one is taking reply fire and occasionally pinned as a result, and the second is firing back continually and keeping the enemy head's down (and freeing the first to add its fire etc).  Never quick or walk at an equal number of enemy shooters - you are just giving them free kills and are not a danger to them at all.
 
It may help to visualize the later stages of the attack, that you are trying to set up.  Every covered position 400 to 500 yards from the enemy with any LOS to any of his positions has MG teams along its forward edge, and HQs spotting for 82mm mortars farther back, hiding behind that cover, and FOs and ATRs and snipers.  Every covered position within 200 yards of the enemy has squad infantry lining every forward spot, with rifles and LMGs at the ready, the men rallied, even if a few have been hit and are down etc.  Supporting armor is peeking around a few of those (either kind), ready able and willing to toss in direct fire HE at any MG that the forward infantry discover.  Then the nearest cover "emits" small teams that "bound" forward at "quick", to any shellhole or house or clump of trees they can find, 75 yards from that enemy.  Then 30 yards from that enemy, after any spots at the 75 have "filled up" with teams that made it.  Anybody shoots at and stops those teams, the whole company sentences to death by firing squad and executes said sentence immediately.  Then another few teams repeat the procedure - as many times as the enemy likes, until they are dead or shut up and go to ground.  It only ends when there are squads rallied with SMGs at the ready at 75, and a few grenade throwers get to 30, alive.  They throw, and throw a little more, and then enemy has stopped firing.  Now someone moves "quick" into the actual cover they used to be firing from.  Same procedure if those get shot.  Repeat until they don't.
 
It isn't fast, isn't meant to be, doesn't have to be.  There is no panicking.  No "oh no, someone is shooting at us, we must DO SOMETHINK!!!"
 It is combat, being shot at is normal.  The something one does about it is shoot back.
 
I hope that helps Doug...

Several questions... First to Doug.
 
Don't use "fast'.  Running troops are very vulnerable, and the problem is not one of minimizing exposure time.  Fast should only be used in your own "backfield", to reposition a reserve inside a friendly town, for example, or to route-march down a road out of LOS of the enemy until you near a jumping off point - with friendlies ahead to ensure there is nothing enemy along the route.
 
The normal move order for advancing troops is "quick", in short dashes, which they can complete in a minute or less.  Before firing starts you can even use "move to contact", to have them all stop and get down as soon as fire is opened.  Inside woods or similar cover, and for heavy weapons teams that can't keep up "quick" without becoming exhausted, just use "move". But don't use that command (or "fast") once under fire.  If they can't "quick" they should probably not be moving at all, but sometimes "slow" to crawl 20 meters to cover may be necessary. While under fire already, mind.
 
The big mental adjustment is to just completely drop the idea that the problem is one of movement in the first place.  You aren't trying to get somewhere.  You are trying to keep the company alive and in good order, and presenting firepower to the enemy.  The only reason you are moving is (1) you don't have spots yet and (2) infantry firepower is higher at closer range.  If you don't have fire superiority in small arms terms, you emphatically would not want to close - you would just be driving up enemy firepower faster than your own.  Only if reason (2) is going to operate in your favor by a large amount does reducing the range benefit you.  Because you are not trying to solve a problem of movement or get anywhere.  You are trying to win a war of attrition by killing the enemy, preferably before he kills you.  
 
The biggest reason to walk towards him, therefore, is (1).  If you don't have any targets where you are, either you are expecting a change on the enemy side to give you some presently (whether from a movement of his, or from hiding guys coming off hide to fire, or similar), or you have to move to get to locations that can see enemies.
 
Next, do you prep fire at a merely suspected treeline?  If you have artillery fire support to burn and not a lot of time, you can fire at likely enemy positions directly along your planned path of advance, and follow that barrage as it walks along your route.  But usually you won't have enough fire support for this.  Indirect FOs are commonly put on only the single most likely enemy held position, either the objective or a point with good cover near the clearly most important route to the objective.  There needs to be a very high chance of a significant number of enemy under the barrage footprint to justify firing off a full module of ammo at a map reference, with no known target.
 
Otherwise, you can have an FO of a "reactive" artillery module call for fire on such a treeline and have the minutes counting down, while you advance.  If you don't find enemy, then you adjust the aim point of the barrage farther on.  You hold the barrage in readiness, in other words, a few minutes out, ahead of the advance.  As soon as the enemy threat becomes actual, you just stop adjusting (or make one final, adaptive adjustment to where the enemy is thickest) and let it count the rest of the way down and land on him.
 
Faster response comes from the on map HE weapons - the 82mm mortars, SU-76s, T-34s.  They don't "area fire" without a target.  They get LOS to that suspected treeline before your infantry steps out.  They are "overwatch", you only advance the infantry at positions your overwatch can see.  When the infantry reach a body of cover, they clear it of any enemy and check it and occupy its forward positions and look out at whatever they can see.  Then the overwatch displaces forward to that body of cover, or to peek around it, at the next LOS blockage.  When the overwatch is in place again, the infantry steps out again - not before.
 
Note, this is not a matter of the overwatch HE shooters helping the infantry move.  The infantry is clearing LOS blockages the HE shooters can't see through.  If you could already see the enemy and he couldn't evade or get away by ducking, you'd sit right where you are and casually murder them all with HE fire, from range.  It is only because the enemy is hiding or behind LOS blockages that anybody needs to advance in the first place.  Then the threat of your infantry walking right over them forces them to reveal themselves and fire.  If they don't, then your infantry finds them anyway, at a point blank range with maximum firepower etc.
 
You say the trickiest thing is what to do with the infantry heavy weapons.  They are like the HE shooters above - overwatch, and the 82mm mortars in particular are the most important weapons in the whole battalion.  HMG teams, ATRs, and snipers are also part of the overwatch element, along with the mortars, FOs, supporting armor.  The difference with the infantry heavy weapons is just that they are cover-loving like the squad infantry, rather than cover-blocked like armor.
 
That just means the normal place for the infantry heavy weapons is the last place the squad infantry just cleared.  Squads check out that woods, no enemy.  OK, so the HMG and mortar can set up there.  What can they see from there?  Well, why did you pick it as a place to reach and clear, if it couldn't see stuff that mattered to the next step of your planned advance?  An avenue of advance is, precisely, a sequence of cover positions each of which covers the move to the next one, by having observation of that next step in the chain.
 
If the range to the next little step is 80 yards, no you don't need to fetch up your 82mm mortars.  At that range, the infantry squads are their own cover fire.  But at 300 or 400 yards, their rifles and LMGs aren't going to do diddly; the infantry heavy weapons need to come up and cover that move, instead.
 
Of course defenders try to separate you from your overwatch.  Meaning, pick spots that can see your leading infantry, but that every part of your side of the field can't easily see.  That's normal.  Take all the spots they can't cover that way first, the locations they could only see from that "up" position on the front treeline or a top the hill, or from the forward line of buildings.  Those spots your overwatch *does* sweep, so those are where you head *first*, with the squad infantry.
 
Once you "own" those, you pick next locations because the squads can cover themselves (short distances, good cover), or you bring up the heavy weapons.  So if the enemy is on a reverse slope, first take your own side of that slope.  Get squad infantry up into the first cover positions on the slope, to spot what is immediately beyond.  Plan your next "move" after you determine all that, with your heavy weapons safely in your dead ground but near the crest, so they can pick whether to engage.
 
Every move the enemy picks has a counter.  If he is "up" and can see everything, then you "counter" with overwatch firepower from range.  If he is "back" and hiding and can't see much, you advance to take the ground he thereby ceded to you, and then you pick just a few of him to "overload".  He usually can't pick *both* to be hidden and also to have all his weapons bear on any of yours.  So you either rely on full overwatch to take on the whole enemy position, or you set up a many on few, then another, and pick your way through only a few of the enemy positions, enough to open a route and dislocate his defense scheme.  You don't get to decide which of those approaches to use.  The enemy sets up one way or another, and you have to use the appropriate "counter" to his chosen mix of "up" and "back" positions (wide LOS and forward slope each, vs narrow LOS and reverse slope each).
 
The next point for Doug should go without saying, but don't rush onto the enemy position.  Movement doesn't take ground - fire takes ground.  You normally clear a position by plastering the enemy on that position and them abandoning it as too hot (or routing away, or dying where they stand) before you send anyone there yourself.  Send shells and bullets, not bodies.  Only send bodies yourself when there is nothing left by bodies in the other sense of the term, as defenders.  OK, occasionally you may "assault" when the remaining defenders are heads down and cowering, but when it doubt, wait and shoot some more.  Get someone into cover at grenade range, or at least good SMG range, first.  It is usually the 3rd unit that "assaults", while one is taking reply fire and occasionally pinned as a result, and the second is firing back continually and keeping the enemy head's down (and freeing the first to add its fire etc).  Never quick or walk at an equal number of enemy shooters - you are just giving them free kills and are not a danger to them at all.
 
It may help to visualize the later stages of the attack, that you are trying to set up.  Every covered position 400 to 500 yards from the enemy with any LOS to any of his positions has MG teams along its forward edge, and HQs spotting for 82mm mortars farther back, hiding behind that cover, and FOs and ATRs and snipers.  Every covered position within 200 yards of the enemy has squad infantry lining every forward spot, with rifles and LMGs at the ready, the men rallied, even if a few have been hit and are down etc.  Supporting armor is peeking around a few of those (either kind), ready able and willing to toss in direct fire HE at any MG that the forward infantry discover.  Then the nearest cover "emits" small teams that "bound" forward at "quick", to any shellhole or house or clump of trees they can find, 75 yards from that enemy.  Then 30 yards from that enemy, after any spots at the 75 have "filled up" with teams that made it.  Anybody shoots at and stops those teams, the whole company sentences to death by firing squad and executes said sentence immediately.  Then another few teams repeat the procedure - as many times as the enemy likes, until they are dead or shut up and go to ground.  It only ends when there are squads rallied with SMGs at the ready at 75, and a few grenade throwers get to 30, alive.  They throw, and throw a little more, and then enemy has stopped firing.  Now someone moves "quick" into the actual cover they used to be firing from.  Same procedure if those get shot.  Repeat until they don't.
 
It isn't fast, isn't meant to be, doesn't have to be.  There is no panicking.  No "oh no, someone is shooting at us, we must DO SOMETHINK!!!"
 It is combat, being shot at is normal.  The something one does about it is shoot back.
 
I hope that helps Doug...

Bulletpoint - a company doesn't use platoons as waves, and won't advance them side by side, and certainly won't stop because one squad takes fire.
 
A company is more like the minimum unit of maneuver for a Russian Rifle style infantry attack.  Sure there are SOPs it follows inside and we can talk over those, but the first thing to understand is that a Russian rifle company gets *one* mission, on *one* axis of advance, as *one* wave.  Not 3.  As for how broad a front that company should advance on is, 400 to 500 meters, tops.  If you've only got one company and the frontage is a full kilometer or more, you might have a small patrol to cover the part of the frontage you won't be using, but almost the whole company will advance in the 400-500 meters you are using.  
 
Such a flank patrol might be a single HQ team, a single squad, split, and an ATR.  Maybe a second split up squad and a sharpshooter in addition.  With like half the battlefield just for them.  They are just eyes they pick forward very carefully (a few movers at a time, max) and stay in cover etc.  They can't attack anything and can't really even defend anything, but they will see it coming and give a bit of warning if the enemy leaves his positions on that part of the field trying to flank the main company attack.  I am just explaining what I mean by a flank patrol, understand.  Better is if the next unit over provides such flank security, but beggars can't be chosers sometimes.  The key thing is *not* to spread out to the full width of the map in an even spread.  That just prevents you having the depth anywhere, to fight the Russian rifle formation way.
 
What is a typical formation for the advancing company, with or without such a slight detachment, in the place where you are actually attacking?  A blob.  Either a wedge with one platoon up, or a square with two platoons up and two following in their foot steps.  One of those could be company weapons or an ad hoc platoon led by the company commander.  Each platoon is then, again, in a blob formation, not a single skirmish line.  There could be several layers to the company as a result, but those aren't really the "waves" talked about previously, they are all one wave.  They are all in mutual supporting distance, a grenade throw or less from each other, similar sight picture from one to the next.  You don't want a single artillery shell to take out too many of them, they maintain their interval in that sense.  But the whole group is still a continuous cloud, not a thin line.  
 
What do they do if a leading unit takes MG fire from a single shooter 300 meters distant?  The single unit fired on hits the deck and avoids fire by crawling to the nearest available cover, more likely back than forward.  Everyone else keeps right on going.  It is going to take a heck of a lot more than one distant MG to stop the whole company.  That's kind of why there is a whole company coming.  If the MG shifts its fire to another, the first rallies and gets back up and comes on again.  The new group shot at hits the deck and crawls to cover and so forth.  Good luck stopping 20 units that way with just 1 shooter.  You probably won't have a good "spot" of the firing MG, but since it can't remotely stop you from getting closer and changing that, there isn't much reason to care.
 
If you do get close enough, it is the company's own heavy weapons that are charged with suppressing isolated, single MGs.  If battalion 82mm mortars back at the line of departure can chime in, great, but not strictly necessary.  None of this counts as the wave being stopped or calls for any pause to fire at the defense with major fire support.
 
If, instead, we are talking about the entire leading edge of the company coming under fire, and shells falling as well, and half a dozen enemy shooters heard (a full platoon position with HMG supplements or similar), then the company wave may stop and fire back and call for fire support.  It uses its unshot elements to reach reasonable cover near where it was first "checked"; it can avoid the fire (everyone prone etc) if it is hot enough and there is going to be fire support help soon.  Or it can try to fire back itself and see if it can achieve fire dominance from its own internal resources.  
 
The key thing there is not to press if it isn't working.  The problem is not one of movement and it isn't a charge; the company either has the firepower to blow away what has confronted it or it doesn't.  If it doesn't, deny closer engagement (cover, prone, short withdrawal etc) and wait for the fire support; the company's mission is to rally in that case, and to hold, ratchet fashion, whatever ground it already covered, that has any terrain worth holding.
 
The whole battalion is supposed to see that company advance result, and assign fire and direct the next company attack wave based on how it went and what it discovered.  Immediately, with no pause in the overall combat.  "OK, you showed me that position to check A company, my fire elements will chew on that, thanks.  Whatcha got vs B company?"  The idea is to induce the defender to reveal himself, to commit his reserves, to show you where his main body is and reveal the whole plan and intention of the defensive scheme.  The attack then directs itself at that scheme, in a "hit them where they are", firepower method.  It is not a hunt for gaps, but for targets, targets that are then plastered, and assaulted once duly plastered.
 
For that to work, the waves have to find serious positions, enough to justify major fire allocations to deal with that.  That is *why* the waves are substantial in size.  It isn't a matter of feeling forward with half squads looking for safe routes or trying to cover ground.  The wave is supposed to be heavy enough that it either goes right into or through the enemy, or he reveals real strength to stop it.  That strength is they directly smashed, by fire and the next assault.  There is nothing subtle about this...
 
I hope that helps.

Bulletpoint - a company doesn't use platoons as waves, and won't advance them side by side, and certainly won't stop because one squad takes fire.
 
A company is more like the minimum unit of maneuver for a Russian Rifle style infantry attack.  Sure there are SOPs it follows inside and we can talk over those, but the first thing to understand is that a Russian rifle company gets *one* mission, on *one* axis of advance, as *one* wave.  Not 3.  As for how broad a front that company should advance on is, 400 to 500 meters, tops.  If you've only got one company and the frontage is a full kilometer or more, you might have a small patrol to cover the part of the frontage you won't be using, but almost the whole company will advance in the 400-500 meters you are using.  
 
Such a flank patrol might be a single HQ team, a single squad, split, and an ATR.  Maybe a second split up squad and a sharpshooter in addition.  With like half the battlefield just for them.  They are just eyes they pick forward very carefully (a few movers at a time, max) and stay in cover etc.  They can't attack anything and can't really even defend anything, but they will see it coming and give a bit of warning if the enemy leaves his positions on that part of the field trying to flank the main company attack.  I am just explaining what I mean by a flank patrol, understand.  Better is if the next unit over provides such flank security, but beggars can't be chosers sometimes.  The key thing is *not* to spread out to the full width of the map in an even spread.  That just prevents you having the depth anywhere, to fight the Russian rifle formation way.
 
What is a typical formation for the advancing company, with or without such a slight detachment, in the place where you are actually attacking?  A blob.  Either a wedge with one platoon up, or a square with two platoons up and two following in their foot steps.  One of those could be company weapons or an ad hoc platoon led by the company commander.  Each platoon is then, again, in a blob formation, not a single skirmish line.  There could be several layers to the company as a result, but those aren't really the "waves" talked about previously, they are all one wave.  They are all in mutual supporting distance, a grenade throw or less from each other, similar sight picture from one to the next.  You don't want a single artillery shell to take out too many of them, they maintain their interval in that sense.  But the whole group is still a continuous cloud, not a thin line.  
 
What do they do if a leading unit takes MG fire from a single shooter 300 meters distant?  The single unit fired on hits the deck and avoids fire by crawling to the nearest available cover, more likely back than forward.  Everyone else keeps right on going.  It is going to take a heck of a lot more than one distant MG to stop the whole company.  That's kind of why there is a whole company coming.  If the MG shifts its fire to another, the first rallies and gets back up and comes on again.  The new group shot at hits the deck and crawls to cover and so forth.  Good luck stopping 20 units that way with just 1 shooter.  You probably won't have a good "spot" of the firing MG, but since it can't remotely stop you from getting closer and changing that, there isn't much reason to care.
 
If you do get close enough, it is the company's own heavy weapons that are charged with suppressing isolated, single MGs.  If battalion 82mm mortars back at the line of departure can chime in, great, but not strictly necessary.  None of this counts as the wave being stopped or calls for any pause to fire at the defense with major fire support.
 
If, instead, we are talking about the entire leading edge of the company coming under fire, and shells falling as well, and half a dozen enemy shooters heard (a full platoon position with HMG supplements or similar), then the company wave may stop and fire back and call for fire support.  It uses its unshot elements to reach reasonable cover near where it was first "checked"; it can avoid the fire (everyone prone etc) if it is hot enough and there is going to be fire support help soon.  Or it can try to fire back itself and see if it can achieve fire dominance from its own internal resources.  
 
The key thing there is not to press if it isn't working.  The problem is not one of movement and it isn't a charge; the company either has the firepower to blow away what has confronted it or it doesn't.  If it doesn't, deny closer engagement (cover, prone, short withdrawal etc) and wait for the fire support; the company's mission is to rally in that case, and to hold, ratchet fashion, whatever ground it already covered, that has any terrain worth holding.
 
The whole battalion is supposed to see that company advance result, and assign fire and direct the next company attack wave based on how it went and what it discovered.  Immediately, with no pause in the overall combat.  "OK, you showed me that position to check A company, my fire elements will chew on that, thanks.  Whatcha got vs B company?"  The idea is to induce the defender to reveal himself, to commit his reserves, to show you where his main body is and reveal the whole plan and intention of the defensive scheme.  The attack then directs itself at that scheme, in a "hit them where they are", firepower method.  It is not a hunt for gaps, but for targets, targets that are then plastered, and assaulted once duly plastered.
 
For that to work, the waves have to find serious positions, enough to justify major fire allocations to deal with that.  That is *why* the waves are substantial in size.  It isn't a matter of feeling forward with half squads looking for safe routes or trying to cover ground.  The wave is supposed to be heavy enough that it either goes right into or through the enemy, or he reveals real strength to stop it.  That strength is they directly smashed, by fire and the next assault.  There is nothing subtle about this...
 
I hope that helps.

A march formation in a manual isn't a combat doctrine.
 
US armored task forces in fact led with a medium tank company, as a rule.  With a Jumbo on point if they had one.  Not with attached cavalry in jeeps or recon anything.
 
Recon forces mostly got screening and security missions, defense of long flanks to enable other forces to concentrate, and the like.  Sometimes they even attacked, but when they did they dismounted and fought like infantry, supported by organic mortars and their assault guns and light tanks - hopefully against a relatively weak, infantry only enemy.  And that wasn't a matter of doctrine or fulfilling a planned role, it was just a field expedient when the only unit around was a cavalry battalion or company, and the operations situation required another probe.
 
The typical tactical formation in a US AD force was a task force, a battalion sized unit created by cross attaching armored infantry companies with tank companies to create an armor heavy or an infantry heavy mix in 2 to 1 ratios.  The typical tactical formation in a US ID force was an infantry battalion with attachments, working as part of a regimental combat team that attached tank and TD support, and a portion of the divisional artillery, down to regiment.
 
Then when a US ID force actually had to attack, it is a battalion assigned the mission, but they don't attack with the whole battalion.  They designated one company as assault, another as support, and the remainder as reserve (3rd line plus HQ, weapons, etc).  The support has a front line position with observation and in range to support by fire, and gets to hold the frontage if the assault battalion gets shot to pieces, so there isn't a hole in the line as the result of a defeat.  It quickly has the same frontage assigned to it as the assault company, just staying at the start line.  It also is supposed to move up and relieve the assault company when and if the attack succeeds, to allow that company to reorganize and the like.  Either it, or the reserve, then takes the assault role, with the other getting the new support role, while the original assault company rotates into reserve as soon as the local combat conditions permit it.
 
Thus, a US infantry battalion is expected to attack with just a single company, and at most some mortar and MG fire support at medium range from the rest of the formation. 
 
How the heck is that supposed to work?  Answer, they aren't relying on infantry numbers to begin with.  It doesn't take a regiment to follow up a barrage.  Sending more men wouldn't increase the shells sent, or the number of supporting tanks, or make the ground any better, or surprise the enemy more.  All the determinants of the success of these little probes, not pushed too hard individually, were outside of the question of how many men were sent and frankly most of them were beyond the control of the attacking infantry battalion.
 
Didn't matter, because these nibbles were going on all over the line, and some would succeed, and the accompanying artillery fire would bleed the enemy, and between him bleeding and little wedges being driven into his position and the whole thing being continued day after day, the line would gradually crawl over the enemy and hurt him the while.  That's how US infantry divisions fought.  The whole system was designed to have another probe ready to go the next day, no matter what.  They didn't try to win the war *today*.  Meanwhile, every nibbling company could get tank support and an artillery barrage and have the whole "kit bag" in a combined arms sense, and the local commander was expected to use the right tool for each enemy encountered, and carefully pick through them.
 
The US AD way of fighting, on the other hand, was above all the find a local flank and turn it with a vehicle move.  Find fix flank was the standing method of any task force.  Terrain and enemy dictated who had which role in that.  An armor heavy task force (2 medium tank companies, 1 armored infantry company, smaller attachments of TDs, engineers, cavalry, whatever) would generally do the finding with a tank company, and the fixing with one of the others.  The armored infantry could be the flankers if it involved going through woods or a town or over a river, or the fixers if it was just a matter of containing an enemy infantry force and pinning them down.  The flanking move could be designed to assault the enemy from a new direction, or to just get behind and "bag" them, expecting to take them prisoner after subjecting them to a prolonged shelling, or it could be a true bypass movement, finding a route that the rest of the task force would follow, leaving only a small screen around the enemy and hauling tail for the next objective.
 
Both forces tended to think of their problem as one of movement and reaching tactical objectives.  The AD way in particular wanted to find a way around and keep going, and fought to get that only if it had to.  The ID way assigned near and reachable objectives, expected to clear them and hold them, and then ratchet the whole thing forward, more systematically.  They also fought to enable movement more than the other way around, but expected to have to fight more because more things could readily block them.
 
The emphasis on ground control and rating any mission as successful if a terrain objective was reached, was arguably a pretty dumb way of thinking about combat, but it was the American way in such things.  Big bags of prisoners and avoiding complete destruction of one's own formation were about the only other items that ranked.  And even the former of those was not much more than gravy, the big thing was to reach the spot on the map the muckety mucks had assigned one to reach, by the hour they called for it to be reached.  Stringing those together into a victory was the responsibility of someone with stars on their shoulder, not bars, oak leaves, or birds.
 
Failure was always an option.  Meaning, if the mission looked too hard or losses promised to be too high, they could and did just say "screw this, somebody blew it" and chuck the mission, go to ground, defend what they could.  Somebody else can do the job today.  Pressing hard and getting a lot of guys killed was considered a disaster and stupidity, not bravery or devotion to duty.  With the net result that advantage situations were pushed and disadvantage situations were backed off, though also with a side effect of some lethargy or half heartedness - at least by some other armies' standards in such things.
 
Just an example of the variety of actual combat practice, in different armies and branches, in the second half of WW II...

kevinkin - they are speaking operationally, not tactically.  The forces on the map that are driving into enemy controlled territory on narrow fronts to deep depths behind the initial front are mechanized units.  They penetrate deeply because of their mobility, at least as much as their armor.  They also drive through the enemy defended zone with a greater indifference to his soft firepower coverage (long range MGs, registered artillery fire etc), and thus the whole defensive position "feels" softer to them, than it does to leg infantry.  They have to hit dedicated AT weapons to hit something "hard enough" to impede their progress, and armies tend to have only limited amounts of that everywhere, and amounts of it concentrated enough to stop whole tank battalions or brigades only in chosen, important points.
 
Thus, up at that operational scale, reviewing the moves on a map, the armor formations feel like spears.  They have harder points than most of the enemy defense - all the places where the defender doesn't have concentrated AT weapons are "soft" to concentrated armor.  And they can be driven deeper into the enemy positions, more rapidly.  
 
Then their operational role is to create paths for other units to follow and expand.  Truck infantry follows them.  Leg infantry widens the holes they made, with its slower artillery support.
Understand, artillery tactically may seem like it is the longest reached combat system with its 10 miles range from any given position.  But to pick up a serious amount of it and move them forward 25 miles, you have to haul their ammo weight with them.  Horse drawn guns are not going to do that rapidly, or through a blasted moonscape, or enemy shellfire, with any rapidity.  Motorized guns can do more, sure, but still can't move large ammo dumps of a million shells on a few hour time scale.  Tank units, on the other hand, haul their fighting power with them through the enemy defended zone, to points 25 to 50 miles farther on in a day or two.  The logistic thruput to keep up full artillery parks with such rates of advance did not exist in any army.  A few guns could get forward with limited ammo supply.  But more of both only caught up, built up, and enabled large scale fire support again, after the front stopped moving and logistics and transport had time to shift ammo forward to their new positions.
 
Thus, mechanized forces were indeed the spearheads.  Just on a large time and space scale, than a tactical CM battlefield.

kevinkin - well you may not be complaining, but I will.  Barren, sterile, pointless, nothing to do with CM, always jumping in and trashing promising threads.  Not referring to any person, just to talking politics at the dinner table.  Give it rest, for the love of God.

kevinkin - well you may not be complaining, but I will.  Barren, sterile, pointless, nothing to do with CM, always jumping in and trashing promising threads.  Not referring to any person, just to talking politics at the dinner table.  Give it rest, for the love of God.

kevinkin - well you may not be complaining, but I will.  Barren, sterile, pointless, nothing to do with CM, always jumping in and trashing promising threads.  Not referring to any person, just to talking politics at the dinner table.  Give it rest, for the love of God.

Don't spend lots of time scouting. Don't bother to fix and flank, except with tank forces, who can do it at speed. But also don't just run infantry at the enemy or ignore casualties. That isn't Russian doctrine or how it actually worked, it is just a cartoon slander of their methods spread by the Germans, whomthought it made them defending against it sound all clever and also heroic for braving it etc. (A rather incoherent set of spin objectives, incidentally, but that is an aside).

The first idea is that any definite plan pushed will be faster than slow recon pull. The next is that the process of destroying the enemy really isn't that complicated - it is a matter of laying your ship alongside the enemy, as Nelson put it before Trafalgar. Meaning close aggressively with the enemy, brave what he can dish out to dish out as much as you can yourself, and trust in your strength to destroy him before he destroys you.

But that isn't a headlong charge. Above all, it isn't about movement in the first place, it is about firepower and punishment dealt.

The first infantry wave is fixing, but doesn't have to do it everywhere, or care too much about finding the enemy. Walking over your chosen route of advance will either penetrate the enemy and break up his defense, or he'll find you, and reveal himself stopping that. Let him. Then blow the living crap out of everything that reveals itself, with all your firepower arms. Tanks, mortars, artillery support - call down the wrath of God to avenge the first wave. All the first wave itself needs to do in the meantime is hit the dirt, take what cover they can, and rally as best they can. They did their part drawing the enemy's fire. Don't press. It isn't a race. Save as many of them as possible, by blasting the guys shooting at them and skulking them out of sight.

Then send the second wave. Not a new idea. Not a fancy razzle dazzle end around head fake double reverse. Send them at the spots your artillery and other fire support just blasted into the lower atmosphere, while the dust is still moving upward. They may occupy the places so blasted. Or they may draw fire from a new set of shooters, and repeat the experience of the first wave. You don't really care which. There is no rushing. You have all week. Everyone will get a turn before you are done, every bit of fire support you have will chew on something, and the enemy will need to shoot you all down and still have something left. If they don't, it may be in the bottom half of the clock that they start crumbling. Waves that have been out of the leading role are rallying the while, shooting back. You don't care how long it takes, but not because any of it is tentative or any part of the clock is quiet. Reuse the rallied early waves as fourth and fifth attacks. The whole point is to outlast them, to have the last rallied wave standing. Inexorable is the watchword.

Each wave doesn't bunch up. It isn't trying to run the enemy off his feet in one go. You only expose what it takes to make a serious threat to enemy position if he doesn't open up with a major line of battle. The ideal size of one wave is a numerical match for the defenders on the same frontage. You don't want to give them denser targets that make all their weapons more effective. Instead you want them to face trying to hold off the third wave with empty magazines and surrounded by blasted friends, worked over repeatedly by all your fire support.

They won't stand. Lean hard enough into them, back off for nothing, make no mistakes, and use every weapon in your force for its proper target - and they will go down. Trust your combined strength, believe it, press home and make it so.

No captain can go far wrong who lays his ship alongside one of the enemy.

Combatinman has it right for a division slice, but the thing to remember about WW II Russians and their rifle armies ("combined arms armies", technically) was that they have twice as much overall fire support as the divisional slice itself.  Half the guns, and the bigger half, are up at army level, and get assigned to support this or that division for this or that operation, at any given stage.  
 
Every level has its organic fire support, for 82mm mortars at battalion, on up.  The commander at that level can count on having that much, it will never be "pulled" from him.  But the higher muckety mucks direct the overall battle precisely by handing out double that firepower to the bits they care about, for the missions they think need it.  Half the ATGs are independent AT regiments and brigades; half the mortar firepower (and the heavier half) are regiments of 120mm mortars, again independent; half the tube artillery, with 122mm guns and 152mm howitzers rather than 76s and 122s, respectively, is up at army level, too.   Independent SU regiments and tank regiments and brigades, likewise, are all in the army commander's kit bag.
 
The army commander is *not* expected to dole out all this extra stuff in even division slices.  The division that has a defensive role isn't given anything, or it is given an ATG formation because it is in good tank country.  The division that has the attack main effort gets a tank brigade, and a 120mm mortar regiment, and as much 122 and 152 gun formations as its organic div arty, on top of that div arty.
 
The organic "slice" is a minimum level, in other words.  The skies the limit on the high side, but triple the division slice amount, in throw weight, would be perfectly normal for an important part of the overall operation.
 
The Russians used this system because it put the combined arms mix decision in the hands of a few experienced general officers and their professionally competent staffs.  You only needed one professional and competent per army this way, instead of needing one in every one of its 6 to 9 component divisions.  The muckety muck in charge was responsible for giving the formations below him the tools they needed to accomplish their part of the overall plan, and for deciding on that plan.  The division commanders were responsible for using it effectively to accomplish their formation's mission.  And lower than that, the field grade guys were just responsible for "laying their ship alongside the enemy" and fighting hard enough.  
 
If they fought hard enough but failed, it was their superior's fault - they clearly hadn't been given a feasible mission or the right tools, in that case.  A long casualty roll was proof positive of trying hard - success, of course, was always welcome too.  To fail without a long casualty roll was a sign of not having tried hard enough and was the subordinate's fault.
 
PS CaptainHawkeye is exactly right about the focus being on the Russian's own plan, and pushing it forward, and not on where the enemy was, or recon, or avoiding them.  They were looking to execute their planned movement, and to kill anything that got in the way, and expected to only get places by such killing.  The mech forces would spend a little bit more effort on looking for a weak point and directing their main effort there.  But even in the mech arm, the following "echelons" mechanically followed that chosen "point of main effort", with a one two three of "first hits them to find and fix, second flanks them (close, one side only) to push them aside, third runs through the hole".  Those were to be delivered at speed, hard, not reacting much to where the enemy was found or what he was doing.  Instead force him around so that the rest of the friendly-side plan makes sense.
 
The watchword in all of it was simplicity, as well as aggressiveness.  They wanted tactics that they could teach to any brave and reasonably competent officer, that were clear in the expectations and requirements of each level and role, that the average could execute - and that were robust enough to work and be effective if that average was supplied.  They weren't aiming at brilliancy and they didn't want the plan to fail if they didn't get brilliancy.  Too many plans would have failed too soon, if they had.
 
The downside of this approach is that it can become predictable.  The upside is that a mass army can actually learn and apply it.  
And that in practice, there is so much confusion and friction in war that simplicity is a very underrated military virtue, of the first importance.

Don't spend lots of time scouting. Don't bother to fix and flank, except with tank forces, who can do it at speed. But also don't just run infantry at the enemy or ignore casualties. That isn't Russian doctrine or how it actually worked, it is just a cartoon slander of their methods spread by the Germans, whomthought it made them defending against it sound all clever and also heroic for braving it etc. (A rather incoherent set of spin objectives, incidentally, but that is an aside).

The first idea is that any definite plan pushed will be faster than slow recon pull. The next is that the process of destroying the enemy really isn't that complicated - it is a matter of laying your ship alongside the enemy, as Nelson put it before Trafalgar. Meaning close aggressively with the enemy, brave what he can dish out to dish out as much as you can yourself, and trust in your strength to destroy him before he destroys you.

But that isn't a headlong charge. Above all, it isn't about movement in the first place, it is about firepower and punishment dealt.

The first infantry wave is fixing, but doesn't have to do it everywhere, or care too much about finding the enemy. Walking over your chosen route of advance will either penetrate the enemy and break up his defense, or he'll find you, and reveal himself stopping that. Let him. Then blow the living crap out of everything that reveals itself, with all your firepower arms. Tanks, mortars, artillery support - call down the wrath of God to avenge the first wave. All the first wave itself needs to do in the meantime is hit the dirt, take what cover they can, and rally as best they can. They did their part drawing the enemy's fire. Don't press. It isn't a race. Save as many of them as possible, by blasting the guys shooting at them and skulking them out of sight.

Then send the second wave. Not a new idea. Not a fancy razzle dazzle end around head fake double reverse. Send them at the spots your artillery and other fire support just blasted into the lower atmosphere, while the dust is still moving upward. They may occupy the places so blasted. Or they may draw fire from a new set of shooters, and repeat the experience of the first wave. You don't really care which. There is no rushing. You have all week. Everyone will get a turn before you are done, every bit of fire support you have will chew on something, and the enemy will need to shoot you all down and still have something left. If they don't, it may be in the bottom half of the clock that they start crumbling. Waves that have been out of the leading role are rallying the while, shooting back. You don't care how long it takes, but not because any of it is tentative or any part of the clock is quiet. Reuse the rallied early waves as fourth and fifth attacks. The whole point is to outlast them, to have the last rallied wave standing. Inexorable is the watchword.

Each wave doesn't bunch up. It isn't trying to run the enemy off his feet in one go. You only expose what it takes to make a serious threat to enemy position if he doesn't open up with a major line of battle. The ideal size of one wave is a numerical match for the defenders on the same frontage. You don't want to give them denser targets that make all their weapons more effective. Instead you want them to face trying to hold off the third wave with empty magazines and surrounded by blasted friends, worked over repeatedly by all your fire support.

They won't stand. Lean hard enough into them, back off for nothing, make no mistakes, and use every weapon in your force for its proper target - and they will go down. Trust your combined strength, believe it, press home and make it so.

No captain can go far wrong who lays his ship alongside one of the enemy.

Don't spend lots of time scouting. Don't bother to fix and flank, except with tank forces, who can do it at speed. But also don't just run infantry at the enemy or ignore casualties. That isn't Russian doctrine or how it actually worked, it is just a cartoon slander of their methods spread by the Germans, whomthought it made them defending against it sound all clever and also heroic for braving it etc. (A rather incoherent set of spin objectives, incidentally, but that is an aside).

The first idea is that any definite plan pushed will be faster than slow recon pull. The next is that the process of destroying the enemy really isn't that complicated - it is a matter of laying your ship alongside the enemy, as Nelson put it before Trafalgar. Meaning close aggressively with the enemy, brave what he can dish out to dish out as much as you can yourself, and trust in your strength to destroy him before he destroys you.

But that isn't a headlong charge. Above all, it isn't about movement in the first place, it is about firepower and punishment dealt.

The first infantry wave is fixing, but doesn't have to do it everywhere, or care too much about finding the enemy. Walking over your chosen route of advance will either penetrate the enemy and break up his defense, or he'll find you, and reveal himself stopping that. Let him. Then blow the living crap out of everything that reveals itself, with all your firepower arms. Tanks, mortars, artillery support - call down the wrath of God to avenge the first wave. All the first wave itself needs to do in the meantime is hit the dirt, take what cover they can, and rally as best they can. They did their part drawing the enemy's fire. Don't press. It isn't a race. Save as many of them as possible, by blasting the guys shooting at them and skulking them out of sight.

Then send the second wave. Not a new idea. Not a fancy razzle dazzle end around head fake double reverse. Send them at the spots your artillery and other fire support just blasted into the lower atmosphere, while the dust is still moving upward. They may occupy the places so blasted. Or they may draw fire from a new set of shooters, and repeat the experience of the first wave. You don't really care which. There is no rushing. You have all week. Everyone will get a turn before you are done, every bit of fire support you have will chew on something, and the enemy will need to shoot you all down and still have something left. If they don't, it may be in the bottom half of the clock that they start crumbling. Waves that have been out of the leading role are rallying the while, shooting back. You don't care how long it takes, but not because any of it is tentative or any part of the clock is quiet. Reuse the rallied early waves as fourth and fifth attacks. The whole point is to outlast them, to have the last rallied wave standing. Inexorable is the watchword.

Each wave doesn't bunch up. It isn't trying to run the enemy off his feet in one go. You only expose what it takes to make a serious threat to enemy position if he doesn't open up with a major line of battle. The ideal size of one wave is a numerical match for the defenders on the same frontage. You don't want to give them denser targets that make all their weapons more effective. Instead you want them to face trying to hold off the third wave with empty magazines and surrounded by blasted friends, worked over repeatedly by all your fire support.

They won't stand. Lean hard enough into them, back off for nothing, make no mistakes, and use every weapon in your force for its proper target - and they will go down. Trust your combined strength, believe it, press home and make it so.

No captain can go far wrong who lays his ship alongside one of the enemy.

Don't spend lots of time scouting. Don't bother to fix and flank, except with tank forces, who can do it at speed. But also don't just run infantry at the enemy or ignore casualties. That isn't Russian doctrine or how it actually worked, it is just a cartoon slander of their methods spread by the Germans, whomthought it made them defending against it sound all clever and also heroic for braving it etc. (A rather incoherent set of spin objectives, incidentally, but that is an aside).

The first idea is that any definite plan pushed will be faster than slow recon pull. The next is that the process of destroying the enemy really isn't that complicated - it is a matter of laying your ship alongside the enemy, as Nelson put it before Trafalgar. Meaning close aggressively with the enemy, brave what he can dish out to dish out as much as you can yourself, and trust in your strength to destroy him before he destroys you.

But that isn't a headlong charge. Above all, it isn't about movement in the first place, it is about firepower and punishment dealt.

The first infantry wave is fixing, but doesn't have to do it everywhere, or care too much about finding the enemy. Walking over your chosen route of advance will either penetrate the enemy and break up his defense, or he'll find you, and reveal himself stopping that. Let him. Then blow the living crap out of everything that reveals itself, with all your firepower arms. Tanks, mortars, artillery support - call down the wrath of God to avenge the first wave. All the first wave itself needs to do in the meantime is hit the dirt, take what cover they can, and rally as best they can. They did their part drawing the enemy's fire. Don't press. It isn't a race. Save as many of them as possible, by blasting the guys shooting at them and skulking them out of sight.

Then send the second wave. Not a new idea. Not a fancy razzle dazzle end around head fake double reverse. Send them at the spots your artillery and other fire support just blasted into the lower atmosphere, while the dust is still moving upward. They may occupy the places so blasted. Or they may draw fire from a new set of shooters, and repeat the experience of the first wave. You don't really care which. There is no rushing. You have all week. Everyone will get a turn before you are done, every bit of fire support you have will chew on something, and the enemy will need to shoot you all down and still have something left. If they don't, it may be in the bottom half of the clock that they start crumbling. Waves that have been out of the leading role are rallying the while, shooting back. You don't care how long it takes, but not because any of it is tentative or any part of the clock is quiet. Reuse the rallied early waves as fourth and fifth attacks. The whole point is to outlast them, to have the last rallied wave standing. Inexorable is the watchword.

Each wave doesn't bunch up. It isn't trying to run the enemy off his feet in one go. You only expose what it takes to make a serious threat to enemy position if he doesn't open up with a major line of battle. The ideal size of one wave is a numerical match for the defenders on the same frontage. You don't want to give them denser targets that make all their weapons more effective. Instead you want them to face trying to hold off the third wave with empty magazines and surrounded by blasted friends, worked over repeatedly by all your fire support.

They won't stand. Lean hard enough into them, back off for nothing, make no mistakes, and use every weapon in your force for its proper target - and they will go down. Trust your combined strength, believe it, press home and make it so.

No captain can go far wrong who lays his ship alongside one of the enemy.

I recall a conversation with a playtester heavily involved in CM just as CMBB was being released, discussing the T-34 vs the Panzer III long (50L60).  He thought "the T-34 is a piece of crap" and that the Panzer III should and would smoke it like a cheap cigar, all day.  He was hopelessly wrong, and that opinion falsifies the whole history of the war in the east.  
 
Tanks are meant to accomplish a concrete combat task, which isn't cuddling the driver's backside.  The T-34, warts and all, pretty much won WWII.  Does that mean it was a superior tank, one for one, to the Panther, say?  Of course not.  It does mean that it was as good or better, in practice, as all other common main battle tanks of the war, and that properly used it fulfilled all the tactical and operational functions a main battle tank needed to perform in that war.  When revisionists try to tell us otherwise, they are engaged in an attempt to get us to believe them instead of our lying eyes, and its just hopeless.  T-26s wouldn't have retaken European Russia from the Germans in 30 months of high intensity combat.  T-34s did.  Not "could have", not "had some potential", DID.  And no amount of spin can detract from that.

Don't spend lots of time scouting. Don't bother to fix and flank, except with tank forces, who can do it at speed. But also don't just run infantry at the enemy or ignore casualties. That isn't Russian doctrine or how it actually worked, it is just a cartoon slander of their methods spread by the Germans, whomthought it made them defending against it sound all clever and also heroic for braving it etc. (A rather incoherent set of spin objectives, incidentally, but that is an aside).

The first idea is that any definite plan pushed will be faster than slow recon pull. The next is that the process of destroying the enemy really isn't that complicated - it is a matter of laying your ship alongside the enemy, as Nelson put it before Trafalgar. Meaning close aggressively with the enemy, brave what he can dish out to dish out as much as you can yourself, and trust in your strength to destroy him before he destroys you.

But that isn't a headlong charge. Above all, it isn't about movement in the first place, it is about firepower and punishment dealt.

The first infantry wave is fixing, but doesn't have to do it everywhere, or care too much about finding the enemy. Walking over your chosen route of advance will either penetrate the enemy and break up his defense, or he'll find you, and reveal himself stopping that. Let him. Then blow the living crap out of everything that reveals itself, with all your firepower arms. Tanks, mortars, artillery support - call down the wrath of God to avenge the first wave. All the first wave itself needs to do in the meantime is hit the dirt, take what cover they can, and rally as best they can. They did their part drawing the enemy's fire. Don't press. It isn't a race. Save as many of them as possible, by blasting the guys shooting at them and skulking them out of sight.

Then send the second wave. Not a new idea. Not a fancy razzle dazzle end around head fake double reverse. Send them at the spots your artillery and other fire support just blasted into the lower atmosphere, while the dust is still moving upward. They may occupy the places so blasted. Or they may draw fire from a new set of shooters, and repeat the experience of the first wave. You don't really care which. There is no rushing. You have all week. Everyone will get a turn before you are done, every bit of fire support you have will chew on something, and the enemy will need to shoot you all down and still have something left. If they don't, it may be in the bottom half of the clock that they start crumbling. Waves that have been out of the leading role are rallying the while, shooting back. You don't care how long it takes, but not because any of it is tentative or any part of the clock is quiet. Reuse the rallied early waves as fourth and fifth attacks. The whole point is to outlast them, to have the last rallied wave standing. Inexorable is the watchword.

Each wave doesn't bunch up. It isn't trying to run the enemy off his feet in one go. You only expose what it takes to make a serious threat to enemy position if he doesn't open up with a major line of battle. The ideal size of one wave is a numerical match for the defenders on the same frontage. You don't want to give them denser targets that make all their weapons more effective. Instead you want them to face trying to hold off the third wave with empty magazines and surrounded by blasted friends, worked over repeatedly by all your fire support.

They won't stand. Lean hard enough into them, back off for nothing, make no mistakes, and use every weapon in your force for its proper target - and they will go down. Trust your combined strength, believe it, press home and make it so.

No captain can go far wrong who lays his ship alongside one of the enemy.

Don't spend lots of time scouting. Don't bother to fix and flank, except with tank forces, who can do it at speed. But also don't just run infantry at the enemy or ignore casualties. That isn't Russian doctrine or how it actually worked, it is just a cartoon slander of their methods spread by the Germans, whomthought it made them defending against it sound all clever and also heroic for braving it etc. (A rather incoherent set of spin objectives, incidentally, but that is an aside).

The first idea is that any definite plan pushed will be faster than slow recon pull. The next is that the process of destroying the enemy really isn't that complicated - it is a matter of laying your ship alongside the enemy, as Nelson put it before Trafalgar. Meaning close aggressively with the enemy, brave what he can dish out to dish out as much as you can yourself, and trust in your strength to destroy him before he destroys you.

But that isn't a headlong charge. Above all, it isn't about movement in the first place, it is about firepower and punishment dealt.

The first infantry wave is fixing, but doesn't have to do it everywhere, or care too much about finding the enemy. Walking over your chosen route of advance will either penetrate the enemy and break up his defense, or he'll find you, and reveal himself stopping that. Let him. Then blow the living crap out of everything that reveals itself, with all your firepower arms. Tanks, mortars, artillery support - call down the wrath of God to avenge the first wave. All the first wave itself needs to do in the meantime is hit the dirt, take what cover they can, and rally as best they can. They did their part drawing the enemy's fire. Don't press. It isn't a race. Save as many of them as possible, by blasting the guys shooting at them and skulking them out of sight.

Then send the second wave. Not a new idea. Not a fancy razzle dazzle end around head fake double reverse. Send them at the spots your artillery and other fire support just blasted into the lower atmosphere, while the dust is still moving upward. They may occupy the places so blasted. Or they may draw fire from a new set of shooters, and repeat the experience of the first wave. You don't really care which. There is no rushing. You have all week. Everyone will get a turn before you are done, every bit of fire support you have will chew on something, and the enemy will need to shoot you all down and still have something left. If they don't, it may be in the bottom half of the clock that they start crumbling. Waves that have been out of the leading role are rallying the while, shooting back. You don't care how long it takes, but not because any of it is tentative or any part of the clock is quiet. Reuse the rallied early waves as fourth and fifth attacks. The whole point is to outlast them, to have the last rallied wave standing. Inexorable is the watchword.

Each wave doesn't bunch up. It isn't trying to run the enemy off his feet in one go. You only expose what it takes to make a serious threat to enemy position if he doesn't open up with a major line of battle. The ideal size of one wave is a numerical match for the defenders on the same frontage. You don't want to give them denser targets that make all their weapons more effective. Instead you want them to face trying to hold off the third wave with empty magazines and surrounded by blasted friends, worked over repeatedly by all your fire support.

They won't stand. Lean hard enough into them, back off for nothing, make no mistakes, and use every weapon in your force for its proper target - and they will go down. Trust your combined strength, believe it, press home and make it so.

No captain can go far wrong who lays his ship alongside one of the enemy.

Realistic does not mean huge.  Realistic does not require special conditions of five times as much clock time.  Green units, 30-50% more time, and less symmetric forces can all improve realism, but none is strictly required (you can have 2 out of 3 e.g.).  
 
As for loss tolerance, the game model issue is that rally is rather too rapid and too complete (which greens do help with, incidentally).  Another approach to that I will describe below.
 
There is also a scenario design issue of designers frequently putting too much into terrain objectives that are all controlled at start by one side - or similar effects with exit conditions - which basically force a push for complete victory.  The better design for loss realism is to have a moderate amount of points for terrain objectives compared to those potentially available from knock out points, and then in addition to spread the terrain objectives around, some being quite easy for the attacker to reach and hold.  So that a normal, probing or tentative attack outcome would split the terrain objective points, with perhaps the attacker getting 200 of them and the defender 300 or 400.  Not 500-600 to nothing, unless the attacker takes the entire field.
 
There is another way to enforce realistic loss tolerance levels by using global morale.  It requires the players to adopt the system and abide by it, rather than any change to the game engine or scenario design (though the scenario design should specify the details).  Each side is given a global morale level that is its "continue the mission" or "critical" level.  If the side's global morale is below its critical level at the start of an orders phase, that side must click the "cease fire" option.  Notice, either side *may* choose to prepare for cease fire, as usual - this global morale just sets an additional "must".  If the defender thinks he is winning, he might voluntarily choose it each turn.  If he then drives the attacker's global morale below its critical level, the attacker will be forced to choose "ceasefire" as well, the two will match up, and the scenario will end, then and there.  This represents a combat broken off, with the attacker ceasing his efforts to try again later or somewhere else or using different tactics or forces, or the defender retreating from the position.
 
This gives a much more realistic way of fighting, in the sense that the force must be kept tolerably intact, in reasonable morale state etc, or it simply will not continue the mission.  If the opponent doesn't want to let it break off, this still won't end the fight early - the other side just won't have picked "cease fire" in that case, and the combat continues.  If both sides are ragged out, however, the fight *won't* continue. So no fighting to the last man on each side, ammo exhausted, trading haymakers at 4 meters with the last dismounted tank crews, etc.
 
As for how to make more realistic scenarios, when I was designing actively for CM1 I took inspiration from operational wargames I was playing at the same time.  I would just log local battles to simulate (at greatly reduced, merely "representative" scale, of course) from the combats that occurred in the operational game.  Those tend to be rather lopsided and to feature combined arms relationships that are not symmetric or ideal.  So e.g. sometimes a full company of German tanks with a few recon infantry on motorcycles attack a pure rifle infantry defense, that has nothing more than a single 45mm ATG as AT weapon, and in open farmland terrain.  On another occasion, such a German force might be called upon to attack through a dense forest along a narrow secondary road, against prepared defenses including mines.  Very different tactical task, that.
 
The point is precisely to avoid any one formula as supposedly "typical", to say to heck with "play balance", and instead just make lots of varied situations that feature only this long suit against that one, in this type of terrain problem or another.  Both sides need to assess what they can actual accomplish in the situation in front of them - which may be only "die gloriously", lol.
 
FWIW.

GhostRider - that source is tendentious horsefeathers, to put it charitably. Straw man argumentation, believing German fairy tales, slipshod relative loss reasoning without actual imputation of causes of loss, ignoring the whole operational history of the second half of the war, etc. the Germans won WWII in the east and handily defeated the dumb Russians, clearly, everyone knows that.n that's about the quality of the "reasoning", and of the miss.

Don't spend lots of time scouting. Don't bother to fix and flank, except with tank forces, who can do it at speed. But also don't just run infantry at the enemy or ignore casualties. That isn't Russian doctrine or how it actually worked, it is just a cartoon slander of their methods spread by the Germans, whomthought it made them defending against it sound all clever and also heroic for braving it etc. (A rather incoherent set of spin objectives, incidentally, but that is an aside).

The first idea is that any definite plan pushed will be faster than slow recon pull. The next is that the process of destroying the enemy really isn't that complicated - it is a matter of laying your ship alongside the enemy, as Nelson put it before Trafalgar. Meaning close aggressively with the enemy, brave what he can dish out to dish out as much as you can yourself, and trust in your strength to destroy him before he destroys you.

But that isn't a headlong charge. Above all, it isn't about movement in the first place, it is about firepower and punishment dealt.

The first infantry wave is fixing, but doesn't have to do it everywhere, or care too much about finding the enemy. Walking over your chosen route of advance will either penetrate the enemy and break up his defense, or he'll find you, and reveal himself stopping that. Let him. Then blow the living crap out of everything that reveals itself, with all your firepower arms. Tanks, mortars, artillery support - call down the wrath of God to avenge the first wave. All the first wave itself needs to do in the meantime is hit the dirt, take what cover they can, and rally as best they can. They did their part drawing the enemy's fire. Don't press. It isn't a race. Save as many of them as possible, by blasting the guys shooting at them and skulking them out of sight.

Then send the second wave. Not a new idea. Not a fancy razzle dazzle end around head fake double reverse. Send them at the spots your artillery and other fire support just blasted into the lower atmosphere, while the dust is still moving upward. They may occupy the places so blasted. Or they may draw fire from a new set of shooters, and repeat the experience of the first wave. You don't really care which. There is no rushing. You have all week. Everyone will get a turn before you are done, every bit of fire support you have will chew on something, and the enemy will need to shoot you all down and still have something left. If they don't, it may be in the bottom half of the clock that they start crumbling. Waves that have been out of the leading role are rallying the while, shooting back. You don't care how long it takes, but not because any of it is tentative or any part of the clock is quiet. Reuse the rallied early waves as fourth and fifth attacks. The whole point is to outlast them, to have the last rallied wave standing. Inexorable is the watchword.

Each wave doesn't bunch up. It isn't trying to run the enemy off his feet in one go. You only expose what it takes to make a serious threat to enemy position if he doesn't open up with a major line of battle. The ideal size of one wave is a numerical match for the defenders on the same frontage. You don't want to give them denser targets that make all their weapons more effective. Instead you want them to face trying to hold off the third wave with empty magazines and surrounded by blasted friends, worked over repeatedly by all your fire support.

They won't stand. Lean hard enough into them, back off for nothing, make no mistakes, and use every weapon in your force for its proper target - and they will go down. Trust your combined strength, believe it, press home and make it so.

No captain can go far wrong who lays his ship alongside one of the enemy.