Best soldiers of WWII?

[Andrew H.]

As I think several people have pointed out, it doesn't make sense to describe which nation's army was best because the armies were so inconsistent. It only makes sense to discuss which units were best, and even then only at a particular period of time.

As an example of "good" US troops, I would include the units in the (I think) 28th ID who, when they were cut off by advancing German forces, fell back and set up scratch defensive forces in various villages and greatly delayed the German attack. This despite often not having air cover, not knowing how many troops were attacking, and not having received any orders (indeed, in many cases, HQ thought that these units were wiped out and only learned of their existence when scouts found them). I would also add the 101st airborne at Bastogne and elsewhere, as well as the 82d airborne at Arnhem. I would exclude the troops who fought at Kasserine pass.

You get similar inconsistencies with the Germans. The Germans who fought in June-July 44 in Normandy were often very good soldiers: they held out for a long time against overwhelming allied material superiority, but nevertheless gave ground slowly...and often took back some of the land they gave up with a quick counterattack against numerically superior forces. But I would exclude from the "best" category many of the later war VG formations.

You find these disparities among almost all forces that fought, even the Finns. Some Finnish troops, for example, could disable Sov. tanks by using toothpicks, but the less elite forces often were only able to disable tanks by using pliers or even crowbars.

[Londoner]

Frankly I'm surprised BTS hasn't closed this thread. One of the first things I learned at uni was, never be afraid to question the credibility of the question. As a question "best soldiers of WW2?" is BS. Its so vague is plain stupid.

Every nation has combat units/formations which could cite amazing feats of "combat effectiveness". All this nationalistic crap is mind numbingly boring.

Since the thread starter has persisted with his flawed question, gleefully disregarding the arguments against it, I may as well add my 2p.

IMO certain Australian and New Zealander units were the most "combat effective" Allied troops of WW2. Not because they were genetically "tough" or "superior", but for their background. These guys lived a life that was about as close to an infantryman's routine as you could find outside of military life. They were given good (for the time) combat training and their infantry weapons were solid, if not outstanding.

Also, for the most part they adopted the "warrior myth/code" more wholeheartdly than other Allied combat troops (see An Intimate History of Killing, J. Bourke). Furthermore Australian and NZ units were regularly in action against large numbers (relative to their own) of the most experienced, well trained/led/equiped combat troops of WW2, the Germans.

Along with the Australians the Japanese arguably had, although for differing reasons, the best "natural aptitude" for a combat infantryman. However this alone is not enough to make a soldier "combat effective" in modern times, as the Japanese painfully found out.

I dont want to anger the Captain Americas here, but you are complete morons to compare operations against half-starved, poorly equiped, badly led troops, ie the Japanese, to land warfare against the Germans in WW2. Ok, so the US fought the Germans too, as so many of you kindly point out. Yawn, all Allied efforts are dwarfed in comaprison to the Soviet effort. It was the Russians who broke the back of the German war machine's biggest asset, namely the Wehrmacht. Lets be clear about this, it was NOT the GI or the intervention of the US military. I shudder to think of the numbers Russian soldiers who bravely and skillfully fought and died against the most dangerous land army of the era, despite the corrupt, calous and incompetent system that suposedly "supported" them.

The number of "USMC is best/GI's kick ass, Rangers rocked here etc" posts is plain silly and offensive. However thats partly the fault of the question.

Dont get me wrong, of course there were some tough US combat infantry units in WW2, but you havn't convinced me that they are any "better" than x number of other very "combat effective" units in WW2. In fact you havn't really tried, you've just asked the question, who are the "best soldiers of WW2?" and added USMC are best. I would expect a child to come up with a thread like this. Arrgggghhh the question is silly, I'm wasting my time ffs. Thankyou to those Americans who have taken the time to point out that not everyone in the US is as historically ignorant as some would have me believe after reading this thread.

[Kingfish]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Andrew Hedges:

[QB]I would also add the 101st airborne at Bastogne and elsewhere, as well as the 82d airborne at Arnhem.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Don't you mean the Brit 1st AB at Arnhem?

[Mikael]

Is it true that an Italian unit advancing in Greece once attempted an assault on a factory, and was made to retreat by workers who possessed only nails, hammers and crowbars?

[BloodyBucket]

originally posted by Andrew Hedges:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>As an example of "good" US troops, I would include the units in the (I think) 28th ID who, when they were cut off by advancing German forces, fell back and set up scratch defensive forces in various villages and greatly delayed the German attack. This despite often not having air cover, not knowing how many troops were attacking, and not having received any orders (indeed, in many cases, HQ thought that these units were wiped out and only learned of their existence when scouts found them). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's two mentions of the Bloody Bucket Division. My Old Man will be tickled.

I still maintain that you can't pick a "best" soldier/country/unit during WWII. My opinion would be too clouded by nationalism, plain ignorance of outstanding performances by lesser known contenders, and my love of the USMC.

[Mark IV]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by aka PanzerLeader:

Is it true that an Italian unit advancing in Greece once attempted an assault on a factory, and was made to retreat by workers who possessed only nails, hammers and crowbars?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Oh, I'm sure it is. Did you know turkeys will look straight up in the rain to drink, and drown? I was chased home by a hoop-snake this afternoon. Well, actually it was someone I knew, but they're not the kind to make something up. Quit your day job and make millions with your home computer in a few hours a day!

[BloodyBucket]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Quit your day job and make millions with your home computer in a few hours a day! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Really? Tell me more. How come I haven't heard of this before?

[Simon Fox]

I didn't notice that Aussies had cropped up in this thread until I noticed aussie's post on this page.

Going back though I think it's funny (and typical) that the Aussies here weren't beating their chests (unlike those marines and sundry other types) but were quick to jump to the defence of the diggers when some ill informed and ignorant comments were made by that organ bloke.

The militia issue is even more complicated than has been made out. Basically the AIF was an all volunteer force raised for overseas service, they were not the "regular" army. The AIF comprised men with no military backround, regulars and some from the militia (officially the CMF, Citizens Military Forces, pre war part time soldiers). For various reasons, those who did not want to go off and fight for the poms, or maybe required for home defence etc stayed in the militia. So the AIF was an expeditionary force and the 'militia' was the home defence force. It was possible to volunteer for the militia or the AIF and many did. When the threat to Australia became more direct then conscription was instituted and the conscripts went into the militia, but the militia was not a conscript force.

The militia was not an ill led or poorly trained force in general. Many of the militia units had a proud heritage because their antecendants were the units which fought in WW1. The two forces were not completely distinct, especially the officers swapped back and forth.

There was considerable disdain in the AIF for the militia units since they considered themselves the elite. But as the Pacific fighting wore on this generally diminished.

On the subject of the Kokoda Trail both militia and AIF units fought in the fighting retreat over the Owen Stanley Range. The Japanese had overwhelming superiority both in numbers and firepower. General Horii's South Seas Force comprised veteran Japanese troops, at least a division was used in the campaign. The 39th battalion (militia) bore the brunt of the initial attacks and performed well, it was generally a well trained and led unit. The 53rd battalion (militia) was inadequately trained having been used mainly as dockworkers in Port Moresby prior to being sent up the Trail. Hardly suprisingly they performed poorly although later they became a very good unit (as is the case with troops of any nationality when well led and trained). The three battalions of 21st brigade were AIF units, veterans of the Syrian campaign. The epic retreat of these units across the Owen Stanley Ranges, all the while inflicting heavy casualties on the Japanese by aggressive action and giving sufficient time for fresh units to be brought into Port Moresby, ranks as one of the finest feats of Australian arms in WW2. Not the least of which is the outstanding leadership of Brigadier Potts who ignored the cretinous orders eminating from MacArthur's headquarters and fought the battle his own way. Later both militia (3rd Btn) and AIF units (25th brigade) took over and finished the job.

My vote for best performing Aussie units in WW2 goes to the Independent Companies or Commando Squadrons. In addition to their patrolling and intelligence gathering activities they fought some outstanding offensive battles against superior Japanese forces completely routing them.

The worst thing that happened to the Aussies in WW2: getting out from under the Brits and Churchill's crazy schemes only to be lumbered with that clown MacArthur

[Gyrene]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Frankly I'm surprised BTS hasn't closed this thread. One of the first things I learned at uni was, never be afraid to question the credibility of the question. As a question "best soldiers of WW2?" is BS. Its so vague is plain stupid.

Every nation has combat units/formations which could cite amazing feats of "combat effectiveness". All this nationalistic crap is mind numbingly boring. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What I find plain stupid is that someone like Londoner has this desperate need to get things fired up in this thread again, especially after more than 30 other members joined in on the thread with great comments well after the original flames had died down. I'd call that more childish than asking what units were better.

Now as you will all bear witness I was being blatantly nationalistic for choosing one American unit out of my four choices. Why Am I not hearing any crap over my choice of the Gurkhas or the SAS? It's because Britain-centric bufoons like Londoner get their panties in a wad over any and all mentions of the US doing anything right at all.

He goes on to voice his choices of the Aussies and New Zealanders as his pick, and both are very valid and I accept them without having to blunt the valor of their opponents.

Then he goes on to make sweeping, generalized statements about how their life was the most like being in the infantry (Having to run from cover to cover at home, I guess...) and how they adopted the "Warrior Spirit" the most of all Allies, etc.

Well, I am just a child, so carry on.

Gyrene

[Major Tom]

Actually, I think that the South Seas Detachment (the first one) by the time of the Kokoda trail operation was composed of two regiments and accompanying engineers and artillery (more of a reinforced Brigade than a Division). The troops were veterans, but, only of the war from 1941-1942. They came from the 55th, or 56th Divisions, which were garrison divisions from Japan, not formations that fought in China. Their troops were well trained, and experienced in the relatively bloodless occupation of North New Guinea, the Solomans and New Britain. They were probably as experienced as the troops from the Australian 7th Division. However, the troops from the 30th Brigade were green militia.

All and all an interesting engagement with initiative going from one side to another and back again.

[Stalins Organ]

Yeah, well as a Kiwi (that's a New Zealander to you foreigners ) I think "Londoner's" remarks weer a little over the top.

NZ & Aus had different nationaly psyche from the "Old country" (ie the UK), and thsi showed in some of the attitudes of the fighting men as you'd expect.

But certainly NZ'ers of WW2 were not living a life "closer to that of infantry" than anyone else that I know of. NZ was an agrarian nation, but most of the pop'n lived in urban aeras. Certainly there were many farmers and labourers in the forces, but farmers were actually a protected occupation from teh outset, and farm labourers also later on.

When several thousand NZ soldiers returned home on leave in 1943 they found conditions so cushy here that many of them mutinied and refused to return - their cry was "no man twice until all men once" - a fair sentiment most of us would agree I think, but not exactly the warrior's call to arms!

[ 05-03-2001: Message edited by: Mike the bike ]

[Michael Dorosh]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mike the bike:

Yeah, well as a Kiwi (that's a New Zealander to you foreigners ) I think "Londoner's" remarks weer a little over the top.

NZ & Aus had different nationaly psyche from teh "Old country" (ie the UK), and thsi showed in some of the attitudes of the fighting men as you'd expect.

But certainly NZ'ers of WW2 were not living a life "closer to that of infantry" than anyone else that I know of. NZ was an agrarian nation, but most of the pop'n lived in urban aeras. Certainly there were many, many farmers and labourers in hte forces, but farmers were actually a protected occupation from teh outset, and farm labourers also later on.

When several thousand NZ soldiers returned home on leave in 1943 they found conditions so cushy here that many of them mutinied and refued to return - their cry was "no man twice until all men once" - a fair sentiment most of us would agree I think, but not exactly the warrior's call to arms!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The same nonsense is often said about Canadians too - that they were all outdoorsmen and natural soldiers. The truth was far from the myth. This entire thread seems like a repetition of myths - from the all-volunteer Canadian Army to the invincible German.

Perhaps if we narrowed the focus, the discussion might be more worthwhile.

[Simon Fox]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Major Tom:

Actually, I think that the South Seas Detachment (the first one) by the time of the Kokoda trail operation was composed of two regiments and accompanying engineers and artillery (more of a reinforced Brigade than a Division). The troops were veterans, but, only of the war from 1941-1942. They came from the 55th, or 56th Divisions, which were garrison divisions from Japan, not formations that fought in China. Their troops were well trained, and experienced in the relatively bloodless occupation of North New Guinea, the Solomans and New Britain. They were probably as experienced as the troops from the Australian 7th Division. However, the troops from the 30th Brigade were green militia.

All and all an interesting engagement with initiative going from one side to another and back again.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well IJA organisations are pretty flexible so it's sometimes hard to nut out exactly what was there. Maybe you have better information than me but what I have read suggests at least some of the Japanese force were veterans of China in addition to having fought on Rabaul etc. Anyway after the initial landing of around 7000 troops (about 2600 combat) the eventual force rose to about 13,500 troops which is not far short of a division. I beleive in addition to the army troops there were about 1500 or more SNLF troops. This force was initially faced by one battalion (the 39th)who acquitted themselves fairly well considering they mainly had WW1 lewis guns as their section LMGs Later in their retreat they were joined gradually by the 3 battalions of the 20th Brigade.

[tank buster]

Moroccan 4th Mountain Division

One of the most impressive fighting units of the entire war.

The Algerians and Moroccans of the French Expeditionary Corps were the troops most directly responsible for making the decisive breakthrough, which led to the German decision to withdraw from Monte Cassino.

:eek:

[von Lucke]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Londoner:

I dont want to anger the Captain Americas here, but you are complete morons to compare operations against half-starved, poorly equiped, badly led troops, ie the Japanese, to land warfare against the Germans in WW2.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, I'm more of a Green Hornet type.

Would those "half-starved, poorly equiped, badly led troops" be the same people who over-ran Malaya & Singapore, Hong-Kong, Burma, most of New Guinea, and sank the Prince of Wales and Repulse --- and still attempted an invasion of India as late as 1944?

Yr right, there is no comparison between the Germans and Japanese: The Germans would surrender in the face of insurmountable odds, while the Japanese (as "half-starved and poorly equiped" as may be) fought on to the last man.

Look at the bloody nose the 12th SS (Hitler Jugend) gave the Brits --- then imagine if all German units had been that fanatical. Multiply that by 100 and you might understand what the Marines went through in the Pacific.

[Berlichtingen]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Perhaps if we narrowed the focus, the discussion might be more worthwhile.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The reason I still follow this thread are the genuinely interesting posts amoung the nonsense

[Skipper]

> by late 1945 the Kwantung Army (IJA in

> Manchuria) was a shell of it's former

> self.

Yes, but I am talking about what soviet officers thought about their opponents' tactical skills in combnined arms warfare, not about their numbers or anything like that. And basically, after five years of fighting germans, japanese did not seem up to par.

> My uncle in fact was captured by the

> Soviets and spent three years in the Gulag

> near Lake Baikal.

Baikal. Not the worst place of them all. If you take a look at diesel vs petrol thread, I lived in a house built by Japanese POWs. Very good house, by the way. Double walls and everything.

Btw, Gulag was Department of Camps, NKVD. Your uncle should have been a client of a different organisation, namely Department of POWs, NKO.

> Didn't sound like much fun to me...

I guess so. At least, he survived.

[Stalin's Organ]

von Lucke I think you'll find far fewer accounts of Japanese actually fighting to the last man than you think.

Often they just died as huddled masses in the bottom of bunkers - sure they refused to surrender, but often they had long since stopped actually fighting. Many also committed suicide rather than surrender - again they did not actually _fight_ to the last man.

Even the infamous "banzai" charges sometimes involveds trops fairly blindly charging forwards without trying to fight very much.

[Skipper]

> I too dislike myths,

> and as such lets fix one.

Ahem, let's see.

> There is a reasons why the allies feared

> the SS, the Tiger (evenmore the Tiger II),

> the Nebelwerfer, stole German equipment at

> every chance, and TO THIS DAY use tactics

> originally used by the Germans.

If there was no such reason, the war would be over in a few weeks.

> It was the Superior Training of those tank

> commanders, and their ability to Adapt.

It was Combat Experience (Poland), better C&C and better operational doctrine, more than anything else. Germans' pre-war tank crew training program was in no way superior to, let's say, Soviet.

> The gun crews, and tank crews for that

> matter, where astonished to see their 37mm

> rounds just bouncing off the front armor

> at point blank!

I seriously doubt that German officers did not know about Matildas well before they started in France.

> why a 20:1 kills ratio against Russia?

Never happened. If you are talking about LOSS ratio for summer 1941, then keep in mind that majority of soviet losses were POWs. The reason was encirclement and panic.

> How can one German machinegun battalion

> take 30,000 Russian prisoners?

See above.

> If the U.S. and Russia switched

> geographical locations, and Germany pulled

> an operation Barbarosa against us, I'll

> bet the Germans will enjoy success early.

Russia had much bigger and better army than USA in 1941. USA is a big island, if you see what I mean.

> It was the experience earned in the

> beginning, by training and ability, that

> would be combined with superior equipment

> in the end,

Errmm... Superior? In the end???

> that allowed Germany to last as long as it

> did against three major powers, plus

> several minor ones.

It was several lines of fortifications combined with an ability to pull off active defence. Btw, Germany was not alone. Far from it.

> And in the end, it is easy to see it only

> took one man to defeat Germany. And his

> name is Adolf Hitler.

Man, that's BS. You should've mentioned at least another two: Gen. Mud and Gen. Frost. To quote yourself "I too dislike myths".

> Had he chose Moscow, he would have cut the

> nations only transportation and

> communications center.

Only????? When posting on this board, it is sometimes useful to take a peek at the globe. Hitler's decision to go after Ukraine was, in all likelihood, correct. There were several valid reasons, one being that there was a reserve command and communicatons center on mid Volga, built in 1930s. If parteigenosse (sp?) Guderian didnt know about it when he was writing his tale, it was not the only thing he did not know (or failed to mention, anyway).

> IF Russia could have continued at all.

From all indications, it could.

[Londoner]

Von Lucke, fanatisism counts for little without the right equipment, tactics and leadership.

The thread starter, no I wasn't reviving a flame you fool, I was simply giving my, as you point out somewhat over-generalised opinion. I wasn't attempting to write an essay on Australian combat motivation or effectiveness for god sake, I was trying to give a quick summary of my thoughts regarding your question. Obviously I dont think every Aussie trooper was an outdoor, rugged, type, and no I dont think that automatically makes a good soldier. Of course anything I can say in a few paragraphs will be somewhat generalised. Also, if I don't like your question i'm surely entitled to tell you so, no? Don't you see its flawed and inviting nationalistic nonsense? You could have at least worded it more clearly. Furthermore, I spent almost a year researching, with the help of a PHD student, what made combat infantryman fight in WW2. This doesn't make me an expert, but it did give me some insight into the subject. As Mr Dorosh points out, this argument needs to be narrowed down. I would argue, to understand what makes troops perform in combat conditions, you have to look at combat motivation. So heres a rather wordy account/argument I wrote, discussing US combat motivation in WW2. It was graded a 2:1 by the KCL War Studies Dept. If you are interested in an opinion that isn't simplfied to a few paragraphs, on what made a good US combat infantryman, read on...( I want to ignore all US involvment/achievements in WW2 you say? Why in hell would I waste a year studying the US combat infantryman in WW2 you moron.)

[ 05-03-2001: Message edited by: Londoner ]

[Flipper]

uhhh...I think i can have fun with this thread...well first of all general montgomery

was a nimrod! so......I guess all english soldier's as well as english people in general are disqaulified from being considered as intellingent, second the japaneses are alway's squinting so that make's them nearsighted so...i guess they don't aim so well,the italian's dance in the street's when their country declare's war..an dance in the street's when they surrender..so that make's them the ultimate jellyfish!...the french fight badly for six week's then surrender an those that don't escape the country claim to fight for the resistance when the war is over so that make's them braggart's...The russian's surrender in mass fight like hell get mowed down like hell an then rape half the country side that make's them human...so I setlle for a tie between the american's an german's.

[Londoner]

American Combat Motivation in World War Two.

Over the past fifty-five years many theories for combat motivation in World War Two have been put forward. Dinter argued in his book Hero or Coward, that humans are innately aggressive. He went on to argue that this aggression can be used effectively if military training is tough and realistic, reminiscent of the Fuller and Hart era. However, in many academic’s minds, the modern battlefield has made this argument ambiguous. Historians such as Ambrose, Holmes, and in the last two years, Bourke and Linderman argue that Comradeship, particularly the primary group had become the most important factor in combat motivation by World War Two. The eminent Paul Fussell remarked, men ‘will attack only if young, athletic, credulous, and sustained by some equivalent of the buddy system.’ Most contemporary commentators tend to agree with this theory, especially where British and American Armies were concerned. Others, such as Forster believe that ideology, principally in regimes with excessive propaganda, played an important role. Bidwell argues that race and ethnicity are important motivators. According to him, ‘martial races’ like the Irish have a natural aptitude for military operations. Strachan emphasised discipline and terror, (in German and Russian soldiers), kept men fighting in extreme conditions. Keegan also added his “big man" theory to the debate which reverts back to the individual approach rather than group paradigms. Linderman on the other hand argued that an animal like coarsening and eventual brutalisation simply took hold of most American combat infantrymen, turning them into robot-like brutes.

There are psychiatrists, historians, psychologists, soldiers, politicians, sociologists and many more miscellaneous commentators who have provided a wide variety of answers to the question of combat motivation in World War Two. However, the aforementioned factors seem the most recurrent and well-studied theories. None of which are mutually excusive, but the relative importance of these ideas have caused heated controversy.

The Primary Group Unravelled.

However, certain assumptions have been made. Janowitz and Shils argued that the primary group was the key motivator in the German army of 1939-45. Bartov and Strachan both dismissed this idea, pointing out, high levels of attrition shattered units relatively quickly. Bartov substitutes the primary group, for harsh discipline (15,00 German soldiers were executed during World War Two) and terror of the enemy, as the primary combat motivator. Bartov and Strachan also argue that the same can be said of the Soviet Army. The Soviet Army suffered almost eleven and a half million active service personnel killed in Action and a further eighteen million wounded in action. Seventy five percent of which fell on the rifle companies, thus decimating them many times over. In 1941 Stalin decreed ruthless punishment for desertion, panic mongering and surrender. Families of soldiers who deserted would be arrested and families of those taken prisoner would lose state benefit. Also NKVD “holding detachments” were placed behind the frontlines to deter would-be deserters. Again discipline and terror were, according to Bartov and Strachan, of fundamental importance to Soviet combat motivation. However, Beevor remarked that many actions involved supreme sacrifice, which could not be explained by merely discipline and terror. However, arguably revenge and hate made up for many of the acts that Beevor cites. As Erickson pointed out, the driving force behind Soviet combat motivation was an all-consuming hatred of the Germans, personalised by millions who had seen for themselves or suffered through their families, what German rule had done.

The reasons for German and Russian combat motivation are not central to the question. They are used to highlight and question the relevance of comradeship and the primary group. Some commentators are acknowledging that comradeship was not the most salient factor in the motivation of certain Armies in the Second World War, (Bartov writing in 1992 and Strachan in 1997). However, most historians still hold the view that discipline, terror and hate do not explain American combat motivation. Discipline was certainly a contributor but the severity of military discipline had declined significantly over the one hundred years preceding World War Two. The US Army executed a handful of men. While probably more important than many believe, discipline, terror and hate was much less of a factor in American combat motivation. Comradeship is purportedly the fundamental variable in motivating young British and American men in World War Two. Ellis commented that Western armies are held together at the squad and platoon level. Comradeship, he affirms ‘was no fleeting, boozy sentimentality’. Holmes argues much the same, ‘mate ship tied men willingly to the altar of battle’. Ambrose also goes along with this, arguing in his book Citizen Soldiers, ‘What held them (American infantrymen) together was not country and flag, but unit cohesion’.

Most major surveys also concentrated on the primary group, Marshall’s comprehensive surveys, summed up in his book Men Against Fire, being the most obvious example. However there are numerous problems with such a singular approach. Most notably the question of casualties arises. American casualties amongst rifle companies made up the majority of total American combatants killed and wounded. The decimation of the primary group would, in many sections and platoons committed to combat for more than a few days, become reality. The purported nature of comradeship simply does not stand up to the number and speed of American casualties.

Keegan also points that the scope of many studies is often limited. Many commentators automatically assume that once a man becomes a soldier he internalises a set of beliefs induced by training, to the exclusion of all others. In Keegan’s words, “The military historian’s man in uniform bore no resemblance to the man in the street. He was a being without family or friends, without future or past, without values, good or bad, except for the incidental flash of courage or self-sacrifice.”. Such a narrow view of motivation is inherently flawed. Mitchell raises the question, how much is American about the American combat experience in World War Two as compared to how much is the product of twentieth century technology and mass society or how much is human, or even animal. Motivation is a fundamental part of the combat experience, furthermore it cannot be described by one factor alone. This dissertation will attempt to show how other factors, which have been marginalized, influence men to fight and ultimately kill.

Oral History and Combat Motivation.

Many historians have frowned on the use of oral history. Carlyle commented, ‘battles and war tumults which for the time dim every year, and with joy or terror intoxicate very heart, pass away like tavern brawls, and…remembered by accident, not by desert.’ Time is not the only factor, the increasingly complex nature of operations in modern warfare troubled Clive. He asks how can the historian recreate the multi-dimensional modern battlefield using oral history, which is non-dynamic and one dimensional in nature? Marwick put oral history eleventh out of his list of twelve primary sources; he argued that oral history is only useful for studies concerning the poor and underprivileged. Also, if oral evidence is the main source available, Marick believes it should still be cross-referenced with any other available evidence. For the purposes of studying combat motivation, oral history is normally the only evidence at hand. Diaries were rarely kept and cameras and tape recorders were rarely close enough to see and hear the actions, words and emotions of infantrymen in combat. Discovering the secret to combat motivation surely requires an in depth examination of oral history. Dee Lee argued ‘information obtained from the individual soldier can have historical value. It is not just the actions of individuals that are important; oral history is the only major form of evidence that allows the historian to truly the understand the conscious and unconscious feelings and emotions of the veterans of World War Two.

The Role and Nature of Motivation in Modern War.

The relevance of morale and combat motivation has long been established as an essential element on the modern battlefield. In spite of the efforts put forward by techno-centrics, Keegan, Ellis and Griffith to name but a few, have demonstrated that motivation is still fundamental in the twentieth century, and for the purpose of this dissertation, World War Two. As Ellis illuminates, until very recently military history has been the general’s story and the role of the infantryman has been marginalized. There is some justifiable reasoning behind this, historians cannot quantify morale, and so it is rarely incorporated into explanations for victory or defeat. In many studies, states which emphasise morale, do so because they are backward and weak, because motivation must substitute for technological and material advantage. Despite contemporary technologicalists, Overy and his book Why the Allies Won, being a poignant example, the “keeganisation” of military history has taken firm root in many academic circles. Marwick argues, “in the past historians have been fascinated by the origins of wars; more recently they have begun to play due regard to the consequences of war.” He goes on to say “the conduct of war must determine the outcome and consequences”.

So the dynamics of the battlefield have been put under the microscope, but one must be careful to remember the civilian nature of World War Two. The soldier cannot be sensibly divorced from society and its system, especially in the “total war” environment that has characterised the twentieth century. Why and how men cope with the stresses of modern combat cannot be simply defined in terms of technology or comradeship.

Others have taken controversial steps in different directions. Linderman and Dinter suggest there are other factors that influence men to kill and sustain them through combat. Both argue that there are certain pleasures in war, Linderman using his brutalisation theory to explain this. And Dinter believing that man is an innately primitive being who has always enjoyed violence. But, and it is a big but, most academics including these authors still come back to the assumption that Americans in World War Two killed for comradeship, albeit sometimes in a different light. As Bourke says, men killed for love, especially that of their comrades but also for their love of the enemy, “men love the things they kill.”.

Linderman and Bourke relegate to insignificance, the presence of a modern ‘warrior ethos’ on the battlefields of World War Two. Bourke called it the ‘warrior myth’, because abstract notions of ‘warriordom’ cannot survive the modern battlefield. In this regard her argument is unoriginal and flawed. Linderman’s brutalisation thesis, in his book “the World Within War” contrasted sharply with Bourkes’, but they held some crucial common ground. Linderman’s opinion of the warrior aspiration mirrors Bourke’s. But he also believes that society, as well as technology had largely retired warriordom.

‘The conception of combat as a test of the individual has lost most of its specificity and some of its gravity… but an aura of its influence remained and some of its precepts continued to circulate: that combat was the ultimate test of the soldiers courage and manhood…it confirmed character by strengthening the strong and diminishing further the already weak…The test had largely lost its social dimension.’

However he admits that this was not wholly the case, the trial of warriordom still remained a source of private, painful curiosity within many soldiers. Both Linderman and Bourke affirm that the warrior ethos could not survive the technologically driven battlefields of World War Two. This dissertation will try to prove how the warrior spirit adapted, and how it has been nurtured to survive firepower dominant warfare, using oral evidence for a building block to a slightly different look at American combat motivation in World War Two. However, much evidence has been harvested in the favour of the traditional arguments.

Casualties.

At a glance American casualties look much lighter than all the other major ground combatants. On close scrutiny, American casualties look horrific. Infantrymen constituted only fourteen percent of the total number of US servicemen stationed overseas, but infantryman suffered seventy percent of the United States’ total casualties in World War Two. When looking at the number of men committed to combat in proportion to casualties, the US ratios look much closer to the Axis forces’ losses. The ratio of combat troops to non-combat personnel was 1-14 respectively in the US army in World War Two. So on paper, when a unit took casualties, the true damage to its fighting strength was obscured. For instance, the average US infantry division had 14,253 men of all ranks but only 9,771 men were allocated to three divisional regiments, each 3,257 strong. A battalion’s theoretical strength was 871, which meant only 2613 men served in the three regimental battalions. However, a mere 192 men served in each of the three rifle companies in a US infantry battalion, so only 576 men were put into all companies. Overall, that meant that out of 14,253 men in a Division only 5184 men actually did the fighting in twenty-seven divisional rifle companies. The allies were also notoriously short of infantry divisions. The 21st Army group for example, had a total strength of 750,000 men but only nine infantry divisions assigned to it, which meant its real fighting power was concentrated in about 45,000 men. American rifle companies on the front lines regularly suffered in excess of fifty percent losses. Casualties could also mount very quickly. It was in fact safer to be a rifleman on the Western Front of 1914-18. Even though the actual number of dead and wounded on the Western Front of the Great War was higher than in the Second World War, there were far more riflemen at the front who served between 1914-18. The ratio of supporting personnel to front line troops had doubled in the US in the interwar period, thus casualties were concentrated to a very small group of men.

The intensity of combat at the front had also significantly increased in 1944-5. Passchendale lasted one hundred and five days; allied forces suffered 24,000 casualties or 2121 a day. In contrast, allied killed and wounded in Normandy was 2354 a day, in eighty-eight days the allies took over 200,000 casualties; seventy percent of these borne by infantrymen. On average, infantry battalions suffered 100 casualties a month on the First World War’s Western Front. In comparison, by the Second World War, the typical Allied battalion took a minimum of 100 casualties a month and 175 were not uncommon. Even when no major operations were ongoing, casualties coming from patrols, artillery and mortar fire meant a constant flow of casualties at a rate that was unheard of in any previous conflict.

For example, fighting through the streets of St. Lo in 1944 took a terrible toll on the rifle platoons of the 30th division, the typical platoon suffered ninety percent casualties. Units were smashed at all levels. On the 11th of November, G Company, 328th Regiment, 26th Division, went into the allied line east of a village called Nancy [on the Franco-German border]. In three days of advancing in a skirmish line, they covered about a kilometre; enemy fire was a constant menace throughout. By the third day G Company’s Battalion was done from 525 to 150 men.

The battle for Hurtgen Forest provides many apt examples of the devastation that was routinely inflicted on American units. If the Germans were well dug in and supplied, wrestling ground from them almost always proved costly, especially in terrain like the Hurtgen. In four weeks of bitter fighting in the dense woods, the 4th, 9th and 28th infantry divisions all took in excess of eighty percent casualties. The total campaign called on nine divisions, 24,000 combat casualties were taken and 9,000 lost to trench foot, disease or combat exhaustion in ninety days, averaging a loss at company level of more than sixty five percent. The 29th Division had a saying after more than 35,000 men had gone through its ranks; we are three divisions, one in the grave, one in hospital, and one at the front. However this could be applied to more than twenty-four US divisions in Europe. Sections, platoons and companies lived, trained and bonded together for months, sometimes years, particularly in elitist outfits like the Airborne, Commando and Ranger units. When such units were put into combat, these highly cohesive groups of men were in many instances almost completely wiped out. Ninety American divisions were shipped to France between D-Day and the German Surrender, more than a third of these had taken at least seventy-five percent casualties. Even this figure is distorted because many saw very little time in action while others fought from D-Day, in almost every campaign. Most of the infantry divisions committed since the 6th of June had an almost compete turnover in their rifle companies by November 1944. This is exactly what happened to the 2nd ranger battalion. By November only a tiny core of veterans remained. For example, the Battalion’s commanding officer, Captain Sidney Salomon, had been a platoon leader on D-Day. The trend continued downwards, in November Len Lovell was a platoon leader because he received a battlefield commission for destroying the big coastal guns at Paste-Du-Hoc. Also Lieutenant James Eikner, who used a signal lamp to direct naval gunfire at Omaha beach, was now a captain and the battalion’s communications officer. American Units were kept in the line indefinitely. The 2nd Ranger Battalion’s experience is typical. After the Ranger’s initial commitment to battle on D-Day, they received a constant stream replacements. A hard core of veterans did survive, but were in many instances promoted and sometimes separated. Privates who made it through the Normandy campaign, became the NCOs of the winter battles, every rank down from the battalion level was affected.

The Myth of the Primary Group in the West.

As a consequence, the primary group was invariably broken up relatively quickly, either by promotion, reassignment injury or death. Also replacements were integrated as individuals in the US Army, Van Creveld argued that this individual reinforcement system, especially the replacement depots or ‘repple depples’ was the most important single factor that contributed to the weaknesses displayed by the US Army during World War Two. The close-knit section or platoon, made up of old friends is a myth, casualties were overwhelming and constant, even new friendships had the odds stacked against them. By the Battle of the Bulge eighty percent of US combat infantrymen were individual replacements. Also, in many of the theatres in World War Two more than half the replacements committed were to be made casualties in their first three days on the line. So the ‘old hands’ were often reluctant to make new friendships with newcomers, as one Marine points out: ‘My best friend was another under-aged kid. He was killed on New Georgia. After that I didn’t get very close to people. There were many replacements over time…its harder to make new friends.’ Adam DiGenard of the 3rd Marine Division also dismissed mate ship. He said, ‘We weren’t that close on the squad level. You’ve pretty much on your own. People come and go very frequently. The ones that survive have an independence, and initiative. Frank Marks of the 35th Regiment 25th Division commented. The men who survived, ‘no doubt formed new friendships and bonds of a sort. But it was rarely the same as it has been for those men in 1942 who went to war with their friends and comrades.’

The Reality of “Comradeship”

Many suggest that men bonded together regardless, because of the extreme circumstances they were thrust into. This does not relate to many veterans’ experiences, especially during their first few weeks, and sometimes months. Assignment to a unit could take a matter of months. During that period men were treated like battery hens, Van Creveld’s argument had many supporters. Private Morris Dunn spent weeks in a ‘repple depple’, ‘We were just numbers we didn’t know anybody, and I’ve never felt so alone and miserable and helpless in my life.’ Another soldier remarked, “Being a replacement is just like being an orphan. You are away from anybody you know and feel totally lost and lonesome. When a replacement arrived at Le Havre, he was sent to a ‘reception depot’ (which was nothing more fancy than a mass of tents). Then he went to a ‘stockage’ depot where he was given a rifle, and some extra training if he was lucky. Finally he went to a ‘replacement depot’ where he was assigned a to unit. Eventually he was sent to a forward battalion, who passed him up to a line company command post, finally a sergeant would lead him to a foxhole. At this juncture most replacements felt totally dislocated form society. All that was familiar to him, even the mates he found at boot camp were gone. The replacements experience only got worse. Men were all to shockingly hurled into the most dangerous place of the Second World War- the front line. Private Donald Chumley was, in December 1944, a replacement in the 90th infantry Division. He remembered, ‘I was nineteen, just out of high school a farm boy with little experience of anything.’ He was led to a foxhole and told to watch for Germans. He didn’t know the sergeants name, he couldn’t see anyone to his left or right, and he didn’t even know what section, platoon, company or battalion he was in. Another replacement who arrived in K company 333rd Regiment, 84th US infantry Division on the eve of battle said, ‘not one person offered advice.’ Replacements were not warmly welcomed into a close-knit community, instead they were thrown into an unknown and often hostile unit of men.

On many occasions replacements were actively intimidated. Clayton Shepard, a replacement in K Company, highlights such events. ‘They said “this man got his head blowed off, this man his arm blowed off” and all that. And I thought, Jesus Christ, what am I getting into here? …. They scared the hell out of me before I even got started.’ An ‘old hand’ summed up the feelings of many veterans, ‘when you bring in a bunch of recruits, the talk gets louder and more boisterous to make an impression.’ Replacements tended to stay together, many were killed because of this.

According to many veterans nonchalance and even hostility didn’t just extend as far as ‘green’ replacements. If a man was wounded he usually became desperate to return to his unit, because if he convalesced to long he would probably be reassigned, which again meant strangers and isolation. Some units even used replacements to keep the veterans out of harms way; a soldier in Irwin Shaw’s Young Lions describes the replacements dilemma.

‘You go up as a replacement and your chances are awful. The men who are there are all friends…That means every dirty, dangerous job they hand over to the replacements. The Sergeants don’t even bother to learn your name…they just trade you in for their friends and wait for the next batch of replacements. You go into a new company…you’ll be on every patrol, you’ll be the point of every attack.’

The same can even be said in some so-called ‘elite’ units, according to a Ranger Staff Sergeant.

‘One day at Anzio we got eight new replacements into my platoon. We were supposed to make a little feeling attack the same day. Well by next day, all eight of them replacements were dead…but none of us old guys were. We weren’t going to send our own guys out on point in a dam fool situation like that.’

There didn’t even seem to be much camaraderie amongst veterans of different companies or battalions, even after successful offensives, as Russell Davis highlights. After reaching the top of the hill on Peleliu,

‘In the next foxhole was (a Marine) rifleman. He peered at me through red and painful eyes. Then we both looked away. I didn’t care about him. He didn’t care about me. I thought he was a fool and he probably thought I was the same.’

The Influence of Training and Leadership on Combat Motivation.

So the question still begs, what motivated US infantrymen? General Julian Thompson believes that motivation boils down to two factors, training and leadership. However US troops in the ETO were, in a lot of units neither well trained nor well lead. Authors such as Marshall suggest that towards the end of the war, training was made more realistic through the introduction of psychologists into the military circles. Others point to the advances in practical training in light of the brutal fighting in the Pacific. More live firing being an issue highlighted and implemented.

General Thompson argues that tough, realistic training gives men confidence; this rarely seems to be the case with many veterans of World War Two. Most veterans still felt themselves totally unprepared for combat. Even paratroopers, whose training regime was so tough they thought, ‘combat can’t be worse than this’ only to find out that it was. Ambrose argues, after interviewing over one thousand veterans most agreed that ‘Nothing can prepare you for combat.’ And as the war dragged on standards of training arguably got worse instead of better. For example, lieutenant George Wilson, commanding officer of a rifle company that was heavily committed to the defence of the Ardennes, received one hundred replacements on the 29th of December 1944. ‘We discovered that these men had been on the rifle range only once, they had never thrown a grenade or fired a bazooka, mortar or machine gun.’ Some replacements, who had taken basic training before 1941 hadn’t even held an M1 due to the Springfield’s lengthy service.

Eisenhower’s gamble in the ETO was falling apart, cooks, drivers and mechanics were being drafted due to the desperate shortage of infantry. Still, most replacements were still coming from the United States, but training was reduced, as bodies were needed more and more urgently. So many eager young men found themselves with less training than most of their predecessors, yet for the most part, they still fought with considerable ferocity, bravery and skill. If training didn’t contribute significantly to motivation, did leadership?

As Thompson, Ambrose and others have argued, leadership was very important to motivation, but not in the way the US wartime military and many military historians envisioned. Officers and NCOs within rifle companies suffered disproportionately higher casualties than did Privates. The 1st 4th 21st lost one hundred percent of their junior officers in the July hedgerow fighting. And in Italy it took just eighty-eight days of combat to cause one hundred percent casualties among a division’s second Lieutenants. Most of the junior leaders who stormed the D-Day beaches were either dead or wounded by October 1944. The privates of Normandy, Falaise, Holland and the Bulge became the NCOs and occasionally the junior officers, of the Ardennes and beyond. Battlefield promotions provided leadership, as well as a steady stream of eager youths from Officer Candidate Schools. These eager youths would commonly find that the transition from replacement to the ‘old hand’ in a platoon could take a matter of days due to casualties.

Also, seeing their leaders actually fighting, not simply barking orders motivated men. Brig. Gen. Norman “Dutch” Cota 2 I.C .of the 29th Division came across a group of infantry pinned down by some Germans in a farmhouse. When asked why they hadn’t taken the house, the senior officer (a Capt.) said, “the Germans are shooting at us”. Cota promptly took a squad of his men and worked his way round the building, then charged, yelling like a wild man, kicking in the door, throwing grenades driving the Germans out the back door. Cota said afterward, “well, I won’t be around to do it for you again…. I can’t do it for everybody.’ The more combat active the better, a fellow officer described Lieutenant Ed Gesner,

‘He was all over the place…I saw him using three different weapons…He seemed to be firing a lot more than most officers…One time when he ran out of ammo at the edge of a trench he jumped in and began to club a German with his rifle butt…they [his platoon] all thought he was great.’

Leading from the front meant fighting. Good leadership gave men a personified example of ‘the warrior cult’.

The Allure of the Warrior Code.

The ‘warrior code’ was not incompatible with World War Two’s battlefields, as Bourke, Linderman and others argue. As Doctor G. Bychowski said, ‘Heroism simply could not survive the horror of twentieth century warfare.’ Even on the modern battlefields of World War Two the warrior code survived in many a youths’ mind. For all Lieutenant Gesner’s efforts, he probably didn’t see, let alone hit any Germans during his flurry of fire described in the last section. Modern warfare only made the warrior code obsolete in a strictly technical sense. The ‘warrior society’ of World War Two saw killing as an inevitable cycle, boys followed in their father’s footsteps and were tested before being reintegrated into mature society. Infantrymen were brutalised long before they donned the uniform. Literature, art, and film all portraying combat as a ‘right of passage’ or an ultimate test of integrity.

Bill Crooks thought, ‘The rifle company was Gods own band. It was the “queen of battles”…the subject of millions of words and thousands of books and countless films… Everything else in the Army was back there supporting that rifle company man.’ Private Alex Bowlby’s infantry battalion had to clear an area with German activity in front of the tanks of the Kings Dragoon Guards. The tank crews applauded as the riflemen went forward, even though danger was close he wrote, ‘I wouldn’t have changed places with anyone.’ Belief in Film, art and literature gave a sense of purpose and righteousness. Sergeant George Lucht was leading his men across a footbridge over the Roer river ‘the Germans had to regroup and their artillery was falling on both sides of the river, and I was thinking, boy, this is just like Hollywood.’ The Second World War battlefield thus became a place that was ‘larger than life’. Eric Sevareid explains, ‘there is an atmosphere at the front…. Until one becomes drugged with exhaustion, every scene is a vivid masterpiece of painting…. Each common order goes down to the final nerve ending…every unexplored house is bursting with portent, every casual word bears vibrant meaning; those who live are incredibly alive, and others stupefying dead.’

There was also a powerful incentive to emulate the head of the family, particularly in the United States, which was not tempered by the memory of First World War losses. Hundreds of thousands volunteered in 1941 alone. War and the traditional military notions of loyalty and bravery, were very much part of the young man’s world. For many there was an unquestionable element of adventure involved. This call to arms seemed strongest in the young. Marine Chadwick relates, ‘I joined up when I was sixteen. I changed my birth certificate…. In our platoon in boot camp we had 62 men: I would bet that at least 10 of those men were under seventeen.’

Developments in warfare were hard pressed to shatter dreams, the warrior ethos continually adapted. Many young men went to war with killing and heroism at the forefront of their mind. Private Morton Eustis worried, ‘I’m so scared Germany may sue for peace before I’ve had a chance to take a crack at her…I don’t believe there’s a man in our company who wouldn’t rather be under enemy fire than in a garrison over here [in the UK].’ Those who were at the ‘sharp end’ in World War Two didn’t necessarily heed the admonitions of the war literature. One 19 year old, whose father was living with a severe wound received in 1918, contemplated the future. On 3rdSeptember 1939, ‘As I closed my eyes the picture which appeared on the screen of my eyelids was of myself leading a charge of cavalry’

Others were so bent on their notions of warriordom, they because irritated with ‘lesser’ tasks. A marine Private refused to continue labouring in the hold of a ship anchored off Guadalcanal, his Captain asked, ‘You volunteered…why did you come out here. Why did you enlist?’ He replied, ‘To fight sir. I’ve been working all the why across [the Pacific], swabbing decks, cleaning heads.’ He’d come to the South Pacific ‘to get me some Japs-not work as a stevedore.’ Men simply itched to fight, Mario Sabatelli, a Marine Raider, was on his way to the invasion of Tulagi. He remarked ‘we wanted to get our hands on the Japs.’ And another Marine bound for Guadalcanal laconically said, ‘I just want to kill a Jap, that’s all.’

Encounter with Battle.

Linderman and Bourke argue that two integral parts of the warrior code were dispelled when the rifleman saw battle at the ‘sharp end’. Both authors affirm that almost all infantrymen lost their sense of invulnerability and any feeling of control over the battlefield very quickly. They both came to the conclusion that expectation rarely lived up to encounter. ‘[What] contributed most to the demoralization of the American soldier…was the chill recognition that most of those who died had committed no error, that no superior knowledge would have saved them.’ But this theory simply doesn’t marry with many veterans’ experiences.

To be sure, some men did adopt fatalistic attitudes but most still refused to believe they could be wounded or killed unless they were very unlucky. Even in the face of heavy casualties young men couldn’t conceptualise their own death. ‘You hear of casualties, see casualties and read of casualties, but you believe it will never happen to you.’ Marine Private James Bruce wrote to his wife, ‘nothing could make [him] really, fundamentally believe that a bullet or chunk of bomb or shell might suddenly rip the life out of him.’ Frank Chadwick, a veteran of Guadalcanal and New Georgia said ‘we didn’t know any better… Most of us felt it will never happen to me. You knew people were being killed and wounded all the time, but deep down you thought it would happen to another guy.’ Scott Wilson affirmed, ‘At 20 you’re invincible. Its never going to be you, it’s going to be the other guy. Its not bravery, its idiotic adolescence.’ Private Geddes Mumford believed, there was still room for excitement even if he didn’t share it, he said, ‘I felt the machine gun bullets passing my shoulder. Two of my buddies were hit by the same burst. It’s a great life if you like excitement.’ Terror and death delighted and excited those who remained unscathed, and even some who weren’t so lucky: Corporal Walter Gordon was hit in the left shoulder by a sniper’s bullet, he was paralysed from the neck down. Two mates hauled him out of his foxhole towards the nearest medic, in Gordon’s words, ‘…as a gladiator was dragged from the arena.’ Even after being grievously wounded he still held onto notions of warriordom. Many young men who had nurtured ideas of warriordom simply refused to accept the reality of the battlefield.

Even men who became disillusioned with modern combat still, in many cases wouldn’t let go of the warrior ethos. A Canadian remarked ‘if only I could see the [the Germans], as in battles long ago, at close range, before engaging them…. The warring sides are getting further and further apart and war is getting more and more meaningless for field warriors.’ He still considered himself a ‘field warrior.’ Even though many men didn’t get to engage a live, un-captured enemy soldier in the frontlines, enough did to maintain the generation’s belief in the virtues of warriordom. After Morton Eustis’ first engagement he was ‘impatient for more action.’

Keegan’s ‘big man’ theory can be used to support this argument. Keegan cites, that there is men whom have a natural thirst for combat, he goes on to argue that men are a key factor in the way battles work. Keegan uses two examples, Corporal Lofty King and Regimental Sergeant Major Desmond Lynch. Brigadier J. Durnford-Slater described Corporal King, ‘[he] was a hard fellow and very hard with his men; he didn’t give a damn if he knocked a man down….He genuinely enjoyed fighting and looked happiest, indeed inspired, in battle.’ Lynch is described in a similar light, he was bitterly disappointed with the official account of the battle of the Bon in Tunisia, complaining that he ‘was the star of the battle.’ Keegan suggests ‘mimicry as a crucial influence to combat motivation. ‘In any competitive or dangerous activity, those who are seen best to meet its challenge set the standard which others, not necessarily voluntarily or consciously, emulate.’ Keegan believes that such men motivate others, even though they neither lead nor command. What he neglects to mention is that many men want to be energised, not just because of competitive instincts, comradeship, training or leadership, but also because of a warrior code that has grown inside them from childhood. ‘Big men’ simply ratified the apprentice warrior’s cherished beliefs.

Also ‘Big men’ don’t have to be, and in most cases probably weren’t ‘old hands’. On the contrary many were new to combat. Arguably most would-be ‘big men’ had eagerly awaited combat for along time. An officer candidate dreamt of action ‘it keeps coming back just when I’m falling off to sleep…how it will be to draw a bead on a living man and take his life away. I really can’t wait to get over.’ Another youth commented, ‘I just know I want to get in their and kill some Japs…[My] last hope before going to sleep was that our boys might have left a few Japs for me.’

There are many documented cases of men desperate to seek glory, whom would seek it at the earliest opportunity. Many of these men would get themselves and other killed or wounded in the process. However, it seems many others were much more calm and calculated when confronted with a scenario that might fit in with their dreams of combat.

Lieutenant Lyle Bouck lied about his age (being a year too young) when he volunteered in 1941. Volunteers were given the choice in the service they joined, Bouck choose the infantry. On the 16th of December 1944 he was the replacement CO of an intelligence and reconnaissance platoon in the 99th Division. His platoon was dug in, North of the town of Lanzerath in the Ardennes. The two tanks that were supporting him pulled out after their position was shelled. Bouck asked his Battalion’s head quarters for artillery support because he’d sent a two-man patrol to the town, which had spotted a German column approaching. No artillery came and Bouck’s men told him it was time to retreat, after all they had done their job. Bouck said no. From Dawn to mid-afternoon Bouck’s platoon held off a German battalion with small arms (a jeep mounted .50 cal. machine gun being their heaviest weapon), and inflicted 400-500 casualties. When the ammunition ran low Bouck told Private James to take the men who wanted to go and get out, but all of them stayed, after an hour they surrendered. For a day Bouck had blocked the Lazerath road and shattered a German Airborne battalion. Thus Bouck, obviously a man desperate to see military service would have had his notions of warriordom reaffirmed. He also became a ‘big man’ overnight. Ambrose argues ‘…the I and R platoon’s experience was typical’

Linderman and Bourke argue that men who were inspired by warriordom generally felt overwhelmed and powerless on the modern battlefield. Close quarters combat in World War Two still provided feelings of self-enrichment through battle. Those imbued with the warrior code, and occasionally even men who weren’t, still felt ‘exhilaration’ when participating in close combat. Sapper R. Eke was strictly job orientated, but his section commander, who was a vet of the Spanish civil war was ‘slightly mad and brave, and a little out of place in a section that hoped to avoid being heroic at all cost. He volunteered for everything, and we never seen him show any fear.’ This enthusiasm even infected Eke, when he became involved in a firefight. ‘The experience was terrifying yet exhilarating…. Against all my instincts I had put my life at risk, and told myself never again would I be infected with this frontline madness.’ It wasn’t just the big man who ‘energised’ Sapper Eke, it was fight its self.

The ETO provided plenty of opportunity for very small groups of men to perform acts of self-enrichment, skill and guile, which were all integral parts of their warrior ideal. It is striking that even in Europe, engagements like the Falaise gap and the Ardennes winter battles, vital contacts were between very small numbers of infantry fighting over a roadblock. It is important to realise that even large encounters often broke down into very poorly coordinated collection of squad actions. For example, the failure of the German winter offensive could be attributed to a handful of men. As Ambrose affirms, ‘thanks to an unknown squad of GI’s here, a platoon there, fighting, although surrounded…until their ammunition gave out.’ Most of these men were replacements, motivated by nothing more than a warrior ethos.

Sergeant Carwood Lipton illuminates the point, ‘No man would choose disgrace. If the stockade was preferable the stockades would have been full, the foxholes empty, and we would have lost the war.’ Disgrace from whom? Not the close-knit primary group, that was, as already has been proved, completely shattered. Rather disgrace would come from within, as a young soldier explains; Dutch Schultz of the 82nd Airborne had dysentery, flu and trench foot, he said ‘I secretly experienced a great deal of guilt about going to hospital for anything other than a bona fide wound…. but when you are an immature kid trying to be a hero it is something of a problem, particularly when you are trying to prove your courage to no one other than yourself’

As a consequence, men imbued with the warrior spirit were arguably less liable to mental brake-down than others. However many men still became psychiatric casualties. Major J. Wishart, XXX corps psychiatrist, wrote in his 1945 notes (concerning No. 35 dressing station for battle exhaustion.). Out of about 1000 psychiatric casualties in the space of two weeks, fifty percent of the men he saw had been previously wounded, of these, ‘many seemed to have small multiple flesh wounds that hardly justified so long a period out of action, during this period they have enjoyed all the glamour attached to being wounded in the invasion.’ The other fifty percent were made up of ‘young, immature boy experiencing their first severe action…it was noticeable that many of them were of very poor combat temperament, and often rather below average in intelligence…. One said he joined the army because he was fed up with living with his mother and her nerves.’ There were undoubtedly many genuine cases of battle exhaustion, but Wishart suggests a trend in both groups. Aspirations of heroism, worries of disgrace, and curiosity about combat are apparently lacking in these men. Men needed these traits to endure to terror of combat.

Many men did not feel belittled in battle. Instead many felt a keen sense of achievement in what they had become. As already mentioned, due to terrain many areas of the battlefields in the ETO and Pacific enabled small groups of lightly armed men to have significant impact, nowhere was this more so than the war against the Japanese war. G. M. Fraser prided himself on his ‘killer instinct…the murderous impulse of the hunter…the jolt of delight he felt each time he hit a bastard’, when fighting in the jungles of Burma. The South Pacific contained elements of modern industrial warfare, however its essence more closely resembled a knife fight out of the Stone Age. In no theatre of war during the twentieth century did infantry experience as much combat at point-blank range as they found in the South Pacific. "Platoons with good men in them and good leaders got results. Average patrols produced casualties but often no worthwhile results." According to many, a ‘good infantryman’ was a man who knew how to kill, as Paul Sponaugle, a section leader points out, ‘Good soldiers, the ones who made it through…were tough and used to killing.’ Many overcame anxiety with thoughts of enrichment, ‘…for all the misery and fear and hating every moment of it the war was a great, if terrifying adventure’

In contrast to many stereotypes, the best combat infantrymen of World War Two were, in many instances, the ones who displayed traits of warriordom before they entered combat. Marshall and Stouffer argued combativeness was a group rather than individual attribute and training must therefore utilise psychological principles. Stouffer interviewed 12,000 soldiers, but the best soldiers were those who before combat expressed a desire to kill. Forty eight percent of veterans who performed particularly well said before combat that they would like to kill. Forty four percent of men who performed adequately said they would like to kill and only thirty eight percent of those who didn’t fight well expressed the same desire. Furthermore forty percent of combat infantrymen were willing to perform further combat duty, highlighting a clear trend. Arguably, many veterans had longed for combat, enjoyed the experience, and were receptive to the idea of more combat.

Comradeship and group cohesion played a critical role in building morale at certain junctures in the GIs wartime experience, but it wasn’t the most predominate motivator, particularly when in combat. Dinter’s argument, that primitive man reappears in the soldier: ‘He liked killing and killed as a matter of course… deep down in his subconscious, man seems to enjoy killing’ also seems erroneous, instead twentieth century culture nurtured men to enjoy modern war, they were imbued with a ‘warrior ethos’, as Ambrose believes took place in Germany. "The German soldiers of late 1944 and 1945 were mostly born between 1925 and 1928. They had been deliberately raised by Nazis, which nutured a fanatical bravery that their Fuhrer counted on." Arguably, American twentieth century culture did an equally good job raising young Americans exactly the same way.

Bibliography.

Paul Addison and Angus Calder (Ed.) Time to Kill (London: Random House 1997).

Steven Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers (New York: Simon and Schuster 1997).

Eric Bergerud, Touched With Fire, The Land War in the South Pacific (New York: Penguin Books 1996).

Shelford Bidwell, Modern Warfare, (London: Allen Lane 1973).

Joanna Bourke, An Intimate History of Killing, Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (London: Granta Books 1999).

T. Carlyle, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished (London: 1872).

John Clive, Not By Fact Alone (London 1872).

Elmar Dinter, Hero or Coward, Pressures Facing the Soldier in Battle (London: Frank Cass and Co. 1985).

John Ellis, The Sharp End, The Fighting Man in World War Two (London: Random House 1980).

David Fraser, And We Shall Shock Them (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1983).

Paul Fussell, Wartime (New York Oxford University Press 1989).

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Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, Men Against Fire. The Problem of Battle Command in Future War (New York: William Morrow 1947).

A. Marwick The Nature of History (London 1989).

G. Edward Miller, Dark and Bloody Ground: the Hurtgen Forest and the Roer River Dams 1944-1945 (College Station: Texas University Press 1995).

Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (London: Pimlico 1995).

Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions (New York: Random House 1948).

Samuel Stouffer et al., The American Soldier: Combat and its Aftermath. Volume 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1949).

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[ 05-03-2001: Message edited by: Londoner ]

[von Lucke]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Stalin's Organ:

von Lucke I think you'll find far fewer accounts of Japanese actually fighting to the last man than you think.

Often they just died as huddled masses in the bottom of bunkers - sure they refused to surrender, but often they had long since stopped actually fighting. Many also committed suicide rather than surrender - again they did not actually _fight_ to the last man.

Even the infamous "banzai" charges sometimes involveds trops fairly blindly charging forwards without trying to fight very much.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Interesting. So you would account for the vast desparity between KIA / POW figures for Japanese defenders in the later stages of the Pacific War (Iwo Jima: 20,000 KIA / 1000 POW --- Okinawa: 100,000 KIA / 7000 POW) as being caused by US troops merely gunning down the cowering masses of Japanese soldiers?

Strange then, that a further 2400 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima continued to pick-off unwarry US troops for some months after they had "actually stopped fighting" and the island had been "officially secured".

I never said anything about Banzai charges --- they pretty much went out after Guadalcanal. If you read anything about the Island Hopping campaign, you'll know that the Japanese were more inclined to dig in and let the enemy come to them during the day, and then engage in agressive infiltration tactics at night.

But I will add that Okinawa saw the most kamikazi attacks of any battle in the war, with some 1500 attacks --- including the last sortie of the Yamato.

And I don't believe I've ever read about any fanatic SS trooper come wandering out of the Alps claiming he didn't believe Germany had surrendered...

[Warmaker]

Londoner, just a suggestion, but you might want to condense that last post there. I don't mind a long read, but I don't want to feel like I'm reading a book instead of reading a post on a forum. :eek:

Maybe it's just me though.

[ 05-03-2001: Message edited by: Warmaker ]

[Gyrene]

Londoner, sure my original question should have been more specific like what unit in particular one would consider of note in WWII, but there is a core of posters in this forum who would have started the flaming and name calling no matter how my question was worded, save for having a lawyer write it up for me, and even then there would be arguments.

Now you insist to keep on with the name calling (I welcome you to scroll back thru all the posts to see who called what first, if you think I started it.) and with your attempts to brow beat me into apologizing for this most hideous of topics, which seems to have caused you such mental anguish.

Your second post gets you the prize for the longest reply (Although I could be wrong), congratulations, it's very nice, quite verbose.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I want to ignore all US involvment/achievements in WW2 you say? Why in hell would I waste a year studying the US combat infantryman in WW2 you moron. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Wow, you got me good there, the whole "Capt. Americas out there" thing must a fluke. I don't know why you "wasted a whole year" it's your time, not mine.

I stated this before, if you don't like the thread don't read it. You've already stated your displeasure of it several times, yet you can't seem to stay away, the original question doesn't apply anymore as the more astute readers have gotten the gist of my original meaning and have made many interesting contributions to this thread.

I'm looking forward to your reply and to read you call me a moron, idiot, child etc. I just wish there wasn't an continent and an ocean between us so I could extend you the courtesy of calling me these things and more in person.

Gyrene

Btw, don't be afraid to use my nickname in your posts, it's quite alright.