The Man Who Pulls the Trigger

by FLETCHER PRATT

I

THE dispatches from Korea, especially since the participation of the Chinese Communists became overt, have made one thing rather dismayingly evident. The nature of warfare has changed; and the long-range efleet of the change is to eliminate not only the minute man but the twelve-month man as a useful soldier.

This change has nothing to do with the atomic bomb. The events at White Sands, Hiroshima, and Bikini, in fact, merely masked another and more fundamental alteration. War whose basic weapon is the penetrating missile has given place to the war of attack by means of explosions.

The penetrating missile became the decisive element in battle at Halidon Hill in 1333, when English longbowmen shot to pieces the squares of Scottish pikes and effectively put an end to the long dominance of the weapon whose striking range is equal to the length of the bearer’s arm. From that time forward until day before yesterday the major developments in ordnance were concerned with finding a better projectile and giving it greater range, accuracy, and striking power. But meanwhile there was developed, there is still developing, the new7 war of explosives, in which the emphasis is on providing a more violent and widespread disruptive shock when the projectile arrives within the region of—not necessarily directly on — its target.

Of course a bullet will still get rid of a man if it hits him. But the discovery of the new war has been that, except under certain specialized conditions, a group of men armed only with bulletprojecting guns is about as useful on the modern battlefield as the Yeomen of the Guard. The North Koreans at the beginning of the war, and later the Chinese, achieved those specialized conditions: a numerical superiority of the order of 10 to 1, a high command willing to accept losses in this ratio, and troops with an indoctrination that enables them to withstand such losses and remain in action.

This is clearly not the general case, nor are the conditions such as we shall ever achieve for ourselves. And even the Chinese and North Koreans found it necessary to accompany the attacks ol their bullet-armed infantry by intensive use of explosion weapons — mortars.

I do not maintain that the gun is obsolete, either as the rifle of the individual soldier or as a piece of artillery. Hardly any weapon has over wholly vanished from human combat; even the pike is still with us in the form of the bayonet, and some troops involved in night attacks in Korea have found a use for knives. But weapons do sink to a level of secondary importance, like the camion of very long range in the presence of the airplane; or they become tools of special opportunity, like the longbows with which some of the British Commandos were equipped, 1041-1944.

The main point is that the infantryman of today’s war is no longer a soldier with a handgun and knowledge of how to use it. He may be a member of a 3.5 rocket-launcher squad; of a squad handling the light 60 mm. mortar or the heavy 81 mm. mortar; he may he a heavy or a light machine gunner; a part of a team operating a 57 mm. recoilless cannon or the 75 mm. recoilless; or a member of the regimental company that uses the 4.2 “chemical" mortar. He may be in a tank; he may even be an antiaircraft gunner.

All these specialists are not merely attached to the modern infantry unit, as a flame thrower or demolition team might be, for work against an opponent ring into caves or pillboxes. They are the infantry, an integral part of the normal foolsoldier formation, accompanying it at all times. It is to be noted that all these men except the machine gunners use weapons which produce their effect by means of a bursting charge. Finally, most of these weapons are essentially new, at least in their close connection with the infantry.

The idea of making tanks an integral part of the infantry formation has been played around with since World War I and has caused some curious controversies, including one period when the cavalry were forced to call their tanks '‘combat cars” because Cotigress passed a law declaring the tank exclusively an infantry weapon. But in World War II, tanks normally operated as part of the separate armored divisions. At present tanks have been [Hilled into the infantry structure and assigned to that Jirm in numbers 17 to each infantry regiment. The 60 and 81 mm. mortars were with us all through World War II, but the 4.2 chemical came kite itnd then as ;i special weapon, assigned for a single operation, like the flume thrower. It is now a normal part of infantry equipment. The recoilless guns got tryouts during MaeArthur’s Philippine campaign, but tryouts only. The 3.5 rocket is a post-war development which has come along so fast that a modern infantry division has more of them than of any other weapon except rifles and pistols.

2

THERE is still a good deal to he learned about those new weapons and their use in combination. The service history of any weapon is something like this: after experiment in maneuvers, and adoption, it passes through JI period during which it achieves some sensational successes in war, balanced by equally striking and unforeseen failures. Then the men in the field find out by experience exactly what the wesipon will do and what it will not do, and it set ties down 1o a place in the general complex of armament. The 4.2, for example, was originally developed to launch containers of poison gas. It took time to discover that there was no other weapon quite so useful for laying JI smoke barrage or for firing white phosphorus shells. Korea hits been the first opportunity to run shooting-war tests on the new complex of infantry weapons, and it could he iluit some of them will be eliminated liecause of funclionjil duplication.

It is possible, for instance, that the 75 mm. recoilless can replace the 4.2 when smoke stud phosphorus shells are developed for 1 he 75 which they have not been as yet. But the chances are against it. The whole history of ordnance shows thal JI new wejipon, instead of driving out an old one, is added to this complex of constantly growing intricacy. Furthermore, the recoilless gun gives away its position through the back-blast every time the weapon is fired. In a moving situation this makes it impossible to gel off more lluin one or two shells before 1 ho piece must be moved to avoid counterfire. This in turn renders it impossible to lay down the rapid, steady barrage which saturates an area with smoke or white phosphorus.

Similarly, it would be more difficult than it looks to eliminate either the 60 mm. mortar or the SI in favor of a single type. The 00 is the company commander’s weapon, light enough to be used along the out post line against targets in sight of that officer. The 81 is organized in the battalion, because it has 1 he range to cover an entire battalion front, and the explosive charge of the shell is large enough to compensate for the fact that it is often used against targets on the map, invisible to the man pulling the trigger. Nothing but a 3.5 rocket launcher will be much help when a modern tank is approaching, but its often inaccurate projectile is nowhere near as good as a recoil less for taking care of a machine gun in position. When ;i formation is advancing, the cover of the armor-protected rjqiid-firing gun of a tank is well-nigh indispensable. Nor do ihe high-1 rajeetory weapons, the mortars, in any way serve the same purpose as those t hut fire .dong a straight line ;it high velocities—t he rockets, the recoilless, and the guns of the tanks.

In short, most of the new weapons seem at present to be necessary unless we arc willing to take Chinese casualties and do the work by hand. But their addilion to the rillc, pistol, machine gun, and grenade has changed the face of vv;ir by substituting group ladies and group reliances for the employment of t he indiv idiuil, no mat ter how well equipped or capable. It is ;i matter of degree, of course; the gener;il tendency hits been there for JI longtime. But in the older vv;ir, ;i group of infant ry relied upon another group similarlv equipped or sought the help of its own artillery. Now it uses the support of its own special vvetipons. At the beginning of the Korean war, ihe forces of the Bepublic were rather belter equipped tlum JI similar number of our own infantry of 1!)1S, but they were blown away like chaff because they lacked anything that would slop ;i tank or anything that could deal with the enemy’s heavy mortars.

The simplest statement about the change is that it has given a modern company of infanlry more firepower than VVJIS possessed by ;t battery of field artillery in World War I. The possession of this firepower 10 a degree emancipates the infantry formation, particularly when it has air cover, from the necessity of sliiying under cover of its own artillery. The use of air supply has further added 1o the infantry’s power of movement. Sooner or hiler, in any serious fighting, the infantry will need ground supply and jirtillery support, hut the man on the ground can move around much faster, and can attack even well-defended positions with his own resources.

The complex of new and powerful weapons has meanwhile produced a secondary effect of considerable social importance, by enormously increasing the police power of the modern armed state with relation to its own particles, and the strength of the large industrial state with relation to its neighbors. In the turbulent early days of the nineteenth century, the citizens of Paris had only to set up a few barricades and produce a few concealed firearms and they had a revolution going. But even if the hand weapons were brought up to date, they would be so many slings and arrows against a modern repressive force that could throw into the scale tanks, mortars, and recoilless artillery. Similarly, at Bunker Hill and Kings Mountain the colonists of the Revolution gave impressive demonstrations of what could be accomplished against regular troops by untrained men who knew how to shoot. But they did not have to fight against regular troops armed with the many and intricate weapons that can be turned out only by machine tools in a large industrial plant. The new tools of war have rendered revolution, in its classic form, all but impossible.

3

WHAT the ultimate political effect of this industrialization of war will be is a topic worth a little speculation. In the meanwhile some of the direct military results are apparent. The most obvious of these is that the pendulum which started to swing in the direction of more open order of battle when the arrows came down from Ilalidon Hill has now reached full range. With the front line containing so manv weapons that produce a burst effect, ihe slightest concentration of manpower can and does bring down the kind of fire capable of wiping out a whole group. The Communist tactics in Korea — infiltration, night movements and attacks — are simply methods of avoiding bursts and trying to reach a situation where hand weapons will be effective.

The use of such tactics, together with the fact that the fire of infantry weapons can now be placed on targets farther away than a man can see, lifts enormously increased the area of battle. The danger from above, in the form of bombs, rockets — and probably, in the near future, guided missiles — works in ihe same direction.

Between World War I and World War 11 the amount of front assigned to an infantry battalion just about doubled, bol h because improved weapons made il possible 1o cover more ground with the fire of the same number of men, and because the greater volume of fire on the battlefield made it necessary to spread the men out more. Since World War II the’ battalion area has doubled again, but this time in the other direction, from front 1o rear. At the same time the number of men in the squad led by a corporal has dropped from 12 to 0. It was found that on the open battlefield of the new war, one man could keep track of only so many others.

Parenthetically, this has produced a problem. The corporals and sergeants, leaders of squads and platoons, must not only be more numerous in respect to the number of men led than under the old dispensation; they must also carry a greater weight of individual responsibility, since they are less closely in touch with the officers. One of the greatest difficulties presented by these conditions is that of finding adequate leadership in the lower ranks.

There are also leadership problems at higher levels. As a result of the extension of the battlefield, battalion, regimental, and even division command posts (the last of which, at least, used to enjoy a high degree of immunity) have been favorite objects of attack in Korea. In this new war any place at all within the zone of the armies may be the scene of fighting, and requires the attention of trained infantry soldiers.

At this point we have touched a key fact. Modern war, by placing enormous firepower in the hands of the infantryman, and at the same time forcing him to scatter and seek cover, has made extremely heavy demands upon the training, intelligence, and combativeness of the individual. Russia lays the emphasis upon combativeness, and so do the Communist countries generally. They know they can obtain that quality and that, with the prodigious numbers they can put into line, it is no had substitute for multiplicity and precision of weapons. The major tactic of the Reds in Korea consisted of this: throw in another 10,000 men; enough of them will survive to infiltrate and break the line.

There are a variety of reasons why we would find this a poor system to imitate, but if we do not imitate it, we must replace it with something. That something can hardly be anything else than completely professional training in the use of the complex of weapons, and completely professional willingness to use them — toughness. General Mark Clark put his finger on the source of our main difficulties in Korea when he remarked that most of our men had been trained for occupation duty in Japan - -as policemen, not as soldiers. This was the regular army, the best men we have — but they had not been trained long enough or hard enough.

This points to the fact that modern war makes much higher demands for professionalism than anything in the past, because the infantryman on the relatively lonely modern battlefield is thrown more on his own resources, has less personal contact with his fellows, than any fighting man of previous history. Since we can hardly change the whole educational system and ideological background of our country to give our troops the kind of indoctrination the Communists give theirs, it would seem that the desired result can only be obtained by training.

The heart of the matter, the net basic effect of the change-over from missile to explosive warfare, lies in the acute demand it makes for carefully selected and highly trained infantrymen. The demand also stems from the need for finding and developing more leadership in the lower ranks, and it is just as apparent from the strictly technological angle. It would clearly never do to send a man into the field as a specialist in the 81 mm. mortar, yet leave him so ignorant of the recoilless cannon that he could not take over that weapon in case its operator became disabled.

As things are set up now, the special weapons man is required to know everything about his main piece — how to take it apart and repair anything that has gone wrong, even in the dark — and at least how to operate all the other infantry weapons. But in ihe course of feeding all this knowledge into the special weapons man, it has been necessary to cut the time spent on the basic infantry hand weapons— rifle, carbine, pistol, and grenade — from fourteen weeks to six.

The total basic infantry training period now stands at seventeen weeks. This means that for about four months of his enlistment the soldier is doing nothing but learning his tools, without ever having been a member of such a major infantry unit as a division in the field, and without obtaining any knowledge of the intricate problems of official relationship and personal conduct that arise from such a situation. In the same speech in which he mentioned ihe training of the soldiers in Korea. General Clark said that it would take seven months to fit National Guard units for Federal duty.

He it remembered that these are men who have already learned a good deal about weapons in the armory. A writer in the Infantry Journal (March, 1948) computed (and nobody contradicted him) that the time necessary to make a good infantry soldier out of the average citizen would be two years. Even the seven months figure for National Guardsmen would have appeared fantastic to a soldier of World War I, when divisions like the 26th and 42nd went into the line of battle seven months after being summoned to Federal service, and when the newly enlisted 3rd Division was engaged in one of the most desperate combats of the war only six months after the unorganized men gathered in a training camp.

Is this need for elaborate technical and tactical training true everywhere? In France, they seem to have decided that it is. The new organization plan for the army there calls for an eighteen-month conscription period instead of the previous twelve, for the specifically stated reason that the shorter term was insufficient to train the men adequately. Military people attacked the plan on the ground that even eighteen months was not enough.

There is some evidence that the Communist countries do not see it quite the same way. Although the total firepower of their divisions is at least equal to ours, they do not use so many different weapons as ours, and those they do use are of rather simpler types. Most of the training period is devoted to tactical matters, physical conditioning, and indoctrination. But this is partly because they have adopted the system, so impossible for us, of treating infantry as thoroughly expendable. Partly also il is because the human material of which their armies are made up lacks the mechanical aptitudes, the childhood acquaintance with a jalopy, so common among Americans. The Russians also have all the training time in the world; their soldiers are in for long terms. They are professionals, though of a kind different from what we need. Today there is hardly any civilian skill whatever that is of the slightest use to the type of soldier who must bear the brunt of World War III; and vice versa, the infantryman will find in civilian life no demand for what he has learned in the service. The new war has thoroughly professionalized the military business.

At the same time it makes another demand, perhaps the most onerous of all. Not only is a bettertrained soldier needed, but a more intelligent one. He must be completely familiar with the workings of several intricate machines and be capable of overcoming that moral prejudice against war which has been a part of our educational system since the twenlies; and he will increasingly find himself in situations where he is required to make decisions withoul reference to higher authority. For instance, he is the leader of a recoil less gun crew of three and has boon stalioned in a position well concealed but out of verbal contact with a lieutenant or even a sergeant. The moment the gun fires, the concealment will vanish with the back-blast. A tank is approaching; shall he open fire? lie knows he cannot penelrale the armor, but he may knock off a tread. Or shall he wait for a more attractive target?

Infantry officers have a lively sense of this demand for intelligence. One of their bit terest complaints all through the late war was that the other services, particularly the line of communication people and the air corps, insisted on taking all the high LQ. men, and what was left over went to the infantry. As soon as the war was over, the mental requirement for enlistment was hiked up to a figure of 9.5 in the General Classification Test. Korea brought it back down to 70, but there are a good many who insist that keeping it so low simply means longer and longer training, until conditioned reflexes will do some of the work normally asked of intelligence and judgment.

Obviously then are not enough of the higher ratings to fill up an army of the size we need. It is a question of employing the human material we have, and that seems to look toward a basic two-year training period, accompanied by professionalization to a point where it is necessary to offer inducements lhal will keep men in the service up to twenty years.

It is a perplexing problem —a quagmire of perplexing problems, in which solid ground can be reached only by recognizing that the new face of war has eliminated one of t he cherished American dogmas. Defense can no longer be achieved by a small standing army around which citizen soldiers can rally in an emergency. That method will yield only amateur soldiers, about as competent in their field as amateur doctors.