Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
What in the name of God has happened to this thread? I turn my back for five minutes and I come back to George Washington and the battle of Cowpens!

At least when I was talking about Macarthur, it was relevant to the discussion, as MacArthur was supreme commander of UN forces during the Korean War, which, may I remind people, fits into the 1945-1972 timeframe. Where does 1781 fight into this?

To use one of my favourite American sayings - this discussion has turned into a goat rope session!

My original aim was to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the US fighting man, 45-72, and compare how he matched up to his Soviet/Korean/Chinese counterpart, instead, this thread has been hijacked for nefarious ends.

Yeah, I'm looking at you Kalashnikov, Jihadin, djones, chaosomega

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
This thread was taken by a joint service lighting raid with extensive combined arms support. We will proceed to hold our ground for the near future.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
This thread was taken by a joint service lighting raid with extensive combined arms support. We will proceed to hold our ground for the near future.

 Easy E wrote:
Well, I'm pretty sure Korean, Chinesse and Vietnamese military forces int eh field had a very different logistical method than the US troops they faced. These logistical problems/methods would play a pretty big role in how the units themselves would need to fight.

Therefore, Americans could rely more on overwhelming firepower and less on fieldcraft where the opposite was not true of their opponents.

Tibbsy wrote:
It has been a rather interesting thread though; so there's that!

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


My original aim was to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the US fighting man, 45-72, and compare how he matched up to his Soviet/Korean/Chinese counterpart, instead, this thread has been hijacked for nefarious ends.

In this context though, Washington, among others greatly formed our fighting/military thinking processes that actually have an affect on the way we wage wars to this day.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
What in the name of God has happened to this thread? I turn my back for five minutes and I come back to George Washington and the battle of Cowpens!

At least when I was talking about Macarthur, it was relevant to the discussion, as MacArthur was supreme commander of UN forces during the Korean War, which, may I remind people, fits into the 1945-1972 timeframe. Where does 1781 fight into this?

To use one of my favourite American sayings - this discussion has turned into a goat rope session!

My original aim was to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the US fighting man, 45-72, and compare how he matched up to his Soviet/Korean/Chinese counterpart, instead, this thread has been hijacked for nefarious ends.

Yeah, I'm looking at you Kalashnikov, Jihadin, djones, chaosomega

The book Phantom Soldier by H. John Poole is probably a good read for you, at least in the latter half of that range.

 Jihadin wrote:
Come now "I Do Not Like That". I mention on the first page off the git go that no one here has experience in those time frame. What do you expect of a website dedicated to war gaming knowing there be military prior and present was going to train wreck this thread and take it as our own...

 djones520 wrote:
Yeah... the thread is in a place called "Off-Topic". What did you expect to happen?

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
This thread was taken by a joint service lighting raid with extensive combined arms support. We will proceed to hold our ground for the near future.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
This thread was taken by a joint service lighting raid with extensive combined arms support. We will proceed to hold our ground for the near future.

Quite possibly the only thing missing is Mattyrm for the coalition support.


On the plus side, it seems the French have seen the level of awesome here, and have surrendered prior to entering this fray

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Well, I'm pretty sure Korean, Chinesse and Vietnamese military forces int eh field had a very different logistical method than the US troops they faced. These logistical problems/methods would play a pretty big role in how the units themselves would need to fight.

Therefore, Americans could rely more on overwhelming firepower and less on fieldcraft where the opposite was not true of their opponents.

This is a model example of a thread that is RELEVANT to the discussion! Have an exalt on me


It's a good point as the NVA and the Chinese army relied on people pushing handcarts for their supplies, whilst the US had a massive, modern logistical operation behind them. Thus, the NVA or Chinese would have to compensate for this by becoming masters of fieldcraft. The way the Chinese were able to move 100,000 men through Manchuria into Korea was military deception of the highest order, as most people know.

 Easy E wrote:
Well, I'm pretty sure Korean, Chinesse and Vietnamese military forces int eh field had a very different logistical method than the US troops they faced. These logistical problems/methods would play a pretty big role in how the units themselves would need to fight.

Therefore, Americans could rely more on overwhelming firepower and less on fieldcraft where the opposite was not true of their opponents.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I still maintain on a hindsight note we should have been involved in Vietnam.


Fighting on the same side as Uncle Ho. Only reason we weren't was a racist in the White House and a bid to keep those useless cheese eating surrender monkeys (the French if you're not tracking) in NATO

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
Well, I'm pretty sure Korean, Chinesse and Vietnamese military forces int eh field had a very different logistical method than the US troops they faced. These logistical problems/methods would play a pretty big role in how the units themselves would need to fight.

Therefore, Americans could rely more on overwhelming firepower and less on fieldcraft where the opposite was not true of their opponents.

This is a model example of a thread that is RELEVANT to the discussion! Have an exalt on me


It's a good point as the NVA and the Chinese army relied on people pushing handcarts for their supplies, whilst the US had a massive, modern logistical operation behind them. Thus, the NVA or Chinese would have to compensate for this by becoming masters of fieldcraft. The way the Chinese were able to move 100,000 men through Manchuria into Korea was military deception of the highest order, as most people know.

I have to disagree, the strategic move of getting the PLA forces into Korea was excellent, everything else? Human wave tactics like both the PLA and NVA applied liberally in Korea with massive amounts of barely literate conscripts is not an example of good field craft. I don't think it's till we hit Vietnam that the standard American soldier is really outclassed in a fieldcraft since by his opponent and even then that comes down to a difference between warfare and COIN operations, and the enemies you face in those situations.


Boom! All up in this on topic stuff.

 Easy E wrote:

I am no expert on this topic, but perhaps one of the reasons for the human wave attacks were also a choice based on the "logisitcal" constraints of the Chinese/Koreans. They couldn't support a large army in the field for long periods, so thay had to use those manpower resources quickly and in overwhleming numbers before they degraded due to poor logisitcs. In such a case, a high casualty rate would be beneficial to their logistics problem provided they were able to run the Americans off in a timely/suitable fashion.

 djones520 wrote:
Your estimation of Washington does a great disservice to you Chaos.

The simple fact he took a band of rag tag farmers, and led them to victory over the strongest military power of the age alone...

Washington was more then just a general. He was a Commander in Chief. He was, and still is, the epitome of generalship.

I'd follow Mattis to hell and back any day of the week. However he's a bit young for the crowd we've been talking about.

I really must concur that you aren't giving Washington much credit. He avoided battles as much as possible, especially decisive engagements until he could enter battle in such a way that utterly favored his army, with short supplies against a better trained, armed and equipped foe this was the ONLY sane strategy. What use is winning a battle when it exhausts much of your manpower and loses the war?

I concur with my military history professor on the subject of George Washington. One of the best ways to judge a man is by how the men he trained behave. Well the Big G.W. trained Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, taught him everything during their time together during the French Indian wars and earlier in the Revolution, and the Battle of Cowpens was an absolute spanking delivered to a superior sized and armed British force lead by none other then the bad guy from The Patriot. (seriously.) any way, beautiful double envelopment playing to the weaknesses of the militia under his command (a trick he learned from George) while taking advantage of Tarleton being an arrogant donkey cave.

 djones520 wrote:
"We can't feed them, so we should just get them killed as quickly as possible."

That just reeks of insanity.

 Frazzled wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
I still maintain on a hindsight note we should have been involved in Vietnam.


Fighting on the same side as Uncle Ho. Only reason we weren't was a racist in the White House and a bid to keep those useless cheese eating surrender monkeys (the French if you're not tracking) in NATO

Or just stay out of a third mess the French had gotten us into.

 Easy E wrote:
I am no expert on this topic, but perhaps one of the reasons for the human wave attacks were also a choice based on the "logisitcal" constraints of the Chinese/Koreans. They couldn't support a large army in the field for long periods, so thay had to use those manpower resources quickly and in overwhleming numbers before they degraded due to poor logisitcs. In such a case, a high casualty rate would be beneficial to their logistics problem provided they were able to run the Americans off in a timely/suitable fashion.

Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.

Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines.

The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by Al Qaeda. Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island.

They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple America’s exist simultaneously depending on one’s race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.

The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like: “Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” “You clear?” I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: “Yes Sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, “No kidding sweetheart, we know what we’re doing.” They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.

A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way—perhaps 60-70 yards in length—and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped.

Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.

When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this struck me as different. Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. We expect Marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different.

The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event—just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I’d have to do it as a combat award that requires two eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.

I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing.” The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion.

All survived. Many were injured … some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.”

What he didn’t know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.”

“No sane man.”

“They saved us all.”

What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “… let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.”

The two Marines had about five seconds left to live. It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing non-stop…the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have know they were safe…because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber.

The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread should width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God.
Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty…into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/john-kellys-speech-about-marines-in-ramadi-2013-6#ixzz2mWIjf4hc