To review Men Against Fire, by S. L. A. Marshall, and
report on its value for officers in the command.
Qualifications: Col. S. L. A. Marshall served as
Official Historian of the European Theater of Operations during World War Two. The focus of his wartime work was a close evaluation of small-unit tactics and operations.
Bibliographic data: S. L. A. Marshall, Men
Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1947.
Broadly, though not formally, Men Against Fire is
divided into two sections: the first discusses the tactical problem of small-unit infantry operations, with an emphasis on the importance of firepower; the second surveys the leadership qualities which Marshall identifies as critical in infantry combat under modern conditions.
Marshall was possibly the first military historian to actually look closely at small-unit operations and tactics in modern war. And in his research he made a discovery that was completely unexpected, and which largely shaped his discussions of both firepower and leadership: that in the American Army in World War Two, on average fewer than one in four combat riflemen actually fired their weapons during combat.
This low figure counted all men who fired their weapons at all, not the presumably smaller number who put out steady and effective fire. It applied to seasoned as well as to green units. It did not, however, apply to crew-served weapons, whose fire performance was on average much more effective. Analysis of this pattern lead to a number of specific recommendations but also to a more general and fundamental analysis of the modern battlefield: it's emptiness and loneliness.
Marshall argued that the fire ineffectiveness of infantry stemmed from their general misperception of what to expect on the battlefield. Their training, reinforced by movies and books, led them to expect a battlefield crowded with men and m...