"MEN AGAINST FIRE"

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, howev

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men to shoot, even (especially) when he isn't right there to order them to. The modern battlefield also makes the basic retention of small-unit solidity and cohesion more difficult, since in combat the soldier is unlikely to see the men "next" to him in line. (As noted earlier, crew-served weapons showed much better fire performance. The reason is that the crews of these weapons were necessarily close enough together to reinforce one another.) Marshall also identified communications as crucial in small-unit action. The American Army, he suggested, did not talk enough in combat: their silence added to the isolation that he found most crippling to the infantry's effectiveness. Having dealt with the issues of fire and communications, Marshall turned to the requirements of command. The conditions of modern warfare have increased the burden on the small-unit commander. He must encourage his troops to show initiative, not simply react mechanically to orders. The unit commander must be aggressive in maintaining communications, not only between his unit and the rear, but with his flanks as well. The natural lines of communications and command help to support rear communications, but flank communications are often ignored. A
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1518
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)