achinery. Instead, however, when they reached the front lines what they found was an emptiness where they did not see the enemy, and soon fell out of contact with their comrades as well. The individual rifleman found himself effectively alone, with no obvious live target to shoot at and no strong impression of support from his own unit. In this environment, the typical rifleman did not so much "freeze" as feel lost; the result was still a lack of effective action.
Marshall gave a typical example of the problem as encountered during island fighting in the Pacific (129-131). A skirmish line would be moving forward when a few hostile rounds forced it to "hit the dirt." The moment it did, however, its forward momentum was completely lost. On the rough ground, each soldier was isolated from his fellows; with unit c
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