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rmunntoday at 5:00 AM1 replyview on HN

I doubt whether Marshall was referring to soldiers in logitiscal roles when he made his claim about only 20-25% of soldiers firing their weapons, but I do wonder whether other people are getting confused by those numbers. About twenty years ago I looked up what the "tooth-to-tail" ratio was for various branches of the U.S. armed forces, and found anywhere from a 1:10 ratio for the army (10 soldiers in support roles not expected to see combat, v.s. 1 soldier on the front lines who would be expected to need to fire his weapon), to a 1:25 ratio for the air force (which had, naturally, a lot more support personnel, such as mechanics and so on, who would spend their whole military career in hangars or on bases and never actually flying a single plane). That's anywhere from 10% to just 4% of military personnel, depending on branch, who would be expected to fire at the enemy; the only time support personnel would be engaged in combat is if something had gone badly wrong militarily and their supply lines were being attacked.

So while the article you linked isn't confused on the subject, and I doubt Marshall was mixing support personnel in with front-line soldiers in his numbers, I do wonder whether there are people who confuse those two numbers: the number of soldiers, sailors, coasties, airmen, or marines who would never be in combat even during times of war, vs. the number who would actually be in combat and not fire.

(The article did address "what if the battle never came near where those particular soldiers were standing?", which was the other question I wondered about).


Replies

RugnirVikingtoday at 7:26 AM

I agree. It seems impossible that its referring to support staff in those numbers. I had heard of similar studies in the British Army in ww1, with similar results (training on man-shaped targets etc) - surely the army would be unlikely to change tack based on a study with such an obviously flawed conclusion.

Not to mention the fact that this was a time of much more serious discipline issues. People were executed for desertion, and despite that many people did. There was also much malingering, up to and including literally shooting oneself in the foot. Is it so hard to believe that some people just hid when battles came?

Id be very surprised to hear from the other person that by Vietnam they had gotten it up to 95% though. My impression was that the most effective move away from this sort of thing was the move to a professional volunteer army, no conscription.