replacement depots

[franksolich]

Okay, the professional civilian here, again.

While reading more about D-Day and its aftermath, I'm finding that it was policy to constantly infuse already-existing Army units with new people, the units having been worn down by "attrition."

I had always assumed that it was policy, once a unit was all torn up, battered up, decimated, that it was pulled back, and an entirely new unit was sent in.

And while being pulled out of action, two purposes were served; that of giving the survivors a chance to catch their breath, and giving commanders time to build them back up to full strength, to re-stock them.

I have no idea where I got that impression, but surely it's decades old, and apparently erroneous.

I am not questioning any determination to keep battle-weary men in action and sending new men to be with them; obviously what's done works.

But I'm left wondering; I suspect those guys who made it into Normandy on June 6, 1944.....well, there probably couldn't have been many of them left by May 6, 1945 still on their feet, still moving forward.

Is this still, generally, policy?

Have there been alternatives that have been tried?

[franksolich]

posted at

http://www.freerepublic.c...s/f-vetscor/2264883/posts

in case anyone is interested in what others are saying; the freerepublic response to the question about tanks was overwhelming, and of course illuminating.

[dutch508]

This is still general policy. Units would be pulled off the line and re-fitted as needed.

However- we haven't had this kind of war since WWII. Even Korea didn't see the type of casualties that were seen in WWII.

In Vietnam we chose to pull entire divisions out of the fight after 12 months. Then common sense kicked in and it started being individual replacements after 12 months.

The reason of 12 months was reports going back as far as the American Civil War which showed that the combat effectiveness of soldiers was about 120 in combat.  That is about the average of a soldier in a 12 month tour.

In wars since then we've used this concept up until Iraq when we've downsized so much it was putting too much strain on troops to continue with 12 month tours. Even though we extended tours to 18 months, we still have troops pulling two and three (now four) seperate combat tours.

In my last tour I have over 200 combat patrols and with rare exception we made contact with hostile forces in all of them. After a while my guys wouldn't let me go out with them anymore, as they said I was unlucky and an IED magnet.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Every variation known to man has been tried, that was generally the way it was done in the WW2 US Army, though.  There is a great value to having continuity of unit chains of command, without having to send in a green unit to take the place of a battered veteran one; on the other side, it tends to make long-term individual survival iffy, as it is inevitable that some units will end up bearing the brunt of the fighting and casualties in successive battles, while others serve in less-hotly-engaged or even entirely unengaged roles, purely by chance.

In the Civil War, Lincoln and the Union Governors came in for criticism for raising many militia brigades/regiments, and then not keeping them up to strength, because the formation of each one allowed the appointment of a new colonelcy, a desireable political plumb; the raising of many new units is actually consistent with your idea about pulling depleted units out, since without replacements such a unit becomes combat-ineffective and there really isn't a lot of point in treating a regiment at 40% strength as if it was really the same thing as a fresh regiment, so de facto they more or less had to be relegated to secondary service until efforts were eventually made to fill their ranks.

In WW1 and WW2, the larger unit was committed to continuous battle and replacements fed into them; WW1 was (for us) relatively short if bloody, but in WW2 there was a point system where soldiers could theoretically qualify to leave the combat unit after a certain point, i.e. participation in so many campaigns, wounds, credit for overseas or combat service, etc. entered into it.  Rather similar to the "Complete XX number of missions and you go home for a tour" in the Air Corps, in concept.  Anecdotally from vets themselves and in reading I have the impression the units to which the soldiers belonged never ever calculated these and released anyone, it always seems to have actually gotten them loose only while hospitalized or at the conclusion of their unit's role in the campaign, when large-scale standdowns were occurring.  Some short-term relief was available to units by rotating them through reserve or supporting roles (a proportion of forces is always allocated to this role by a commander for either exploitation in the attack or bolstering the weak point in the defense, of course the tactical reserve is very often thrown into the crappiest most going-to-Hell-in-a-hurry part of the battle).

In Viet Nam we used continuous units in the WW2 system (Now called "Enduring units" in current parlance) but with a timed tour for soldiers arriving to fill them, basically twelve months.  There were certain weaknesses to this since among other things it meant the commanders and other leaders, as well as the soldiers, were constantly turning over in the combat theater, which made any sort of unit cohesion or mutual trust almost impossible to achieve.

The current system we've been using in Iraq and Afghanistan involves entire units going into the theater for a year and conducting a turnover with the departing unit they are replacing on arrival, referred to as "Rotational units" vice "Enduring units."  In theory this achieves some transfer of institutional memory while preserving unit cohesion through the unit's entire stay.  This approach is not without certain weaknesses as well, since it tends to create rather drastic departures in command philosphies from one week to the next during the turnover and the new units are invariably greener to current conditions than the ones they replace, leading to a certain bias to follow the beaten path and behave predictably and rather conservatively for three or four months, as well as a perfectly understandable desire on everyone's part not to take any chances at all for the last month in theater (these tendencies certainly existed individually in the Viet Nam era system, but cancelled out since everyone was arriving or leaving at different times).  The system is also entirely dependent on not having more than about a third of the Army's combat units committed to combat in theater, which was not the case by a long shot in WW2.

None of them work perfectly, it just is what it is.     

[dutch508]

In the Civil War, Lincoln and the Union Governors came in for criticism for raising many militia brigades/regiments, and then not keeping them up to strength, because the formation of each one allowed the appointment of a new colonelcy, a desireable political plumb; the raising of many new units is actually consistent with your idea about pulling depleted units out, since without replacements such a unit becomes combat-ineffective and there really isn't a lot of point in treating a regiment at 40% strength as if it was really the same thing as a fresh regiment, so de facto they more or less had to be relegated to secondary service until efforts were eventually made to fill their ranks.

What you have to remenber about this is that these were State Units, nor Federal troops. The Federal Army up til WWI was very very small, with State 'Guard' units filling up a majority of the troops. Even during WWII there wer National Guard units, but the firm majority were Federal 'Regular' Army.

[franksolich]

Thanks, Tanker and dutch.

I was sort of wondering about this "institutional memory" thing, the continuity aspect, that a unit needs.  Putting a wholly new unit into battle of course infuses new energy, but then on the other hand, these new guys have no idea what had all gone before them.

One can only speculate, but might that possibly be the best reason for putting new men into an old unit; that the old-timers in the unit know what's going on, and hence the chances for survival of the new ones was more or less better, than if they had all gone in new?

To me, this seems the best reason, but I might, or might not, be reasonable here.

[Eupher]

Thanks, Tanker and dutch.

I was sort of wondering about this "institutional memory" thing, the continuity aspect, that a unit needs.  Putting a wholly new unit into battle of course infuses new energy, but then on the other hand, these new guys have no idea what had all gone before them.

One can only speculate, but might that possibly be the best reason for putting new men into an old unit; that the old-timers in the unit know what's going on, and hence the chances for survival of the new ones was more or less better, than if they had all gone in new?

To me, this seems the best reason, but I might, or might not, be reasonable here.

I'd suggest that as far as the old guys are concerned, the career military types, they move around as well - not just to deployments. About every 3 years or so, a guy will be reassigned to a short tour (Korea), or even a long tour (Germany) and CONUS, of course. It's those guys moving around that help provide the continuity. Guys like Dutch and TRG have been deployed, yet they are serving in units other than the units in which they deployed.

[DumbAss Tanker]

What you have to remenber about this is that these were State Units, nor Federal troops. The Federal Army up til WWI was very very small, with State 'Guard' units filling up a majority of the troops. Even during WWII there wer National Guard units, but the firm majority were Federal 'Regular' Army.

True as to the Civil War, but that did not preclude Lincoln being beat up by the press for it, of course.  Ultimately the responsibility for generating the requirements for those new regiments and brigades rested with the President and Secretary of War, so the criticism was not entirely misdirected.  As far as WW2 goes, an awful lot of the combat divisions were Federalized Guard/militia troops, the Federalizing was done in a patchwork fashion mixed in with the raising of new Regular units (or what for the most part would become AUS and then USAR units later); I don't know what the final percentage was, but there were plenty of battles like the Liri Valley where it was not primarily the RA in the fight.  The armored and mech forces were RA by and large, but there were a ton of leg infantry divisions that were Federalized State units, or in which the actual line regiments were.

Frank, the theory is that the old-timers would take care of the newbies, but it only works that way below a certain turnover level, and it tends to work somewhat better with a more homogenous culture than a diverse one.  High-casualty units in WW2 and the high-turnover nature of Viet Nam replacements produced a situation where the old-timers tended to stick together and not assimilate the newbies because they didn't want to get attached to the person who was most likely to get shot next, making it into kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The Germans used that philosophy and it worked somewhat better for them due to the more homogenous nature of a central European country's culture, I recommend reading Guy Sajer's classic memoir The Forgotten Soldier to get a worm's-eye view of how a German squad worked and see the force of bonding and cohesion in a relentless succession of battles from about 1942 to the defeat of Germany. 

[dutch508]

Thanks, Tanker and dutch.

I was sort of wondering about this "institutional memory" thing, the continuity aspect, that a unit needs.  Putting a wholly new unit into battle of course infuses new energy, but then on the other hand, these new guys have no idea what had all gone before them.

One can only speculate, but might that possibly be the best reason for putting new men into an old unit; that the old-timers in the unit know what's going on, and hence the chances for survival of the new ones was more or less better, than if they had all gone in new?

To me, this seems the best reason, but I might, or might not, be reasonable here.

There are problems with both concepts. They all boil down to the fact that human beings can only take so much of the shit before they start to crack. The 'Old Hands' in units with new replacements would let the new guys get killed rather than themselves. Harsh, but if you knew you would get killed doing that same crazy shit you did 6 months ago- you'd let the new guy lead the stack team into the building.

Putting a whole new unit in brings energy, but also the soldiers learn that hard way all the lessons the old unti learned. Not a bad thing except you realize that the hard way is the death of soldiers. It usually tkaes about 6 months before a new unit learns all the tricks.

The 120 day in Combat concept may seem like alot, but it's only 1 day out of 3. That is for front line troops, too. Not the joes in the rear with the gear.

One thing about combat, Frank. There is nothing like it. Even now I find myself missing the feeling. If given the chance I'd be back there now.