Symbionese Liberation Army Marshal

When I was an undergrad I wrote my term paper for US Military History on S.L.A. Marshall, so I'm displeased to see the news doing it's normal shitty job of covering him.  To set the record straight, there are two big things you need to know about S.L.A. Marshall:

1. He was a brigadier general and official army historian who did a lot of post-battle interviews with American soldiers in WWII Europe, concluding that about 80 percent of soldiers weren't firing in combat.  Partially thanks his recommendations* for how to fix the problem of low fire ratios, we saw a titanic shift in how infantry platoons fought between WWII and Korea: 1. Training changed to condition people to fire on humans (training marksmanship on pop-up, man shaped targets vs. stationary, bullseye type targets, for example), 2. Platoon organization changed to allow closer management of individual soldiers (the smallest unit in a platoon shifted from a squad of 12 or so people to a fire team of only four people), 3. How platoons were equipped changed (Marshall noticed that soldiers were much more willing to use crew operated weapons than personal weapons on the enemy.  Because of this, as well as an increased doctrinal emphasis on suppressing fire, the number of squad automatic weapons per soldier was vastly increased, from one per squad to one per fire team).  Marshall recorded much higher fire rates in Korea and Vietnam (well into the 90th percentiles), and by the gulf war fire rates when confronted with the enemy were above 99 percent.  So all these reforms worked (at a possible psychological cost for vets, according to the work of retired LTC Dave Grossman, a shrink).

2. Except maybe they didn't, because Marshall's "statistics" are probably bullshit.  He never published his data, and as his people began going through his archives after he died most concluded that there was no data.  He interviewed lots of soldiers,  sure, and his qualitative summaries of their reports have a lot of power, but his quantitative figures about what percent fired in combat might have been pulled directly out of his ass.

So there is sort of a mixed history there.  On the one hand, his reforms were adopted so rapidly and so widely by militaries after WWII that I have to think they rang true to the battle hardened veteran officers and non-coms of the day.  And the fact that infantry platoons still fight along the lines he outlined proves that his recommendations stood the test of time.  So there is probably a lot of truth to his observations.

On the other hand, his stats were possibly full of shit and should only be quoted with heavy caveats.

The media tends to only report one story or the other, so we get this article saying that we know for a fact that only 20 percent of soldiers fired on the enemy in WWII.  We don't!  Alternately you'll get articles saying that Marshall is a proven fraud and that we should conclude fire rates were as high in WWII as they were in Korea.  We shouldn't!  It's a more mixed story than that: there is a lot of evidence that S.L.A. Marshall was dishonest, but also a lot of evidence that he was right.

Anyways, his wiki page summarizes some of this if you'd like to know more.

*I want to emphasize that he was only one of many influences that brought about the shift I'm talking about.  The marines first tried out the fire team while occupying Nicaragua between WWI and WWII, for example.

Support the People who are Troops, not the "Troops"

Unicorn in Uniform has a great new post about "supporting the troops" that got me thinking.  Her point is that we shouldn't take "supporting the troops" so far that it just becomes empty praise, a "thank you for your service" as automatic as sneezing, because what good does that do?  She adds that we certainly shouldn't take it to so far that a moment's joke at the troops' expense is a life altering event, because actual servicemen and women don't want that kind of support-the-troops-or-else culture.

I'd take it one step further: we should support the individuals in the military because they are great, not because they are in the military.  Most of the people I know in the military are smart and hard working and funny and thoughtful and conscientious.  In most cases, I don't think that's because they are serving, it's just how they are  (often I know this, because I knew them before they enlisted or got their commission).  The military has been an important road out of poverty for a lot of people I know, but if we gave them a civilian road (better and less costly education options?  More use of professional internships for high schoolers, along the German model?) I think they'd be just as well off.

I feel semi-comfortable generalizing my personal experiences, here.  It's really hard to make a great person at the age of 18, so it makes sense that most soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines were probably pretty awesome from the get go (albeit needing a bit of maturing).  Under this telling, it's more about great people being attracted to a life of service and sacrifice than it is great people being forged by a life of service and sacrifice and fighting lava monsters.  So yes, the troops are impressive people doing a great thing and should be thanked and respected for it, but we should recognize that if this was pre-WWII and we didn't have a large standing military, most of them would still be impressive people doing something great and impressive and charitable for their fellow Americans.  Or, you know, slaves.  Things sucked back then.

Once you separate that, supporting the bad-ass people who are the troops from supporting the troops, two things happen.  1. You are a lot more prepared to encounter the (incredibly small) minority of people serving who suck.  2.  The military, as opposed to the troops, looks less unambiguously good.  The military isn't what made all these great troops we should support.  They were already great.  No, the military is what took all these great, hard working, smart, idealistic people out of the economy that builds things and put them in the economy that blows things up.

Maybe we are blowing up the right amount of things, and if we spent less on blowing things up we'd be less safe, less free, and less able to invest and trade.  Maybe we are spending too much.  But that calculation should be based on how much stuff we want and need to blow up, not on whether we support the troops.  Once we start blowing up or preparing to blow up too much stuff, each extra servicewoman assigned to that task is a major waste, a transformation of one of our great creators into a great destroyer.  And it doesn't do her many favors besides: giving the individuals in the military a robust economy and lots of alternative careers after military service is the single best way to support them, not wasting trillions on military spending.

So support the troops, they're great and we owe them.  But don't let that support affect how you think about military spending.  If we cut military spending and lose 5 combat brigades, that's not thousands of troops hurt; it's 1000s of great people who are going to get a chance to do great things for the civilian economy.

And yes, I realize that is a lot stronger argument at full employment than it is now, in an economy where laid of veterans risk unemployment.  That's just reason 50000  to wait for the economy to improve before cutting spending, on the military or on anything else.