It is no longer possible (if it ever was) to deal with the role of land forces in a future conflict without including concurrent consideration of the missions of naval and air forces. I have never believed that, in the drafting of war plans, basic directives, and operating orders, missions can properly be assigned to arms, services, or similar categories of personnel. Missions, in the accepted military sense, should rather be assigned to what we term task forces—-almost always combinations, varying greatly in size and composition, of many or all of the so-called arms or services. In other words, a balanced team is required to accomplish a mission.
The operations of the forces of each major service are, in general, inseparable from those of the other two. To understand their respective future roles in warfare it is necessary to review the over-all mission of the armed forces.
Briefly, that mission today and generally throughout peacetime years, may be placed under two principal headings:
First: To discharge occupation commitments and preserve the peace won at such great cost in World War II.
Second: To provide armed forces in being and to develop and maintain a system capable of providing additional forces rapidly as needed. Through preparedness we must be able to show sufficient strength to the world so that the words of our government will be respected internationally.
The wartime mission of the armed forces, if we again should be thrust into war, also is two-fold:
First: To repel and destroy the forces of an aggressor—air, ground, and sea.
Second: To counterattack the enemy’s bases and ultimately his homeland in such strength and with such effect that his attacks on us will cease, and to press our attack until we have completely and permanently destroyed his will and ability to fight, destroyed or captured his forces, and occupied his territory, or that part which is essential to the prevention of recurrence of hostilities.
In the accomplishment of these missions no single one of the three sub-divisions which comprise our armed forces can operate without the support of the other two. It is foreseeable, however, that air power, for example, will play an even greater role in a future war than it did in the last.
No one would deny, of course, that the first of our present peacetime commitments, that of occupation, is primarily a ground forces mission. The occupation job requires the physical presence of troops on the spot, since a country cannot very well be occupied by bombs or battleships. But this job cannot be done by ground forces alone. It cannot be successfully accomplished without air and sea support, both tactical and logistical. There must be a proper balance of land, air, and naval forces to perform the task properly.
The same thing is true of our second peacetime mission. We could build and maintain the largest and the best equipped army in the world, but if we wrapped the planes of our Air Force in cellophane and laid up the ships of our Navy, the Army could not materially discourage a determined aggressor. It would be obvious to the enemy that his air and sea superiority would make it possible for him to overrun our homeland with his land forces.
By the same logic, if the weakness of our armed forces provoked attack by an aggressor and we were called on to fulfill the first of our wartime missions, we would risk going down in defeat if we were deficient in ground forces and met the enemy only at sea and in the air.
All warfare is conducted from fixed land bases. Man is, after all, a land animal, and he can exist on the sea, or in the air, for a relatively limited period of time, although that period is steadily being lengthened by the development and improvement of sustaining techniques. However, with due regard for these sustaining techniques, in a strict sense there is no such thing as an air base in the air, for it is on the land, and so is a sea base. True, there may be temporary sea bases for aircraft such as carriers, but the true bases for air and sea forces are on the land. Air and sea forces depart from land bases to strike at their targets and then return to the same, or other, land bases. For air forces the time away from base is only a few hours, although the time is increasing as the range of aircraft increases. Carrier aircraft must return to the carrier after striking their targets, and the carrier, as well as other naval craft, is obliged ultimately to return to a fixed land base.
But by contrast to air and sea action, a land or ground force sallies forth and moves its base with it. It fights, lives where it fights, and moves on. It occupies ground, and by so doing denies that ground to the enemy. It holds the ground on which air and sea forces establish their bases. Thus one of the several roles of ground forces is the protection of land bases which are required by air and sea forces.
If we attempted to repel an invader without an adequate ground force, he could push on across the United States taking base after base, factory after factory, and shipyard after shipyard, until his supremacy on the ground would be translated into superiority in the air and on the sea as well.
By the same token we would be unable to carry out our second wartime mission, that of taking the fight to the enemy’s homeland, if we had no Navy or Air Force to transport our men and materiel.
All three of the sub-divisions of our armed forces are interdependent each upon the other two. Our missions are the same; only our means and methods differ.
Those who deny the importance of the other services in their zeal for their own, do themselves a disservice in the end. Now that we are unified legally we also must be unified mentally.
It is hardly necessary to emphasize the importance of maintaining, in years of peace, a military structure which can be expanded to meet wartime needs when war occurs. But it is necessary to develop certain fundamental points which provide a basis for detailed study of the major concepts which influence the conduct of war. We cannot do long range planning and project our thinking into the future if we use only the methods of the last war as the foundation. It is necessary to study the tactics and strategy of the last war only in order that we may use the lessons learned as a guide in planning for the future.
The charge frequently is made that the generals and admirals always prepare to fight the next war with the weapons of the last. That has never been true of the enemies we Americans have been called on to fight in the past, nor will it be true in the future.
But it has sometimes been true of the United States. Not because the generals and admirals are so lacking in imagination that they prefer obsolete tanks and planes and ships and methods, but because we as a people hope for peace so profoundly that we hate to appropriate the money until the enemy’s brand new bullets and bombs have hit us.
It used to be difficult at the higher schools in the military educational system, such as the Army War College, to get all members of a class to project their war planning two, three, or four years in the future. And I suppose it still is true. Superficial compliance is given by many, based on the belief that such planning was too visionary to be practical. But it is my firm conviction that adequate preparedness can only be based on practical, yet imaginative and progressive planning.
At the Army War College some years ago, one class gave particular trouble when it came time to open the war planning period. Usually there was a small proportion of each year’s class who resisted the requirement that a war plan be projected into the future, rather than just to the outbreak of a war. This particular year the class was almost equally divided, and it required considerable argument on the part of the faculty to procure more than a superficial compliance with the directive for carrying the war plans through to completion. There was some grumbling on the part of the advocates of just sailing off into the blue and letting the war take what course it would. Some rather pointed remarks were made about the futility of “crystal gazing.” The war plans director purposely withheld any comment until the final presentation and then closed the period with a quiet, grimly humorous, and somewhat cryptic remark which I am sure nevertheless left his audience silent but convinced. He said: “I have intentionally refrained from comment during these past interesting six weeks, but as I observed the labors of the planning committees I became aware of the fact that many remarks were being made about crystal gazing. Accordingly, I interested myself in a research of the art of crystal gazing and have come to some definite conclusions. I shall not bore you with the details of my research, but I will say that I have found that there are two outstanding essentials in the conduct of the art of crystal gazing. One of these is a flawless sphere of crystal and the other is a vacant mind!”
Perhaps our higher schools are dwelling too much on tactics—on the more absorbing, familiar, operational aspect—and not enough or at the expense of, the fundamental consideration of the creation, maintenance, and basic employment of armed forces. These latter problems are the tough ones.
The role of ground forces in future wars will be the same as it has been since men first started fighting wars—that of engaging the enemy, killing or capturing his troops, and occupying his land. Even spectacular advances in the development of destructive weapons of war will not alter this basic role.
The history of warfare has been the history of new weapon after new weapon, each apparently so effective that prophets have claimed it to be the means of ending warfare, and in some instances the end of mankind. I suppose that was true of the bow and arrow. At least it has been so for almost every weapon since.
When gunpowder was introduced it was predicted that war would be so dangerous that no nation would want to, or could afford to fight. When the Gatling rapid fire gun came along, and later the modern machine gun, they were expected to stop wars. But men found ways of defending themselves against Gatling guns and the newer machine guns, and wars continued to be fought.
Simon Lake expected the submarine to drive surface ships from the seas. And although submarines have been greatly improved since Lake’s time, surface craft still play major roles in sea engagements.
In World War II the airplane reached a stage of development and employment surpassing even the most lively imaginations of air enthusiasts. Airplanes sank battleships, flew the oceans in endless streams, carried men and freight in quantities and over distances that would have been considered utterly impossible a few years before the war.
Airplanes attacked ground objectives and wrought tremendous destruction. But airplanes did not make the ground soldier obsolete. The bombing of Cassino is only one case in point.
In some quarters the impression has been left that at some future date we will be able to wage a new type of warfare in which the soldier will become obsolete. Called “push button” warfare, it is described as a method by which the fighting will be done by someone who sits at a control panel far underground, pushing buttons with various geographical labels which dispatch atomic rockets to obliterate the city or other target at which the missile was directed.
But the simple fact is this: If and when we do develop the means to wage war even on a modified “push button” scale, the ground soldier will be more vital to success than ever before. The final deciding factor in winning wars is the man with a weapon in his hand who overcomes the enemy and wrests his soil from him. The means by which we employ this soldier may change. We may give him new weapons and evolve new techniques, tactics, and strategy, but his role will not change.
Some, who do not hold this view, point to the surrender of Japan prior to an actual invasion of the homeland by land forces as an example of a war won without an all-out meeting engagement of ground troops. The special situation in which Japan found herself when she sued for peace cannot logically be used as the basis for all future planning. Here was a small insular nation pitted against the rest of the world. Small in area, her industries crowded together, her communications cut, completely defeated at sea and in the air, the bulk of her land army far from home and denied the means to return to home soil, and with a vast invasion army building up off shore, she had no alternative.
It is not likely that the special set of circumstances which caused Japan to capitulate will be encountered again. Certainly the people who believe that the winning of wars without land forces is a possibility will recognize that even after Japan’s fall it still was necessary to send in troops to actually occupy the country, and that they still are there to impose the will of the victor on the conquered.
And I am equally confident that these same people who would change the concept of war would not deny that the invasion of Normandy was necessary to bring about the defeat of Germany.
This then is the primary mission of the Army: To close with the enemy, defeat and disperse his soldiers, and overrun and occupy his vital areas. The secondary mission —the safeguarding and the advancing of bases—is essential to the accomplishment of the primary mission. It is, of course, normal that the secondary mission should reach ascendancy in the early stages of a war.
It is impossible for land forces alone to accomplish this primary mission. The army would never be able to do it by sheer weight of numbers, particularly if its foes possessed a larger population than our own with a resulting greater pool of available manpower. We must be prepared to carry out this mission through the excellence of our training and planning, our weapons and support from the other services, and in the final analysis through the willingness to fight of our own men.
It is plain, I believe, that a balance among forces is absolutely necessary if our security structure is to be firm. If we fail to provide proper balance our strength will be wasted and our future security jeopardized. It is not an easy matter to change in the middle of a war, for instance, from a concept of bombs and blockade to one of extended and sustained ground action. The retraining of manpower and its reapportionment and the retooling of industry would be a process requiring years to accomplish. The time thus spent might be enough to permit the enemy to recoup from the blows already given him under the previous concept.
It is useless to argue the role of the Army if we adopt a concept which relegates to the Army the position of a procuring agency and a purely defensive force. Such a concept means that we have committed ourselves to the all-out decision to defeat the opposition by bombs and blockade alone.
The decision as to what and when the role of the Army will be in future war depends on our war planners. Their decision should in turn stem from a sound determination of the end result desired. The ultimate goal must be determined before any war plan is made. It is not enough to say that we must make sure we are not defeated. It is not sufficient to say that we must place the enemy in such a position that he cannot hurt us. Wars of attrition cannot be successful under modern concepts. Our aim must be to defeat the enemy completely and, having defeated him, to impose our will on him. Having determined the desired end result in concrete terms, the war planners have a sound basis upon which to work. It is interesting to note that our military pattern and plan must follow—not emulate or dictate—our political goal.
It is in this planning stage that the determination is made as to roles to be played by the various services. The capabilities and probable intentions of the enemy will strongly influence such planning.
In this connection I am firmly convinced that an important contribution to the science of long range planning can be found in a close examination and study of the periods immediately prior to and following the outbreak of a war, probably six months or a year on either side. I believe that concentration of research on this opening period of war should be given priority in the current and future studies at higher schools of our armed forces educational system and in planning on higher staff levels.
Most of us prefer to study those phases and events of a war which occurred after the war was actually under way. This is natural because the later period is the more interesting, is better documented, and is more recent and therefore fresher in the memory of the individuals. More people were directly involved in the battles, and therefore there was a wider base of interest. A discussion or review of the later more successful events in a war which we won and in which we took part also is more gratifying to the ego of those concerned.
By now the events of the past war are dimming and clarity of outline is rapidly being lost. It is very hard to recapture vividly the memory of the events of 1940 and 1941. It seems difficult to imagine that in high level planning early in the war such negative phrases as “the patriotic uprising on the Continent” or “when the German morale cracks” frequently were heard.
Most of us like to study the phases and events of a war chronologically and in narrative form, particularly their strategic and tactical aspects. But in general such study lacks well-defined objectives. Actually it is reading, not studying.
In reviewing the phases and events prior to and during the last war I was struck by the many things we did that contributed to the more efficient destruction of the enemy. On the other hand, I have been startled by the many things we did poorly, too late, or failed to do that contributed to the useless destruction of our means. Searching for the reasons or causes for good and poor work, I have found that when national objectives, military strategy, and available means were in step we usually did good work. When they were out of step, as they were in 1940 and 1941, we were not so efficient.
The past must be studied as the basis for, and a guide to, the study of the future. To make a sound prediction one must project the past into the future. If the past is ignored, as many would ignore it, then there is no firm foundation for sound forecasting, sound planning, sound apportioning of the limited means now available and to become available. In focusing attention on this study of the past, emphasis should be laid on the earlier periods to which I have referred.
It is obviously necessary to project plans well into several years of war in order that we can have on hand at the right times properly balanced numbers of: bombers, fighters and other types of aircraft; tanks, cannon and other ground weapons; communications and warning equipment; shipping; countless varieties of supplies—all the vast stocks of weapons and equipment which are essential for the conduct of modern war. Unless planners take into consideration how as well as where we will fight, we are sure to find ourselves dangerously lacking in essential weapons and equipment, because design, testing, and setting up assembly lines often require one, two, or more years for completion.
It must be remembered that not even the great industrial capacity of the United States is limitless. In the future we will have to use all of our natural and industrial resources for the production of essentials. If we produce anything which is not essential we will be short of needed weapons, supplies, and equipment. There will not he enough resources and man hours to produce everything that we believe we need or would like to have. There will be sufficient resources to produce only what we know by careful study is essential to victory.
As an illustration of the value of the study of the early period of war, I point to the radical reorganization of the War Department which finally took place four months after our entry into the last war. The organizational structure in effect prior to March 8, 1942—a structure which had obtained throughout the Army during the years between the two World Wars, and which had been taught in our service schools —was considered by those in authority to be unsuited for prosecution of a war. I would like to emphasize the fact that regardless of the comparative soundness of the two systems of organization, a reorganization was found necessary or at least desirable long after war had commenced.
Now since the conclusion of the war we have reverted essentially to the pre-war system, and it is felt by some that a major reorganization, or a return to the wartime system, would be required if we were plunged into war again. The parallel to the shake-up in the War Department in 1861, 1898, and 1917 is most striking.
New developments will have a major effect on new concepts of tactics and techniques to be employed by the Army in future wars. I am not essentially a technical man; therefore I will not dwell in technical terms upon the thousand and one improvements and inventions that crown the field of new developments. I will try to deal with them in general terms.
First of all we cannot ignore the atom. I wish to point out that, from the ground combat point of view, atomic weapons are primarily strategic weapons because of their scarcity and their tremendous expense. On occasion an atomic bomb or cloud might be used on targets such as those that were in the waters of Omaha Beach or the buildup area in Southern England. But ordinarily the atom and its derivatives will not be used against a field army.
I am not minimizing the effect of the atom; I am merely trying to make clear that a field army or armies engaged with the enemy is not ordinarily a profitable target for the atom. Obviously the land forces will experience the impact of the atom in many ways. Great massings will not be made in future wars. Or, if they are made, they must be made quickly and secretly and just as quickly dispersed. Losses on the home front will be reflected in short supply, and in the morale of our soldiery as they worry for the safety of their people. In these aspects the atom will have a profound influence on the Army. Essentially, the atom strikes not directly at the Army but at an intangible of transcendent importance—our national will to fight!
The guided missile field is of intense interest to the Army. When we consider that the massing of sufficient explosives, at the proper time and place, will of itself break up an attack or breach a position, the importance of the guided missile as vastly improved artillery is obvious.
It is conceivable that, by army group control, all guided missile units in all field armies could bring fire to bear on any critical portion of the front. The tremendous flexibility and versatility that is offered in this field is of paramount importance to the Army. We do not have the finished weapons now, but with their full development the Army will have a decidedly potent weapon for insuring a victory on land. The guided missile also will be of tremendous value in the anti-aircraft field. As a strategic weapon rather than tactical, guided missiles will undoubtedly aid the Army materially. The organization to control and plan the broader aspects of this strategic effort has yet to be evolved. It is reasonable to assume that all three services will partake in launching missiles on strategic missions. Unification will undoubtedly aid in providing proper coordination of such strategic efforts.
The secrecy that surrounds most new developments makes it difficult to evaluate their possible effects. But it is wise to remember that some weapons of war can also inflict damage to the user as well as the target against which they are directed. The fact that all adversaries shunned the use of gas in the last war is of course a case in point.
Perhaps it is in the field of electronics that the Army can profit most. It was demonstrated in the past war that high explosives cause the greatest casualties among land troops. If we can locate accurately by electronic means the enemy’s guns we can silence them and insure our success. Television has many possibilities as a target locator and as an aid in reconnaissance. Our communications must be improved, since modern developments in waging war require thinned lines with resulting difficulty of control.
Recoilless weapons, free rockets, better (not bulkier) armor, speed (not weight)— all these will aid the Army, but they also will make our own task more difficult to achieve.
The lot of the ground combat soldier becomes more hazardous, more complex, and more difficult as technological aids are developed. A century ago the foot soldier was used en masse. He fought pitched battles. If his flank was turned the battle was considered to be lost. Fighting was formalized and stylized. Leaders on the battlefield at brigade level personally led their troops. And the troops in solid ranks, shoulder to shoulder, felt the impact of this leadership and derived courage from the weight of numbers about them.
Today the only time the ground combat soldier experiences a group lift, that feeling that he is part of an irresistible mass, is when he participates in a formal review. The development of automatic weapons and improved artillery, plus the airplane and the tank, have thinned our lines. Small unit leadership has become of increasing importance. A turned flank is normal and it does not signify the end of the battle. It takes heart to stand with a squad or platoon when enemy guns are in the rear and one cannot determine which way the tide of battle runs.
It requires a peculiarly heightened discipline and splendid leadership. It required that kind of Spartan heroism that we call fanaticism when it is exhibited by our foes. And it is not a discipline that can be instilled in seventeen weeks or even a year of training. In the War Between the States there was much talk of the “thinking bayonet” of the “modern” man, and how through individual brain power the need for discipline was past. This fable persists. There are few who have not heard it voiced in some way or another, and yet in Normandy in the summer of 1944 a regimental commander wrote to General McNair, “Our discipline is only surface stuff”—and this after two years of energetic preparation. Many casualties are caused by this lack of discipline and many times a local success is not exploited because of this lack of discipline. It is well to remember that the one thing we cannot squander with impunity is our manpower. In addition to the very real moral obligation in this matter, is the demand of expediency. If lack of discipline means unnecessary casualties and lost opportunities, then discipline is absolutely necessary.
In a future war we will not have time to instill discipline after hostilities commence. We must have a disciplined sizeable force “in being.” And we must have that force without becoming “militaristic,” without forcing the military manner on our whole society. Our people are not favorable to any “continental system” of mobilization, but we must devise some system that embraces the virtues of the continental idea and excludes the faults. Certainly we will never approach the Prussian system which through its Imperial General Staff prior to 1914 advocated no increase in the size of the Army because there were not enough people of blood and background to officer the new units. Our American male is potentially the best soldier in the world. We do him a grave injustice if we fail to develop to the full that potentiality. That development means discipline, battle .discipline, the real means toward saving casualties and winning wars.
Wars are, perhaps, a mere bid for power in one form or another. But more and more the tendency is to make them wars of ideas or ideologies. We need a clearer understanding of “Why we fight.” We all sense what it is we seek to preserve, yet few can define our views or intelligently discuss them. A field officer told me of a personal experience of his that is most revealing as well as germane to this matter of providing an incentive to fight. He attended a post-hostilities course at Columbia University during the winter of 1945-46. He and forty of his fellow officers were men of several years service. At a seminar session lasting two hours, an able instructor asked the class to produce a list of conditions or guarantees that must obtain if a government is to be democratic in the Western, and commonly accepted, sense. At the end of two hours he had to supply most of the answers himself. If this situation is true of field officers of the Army, it is not strange that our soldiers fail to comprehend the larger aspects of the reasons why we fight.
By some means we must instill in our personnel a fundamental understanding of their political creed. I do not know if the Army, or the services, can clear up this problem or that it is even within their province to do so. But the problem remains, and it is a very real one. Political indoctrination, in a very real sense, is a potent force. It is not a new weapon. We need to develop it, for a man without conviction makes a poor fighter. More and more it becomes apparent that war is politics carried out by other means.
I come now to a new means of entry into combat, airborne operations. It was Rommel who said that desert fighting “is a tactician’s paradise and a quartermaster’s nightmare.” No one has disputed his observation. In fact, most people believe the statement to be reasonably clever and, most amazing of all, reasonably close to the truth. It is even more applicable to airborne and air-landing operations! Such operations are wide-open in the extreme. In speed and distance they dwarf a ground struggle on the desert.
Airborne or air-landing operations present logistical problems of staggering proportions. It is axiomatic that the G-4 holds the check rein on all plans of action. I have always been deeply impressed in ground actions by the quiet but very important role played by the FOUR. He takes the plans of the commander, and if there is any way possible to support them logistically he goes quietly about his work. But if he cannot support the plan he plucks at his commander’s sleeve and says “It cannot be done.” And if the FOUR and the commander are a worthy pair, the commander will change his plan to conform to the logistical possibilities. Otherwise, there will be a new FOUR, or perhaps, a little later, a new commander. It is plain that the science of logistics is particularly concerned with distance, speed, transport, and timing. By definition, then, airborne or air-landing operations demand the most precise and exhaustive logistical planning. Those who are familiar with amphibious operations know the staggering amount of logistical planning involved in such an action. Obviously, there is a definite analogy between amphibious and airborne or airlanding operations, and everything points to the latter as the more complex problem.
Logistics certainly is the controlling consideration regarding the range and size of airborne and air-landing operations. During the last war there was developed for the first time in our Army the airborne concept. It is true that it had a most humble beginning. Most missions for this embryonic force were at first envisioned as a sort of cloak-and- dagger business, an airborne commando raiding party, a small unit affair. Gradually, as the war moved to its close, the concept of employing airborne troops en masse gained favor. This concept was never brought into full employment until the airborne crossing of the Rhine at Wesel, when two airborne divisions entered combat en masse and complete in one fell swoop. The success of this operation was immediate and complete. Shock action, massing, surprise— all were utilized to the full. It is true that in Holland three airborne divisions were used, but their aerial delivery into combat was stretched over a period of days. Weather intervened, surprise was vitiated, and shock action and mass were lost.
Largely as a consequence of this piecemeal aerial entry into combat, the tragedy at Arnhem occurred. Even so, the venture was partially successful. The Army is thoroughly convinced that airborne action must be bold, it must take advantage of surprise to the utmost, and it must adhere to the principles of mass and shock action. Up to the present time we have had no airborne or air-landing operation which truly parallels a beach-head operation. Airborne troops have been supplied from the air for a few days only. We have never established a large airhead. Heretofore, we have linked up with ground troops in relatively short order. Actually we have never paralleled an amphibious operation on a large scale.
But it can be done. The deep and swift striking power that can be developed in an airborne operation can have far reaching strategic effect. Obviously our capacity to carry large bodies of troops by air will not be great at the start of a war. The ideal of an army airhead is improbable of achievement until relatively late in a war.
Transportation requirements cannot be met at the outset of a war, and air superiority must be attained to insure success of such operations. I use the term “means of entry into combat” because the soldier is a ground fighter the minute he hits the ground.
In spite of the inherent difficulties in air landing operations we are particularly interested in new developments which will make the ground arms truly and universally air transportable. We are setting our sights on the air landing of entire armies.
In discussing any plan for the employment of the Army in future wars the matter of the manpower potential must be considered, because it will have a profound bearing on the manner in which the ground fighter will be utilized. The numbers available will largely determine the extent to which they can be employed.
Manpower is one economic commodity of which we never have enough, and for which there is no acceptable substitute. The German General Staff was well aware of the manpower problem. In their calculating way they stated that after a certain percentage of a nation’s young blood has been spilled, the nation is incapable of any large offensive action. Our manpower is top quality, but in quantity it is lacking.
I doubt if any great numbers of our people will migrate to other lands, and I feel quite sure that our own immigration bars will not be lowered perceptibly. Our medical service and national sanitation are of such excellent order that I doubt that any pestilence will decimate us. It seems quite clear that, a generation from now, our population may reach the imposing figure of one hundred and sixty million people. But what will be the nature of this population? Everything points toward its becoming an old population, with the majority in the upper age groups. This is precisely the sort of state that has prevailed in France for some time. It is possible for our population to grow, for a considerable time at least, and yet our military manpower potential may remain static or even diminish. From such publications as Notestein’s “The Future Population of Europe and the Soviet Union,” and the National Resources Planning Board’s rather revealing pamphlets entitled “Estimates of the Future Population of the United States,” it is apparent that with reasonable accuracy our population can be predicted for certain assumptions of fertility and mortality rates.
The real points to be established are that we will have only so much manpower of a military age at any one time, that this potential can be predicted with reasonable accuracy. We must realize that in round and comparative number our military manpower is alarmingly small. We are not going to outbreed an enemy. We will win wars only when we outsmart and outfight him.
No single concept, at least from the standpoint of basic organization, will or should receive more serious consideration in the study of our role in future war than that of unity of command. This past war, principally in Europe, and perhaps to a lesser extent in the Pacific, saw an absolutely unprecedented attainment of the unity of means—not only land, sea, and air, but those of allies as well. Although predominantly American and British Commonwealth, the forces engaged against the Axis included French, Dutch, Norwegian, Belgian, Polish, Jewish, Brazilian, Greek, Italian, and many others.
General Fox Connor was the Chief of General Pershing’s operations division and no doubt had many headaches to deal with in coordinating efforts with the French and British Armies during World War I. In his annual lecture to the Army War College during the 20’s and 30’s, he used to open his remarks with the preface “If we should ever fight a war again with allies—which God forbid.”
Without more than lip service to the fundamental concept of the unity of effort, no sure plan for a future war can be considered sound. A unit, a service, or a nation’s forces, in which the theme is allowed to develop of damning those with whom, instead of against whom, the fight is to be carried on, is courting defeat and disaster. Often all too common have been the phrases “the damn’ tanks, the damn’ Air Corps, the damn’ Navy, the damn’ British, and the bloody Yanks.” I think my point is clear—with the concept of unity go those of cooperation, mutual support, and common effort.
I cannot close without paying profound and everlasting tribute to the front-line soldier, so few in numbers when compared with the millions who recently served their country in the armed forces, who will play the same role in future wars. I do not minimize either the essentiality or the tremendous service of the individuals, troops, and facilities which raised, housed, and supplied, trained, administered, and transported the vast numbers of troops that were needed and employed across the world. Often the risks and dangers on the seas, in the air, and on home stations flared into costly reality, and grim discomfort and death were not confined solely to the battlefield on land.
But for sheer and bitter desperation of survival to fight and win; for dogged perseverance, courage, and sacrifice of self, of safety, limb, and life; for service to his fellows, his outfit and his country—no one individual merits more the deep and unqualified tribute of a victorious nation than the foxhole rifleman. And I conceive of him as representing the tank crew, the fighter pilot, the bomber crew, the forward artillery observer, and the aid man to the front line. Taken all together, their numbers were surprisingly small.
The organization of the vast forces used in modern war requires great force to serve in support of the forces actually in contact with the enemy. It will not be different in the future. The foxhole rifleman, as the epitome of the fighting soldier, comprises only a few percent of the total forces. But he bore the great burden of the casualty cost and he makes up the great part of the silent population of the cemeteries overseas. Where he was, there the battle was. He took the ground and held it. Most of the sweat and blood were his; his family shed most of the tears.
Men, not weapons, make war and peace. Men, not machines, win and lose the battle. It is a fault born of our American kind of civilization that we think we can win a war cheaply—without having to come to a death grip with the enemy. That idea tended dangerously to take strong hold in the early days of World War II. But if a war is to be won, the root and the source of the enemy’s threat and of the hostile action must be seized and destroyed. Europe had to be invaded; Germany had to be overrun; the V sites had to be destroyed; Mussolini and Hitler had to die. It was men—men with machines and weapons, it is true; but in the last analysis, men—who did these things. The war in Europe, as did the war throughout the world, and all the wars of history, proved again the basic military concept that man is the principal weapon of war.