Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command

Rating:
Summary: SLAM Is Overrated
Review: As a primer for military knowledge, SLA Marshall's Men Against Fire is recommended reading for both the US Army and the USMC. His information is regarded as factual and authoritative, because he "was there". The reality of SLA Marshall is a little different.

From Dave Hackworth's "About Face", the truth about SLA Marshall can be seen. Marshall wasn't present for D-Day as he claims, and wasn't present in the European Theater until July of 1944. His service in Korea covered exactly three months (Dec 1950- Feb 1951), and was as a historian only, not a combat soldier.

"Veterans of many of the actions he 'documented' in his books have complained bitterly over the years of his inaccuracy or blatant bias..," Hackworth writes. "He didn't seem to care that what he wrote was totally inaccurate and easily disproved." (pg. 584, About Face).

On Killing is a fine novel that illustrates a different side of warfare, one more focused on the after-effects of warfare and the stress resultant from the taking life in the line of duty. Marshall's Men Against Fire is an important novel as well, if only for historical value, and as evidence of many of the lessons the Army has still not learned in the application of small unit tactics. However, for anyone to assert that SLA Marshall's information on fire volume is accurate or representative of careful fact-finding is doing a disservice to himself as well as other readers. SLA Marshall's work is sensationalized, and was designed to sell rather than inform or act as a foundation for further study.

Rating:
Summary: Pioneering Analysis...in 1947, Today: Little Value!
Review: First published in 1947, S.L.A. Marshall's "Men Against Fire" argues that in spite of long-range nuclear weapons, the next war of nations will not be a push-button war. Rather, individuals engaging each other on the battlefield will again provide the mainstay of a total war even more destructive than World War II. Obviously, Marshall did not foresee the advent of limited wars in Korea and Vietnam just around the corner. Nevertheless, Marshall poses some thought provoking questions of Americans in combat. In a highly controversial claim based on questionable research, Marshall concludes that in World War II, only one-in-four soldiers fired his rifle in combat. Marshall claims to have "personally" conducted mass interviews with approximately 400 infantry companies in the Central Pacific and European Theaters immediately following important battles (If you are doing the Arithmetic, approx. 200 men per company x 400 companies, you're getting the idea!). Not one platoon, company, or battalion commander, argues Marshall, was aware that only twenty-five percent of soldiers engaged in combat fired their weapons. As a result of his findings, Marshall then campaigned for the need of new training methods for infantry soldiers. He stressed, this individual training should be based on long-term psychological camaraderie, not the quick turnover replacement system that was utilized during World War II. Marshall's un-refuted claims (until recently) have influenced a generation of military historians including T.R. Fehrenbach and Russell F. Weigley. Marshall is quick to point out that the alleged seventy-five percent of those who did not shoot were not shirkers or meanderers. These men were on the front line with their assigned units and often performed other essential tasks relating to combat duty. When the confusion and chaos of a fire fight ensued, however, they just did not shoot their weapons. Marshall rejects the reason most often used for not firing, that of giving one's position away. Instead, Marshall contends it is just a gut-level fear that prevents these men from firing at the enemy. Fears of letting down one's comrades were also prevalent among the interviewees. Most importantly, however, Marshall found "that fear of killing, rather than the fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure in the individual, and that fear of failure ran a close second." Predictively, Marshall does not cite any of his evidence and his less than scientific methods have been widely refuted in recent decades. However, the questions that he poses about the psychological makeup of an American in combat have some merit. It is widely agreed by military professionals that two years is enough time to adequately train an individual for combat. Yet given the uniquely American dependence on the citizen soldier, is this time period sufficient to turn an ordinary civilian into an effective combat soldier? Is an American conscript morally and ethically suited for this role? Is there a solution other than Marshall's proposing that units train together and stay together with a tight knit cadre of officers and non-coms that would provide the basis of moral support all through training and eventual deployment in combat? In hindsight, one such inception, "Operation Gyroscope" in the late 1950s was a complete failure. It is the thought provoking answers to these questions that make S.L.A. Marshall's book a significant addition to any bookshelf, though its viewpoints are severely dated and controversial.

Rating:
Summary: The Proof is in the Pudding
Review: I love this book. I've quoted it in articles and still recommend it to anyone currently in Army leadership training, especially PLDC or OCS. It's on my shelf with Keegan's "Face of Battle" and Grossman's "On Killing."

The criticisms of Marshall are entirely baseless. One example: a critic here claims that in the 1970s, veterans retiring from service disagreed with Marshall, claiming that his statements about low rates of fire in WII ("only 15-25% of riflemen actually fired their rifles in combat") MUST be untrue, because... well, because the rate was over 90% in Vietnam (which is the conflict a soldier would have retired from in the 1970s). None of these critics seem to notice that they were the beneficiaries of a training system based on Marshall's book, precisely designed to raise their rates of fire!

The Army applied the lessons Marshall wrote down, and the result was exactly what Marshall predicted.

His observations seem commonsense, but we have to remember that WWII began with a US Army completely unprepared for modern combat. They were still making some things up as they went.

An example of his findings: four men in the dark, who stay in communication and coordinate their weapons, will not panic as often as four men in daylight who make no effort at teamwork. You can prove this to yourself playing paintball. In fact, there is no better predictor of small-unit success.

As for the supposed "lies," such as not being present at D-Day: these are based on flimsy paper evidence ("floaters" like Marshall can often out-travel their paperwork), as well as personal attacks (I'm thinking specifically of Col. Reeder, whose own observations emphasized tactical individual success - but interestingly enough, Reeder found an average of ONE such "pointer" per platoon, which suggests a fire rate LOWER than Marshall's!)

If you want to know how men act under fire, this is one absolute necessity for your bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Marshall still rules
Review: The negative review from "a reader in Boston" is misinformed. As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman puts it in On Killing (Little, Brown, 1996): "Some modern writers (such as Harold Leinbaugh, author of The Men of Company K) are particularly vociferous in their belief that the firing rate in World War II was significantly higher than Marshall represented it to be. But we shall see that at every turn my research has uncovered information that would corroborate Marshall's basic thesis, if not his exact percentages. Paddy Griffith's studies of infantry regimental killing rates in Napoleonic and U.S. Civil War battles; Ardant du Picq's surveys; the research of soldiers and scholars such as Colonel Dyer, Colonel (Dr.) Gabriel, Colonel (Dr.) Holmes, and General (Dr.) Kinnard; and the observations of World War I and World War II veterans like Colonel Mater and Lieutenant Roupell -- all of these corroborate General Marshall's findings. Certainly this subject needs more research and study, but I cannot conceive of any motive for these researchers, writers, and veterans to misrepresent the truth. I can, however, understand and appreciate the very noble emotions that could cause men to be offended by anything that would seem to besmirch the honor of those infantrymen who have sacrificed so much in our nation's (or any nation's) past."