in strategy games you usually have troops at the frontline whose sole purpose is to die fighting to buy you time to execute your plans or to protect stronger troops. is this something that happens in real life / used to happen before, if so what are the logistics of it, do the troops know that they are most likely goona die, etc..
In: 399
Read up on the different ‘life expectancy’ of various garrisons, bases, depots and troops stationed throughout Europe during the cold war.
Where life expectancy were measured in hours, not days, after start of any conflict with the USSR.
Old fashioned skirmishers or “irregulars” were often used to blunt an enemy charge or soak up arrows, the bristish would often send native troops in first to fight during the colonial period for the same reason, Russia is doing it now with the wagner group
It’s been happening as long as there has been organized warfare. Formation fighting doesn’t work if everyone is trying to save themselves.
The Redcoats of the British Empire era are an excellent example. The assumption behind everything is they keep marching and fighting when several guys in their line go down. And they did, and they were very tough to beat.
During the Battle of Gettysburg, General Hancock sent the 1st Minnesota Infantry into a suicidal run against Confederates threatening to breach his defenses. He needed to buy time for his reinforcements to arrive.
The 1st Minnesota was outnumbered 5-1 but charged in anyway and held out for a surprising amount of time whilst suffering 87% casualties. It bought Hancock enough time for his reinforcements to arrive. His defenses held and the Confederates retreated.
The Battle of Gettysburg might have had a different outcome if the 1st Minnesota hadn’t charged in despite overwhelming odds.
I’m currently reading a book called “Checkpoint Charlie.”
One common sentiment that troops stationed there expressed was that in the event of the Cold War turning hot they were “the tripwire.” They knew they wouldn’t make it out alive, but at least they could give NATO a bit of a warning.
One unit, detachment A, was a special ops unit whose mission, in the event of war, was to wreck havoc by destroying key objectives. They would break up into teams of 2-3 and beeline to their objective. The expected life expectancy of these soldiers? 48 hours.
A lot of these answers are drastic oversimplifications. Yes, the Japanese used Kamikazes in WW2, and yes, the Russians have used human wave attacks in Ukraine. But these are the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of militaries have historically not fielded units with the explicit expectation that they would all die, mostly because it’s a massive waste of resources.
Strategy video games also oversimplify how war is fought. In video games, when your unit is defeated, it dies and no longer exists. In reality, that unit front line unit would more commonly be captured or retreat with heavily casualties. It would not actually be completely annihilated.
Part of the job of the unit personnel officer (S1 under NATO staff system, other designations outside of NATO system) is to, in addition to regular HR stuff like processing pay and boring paperwork, figure out an estimate of how many casualties to expect when the various staff officers are advising the commander for how to come up with a plan. His job also includes advising the commander on how to adjust to having fewer guys around afterwards.
Really, one of the main reasons why they discourage social ties between officers and enlisted troops is that the officers are going to have to tell people to risk their lives, might have to pick people to do something knowing that they will most likely be killed (even if he doesn’t tell them that). For example: if Staff Sergeant Jones from Third Platoon is one of Captain Smith’s drinking buddies, he might be inclined to give the less dangerous missions to Third Platoon, which is unfair to First and Second Platoon (infantry companies typically have four platoons, but Fourth Platoon is where they keep the heavy weapons that are bigger than stuff held at platoon level, such as mortars).
From Wikipedia on the Fulda Gap:
During the Cold War, the Fulda Gap offered one of the two obvious routes for a hypothetical Soviet tank attack on West Germany from Eastern Europe (especially from East Germany); the other route crossed the North German Plain. A third, less likely, route involved travelling up through the Danube River valley through neutral Austria. The concept of a major tank battle along the Fulda Gap became a predominant element of NATO war planning during the Cold War. With such an eventuality in mind, weapons were evolved such as nuclear tube and missile artillery, the nuclear recoilless gun/tactical launcher Davy Crockett, Special Atomic Demolition Munitions, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, and A-10 ground attack aircraft.
Units stationed here were expected to fight and die in place to buy time for the rest of Europe. For example firing a Davy Crockett recoilless gun put you within the blast radius of the small nuclear warhead. Crazy stuff
[removed]
I think you’re looking for the “forlorn hope”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_hope
Latest Answers