Recently I watched “Saving Private Ryan” again, and it made me have some questions. For example, in the opening scene of soldiers rushing to the beach, most of the soldiers were almost dead before they even got out of the landing craft. If the commander was also killed, what about the remaining soldiers? Who should direct the people? How should each unit perform the tasks assigned before departure?
In: Other
This is something which have changed as the type of battles have changed and as different military doctrines are developed and adapted. But for most of the 20th century and even in most armies today every commander have a second in command. Sometimes you even have a third person in the unit with role of commander. Not only does this help if the commander is dead but also allow you to split the unit or allow for better flow of orders. If all the commanders of a unit is unavailable you go to the next lower set of commanders. As a rule the most senior of these gets promoted. So the most senior squad commander gets the role of troop commander if the troop commander and his second in command is both dead. So no matter who gets killed everyone knows who takes their place.
As for how the orders from above is distributed down this depends on doctrine. Of course you need secrecy so you may not be able to tell everyone the plan in detail. This does occasionally leave you with troops who do not know their role in the plan. But they know the general idea, if nothing else they will find targets of opportunity or link up with another unit to fall inn under their command. This is something which is better demonstrated in “Band of Brothers” which show the scattered state of the US airborne troops in the D day landings where most troops were unable to link up with their commanders and were often too far from their objectives. But in this case they had actually briefed each soldier on what their mission was, although not the mission of their neighboring units. So there were enough soldiers dropped in the right place to puzzle together the battle plans and execute them.
And this is a bigger part of the modern NATO military doctrine. Each soldier is briefed on their role in the bigger picture so that they can execute their mission and change it as needed without having to receive orders from the commanders. There is a lot more self-organizing in a modern army then there were even 20 years ago. To the degree where a lot of commanders do not even have a second in command any longer. When soldiers can make their own tactical decisions there is less need for a commander in the battle.
Latest Answers