Why were the camouflage uniforms (green, brown, yellow) adopted so late? When it seems that it would be pretty obvious that a soldier would die less often in the field if he’s harder to spot? Even in WW1 French were still wearing bright blue and red uniforms?
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In modern war, killing soldiers quickly and accurately from a distance is easy but that’s a relatively modern thing. Real time voice communication between different units in a battle is also a modern thing.
In an earlier battlefield, say during the napoleonic wars, engagements were generally between large blocks of soldiers, not individual units.
Accurate range for the muskets of the time was generally pretty short (lethal range 175 yards, but volley range was generally 25-50 yards to allow soldiers to actually hit something). Once they did start shooting, the gunpowder of the time was very smoky
The commanders would generally try to position themselves where they could see most of the battlefield as this was the only way to know what was going on in real time. They could send messengers who take time to get there or use flag signals or sound signals etc (relatively simple messages only) to communicate.
In order to know what was going on, they used distinctive uniforms so they could tell which soldiers were which from a distance especially through the smoke. This also helped soldiers avoid friendly fire.
By WW1, weapons had gotten a lot more accurate and machine guns were starting to be a common weapon but tactics were still catching up and there wasn’t much experience with the modern weapons so there were a lot of fuck-ups early on as they got the hang of how to fight in with and against the new weapons
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