How to get troops to attack

in this video which has been sponsored by audible but more of that later I'm going to be talking about the tremendous difficulty that armies have getting their soldiers to actually get in there to get to grips face-to-face with the enemy and get the job done closing with the enemy there are many obstacles to this and I could be taking much of my material from this book which is called wargames although it has another title confusingly brains and bullets by Leo Murray it's been produced by a small group of like-minded individuals who are trying to get their ideas out there and it seems that they are at least tolerant of my being a vehicle for just that now one thing that will help get guys go forward is good leadership if you've got a good leader telling them to do it then they're more likely to do it right one of the big problems with leadership though is that no one has worked out exactly what the hell it is what is it that makes a good leader and how on earth do you teach it now true there are many gurus out there who will for a fee you understand allow you to attend their seminars in which they will tell you the secrets of leadership but it seems that they're probably charlatans because militaries all around the world have been trying for centuries to work out a way of teaching leadership working out what the hell it is that makes a leader a good leader and they have all failed now there was a u.s. Naval Academy that had a peer rating system so at the the end of the course once the various students let's call them had been taught all the various things and been tested on all the various things and had various marks so people knew roughly how well they were doing there was a big final test and they would select the leader for the big final test by getting all of the candidates to vote amongst themselves it was peer rating and they would vote for the person they wanted to be their leader for the big final exit exercise which was very important to their final mark now the u.s. Naval Academy actually dropped this practice and replaced it with the officers teaching leader course picking the person that they thought ought to be leader and the reason was a political reason the reason was no woman had ever been selected to be the leader of the final of the final task and they thought that this was in some way wrong the problem with this is that if you if everyone agrees if everyone votes this is the person we want to be led by that actually makes them a good lead if people want to be led by you you are a good leader you've got that magical thing which which you've you've all picked up on and it inspires you and because it inspires you that makes you good leader but maybe the people running the course haven't picked up on it and they think well no let's look at the marks and very these people have done better marks and actually so those turn and they may have come up with a really terrible reason and a terrible choice of leader the person that naturally somehow has just got it and makes all the other people think yeah I want to be led by that guy he's a good leader but how can you work this out by by teaching it it seems not by by criteria tick boxes by some sort of mathematical algorithm nope but if you get people to vote amongst themselves who do you want as leader then you get someone who is a good leader at least in small groups and all saying that's necessarily consistently applies with democracies for instance but you get the general picture now one of the things that consistently comes up in what makes a good leader is he's someone who wouldn't order you to do something that he wouldn't do himself and he sets an example he leads by example if he wants troops to get stuck in with the enemy he gets himself stuck in with the enemy follow me men and he charges forwards and that inspires the men so they charge after him although actually a friend of mine when he did eventually become an army officer but the first time he applied he failed the the entrance tests and one of the reasons that they gave was that he led almost entirely by example rather than by giving orders so they obviously wanted and someone who could do both so being able to set an example is a good way of inspiring people and leaders have different jobs in in war so for instance with tune you got the platoon officer who's a perhaps a captain or more often a left tenant and he might be he might be trying to get the guys to go forwards and he's looking at the big picture and his sergeant is a very useful guy but he's not the main guy who says right follow me guys we're going there his job is more to do with going laterally to going out to the flanks to moving outwards left and right conveying the ADI the orders of the officer passing his plants that everyone knows what the plan is along the line and and sorting out any local problems he comes across hang on why you guys have to position no no you need to be there and you need to be shooting at those guys over there right okay and then across to the other side and if anyone's not doing their job to trip him or get them to do their job and joying everything along now of course any sensible left-handed will listen to his sergeant particularly the sergeant is more experienced but ultimately if the commander of a of the platoon is the officer and he's the guy says right guys this is what we're gonna do we're gonna go that way and we're gonna do it now and he could if he's in a Hollywood movie make a speech a stirring speech in which he appeals to things like patriotism duty honor think of the people back home protecting your wives and children back home but actually in a real battle none of those things plays any part that those ideas go completely out of the window they're a guide the bullets are flying about the place there are guys thinking huh am I in danger I couldn't be in less danger if I moved somewhere else where are my friends where are my friends where are my friends that's particularly important one where are my friends and and what are the orders and is my gun still working and you're thinking all those thoughts you're not thinking about Patrick ISM duty and the folks back home you have far more pressing more urgent matters that completely occupy your mind right now so how did you get the guys to go forwards well a surly marshal in his men against fire he reported that commanding officers particularly more senior ones walk going around a battle got the impression that everyone was doing their job and it seems this was for the same reason that the Queen thinks that the world smells paint if you're British you'll get that reference but just in case you're not British which is possible let me explain there is this gag shared by all British people that the Queen thinks that the world smells of paint the the idea being that she's constantly visiting hospitals and schools and various institutions that are being opened up or having new wings added or whatever or giving out awards and things and of course knowing that the Queen is just about to visit they spruce the place up just in time for her visit and that's why every time she goes into all these buildings there's always the smell of drying paint because something somewhere has just been repainted so if you are the Queen you perhaps get the impression that that's the way the world smells so if you are a commanding officer and you're wandering around a battlefield you may get the impression that that everyone's constantly doing their job and firing at the enemy but actually the reason they're doing their job and firing at the enemy is that you are you are there so they'd been hunkered down in their slit trenches and their foxholes doing as little as possible in keeping out of harm's way as much as possible apps having a smoke or whatever and then oh oh the commanding officers around quick everyone look look busy look competent look brave maybe you got a medal out of it sorry mate I'm firing me yeah so perhaps that's why commanding officers didn't realize how few men were actually fighting properly during battles now the the granddaddy of tactical psychologies is a British guy called David Rolland and based on information gleaned during World War two he came up with some calculations to show how many anti-tank guns the NATO allies should be fielding to stop the steamroller attack that was expected possibly that was feared at least from the Warsaw Pact and he he thought fairly convincingly showed that anti-tank guns was a way to stop their tanks but there was a very powerful tank lobby the people who made tanks which are very big and expensive things were quite keen on making and selling lots of Tanks and there was this idea that tanks about if the enemy has got tanks we should have tanks right but actually if you're the defending force anti-tank gun can be better it's a much easier to conceal it's much smaller it's much cheaper so you can have more of them and the crew can be spread out more you can have lots of guys and binoculars in the open air and they're able to use their two eyes with the perspective that that gives you and then confirm with binoculars and they shout to each other yeah there's a target over there you see three telegraph poles left at the back of the big barn she's got more eyes looking at the target you open and you've got more room to load the gun fire the gun and you can have a very powerful anti-tank gun that doesn't have to have a enormous noisy difficult to move expensive attention drawing chassis to carry it and he reckoned that with the right crew anti-tank guns could be perhaps ten times more effective than tanks tanks cost being mobile can use that mobility to get out of danger which is something that anti-tank guns can't so if the enemy is coming forwards and you've got an anti-tank gun maybe it's better that you stay here and shoot the enemy rather than just try to get out of there but anyway the tank lobby it seems actually won the debate anyway he was able to cite certain examples so for example in the Second Battle of El Alamein there there was one six pounder gun that knocked out seven enemy tanks which is better than some regiments managed to achieve it was crewed by a corporal a sergeant a left-handed and a left-handed colonel and when you get crews like that together of guys with a lot of gumption a lot of initiative and a lot of keenness to get stuck in and and competence and all the rest of it then it seems that anti-tank guns are tremendously effective but if you've got a weapon the perhaps you don't have tremendous confidence in and no one's watching you and you feel a bit vulnerable you might decide not to use it properly and just get out of there instead and this is what happened was a lot of two-pounder parties now the start of World War two the British had a stand of anti-tank gun that was a 2 pounder and almost every a source you ever read about these will tell you it was a pop gun it was ridiculously obsolete no actually at the start of World War two it was a pretty effective had a good hit rate he had a very high rate of fire and that's really good and a fast 360 Traverse and they found that they could porty them nowadays they could just stick it on the back of a lorry now in desert warfare a lorry is a very vulnerable thing it's got no armor and it's got a rather high silhouette so you don't feel particularly safe firing an anti-tank gun off the back of a lorry and if no one is watching you might decide yeah just do it to abandon things but if you stick to your gun and get the full capability out of it it was actually very effective and he was very effective against even Panzer fours I mean look these would be the earlier panzer falls that weren't quite so heavily armoured so the quality of the crew actually this became a problem in in World War two I've heard it said for instance that there were tank crews a tank would get knocked and run over a mine say Oh immobilize what can we do well okay abandoned tank guys hatches open and the commander gets out sends his men away but thinks I don't walks over to one of the other tanks and his troop knocks on a hatch and says right you wait ant and he orders one of the lower ranking guys in that other tank out and he replaces it so now you've got two commanders in one tank and then that tank gets knocked out and those two commanders then join another tank than that tanks now got three commanders in it and after a while you have to sometimes tanks entirely crewed by officers sometimes quite senior but that's a lot of eggs in one basket so orders came from on high to put us up in a chaps and no more of that anyway sorry digression let's fast forward now to the 1960s and Yale University and they're very very very famous scientific experiment I don't spend ages describing it because you probably know about it you know it's the one that where you with a very serious free credible very grave guy with glasses it's quite senior a nice suit with a lab coat over the top clipboard and he gets in to test subjects and says right well one of you is actually going to be experimented on and the other ones just going to help me do the experimentation and randomly they pick one to go through into another room where they'll be spoken to just over the intercom I'll be able to see them and then the other one just sits down next to the chap with the clipboard and he's actually the guy that the is being experimented upon because he wasn't really random and the guy went into the other room was actually in on it and was an actor and he says right we were experimenting on the effects of punishment and reward on how good people are at answering questions so they would ask a question and if the guy got it wrong he would get an electric shock and it was it was the it was the guinea pigs job to set the volt meter - how much of a shock to give the guy and then press the button to administer the shock and then the guy over the intercom would go all right okay so I'll be wrong then I suppose and then the next question more electrical charges oh oh well we come over there and each time more and more and more pain was being registered by an actor over the speaker until the guy in the other room was pleading no it no stop series this is really painful and I want to stop I want to stop and the man with the clipboard would say they're absolutely fine there's no way that any harm can come to them please it's just a scientific experiment it's necessary that we we carry on how do you know what most people did it turned out I mean you might think no no I wouldn't but most people the substantial majority people would keep on obeying instructions okay I was just told to do it and would up and up and up the amount of electric current running through this person he was just pretending until they would actually feign death and then they would still no no no no no I had that prompt they're just that they'll be fine there you go they've gone quiet now please carry on with experiment it was amazing how far they would go with that and various militaries around the world looked at this and thought well that's interesting I wonder if soldiers behave this way and whether there's something we ought to know about soldiers so military equivalents of this were organized winces there's one where you're on a firing range and there's a drill instructor saying what we need to to test the effectiveness of this new sighting system on the rifle or whatever it was and you have to fire a certain number of bullets and he's noting stuff down on the clipboard it's all very official you understand and you fire a few shots and then over an intercom well something working on the range down by the target is saying whoa what's your ricochets guys that did Sunday I definitely pinged off a saw it to hit the berm not far from me and don't worry it's perfectly safe and after a while know that I hate guys seriously that missed me by just like ten feet or something could you really watch it don't worry he's perfectly safe it's all but it's all been tested there carry on with the experiment and then bang over they did hey just missed me holy cats I got a hole in my uniform and again they would keep going actually caused an accident they didn't of course caused any accident the guy on the intercom was an actor in on it but again same sort of idea they heard and there was no bond with that so the experiment on stealing air and this always involved people jumping out with aircraft with parachutes with I know supposedly tried to get the parachutes to open at the same height so if this parachute opened first then maybe it would steal the air the air rushing that way that means that this parachute doesn't open properly and this guy then possibly suffice I would people actually do this and one of the interesting things they found was that a soldier would often be willing to accept risk for himself and he might accept a stranger his actions to cause a stranger to to be at risk but soldiers were extremely reluctant to take some action that would put one of their mates at risk another thing they found out is that the the grave credible experimenter who's giving them the instructions that they're supposed to obey if he was a well-respected sergeant that sometimes worked better than an officer who was considered a bit of what the Americans would call a pencil-neck I'm actually I've had a few emails from charming Americans calling me a pencil-neck well sorry I'm doing my best the British Army perhaps would call them rupert's same to the thing in case you don't get that reference an awful lot of British Army officers are from aristocratic backgrounds and a lot of upper-class people in Britain are called Rupert which of course you realize is just a the same name as Robert but spelt differently as in you know Rupert the Bruce anyway totally found out that yes soldiers did actually have that this this psychology in common with those people who were administering the electric shocks so leadership therefore clearly has a marked effect if there's someone who is credible telling you to do something then you are surprisingly likely to do it while I was ordered to do it so it was bringing you know and he knew what he was talking about presumably he's got a kind of clipboard and everything or he had pips on his shoulder or whatever it was that gave him this credibility to to make these people do that was required of them now and there's a drill that has been taught since World War one I'm pretty sure in the British Army and so that their records of it going back a very long time and the results are instructive so in this drill there is an enemy a known enemy you are told how many enemy are there are and what weapons they've got and they're just over there there are only a hundred yards away so that should make the situation pretty safe and easy to deal with because you're dealing with so many knowns and there's another unit somewhere that this is pouring suppressive fire onto them keeping them suppressed and your job your sections job is to get in there get in there with grenades bayonets and and and right hand up John Paul or Fritz or whoever it's going to be and and come on and to do the job to actually take the position from the enemy to win the battle and privates are amazingly reluctant to do this even though and it's on your simulation of course so nobody actually dies but even in the simulation there's a 90% survival rate of the guys who go in to take the position but even then they're really reluctant or if reluctance not quite the word they just don't have the initiative to do it I don't know what quite what's going on why the who why should I follow you watch if you just have a lot of privates there they don't do anything it takes someone a command more senior than the section commander some a sergeant or or a platoon commander a left-hander has to come along and lead them and then they'll do it now a private on his own under combat in a combat situation seems to have about less than a 20% chance of initiating violence an NCO as corporals and sergeants people like that more like 40% a really good NCO senior NCO or an officer it's somewhere around 70% of course he never get to 100% but the more senior you go that the more likely it is that these people will initiate some violence somehow get people moving forwards doing the job this involves of course quite often leading by example now there are various factors that will lower this chance but under ideal conditions with a good officer you are six times more likely to get an attack going in you're six times more likely to get an attack to happen if you've got a good leader under ideal conditions I say how the other conditions every dark or you're in a jungle or to confuse amazed of buildings or whatever so envision is is blocked by smoke or whatever it is so people can't see each other then it can be more difficult to get things to happen you might charge forward a few guys go with you but the other guys going where they've all gone where is everyone gone and not knowing where you've gone they don't go charging forwards because they don't know that you've gone forwards necessarily maybe you went backwards and so they just stay where they are or will just look stupid and and ask a lot of questions and but good units elite units well-trained experienced troops will clearly do a lot better in these situations and it seems that one of the main reasons for this is that if someone at least half-decent steps up and said ah okay I don't know where the officer is he seems to have gone but if you'll follow me I'll lead us in and if you're in an elite unit you've probably got trust in that other guy you've probably served with him for a while you've probably got confidence that he does actually know what he's doing so okay someone half-decent steps up fair enough we're gonna follow this guy and get the job done because being an elite unit you're reasonably experienced you probably know what the job is that has to be done and what needs to be done to get it done so fair enough in will go which means that elite units degrade very slowly as officers get lost get killed go missing for whatever reasons the other troops are able to carry on under intense combat situations conditions non elite units in non elite units privates will almost never initiate violence so if you are trying to come up with some more game rules for instance doesn't matter what appear this meagan either Wars of the Roses so you've got to let's say peasants and minute arms and nights just to have three very broad categories if you actually want the troops who are peasants to do anything then you need a good sergeant of the arms or a good night to be with them and make sure that they do actually move and do something cuz otherwise they're like if it is they'll just stand around chewing the cud or slowly march toward the so he was a saunter just of amble just sidle sidle that's what they do they sidle to the rear and out of harm's way right I think now it's probably time for me to pick up my uke and let's see where [Music] so she quite difficult to play you which is quite shiny with it with a city but anyway yes sponsor time and my sponsor for this video is audible so thank you very much audible and audible has an offer on yes if you go to www.google.com stroke lyndie page or particular if you in America I think this works best you text a Lindy page to 500 500 then you can take advantage of an offer yes you can get three months for the knockdown price of just six dollars 95 which is under half the usual price and what you get for that what is audible well I'll tell you audible has the world's biggest collection of audiobooks and you get one of those per month for that price and on top of that in addition as well you get two that's two audio when you can if you want you to have to belt forced on you to audio audible originals and original being something you can't get anywhere else and they have they're pretty famous people like people like these involved in those audible originals so they're they're not not to be scoffed or sniffed out will have none of that scoffing or sniffing and you can you can of course own these things forever not you're not renting them it's not a streaming service you actually you download the thing it's yours it's your property to keep for ever and ever and you can even share one with a friend once now you played all those devices as well and not just your computer you even that's right even on telephones I don't understand how that's possible but apparently you can play this stuff even on telephones these days if assuming they're not joking about that anyway there are features a features unique fit here some features that are unique to audible there you go features that's enough about the features the point is that audible got its act together on on this front and I doesn't recommend the junior or the postman I do in fact recommend the junior officers reading club by a chap called patrick hennessey who's also the voice you will hear reading the audiobook so it's narrated by the author which i think is often nice and he tells his story of how he became an officer in the British Army the first part of the book is he is growing up joining the army being trained and having his first few postings that for instance he was one of the guards at the Tower of London for a while but he was he talked about this quite taboo subject is taboo subject of his how keen he was and all the guys around him to get into action get into a real scrap and how near insanely jealous he was of the guys have actually been out there and and come back with with dirt on their uniforms that showed that yeah they'd seen action and and and their their camouflage uniforms were faded under the Sun and when you saw them in the airport just thought I want to be one of those and when he got into action he also talks about again a bit of a taboo subject that the heii's he felt how exhilarating he found being in combat something which I found was frustrating but annoying is that he was almost silent on the nuts and bolts of the tactics he was using so he would say oh we fought our way from here to there and just how what exactly do you do what orders did you give how what was the but on the psychology it's and it's not tactical psychology it's different sort of psychology he's talking about the desires and feelings that the soldiers have he's very good and he eventually left he left the army though later he went back to Afghanistan as a reportable he left the army because he found himself thinking I'm not in love with this guy I appear to be becoming he would when he was on leave back in Britain go to some really dodgy pubs and he often what he was thinking why am I going to all these dodgy pubs at oh oh right yeah I'm hoping something's gonna kick off I'm hoping there's gonna be some trouble I'm hoping someone's gonna challenge me so I can rise slowly from my seat crack my knuckles and say oh dear you picked on the wrong guy I've killed people and I don't mind adding to the list and I thought I don't want to be that guy so he got out of the army and wrote this book and now if you go to www.hsn spur month can listen to that audio book or any of notes of others so thanks audible right now moving on one of the things that gets guys to go forward is it's the fellowship of the other guys around them if you're in a group of guys of all going forwards in a determined manner it's much more likely that you two will go forward in the determined manner and when that people observe hunter-gatherers fighting they notice that they have these loose dispersed formations that almost never really get to grips with the enemy they the guys have often got javelins the like and maybe a shield spears and other things but javelins are commonly the main weapon maybe some bows and they they they get to a certain distance from each other when they're traveling is a threat but if you've got much closer you yes you'd be able to threaten one of the enemy more but several of the enemy will be able to threaten use so you don't actually charge out of your formation that far forward because it's too much of a risk to you so you end up with these formations that just sort of postural each other for a while and exchange the occasional javelin just throw but a javelin or even arrow from the shot of distance it was just one it's quite easy to see and dodge and you've got all your various mates will point out you exist there's a javelin coming in from that side you haven't seen in some although show lineup and you know you'll be fairly safe and casualties amongst that those sort of engagements are very very low and in fact of course in the ancient world there were skirmishes who did precisely that job they were usually young men again armed with javelins of alike missile weapons who were not expected to close with the enemy yes they had swords and other weapons just in case that happened but they were not expected that wasn't their prime job they were screening the the army as it deployed in in tough big dense blocks of armored men the heavy infantry behind and when the the army was ready to advance the skirmish was of that with fall back and the guys who were expected to close of the enemy then they would advance and if they saw their own skirmishes running past them the other way they wouldn't bother them at that much because well skirmish has always fall back that's once their job once they've done their job that's that's to be expected so it wouldn't dismay they have the infantry going forward to see their skirmishes running at speed in the opposite direction now in exams of the great time he was a big big fan of the phalanx of massive phalanx of pikemen and phalanx and yes it was quite a deep formation but it was also in his day a very very wide formation it was most of the guys in the army and most of those guys are in the middle of that phalanx formation with what is essentially a very long stick a pike so they're not gonna be fussing about they can't be saying oh I've got to check the frequencies on my radio I've got to check that the ejector port on this this is working and whether this thing is oiled and you don't have anything complicated like that that you can you got an excuse to fuss with you've got a stick oh I've got to make sure that my stick is a stick yeah it's a stick okay right you've got no excuse for for fussing with anything because you're just a guy carrying a stick and you're surrounded by guys shoulder to shoulder right for right around you in a dense formation if everyone's walking forwards it's really difficult for you to do anything other frankly than walk forwards if you try doing anything other than walk forward everyone would notice and they would have the equivalent of corporals I suppose as file leaders to the front of every file would have a guy who's a little bit more senior on the corners you'd have the more senior commanders and the guys at the back and down the sides as well would be would be a more experienced so you've got a thin crust of the experienced guys on the outside the better troops if you like but the great mass of men in the equipment of the privates of a modern army would just be in the middle and you could give them all the same order which essentially is follow the guy in front of you oh and don't forget your stick and that could contribute quite handily to the winning of a battle and in the case of Alexander the Great did on numerous occasions and now the of course was a weapon that would retained his popularity for a while and came back particularly the pike and shot era so Gustav Adolphus and his lot and an English Civil War you've got these these these pike blocks but they tend to be much smaller and more isolated and there are also horribly vulnerable to a new thing on the battlefield which was gunpowder artillery a couple of big cannonballs shot into a pike formation could really cause quite a mess so it did happen sometimes that these plaque blocks would disintegrate at distance from the enemy never having got to grips with the enemy at all but that sort of didn't matter much but because they were small and isolated they were just one little bit of the army the army as a whole could carry on without one of those pike blocks but if the Alexandrian phalanx went that was most of the army so that would mean that they'd lost the battle if the Macedonian phalanx broke up and routed that would be the end of the battle all the other guys even if they were doing quite well I think I'll do the same I'm on a horse that's handy so the more eggs you got in that basket more risk you're taking so the more cohesion you've got of a unit that's great for going forwards though of course the flip side of the coin is that the more cohesion you've got in a unit if you start going backwards everyone starts going backwards now there was a chap called Colonel Charles Jay Jay Jay I'll don't do Peake who's nobody guessed it French and he died in the franco-prussian war and he made an awful lot of observations in his day and in his day that the columns going forwards have quite quite narrow and he discovered that for instance trying to push a column of men forwards it was it was futile you push from the back of a column and if you push hard then some men just fall over if you push sometimes they'd lie down or they just get out of the way and you've probably seen haven't you as I have on occasions you ever go to some kung-fu event or some event where the kung-fu has been or something like country was being demonstrated there are these kung-fu charlatans out there and one of the one of the the amazing feats that they like to demonstrate is how that they can they can push 20 I have the strength of 20 men so they they get into a decent stance on the floor and they they push a guy who has another guy pushing like that with his arms out in front on his back and this guy he's got another guy's got his hands there and there's another guy another got another 20 guys in the lining single-file all with their arms out like this there's a lot of air between them lots of room for movement between them all and well would you believe it these 20 guys can't push the the kung-fu charlatan out of the way who stands there like a rock isn't the amazing not really because you know exactly what's gonna happen if you push a wonky thing with all that wobble in it you just know that it's going to go off sideways so all all the guy at the front has to do is have a good stance and just redirect the force of the guy at the front and it's gonna throw the whole column out every single time they're never going to be able to push him I'd I want to see I hope to see a lot of those guys form a really effective tight rugby scrum with shoulders arms hooked around each other and shoulders will lock together and then yeah see if you can push those 20 guys back then we'll see if you're actually stronger than 20 guys sorry it's a bit of a digression but anyway so here just the pushing colour this was a bit futile and he reported that when columns did go charging in and the usual result was at the enemy who oh hell would run away great job done um but if the enemy were stubborn and didn't run away the guys at the front would charging forward start running a little bit more slowly because they actually want to get into grips with the enemy because that's horrible they've got bayonets and we've got bayonets little bayonet Ian nasty and so the guys then behind them I've got guys running behind them and they've got to find some room to go so they start spreading out and the head of the column then gets dispersed and loses momentum and everything comes to a halt and a lot of guys end up starting a firefight at very short range with the enemy which of course involves not all the casualties to both sides it would have been far fewer people would have actually have got killed if they'd just gone in but it's really difficult to close with someone who's got a bayonet men are naturally averse to doing that and quite often when they did go in and get stubborn opposition the first three rows would get minced but you're feeding more men in with this this great big column and so you should still carry the day and he reckoned that it was about the sixth rank back that decided whether there's gonna be a route or not if the guys in the 6th rank back decided ok right this attacks not working and they turned and fled they were the guys who were likely to carry the whole column back in disarray and now if I'm not sure how much it is true the youth of today but people my age and older back through time if you mail you've probably taken a beating at some point in your life you've probably got set upon by some older bigger boys at school or after school and you've got a big thorough kicking and you just know how horrendous that was and so you imagine when you become an adult Wow a lots can dish out an awful lot more damage than those kids who beat me up can dish out so yeah that's really nasty I don't want any any part of that and in some periods that they would put the the young men in the front rank because those are the guys have still cocky still keen still optimistic and haven't seen the full horrors of war and or maybe they get paid double being in the front rank so that's pretty good too I am I'm a front rank Oh oh yeah ladies listen yeah yeah why don't you sit at my table in the inn because I'm a double pay front rank guy well the the the more experienced troops had seen enough and never really wanted to be in the in the front rank and it is thought Dave Grossman for instance quotes intent on killing he comes over there's 2% figure and this figure comes up again and again 2% it's an estimate of the number of men the proportion of men who were not averse to killing up close and personal it's only about 2 percent so 98% of men really don't want to get up close to the enemy with the sharp pointy things now it's thought that maybe five to ten percent of men can become immune if they've experienced enough victories if they've gone in and won enough times against the enemy they might be not exactly keen and willing but at least not particularly averse to to going in getting into too close too close Mele close face-to-face Mele with the enemy but that's still a substantial majority who don't want to do that and it's true that all men including even the 2% would far rather kill the enemy to distance from from safety if they possibly could and I'm gonna go to world war one Palestine so World War one Palestine illustrates this reasonably well in that they did a study looking where the bodies had fallen relative to a position that got taken off the enemy and these were they were looking at successful attacks so you've got some some trenches here for instance and then bodies at various distances from that trench as the attack went in to take the trench and they would see that beyond 400 yards not that many casualties and lot of those casualties were able to be exported to do to the rear to a field station or whatever but about 400 yards significant casualties being taken and fatalities too and so at 400 yards there are bodies and splats of blood on the ground that are accountable and then at 200 yards there were yeah twice as many hazard four hundred yards and 100 yards twice as many again so it's four times the number of four hundred yards so it's doubling as you would sort of expect but then at 50 yards the line on the graph suddenly does a weird reverse and the number of casualties at 50 yards go steeply down and at 20 yards there are fewer men being killed in this successful attack than were being killed at 400 yards so what's going on this requires an explanation well you could say well machine guns an awful lot of the men are being killed by machine guns oh I should have said by the way that these engagements were all small arms machine guns and rifles doing almost all the killings so machine guns do an awful lot of a killing and at long range you've got loads of guys there a machine gunner if he's got his sights set right can with a very small movement he can strafe all of those guys and the bullets are quite close together small yeah that's why machine guns are quite effective at that long range but when you get really close and the machine gun has to traverse it's really difficult as the guys get closer and the bullets are spreading out go ahead yeah it's yeah so that's it's it's machine guns less effective well yeah it's a factor but doesn't seem to explain this degree of of change and surely closer range though guys with rifles who would fill in that they would be scoring more hits because the enemies closer therefore easier to hit as proven by the fact that they were hitting more of them at 100 yards then at 400 yards okay so maybe it's losses of course by the time the enemy gets to 20 yards they're probably close enough to start causing significant losses in the defenders so there then few offender defenders to shoot back yeah yeah absolutely that's a factor too or could it be and I've read several accounts that put it down to this that the foolish foolish defenders forgot to set their sights again so they were firing accurately 400 yards but by the time the enemy got to 100 yards they still had their sights set to 400 yards so that their bullets were often going over the top of people's heads by the time they got to 20 yards really you could miss at 20 yards I always found that without god I've been reading accounts of that and even against I get light cavalry charge of World War one Australian light cavalry charges that sometimes and got away with almost no casualties and they ask because it's because the enemy didn't remember to to reset their sights really you can miss a horse and rider at 20 yards because your sights weren't set right and there was a boat that I always thought something else must be happening and it seems that well something else is happening um there was another study actually that showed it to 200 yards about 2/3 of the men are actually fighting about one man in 20 is not exactly running away but doing something very similar to running away finding something to do that keeps him out of harm's way and and the rest are just sort of fussing and faffing about not really getting anything done and by the time you you get to 20 yards yes sorry that's right but I'm you get to 20 yards only about one man in five is actually effectively fighting about half the men are now faffing about fussing doing goodness knows whatever it seems that sometimes they will find a rock to hide behind and they'll have a smoke and start swapping photographs although this tends not to get recorded any of the official records but it seems that that yeah that does actually happen and and the rest of the rest of running away so a tiny proportion of men are actually effectively fighting at the front and in World War two I read again and again and again there's a company attack and it's it's it's a platoon officer a sergeant and one other guys often it's just three guys to actually go into the building and take it off the enemy throw in the grenades do the last thing that needed to be done to win the action if you're finish then you will at school have read a war story which is also called the Unknown Soldier it depends on whether it's the boundary's version or not and this is his account of Finn's fighting Russians in World War two in the principle in the continuation war and it makes super clear over and over again that is the actions of one or two men even in quite large battles that makes a difference between victory and defeat I thought I was really struck by that when reading that book and don't forget that these are in successful attacks so you imagine that in failed attacks all those figures that I was mentioning before are presumably worse than that now then there is this this concept of the last the LSP the last safe position or point or place and this is at the point at which a certain equation balances so imagine you are here this is starting position and you have to get to here to take the position off the enemy and there are various forces that carry you in that direction you've been given orders you're hearing the trumpets blare and you've been trained loads of times when the trumpet plays that thing you go forward so you associate that with going forwards okay I'm going for all your mates are going forwards and there's nothing fives like that you see it's okay right look forwards and forwards you go dump to dump to DOM and so you're carrying forwards following orders everything's great you have you have the leadership people have told you giving you definite orders to go forward you've got the cohesion with the guys around you yes let's go for it okay so you go forwards and then there are forces that force you in this direction or it needs to come to a halt and they involve that the enemy is really big and scary and has guns and don't have your best interests at heart and it's really dangerous to get close to them and there is a point at which the the equation balances and that's when troops tend to come to a halt and it seems that if troops have got say Spears that the LSP might be about five yards which is just outside spear range in the musket era it was perhaps 20 yards and there are loads of accounts of musket fights even in in building on so forth with guys firing muskets with dirty great big bandits on the end but they're not charging in and instead frantically reloading their muskets I'd only go over there we've got bonus yeah yeah but if you stand where you are you're more likely to be shot and if you charge over there they're very lucky to run away but it's very difficult to get guys to close with the enemy which is my way one of my main points you've probably spotted that well though so at the last safe point it seems that people start coming to a halt with an ak-47 it's about 50 yards and didn't I say that in Palestine they found that at about 50 yards that the grass started going the other way yeah it seems to be a related point so people yeah and you probably yourself have personal experience of the LSP remember that time you were in the playground and you've been wronged by that other kid who's in the year above you slightly bigger than you but he was bit of a kid no one liked him but somehow he had a few friends that always went around with him and all your friends said he's really wronged you and you you should sort this out and and we will back you up and you you go up to in the playground and say before you you did a bad thing and but I'll let you off if you if you apologize and he stands there the smug he's trying to intimidate you understand smile and say come on in come on in if you're if you're hard enough maybe about hard enough just want you to apologize I'm right here if you want to have a go why right here if you wanna have a go do you think the distance between you and me is different for the distance what do you mean mean you well it's not it's exactly the same if you say I'm right here well I'm right here that's a completely nonsensical argument remember you see and you have this you have this posturing argument just outside punching range just outside punching range and you know that if you if you were to go for you you could you could step back and yeah I had you yeah yeah yo coward you could you're doing all that you were at the LSP and then one of your friends who just wants to see a fight says go get him and he shoves you forward and then you're within punching range and then the guy is gonna look really silly if it doesn't punch you and you think ah I I can't stop and turn around and go back faster than he can throw a punch so you use that windmilling with your arms because you're only eight years old whatever you don't know what you're doing and an actual punching match starts because you've gone past that point of you don't pass the last safe position so you've gone into an unsafe position you now have to fight so you have that that personal experience and and it's happened many times in in Afghanistan for instance a recent in recent times that fights have started already past the LSP because maybe you there's you're in one of those compounds of the high walls higher doping mud brick walls and contact is made with the enemy at very close range and you're the British or American they're the the the Allied Force is is quite dispersed and so there are guys only 20 yards behind who can't see what's going on are in no position to help but the here some some fighting and instinctively they will don't freeze look around and perhaps wait for orders but the the officers not with them and they're not getting any useful information over the radios if they have radios and so all the fighting ends up being done by those poor saps at the front who have already passed the LSP when things kick off so it seems that actually modern armies in that context are using the wrong tactics because if you if you take into account the psychology of humans and what causes people to to fight well in battles that that's not a conducive way to go about things and it seems that at the the LSP at the last safe point only about a quarter of the men who were who were fighting a distance and don't forget that not everyone either only about a quarter of those men will actually still be fighting at the LSP so yeah this is a problem that armies have yet to solve how do you get guys to close with the enemy [Music] the man [Music]

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 715,286

Keywords: warfare, soldiers, troops, battle, advance, close, contact, leaders, officers, officer, sergeant, rank, command, control, attack, assault, psychology, tactics, tactical, mental, mind, brain, motive, motivate, fear, risk, danger, inspire, leadership, army

Id: axY35kYud88

Length: 51min 21sec (3081 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 27 2019