seanessay.com (under 1,000 words)
Sometimes I think about free citizens rushing into training for the war in Ukraine.
I imagine older volunteers would guard prisoners and checkpoints. As for the younger guys, I guess their commanders could seize every spare moment to train them, beyond the indelible training of being in the “front lines.” Or, in modern parlance, at the FEBA, or, “Forward Edge of the Battle Area.” Within the FEBA I imagine small patrols, highly motivated, making use of terrain to get close enough to launch small attacks on individual Russian fuel tanker trucks. Not merely against battle tanks. I am reminded of U.S. submariners being instructed to avoid “glorious” combat against Japanese warships, to instead torpedo rusty freighters.
I can also imagine a patrol of Russians with low morale being sent off and entering the woods, but then hiding in one spot, and later returning to claim, “Yup, we patrolled.”
By now every civilized person, outside of Russia, knows that “war is hell—” Yes, but what choice do the Ukrainian people have? Except to fight? Besides, they know now that surrender means atrocities and “executions.” (If you have the stomach, google how the Russians in WWII treated thousands of Polish civilian leaders called up from the reserves: the “Katyn Wood massacre”—the movie version is banned in China for exposing communism)
For training, I know that wartime boot camp normally means parade drill. True in my dad’s war, and true in the U.S. civil war, where newspaper accounts of newly formed African regiments always made a point of saying that “when they are finished their drill” they would be going off to join the other massed troops… In peace time, incidentally, at a police academy, rookie training involves hours of parade drill too, for the same reason their peers in the army are drilling: To instil habitual, cheerful, predictable obedience to orders. (One constable said, for times of danger, a police dog was his best partner, for the being the most predictable)
After boot camp, the easiest thing is to operate in the defence mode. Trenches. No doubt the new Ukrainian volunteers will get comfort and confidence from knowing that experienced soldiers are also defending. In WWII the Germans used auxiliaries, nonGermans, in their defensive lines. The ratio, as best I recall: If one soldier in five was German then the line would hold. As it happens, a visiting Australian history professor once lectured at my university at a brownbag lunch on “the manpower firepower ratio”: Regardless of whether the weapons are slow and “traditionally glorious,” or our quick modern “less glorious” weapons, the ratio is the same: Twenty percent casualties means the line will break and fold, or run away.
The final test of an army unit, after training in defence and offence, is their ability to conduct patrols. This from a classified army manual I once found from the years of the guerrilla war in Malaya, where the book’s first half was “Patrolling and Tracking.” (The second half was “Ambush and Counter Ambush”) Patrolling involves too much to summarize here. Instead, let me simply remember walking towards the enemy.
You may have seen in news photos how a squad will advance along a road in staggered formation, on both sides of the road, as opposed to “single file.” (Indian file) That’s called “loose file,” better known, since it’s fun to say, as “ack ack formation” in homage to the placement of Anti-Aircraft guns. The hardest formation would be “arrowhead,” as when “advancing to contact” (the enemy) in rather open countryside. Once fired upon, or the enemy sighted, “battle drill” starts.
Walking in arrowhead formation is hard at first, like when a newbie with a “learner drivers licence” needs to go slow with the car radio turned off.
So there I was, “advancing to contact” at a walking pace, a pace almost too fast for all I had to do. First, to “keep in formation and keep my spacing” as people under stress want to bunch up, a regrettable tendency that allows “one bullet to take out two people.” Second, to keep glancing at the squad leader to catch any arm signals to change formation, or change which side the guys with the automatic support weapons would support.
Next, to keep scanning my given “arc of responsibility,” scanning hunter style: close ground, intermediate, far ground. Next, to keep scanning for my possible “fire position” such as a hefty log or a blessed slight depression. As we kept walking I had to keep looking ahead to spot another fire position—because it’s harder to chose after a bullet whips by. The battle drill is to dash forward, fling myself down, crawl swiftly to a fire position, (or to an extended firing line) observe, and then fire.
Of course, despite practise, people under stress may get the drill messed up: During the U.S. civil war it was common to see ramrods flying through the air, as a few heart-pounding soldiers forgot to remove the rod from the barrel before firing.
After the squad, or “section,” practices advance to contact, complete with “fire and movement,” the entire platoon—three rifle squads and the support weapons squad—starts practising. I remember doing platoon formations—with fire and movement after contact—up and down a valley, getting very tired, because “sweat saves blood.” The fellow beside me, who thought more concretely than abstractly, suddenly realized, as he told me afterwards, “hey, I got it, this is just like fire and movement at the section level.” Exactly.
And all this time we were getting to know each other, like a sports team doing drills, because knowing and trusting each other is so important in battle, important for that much needed peer support and peer pressure during the loneliness of super-high stress.
In peacetime even a veteran police constable, patrolling a sidewalk as part of a pair of officers, when he hears a horrible—bang!—for a second will crouch into himself, a second of “every man for himself.” So human. But only a second. Then training and self-respect kicks in.
I am sure the Ukrainian volunteers will do their country proud.
…
…
Sean Crawford
As civilians over in Russia refrain from volunteering to serve under Darth Vader,
April 10
(The invasion started February 24)
2022
