Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War

Col. Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall's, former chief combat historian Central Pacific (1943) and chief historian European Theatre of Operations (1945), 1947 book, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, predicted that infantry would be essential in future conflicts despite the era's belief that machine-based warfare and atomic super weapons would render traditional warfare obsolete. Marshall criticized 1940's doctrine as having adapting 20th century weapons to 18th century tactics and postulated that the most important factor in combat is the volume of lethal fire that can be directed onto the enemy. Thus all movement should be made with the intent of maximizing fire output. Logically, any troop refusing to fire at the enemy reduces the maximum achievable fire output. Marshall called the ratio of firers to non-firers, the Ratio of Fire. Marshall stated only 15 to 25 percent of individual infantry riflemen in close contact with the enemy would actually shoot unless compelled by an officer standing over them. Marshall felt the ratio of fire equation could be maximized by improving unit cohesion and by providing realistic training to educate soldiers on what physical and psychological conditions to expect on the battlefield. Chapter 1, "The Illusion of Power," highlights the need to integrate infantry into strategic plans. Examples illustrate how shortages in infantry reserves nearly crippled operations in Europe after D-Day. In Chapter 2, "On Future War," Marshall makes a projection as to the nature of future international warfare and mutual destruction. Projections echo the Cold War, but fail thereafter. Modern counterinsurgency roles and pinpoint strike capabilities were beyond Marshall's comprehension. In Chapter 3, "Man on the Battlefield," Marshall explores battlefield neurosis. Differences between Hollywood's romanticized versions of combat and reality are examined and convincing explanations are offered as to how this affects soldiers fulfilling responsibilities on the battlefield. Chapter 4, "Combat Isolation," offers a powerful description of the phenomenon of battlefield isolation, the psychological experience that occurs when soldiers lose sight contact of comrades while under fire, and its effect on fighting spirit. In Chapter 5, "Ratio of Fire," Marshall explains the concept of Ratio of Fire... clearly leaving no room for debate as to the importance of maintaining a high ratio of fire. However, Marshall fails to provide any collaborating documentation anywhere in Men Against Fire, to include a single named witness, to substantiate his statistics. Chapter 6, "Fire as the Cure," advances a non-traditional idea that even non-firing soldiers fulfill useful battlefield functions by reducing isolation, maintaining momentum, and holding ground as non-firers are reportedly no more likely to give ground than firers. The presence of non-firers is still demoralizing to enemies. Chapter 7, "The Multiples of Information," insight

S.L.A. Marshall spend a lifetime writing in and about the U.S. Army in conflicts from the First World War to Vietnam, and honed his writing skills as a journalist and historian between wars. 1947's "Men Under Fire: The Problem of Battle Command" was based on Marshall's observations of the behavior of soldiers under fire in the Second World War. It contained the controversial conclusion that some 75% of soldiers failed to engage the enemy in any given fight. He examined how fear, a sense of isolation on the battlefield, and a lack of leadership might cause this condition. Marshall's observations might not pass muster today as systematic, but he put his finger on a real problem. The system of individual replacements used in the European Theater of Operations caused US infantry divisions to add new soldierts directly into units on the battle line. As other and later scholars have documented, these men were undertrained and given little chance to integrate into their squads and platoons, let alone get to know and trust their leadership. Add these condition to the normal stresses and horrors of combat and Marshall's observations are not far-fetched, if not necessarily universal. The bulk of the book wrestles with how to provide better combat leadership. Here again, Marshall's observations are anecdotal but commonsensical; many have since been integrated into military practice. Units do best when they train hard and long with the leadership that will take them into combat. One of the biggest lessons of World War II was that citizen armies take time to achieve proficiency for combat; when they enter combat before achieving proficiency, the results can be wasteful of human life and sometimes unsuccessful in battle. "Men Against Fire" is highly recommended as historical documentation of a mark on the wall in the US Army's eternal struggle to produce trained, ready, and effective combat units.

First published in 1947, S.L.A. Marshall's "Men Against Fire" argues that in spite of long-range nuclear weapons, the next war of nations will not be a push-button war. Rather, individuals engaging each other on the battlefield will again provide the mainstay of a total war even more destructive than World War II. Obviously, Marshall did not foresee the advent of limited wars in Korea and Vietnam just around the corner. Nevertheless, Marshall poses some thought provoking questions of Americans in combat. In a highly controversial claim based on questionable research, Marshall concludes that in World War II, only one-in-four soldiers fired his rifle in combat. Marshall claims to have "personally" conducted mass interviews with approximately 400 infantry companies in the Central Pacific and European Theaters immediately following important battles (If you are doing the Arithmetic, approx. 200 men per company x 400 companies, you're getting the idea!). Not one platoon, company, or battalion commander, argues Marshall, was aware that only twenty-five percent of soldiers engaged in combat fired their weapons. As a result of his findings, Marshall then campaigned for the need of new training methods for infantry soldiers. He stressed, this individual training should be based on long-term psychological camaraderie, not the quick turnover replacement system that was utilized during World War II. Marshall's un-refuted claims (until recently) have influenced a generation of military historians including T.R. Fehrenbach and Russell F. Weigley. Marshall is quick to point out that the alleged seventy-five percent of those who did not shoot were not shirkers or meanderers. These men were on the front line with their assigned units and often performed other essential tasks relating to combat duty. When the confusion and chaos of a fire fight ensued, however, they just did not shoot their weapons. Marshall rejects the reason most often used for not firing, that of giving one's position away. Instead, Marshall contends it is just a gut-level fear that prevents these men from firing at the enemy. Fears of letting down one's comrades were also prevalent among the interviewees. Most importantly, however, Marshall found "that fear of killing, rather than the fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure in the individual, and that fear of failure ran a close second." Predictively, Marshall does not cite any of his evidence and his less than scientific methods have been widely refuted in recent decades. However, the questions that he poses about the psychological makeup of an American in combat have some merit. It is widely agreed by military professionals that two years is enough time to adequately train an individual for combat. Yet given the uniquely American dependence on the citizen soldier, is this time period sufficient to turn an ordinary civilian into an effective combat soldier? Is an American conscript morally and ethically suited for t

The negative review from "a reader in Boston" is misinformed. As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman puts it in On Killing (Little, Brown, 1996): "Some modern writers (such as Harold Leinbaugh, author of The Men of Company K) are particularly vociferous in their belief that the firing rate in World War II was significantly higher than Marshall represented it to be. But we shall see that at every turn my research has uncovered information that would corroborate Marshall's basic thesis, if not his exact percentages. Paddy Griffith's studies of infantry regimental killing rates in Napoleonic and U.S. Civil War battles; Ardant du Picq's surveys; the research of soldiers and scholars such as Colonel Dyer, Colonel (Dr.) Gabriel, Colonel (Dr.) Holmes, and General (Dr.) Kinnard; and the observations of World War I and World War II veterans like Colonel Mater and Lieutenant Roupell -- all of these corroborate General Marshall's findings. Certainly this subject needs more research and study, but I cannot conceive of any motive for these researchers, writers, and veterans to misrepresent the truth. I can, however, understand and appreciate the very noble emotions that could cause men to be offended by anything that would seem to besmirch the honor of those infantrymen who have sacrificed so much in our nation's (or any nation's) past."

This book, together with the After-Action Review (AAR) system of asking for unvarnished observations of all battle participants and his book, "The Soldiers Load and the Mobility of the nation" are SLAM's greatest contributions to the defense of freedom. However Men-Against-Fire (MAF) is his most controversial and led to his near destruction as an authority a few years back by revisonists jealous of his life's body of work and unwilling to let their macho image of the American marine or Soldier suffer any scrutiny. Its tragic that SLAM was actually there and most of these revisionists were not; and it all hinges on his statement of truth that in modern automatic weapons swept battlefields MOST MEN DO NOT FIRE their weapons. How can they? The minute they take aim, they are hit by enemy fire, injured and killed. Instead of dismissing SLAM like most can do to his "Soldier's Load", read "Blackhawk Down!" and mark every time a Ranger or a Soldier is hit by unshielded enemy fire that reaches out and damages the minute the bullet can fly to impact. Do this, and you will see that its not a "slam" (pardon the pun) on the American Soldier its a reality of the "death ground" (re: Col Dan Bolger's book by the same name) that we have yet to solve at the dawn of the 21st century. How important is this book?We lost the war effort (notice I chose my words carefully) in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia because of our poor ability to overcome enemy fire resulting in casualties which resulted in the American public/policy makers "throwing the towel in" amplified by media images. This is 4th Generation warfare; welcome to the modern era! The premise of SLAM's book written in a state of WWII and Cold War urgency is that in the face of enemy fire SOME MEN WILL BE PINNED DOWN BY IT. Those that are not need to know this (cross-talk) and using terrain masking, IMTs and fire/maneuver tactics advance on the enemy and defeat the enemy to relieve pressure on the unit in trouble. To condition men to fire when threats appear, SLAM helped introduce the "TRAIN FIRE" concept of pop-up targets that teach Soldiers in the U.S. Army to even in a state of fear the thing to do is to FIGHT and FIRE to knock the threat down. This is why the Army uses pop-up targets in rapid fire succession and not the slow, predictable known distance range firing that marines think is all the rave because their last targets are a bit farther out. We are not training to fight from WWI trenches, or at least we shouldn't be if we are using our time right. In Somalia on October 3, 1993, the rapid fire capability of U.S. Army Soldiers was all they had to erect a "shield" for them from swarms of enemy. Fighting is a conditioned reflex that has to be built into our men, otherwise men will POSTURE (go through the motions of firing to appease their peers) or FLEE or SURRENDER as LTC David Grossman's works on killing verify. To fire effectively, one must AIM and as SLAM shows i