Stephen Ambrose is a historian of impeccable credentials. His reputation will only be enhanced by his 1997 book about the US Army during World War II, Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany; June 7, 1944 to May 7, 1945. The thesis of Citizen Soldiers is that the war in Europe was fought and won by men (and comparatively few women) between the ages of 18 and 30. These were the lower-ranking officers and most of the enlisted soldiers who did the fighting on and over the continent. The small size of the prewar regular service ensured that very few of those who bore the burden of direct confrontation with the enemy were professional soldiers. Their story has to be told now; 1944's 20- to 25-year-olds are in their 70s. The sun has long since passed its zenith for them and their buddies. "They were just kids..." If this book makes no new discoveries, it does reflect with a high degree of accuracy the life of the average US soldier in Europe from June 1944 to May 1945. Ambrose generalizes convincingly about what soldiers experienced, how they talked, and what they believed was going on around them. The observations are personal, which means that the particular event being described may in fact have been different if seen from another vantage point. In the eyes of the beholder, however, this is the way it was. The conversations ring true. In 1936, Ambrose reminds us, FDR warned the generation that would eventually win the 20th Century's Great Crusade that it "had a rendezvous with destiny." Early in his new book Ambrose expands on that concept, one that a society can readily lose contact with in an era of peace: In his 1997 book For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought In the Civil War, America's leading Civil War scholar, James M. McPherson compares the motivation of Billy Yank and Johnny Reb to that of the GIs. He argues that the Civil War soldiers fought for cause and country even more than they fought for comrades and that it was just the opposite for the GIs. Now it is certainly true that unit cohesion, teamwork, the development of a sense of family in the squad and platoon, are the qualities most World War II combat veterans point to when asked how they survived and won. That is the theme of almost all my writing about the military, from Lewis and Clark to George Armstrong Custer to Eisenhower to D-Day. It is the theme of this book. ...They [World War II soldiers] were, overwhelmingly, high school or college students when America got into the war. They were drafted or enlisted voluntarily in 1942, 1943, and 1944. They entered France beginning on June 6, 1944. From June 7 to September, they came in over Omaha and Utah Beaches; from September to the spring of 1945, they came in at Cherbourg and LeHavre. They came as liberators, not conquerors. Only a tiny percentage of them wanted to be there, but only a small percentage of these men failed to do their duty. Ambrose has it right. Professional soldiers know that unit cohesion is one of the most important factors in creating and sustaining an army. They are equally aware that cohesion is always built at the level of the infantry or engineer squad, the tank or artillery crew, or at the platoon level in any of the combat arms. The feeling may extend by association to company, battery, squadron, or troop level, and sometimes to battalion; few participants, however, have spent much time reminiscing about regiments or divisions. Check this by looking through the reunion announcements in any military-oriented newspapers or magazines. Maintaining Cohesion The fundamental leadership challenge in combat, then, is how to replace losses at the squad, crew, and platoon level while maintaining individual and unit effectiveness. The cohesive elements that emerge during platoon and company training and preparation for combat are almost impossible to replicate once the units are committed to combat and losses occur. The survivors will have created unbreakable bonds, sometimes to the point of leaving replacements to fend for themselves. But there is something more in this book that should pique the professional interest of active and reserve component soldiers. Ambrose has devoted a chapter ("Replacements and Reinforcements--Fall 1944") to analyzing the management of individual replacements within the Army, specifically within the European Theater of Operations. Two tables in the chapter display the casualties incurred by each Army division in Europe during World War II. In his analysis of the content of the tables, the author is severely critical of the Army as an institution, and of specific leaders as well, for what he condemns as failure to manage the replacement system more effectively than was the case. Ambrose portrays the consequences of the personnel replacement problem at the level of the individual infantry soldier, his squad, his platoon, and his company. How the US Army at the highest levels developed manning requirements and personnel policies during World War II is worrisome. But at the tactical level, where daily decisions determined who lived and who died, the picture is devastating. In his recent portrayal of WWII, The World Within War: America's Combat Experience in World War II, Gerald Linderman described how one infantryman compared his lot with that of his contemporaries in the Army Air Force: Fry went on, as would many infantrymen, to contrast the civilized smoothness of air effort with the onerousness of infantry life: foot soldiers seldom received hot food or fresh clothing; they slept on the ground; they were never spared awareness "of the imminence of enemy action and violent death." For them, "there would be no chance to relax, no opportunity to forget what had taken place." So once again, continuities in the two experiences of warmaking were unrecognized, and obvious contrasts worked to raise an envy and resentment intensifying the infantry soldier's sense of isolation from the other branches of the American military. The problem of replacing combat losses or those rendered ineffective through accidents or illness can be examined from at least three perspectives: strategic decisions, operational consequences, and effects on the individual caught up in the depersonalized replacement flow. At the strategic level, the Army's original plan for the conduct of the war called for the creation of some 200 divisions. But by 1943 the country was at the bottom of the manpower barrel. Mobilization of industry and agriculture for the war effort, along with other requirements of the war economy, had drained the pool of male civilians capable of front-line soldiering. Consequently, late in 1943 General Marshall and General McNair concluded that the War Department's 200-division plan, which could have permitted replacements in combat by regiments, if not entire divisions, could not be carried out. Secretary Stimson, a proponent of the larger number of divisions, nevertheless accepted the recommendations of his senior military advisors. Henceforth, casualties and non-battle losses would be offset by replacing individual soldiers, not units that had trained together before entering combat. General Marshall subsequently decided to maintain the Army's ground combat strength at 90 divisions. Every professional soldier should understand the background of this problem and the ramifications of Marshall's decision, for we have not yet overcome the obstacles that Marshall faced in this matter. Command Decisions, published by the US Army's Center of Military History, devotes an entire chapter to the process of replacing battle casualties or those lost through non-battle illness or injury. The first two paragraphs of the chapter describe concerns about the replacement system not unlike those identified by Ambrose: Of all the calculated risks taken by General George C. Marshall in World War II none was bolder than the decision in midwar to maintain the U.S. Army's ground combat strength at ninety divisions. Students of warfare will long debate whether the decision was as wise as it was courageous, as foresighted as it was successful. The decision to limit the Army, ratified in May 1944 on the eve of OVERLORD, was a compound of necessity and choice. A variety of influences played a part in it -- national policy, allied strategy, air power, American technology, the balance between American war economy and manpower, logistical and operational requirements, the needs of allies and sister services, and General Marshall's faith in the fighting qualities of the American soldier. The decision came at the end of a long series of steps going back to the pre-Pearl Harbor days when American planners had first begun to be concerned about the problem of determining the size and shape of the Army needed for global and coalition warfare. Among the many others who have elaborated on the strategic issues, two accounts stand out. In one of the books in his epic study of George C. Marshall, Forrest Pogue used an entire chapter to describe the manning problem at the strategic level. And Russell Weigley's History of the United States Army contains an excellent assessment of force management challenges at the strategic level during World War II. The Individual Replacement System Citizen Soldiers itself provides graphic evidence of the implications of the individual replacement system at the bottom of the hierarchy. At one point the book describes the sources of a significant percentage of the infantry replacements that were needed after D-Day. Many came from a group who had been enrolled in the Army Specialized Training Program, which had promised college training after induction. When the shortage of infantry became critical in mid-1944, these soldiers were pulled out of college and assigned individually as infantry replacements in northwestern Europe. Many others had volunteered as aviation cadets, only to find in 1944 that the requirement for pilots had decreased; they too became infantry replacements. Anyone associated with soldiering can understand the trauma as these individuals made their separate ways through the replacement depots in the United States and Europe en route to foxholes as individual replacements in infantry squads. It is perfectly reasonable that the problems associated with replacing combat losses should appear different at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels within the Army. What none of these authors say, or even suggest, may be even more germane. In the 50-plus years since the end of World War II, we have managed to get no closer than we were in 1945 to solving the riddle of individual versus unit replacements during combat. Lessons Poorly Learned The Korean War introduced the one-year combat tour for individuals, which guaranteed turbulence. Between Korea and Vietnam the Army tried "Operation Gyroscope," during which an entire division was sent to Germany to test concepts for division replacement in the event the Cold War heated up. Its scope alone was enough to doom the project to failure. The challenge was made the more difficult by the short-term draftee Army in the decades between 1953 and the end of the draft. The project had no chance of succeeding. The Vietnam War applied the concept of a one-year assignment in a combat theater at the unit level. Entire units were sent into combat for a year, but immediately on arrival in country were subjected to an "infusion program" that tore apart unit cohesion. The process of "infusion" entailed levying arriving units within weeks of their arrival in Vietnam for a percentage of their personnel so that the members of the newly arrived unit would not all become eligible to leave Vietnam at the same time. The percentage levied was replaced by personnel already in country from other units with varying dates of arrival in Vietnam. Not only was this process disruptive of cohesion and training, but there was no guarantee that the units involved had "volunteered" their best soldiers for the program. In the aftermath of the Vietnam War and during the early years of the fledgling volunteer force, the Army decided to try again to find a solution to the problems of replacing combat losses. This time the concept called for sending brigade-sized units to the Army in Europe for a prescribed period. The intent was to develop methods for replacing entire brigades in combat were NATO to require rapid reinforcement. This effort managed to sustain itself long enough to conduct two brigade "rotations" to Germany. Lessons learned from the deployments of "Brigade 75" and "Brigade 76" can be summed up in the rule of three: In the peacetime Army it takes three units to create one deployable unit of the same size--one deployed, one present for duty at the home base (less personnel transferred to the deployed unit), and one recovering from the effects of its deployment. This rule has been validated in every operational deployment since 1989, most recently in the movement of US forces to Bosnia. The Army Inspector General conducted a study in 1979-80 that led to "The New Manning System" in 1980-81, which proposed that company and battalion "cohorts" could be created when individuals enlisted in the Army and began basic training. Such units would serve together for several years; upon completion of the enlistments of their soldiers, the cadre would be recycled through the cohort process, sent to training or staff jobs, sent to school, or otherwise used to fill other units within the Army. The management of the cohort organizations proved unworkable, in some measure because the Army itself was never convinced of their benefit. The rule of three has nothing to do with the Cold War, and everything to do with how our Army conducts its day-to-day business. The Haiti operation demonstrated as well the effects of peacetime deployments on the reserve components, and the other services have dealt with the consequences of peacetime deployments in ways unique to each. Today we seek whatever efficiencies we can find under the rule of three while coping with an operating tempo within many units that young soldiers and their families are finding increasingly unacceptable. Did Marshall's Plan Work? There is no doubt that the system by which individual replacements were managed by the US Army during World War II was hard on morale, in part because it was pervasively cruel to individual soldiers. Given the alternative--fewer combat divisions on line while the United States struggled to form new combat organizations in the face of manpower shortages--one has to ask whether casualties would have been much different had Marshall committed to a different goal, such as 110 Army combat divisions. Delayed fielding of the divisions could have prolonged the war, possibly leading to more opportunities to incur casualties. Conversely, the decision to feed individual infantry replacements into divisions on or near the front line might have forced the Nazis to continue to deal with two hostile fronts simultaneously. If the latter proposition is true, then perhaps the system worked just well enough to end the war when it did. While this conclusion may not be a source of comfort to those who suffered through the individual replacement process, leadership from Eisenhower to squad leaders in the years 1944-45 might have saved literally thousands of lives that would have been at risk had the war been prolonged. Dr. Ambrose sums up in Citizen Soldiers the battle for the Remagen Bridge as follows: Everything came together at Remagen. All that General Marshall had worked for and hoped for and built for in creating this citizen-army, happened. It was one of the great victories in the Army's history. The credit goes to the men--Timmermann, Delisio, Drabik, through to Hoge, Bradley, and Ike--and to the system the US Army had developed in Europe, which bound these men together into a team that featured initiative at the bottom and cold-blooded determination and competency at the top. The practicing professional may find Ambrose's conclusion a familiar one. Grant and Sherman with their Union armies in 1864-65, Crook and Miles in the Indian Wars of the last half of the 19th century, Pershing and Summerall in World War I, Ridgway in Korea in 1951-52, and Schwarzkopf in the Gulf in 1990-1991 all in some measure were able to develop and sustain "initiative at the bottom and cold blooded determination and competency at the top" in leading US forces in combat. If you really want to know what it was like to be a citizen soldier in Europe in 1944-45, Stephen Ambrose's new book provides a fine overview. It is a most worthy companion to Company Commander, The Men of Company K, and Band of Brothers, adding to those studies a theater dimension, on the ground and in the air, front to rear, from the foxhole to SHAPE. World War II was the defining event in the lives of those who survived it. There is no doubt of the admiration that Dr. Ambrose has for those citizens soldiers who became the leaders of this country in the decades following the war. Back to Cry Havoc #28 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1999 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com