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Title: Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command by S. L. A. Marshall ISBN: 0806132809 Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.25
Rating: 3
Summary: SLAM Is Overrated
Comment: As a primer for military knowledge, SLA Marshall's Men Against Fire is recommended reading for both the US Army and the USMC. His information is regarded as factual and authoritative, because he "was there". The reality of SLA Marshall is a little different.
From Dave Hackworth's "About Face", the truth about SLA Marshall can be seen. Marshall wasn't present for D-Day as he claims, and wasn't present in the European Theater until July of 1944. His service in Korea covered exactly three months (Dec 1950- Feb 1951), and was as a historian only, not a combat soldier.
"Veterans of many of the actions he 'documented' in his books have complained bitterly over the years of his inaccuracy or blatant bias..," Hackworth writes. "He didn't seem to care that what he wrote was totally inaccurate and easily disproved." (pg. 584, About Face).
On Killing is a fine novel that illustrates a different side of warfare, one more focused on the after-effects of warfare and the stress resultant from the taking life in the line of duty. Marshall's Men Against Fire is an important novel as well, if only for historical value, and as evidence of many of the lessons the Army has still not learned in the application of small unit tactics. However, for anyone to assert that SLA Marshall's information on fire volume is accurate or representative of careful fact-finding is doing a disservice to himself as well as other readers. SLA Marshall's work is sensationalized, and was designed to sell rather than inform or act as a foundation for further study.
Rating: 5
Summary: Marshall still rules
Comment: 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."
Rating: 1
Summary: "Slam" was a hoax - NEVER did the interviews
Comment: S.L.A. Marshall claimed to have pioneered the technique of mass interviews of soldiers. Marshall's 1947 book "Men against Fire" argued that, in the American army, "not more than 15 percent of the men had actually fired at enemy positions or at personnel... during combat.... The best showing... by the most spirited and aggressive companies was that one man in four had made at least some use of his fire power." Marshall described this phenomenon as the "ratio of fire" and claimed it
provided a new way of understanding what happened when citizen soldiers gripped by "fear and inertia" enter combat. The ratio of fire, and Marshall's explanation of it were readily accepted by historians who lacked any experience of combat and who were anxious to distinguish their history from mere narrative. It was not until the 1980s, when combat veterans began to retire and learned what the experts were saying, that Marshall's evidence was challenged. When Harold Leinbaugh and John Campbell began the research for their historical memoir "The Men of Company K", they encountered books like John Keegan's "The Face of Battle", which relied on Marshall's statistics to argue that poorly motivated combat soldiers avoided action. They found that Weigley, an influential American military historian, accepted the validity of the ratio of fire and used it to bolster his argument that Allied infantry were overcautious and could not be relied upon to attack the enemy.
Harold Leinbaugh knew from experience that Marshall was wrong and the historians who relied upon him had been misled, but it was not until Dr. Roger Spiller, founder of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, re-examined Marshall's evidence, that the case for the ratio of fire fell apart. It turned out that the mass interviews of men fresh from combat had never taken place and Marshall's notebooks recording occasional interviews made no reference to how many men fired their weapons. Marshall had made it all up.
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Title: On Killing by Dave Grossman ISBN: 0316330116 Publisher: Little Brown & Co (Pap) Pub. Date: 1996 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Company Commander by Charles Brown MacDonald ISBN: 1580800386 Publisher: Burford Books Pub. Date: 1999 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the Gulf War (Ausa Institute of Land Warfare Book.) by Robert H. Scales ISBN: 1574881361 Publisher: Brasseys, Inc. Pub. Date: 1998 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: ACTS OF WAR : A Novel of Police Terror by Richard Holmes ISBN: 0029148510 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 1989 List Price(USD): $20.50 |
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Title: Buffalo Soldiers by Tom Willard ISBN: 0812551052 Publisher: Forge Pub. Date: 1997 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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