Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Why Being a U.S. Infantryman During WW2 was Hell" video.

  1. Italy was terrible ground for offensive fighting. It can be deceptive just looking at losses at the company or even regimental level. There can be objectives that can be taken with under 1,000 casualties, if you can get a suicide company that takes 90% losses to get there before the enemy has had time to fortify or bring up reserves. You lose 162 out of your 180-man company, but if you did it "right," you'd wait until you had 3- or 4-to-1 odds and overwhelming firepower to throw at them, and just level the town, with light, 1% casualties from the 100,000 men you assembled. So by playing it smart and cautious, you lost 1,000 men, when you could have taken the objective 2 weeks earlier, and only lost 162 men. I'm not saying it's always like that, but if you have the initiative, but only so much force to maintain it, that force can be in for it, but achieve more objectives, sooner, and with lighter losses when you tear your eyes away from the percentage losses and look at the total losses. As I recall from my history, there were a lot of big egos trying to fight their way up the Italian peninsula faster than the other big egos, and achieving objectives quickly was more important than the losses required to achieve them. That's why I could never be a general, or would insist on being at the front, and probably not last very long. It takes a different sort of man than I am to send other men into a meat grinder. I'd have nightmares my whole life if I did such a thing by accident, let alone with intention.
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