This is wild. A brigade almost completely focused on short range and short term close combat. Note the almost complete absence of sustainment units. Even if you assume some of the personnel with undefined duties are medics, supply personnel, mechanics and armorers, this organization would not be able to fight for very long. It would probably be able to fight for a few days, but it would run out of all internally available commodities and not be able to fix its own equipment unless resupplied and supported from outside organizations. Why horse drawn machine guns if your artillery battalion is motorized? And no scouts, mortars or radios? Seriously?
Kindly redo this proposal Major Patton and resubmit!
The proposal does provide for medical units. (I will describe these in another article in this series.) I have yet, however, to find much in the proposal that deals with matters of supply, maintenance, or communications.
This screams of von Schell even more than the companies did. I don't remember if it was in The Soldier's Load or Battle Leadership, but I definitely remember von Schell criticizing mortars for maneuver elements
Maybe. I always got the feeling though von Schell disliked them because it was one more thing for the tactical commander to have to direct and manage and he preferred their management and fire direction to come from higher echelons.
This is wild. A brigade almost completely focused on short range and short term close combat. Note the almost complete absence of sustainment units. Even if you assume some of the personnel with undefined duties are medics, supply personnel, mechanics and armorers, this organization would not be able to fight for very long. It would probably be able to fight for a few days, but it would run out of all internally available commodities and not be able to fix its own equipment unless resupplied and supported from outside organizations. Why horse drawn machine guns if your artillery battalion is motorized? And no scouts, mortars or radios? Seriously?
Kindly redo this proposal Major Patton and resubmit!
The proposal does provide for medical units. (I will describe these in another article in this series.) I have yet, however, to find much in the proposal that deals with matters of supply, maintenance, or communications.
This screams of von Schell even more than the companies did. I don't remember if it was in The Soldier's Load or Battle Leadership, but I definitely remember von Schell criticizing mortars for maneuver elements
He must have been thinking of the big minenwerfers that Germans manned with engineers and not the Stokes or Brandt models. Crazy.
Maybe. I always got the feeling though von Schell disliked them because it was one more thing for the tactical commander to have to direct and manage and he preferred their management and fire direction to come from higher echelons.