Bayonet!!!

[ghp]

I found the following article while surfing archery sites ... the author, a former Range Safety Officer in the Canadian military, has a book for archery range construction.

http://members.tripod.com/~RegimentalRogue/papers/bayonet.htm

by: Capt Michael M. O'Leary, The RCR
Copyright, 1999

Historically, the bayonet charge signified not so much the application of offensive spirit as it did the release of intense emotion by soldiers freed of the rigid discipline of the tactics used to win the battle. It was not a controlled state but the running amok of blood lust, to harry and kill a defeated enemy, taking revenge for the death of friends and a pursuit of the spoils. Alternatively, desperate defence and the forlorn hope were characterized by absence of optional courses of action, one thrust and parried when no other course remained. In the heat of battle, these were not the activities of rational men; they were the reflexive actions of over-wrought men fighting to survive one more day.

Sadly, Capt O'Leary did not use Capt. Millet's example (Korea, 1950) -- which would have been illustrative of the last paragraph, above.

Joe, you might want to contact the author to use his article in EJMAS.

Regards,
Guy (vive la bayonet!!)

[Joseph Svinth]

Guy --

I have a copy of Jacomb's book on bayonet training in the Canadian Army during WWI. It's pretty funny stuff, and one of these days I'll post it to JNon-Lethal.

Meanwhile, here is a story that exemplifies the Spirit of the Bayonet in the 20th century. It's from WWI, and the URL is http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~libsite/wwi-www/Scott/ScottTC.htm

***

An incident showing unusual fidelity to duty came to light yesterday. Sergeant Gans, with two other colored [e.g., African American] comrades, was on guard at a 'strong point' on one of the active fronts. During the night his two comrades were killed by enemy shrapnel, and he himself had ugly wounds in his back and leg, from which the blood flowed freely; still he remained at his post. When it was learned that his two comrades had been killed, and he himself wounded, Captain Harry Atwood sent to have the dead and wounded brought in, but Sergeant Gans refused to leave his post, because a sergeant, as he thought was proper, was not there to relieve him. *It became necessary for Captain Atwood to order this badly wounded sergeant to leave his post at the point of a bayonet, to secure medical treatment.* [Italics added.] All he knew was duty; he was firm in the belief that before he could leave his post for anything, a relief should be there to take his place.

So, as the British and French found after the mutinies of 1917, bayonets were very useful for encouraging soldiers refusing orders. In combat, though, during one of the few documented accounts of H2H among patrolling soldiers described in the previous book, the Americans clubbed rifles. No need for a bayonet if you're going to hit somebody over the head with the buttstock.

Anyway, why the British love affair with bayonets? Partly because in 1915, as an economy measure, the British Army did not issue troops live ammunition when going over the top. For one thing, they hadn't had enough training at the range, and for another their officers weren't sure who they would shoot with it. (One hopes because the artillery was supposed to kill all the Germans, but one never knows.) Anyway, while the Old Contemptibles of 1914 made head shots at 300 yards, Kitchner's Army was massacred in what even the Germans called the Kindermord.) Later, in 1917, military police bayonets proved essential for keeping mutinying British and French troops at the front, but that is of course a different usage.

Now, on the other side of the wire, Erwin Rommel, survivor of a bayonet fight in France in 1914, wrote in his book "Infantry Attacks" that "the winner of a bayonet fight is he who has one more bullet in his magazine." It seems that Lt. Rommel rushed out with his bayonet affixed, and was promptly shot and left for dead. But he recovered after about a year in the hospital, and of course went on to great things in Italy in 1917-1918. No bayonets, though -- he preferred automatic weapons and flamethrowers for infantry moving in teams rather than waves...

Which makes sense -- you get a bayonet, I get a light machine gun or a flame thrower. Sounds fair to me.

[John Brado]

When I was going thru seal training one of our instructors told us that if you ever have to use your knife it means that everything has gone very very wrong.

[ghp]

John,

That is very, very true. And things never go very, very wrong?

When things do go very, very wrong -- I sure hope I have a bayonet -- cuz that penetrates a lot deeper than my knife-hand.

Of course, I'd prefer one of the older cut-down versions of the WWI bayonet: wood handle slabs and good steel. Not this modern crud that falls apart when dropped.

Yup --- a bayonet or knife is the last defense; as it should be.

Regards,
Guy

[George Ledyard]

Anyone interested in what you might call state of the art bayonet training should check out Hunter Armstrong at the Hoplology website. He and his partner have developed a program that they have done for the marines that is based on classical martial arts and the latest research into combat mindset. They train under the name of Integrated Combat Systems. He doesn't seem to have a description of the training on the site but there is contact information for him on the site.

I did a kind of sample of the training at our local police academy when he came up. It was excellent. I am sure that the full meal deal would be fabulous.

http://www.hoplology.com/Default.htm


[Edited by George Ledyard on 11-04-2000 at 09:05 AM]

[Joseph Svinth]

George, you teach aikido but preach sumo: bayonet fighting is not finesse, it's just meeting force with force. Bayonet fighting makes generals' lives easy because they don't need to plan, deceive, use logistics, or blend. Like Haig or Almond, they don't even need to go to the front, they just draw lines on a map. But in the end even Kitchener said, "This isn't war, this is murder." After all, Somme, Passchendaele, and banzai charges are the spirit of the bayonet; steel likes blood.

Now, perhaps an aikido-style military would blend rather than bash, and use aiki rather than sheer weight? If so, then a modern soldier shouldn't worry too much about making a $500 assault rifle into a $100 pike. Instead he should learn to:

* Aim individual fire.
* Properly position crew-served weapons.
* Maneuver under fire, in conjunction with infantry, mech, and aviation assets.
* Preplan fires for artillery, naval gunfire, and close-air support (both fast movers and rotary wing).
* Fully utilize intelligence, engineer, chemical, and anti-aircraft assets.
* Synchronize and coordinate relations with other commands.
* Push-pack log.
* Perform routine field sanitation (Rommel lost more troops to dysentery than the British).
* Recover, repair, and replace injured personnel and broken equipment.

And from a planning standpoint, rather than looking back three centuries, hoping to perfect an idea that technology has rendered obsolete, the modern soldier should look ahead to the forthcomng three-block war fought in urban environments. The battles to study are not Isandlwana and the Somme, but Stalingrad, Arnhem, Hue, Mogadishu, and Chechneya.

Engineer assets, signal and communication, and an understanding of the military's relationship to the media are keys to winning the 21st century three-block war, not bayonets.

[Joseph Svinth]

Right after posting this, I checked the snail mail and found this month's Marine Corps Gazette. :) The theme is the Korean War and personnel issues, but some salient points:

Lt. Col. George N. Mayer, retired, in a letter to the editor of Marine Corps Gazette, November 2000, page 18:

"[At Okinawa, unrehearsed night attacks on the Japanese worked because of] "the complete frustration and disgust everyone from ADM Nimitz on down to the flamethrower operator had with the fixation on attrition strategy -- a strategy promulgated by the commanding general of 10th Army, known as Corkscrew and Blowtorch. A night attack is maneuver warfare. It relies on brains not blind charging of the objective where the last man standings wins."

In the same issue, BGen Timothy F. Ghormley, the Inspector General of the Marine Corps, says: "In order for a unit to be mission capable, it must be striving to comply with Marine Corps orders -- not old Spanish custom... The time we used to spend ironing our skivvies is better spent honing our warfighting skills." [For Marine Corps orders relating to training, see http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/utm/ . It's interesting reading, and a few hours there should give you some idea of the difference between a professional military of the early 21st century and a society for creative anachronism.]

Finally, Maj. Timothy Shobbrook writes that junior enlisted leave the Corps because "they get the brunt of any asinine policy we [officers and senior NCOs] put in place."

Bottom line? Teach privates to shoot straight and sergeants to call for fire and maneuver the privates. Meanwhile, if bayonet training is to be taught anywhere, I'd say the best place would be the Command and General Staff College and the Staff NCO academy; get the majors and master sergeants out there with packs and rifles and tell them, "Take the hill, gentlemen, some idiot in the staff forgot to requisition ammunition again." Not only would this encourage said officers and NCOs to avoid putting their young Marines into such stupid positions in the first place, but it would also give them real-world practice in the backstabbing techniques they will need to reach the stars.

Oh -- while Col. Millet of the US Army found bayonets useful against a Chinese platoon, a medically retired Marine lieutenant writes, once more in the November Gazette, that "Friendly napalm, precisely laid against a stubborn, dug-in enemy is a spectacle of beauty... The red flames and black smoke billow against the white snow. There is a sudden, paradoxical silence..."

I still prefer fuel-assisted munitions for clearing trench lines to pointy things. (And if they aren't there, fire the air wing commander and his supply officer; it is their job to put steel on target. So, as George Patton told his chaplain during the Battle of the Bulge, Chaplain, pray for good weather, your evaluation depends on it.)

[Edited by Joseph Svinth on 11-04-2000 at 07:28 PM]

[George Ledyard]

Originally posted by Joseph Svinth
George, you teach aikido but preach sumo
I reread my post and can't seem to find anywhere that I was "preaching" anything. I just pointed out that there was some training that I was aware of that people might want to check out.