"Looking for Feedback on WW2 Platoon Level Rules Concepts" Topic

"FIRE AND MOVEMENT

As in U.S. courses in combat firing, the main British theme is fire and movement. Since the British squad consists of a Bren-gun group and a rifle group, teaching the mechanics of fire and movement is very simple.[1] When a squad leader desires to move his unit forward under enemy fire, he is taught to get his Bren gun into a new position under the cover of his rifle fire. After the Bren gun has reached the forward or flanking position, the riflemen advance, in turn, under cover of are from the Bren gun. Variations of these methods are also taught by the British."

The above quote comes from the following US Army wartime intelligence bulletin dated July 1943, on British Infantry training, and the use of the Bren gun within the infantry section for laying down fire to support the movement of the section's rifle group (a demonstration of fire & movement tactics directly used within the British Section, and as also noted as US squad practice). Let me emphasize these are tactics being taught in 1943, they're not obscure pre-war doctrines, or obsolete wartime artifacts, but basic methods the squads/sections were receiving in training, and after being reinforced in battle as valid practices tested in combat during WW2.

link

This confirms (along with the US Army training manual I linked previously), American fire & movement tactics taught for using a squad's automatic weapon for supporting fire while its rifle group moved forward (and then vice versa), and also confirms that this was a trained British wartime tactic as used by their infantry sections. This is the documentation – these were WW2 squad/section tactics, and if some of us hobbyist care to utilize these tactics in our own gameplay, in our rules construction, or for plain old advice on what can be done within WW2 skirmish gaming, rest assured you're doing it by the book good people…….and game on!

My father taught battle drill to British infantry. He went through his initial training in 1940, repeated it in 1942 and then did chindit training in India.

They trained with the section as the lowest level of granularity.

In practice, Wigram found that real British platoons only split into two.
You really should read Wigram's report.

I would like to see your father's training notes, and where it specified that the armies of the world abandoned fire & movement tactics at the squad level in WW2.

Documentation from the early war, through 1942, and now 1943 indicate otherwise (we're running out of war years). I produced Lt. Col. Micheal Doubler's passages on practices for even greater sub-division of the infantry squad for combat tasks (btw, Doubler wrote the paper on Hedgerow tactics innovated by the US Army in 1944 too) – the claim that maneuver and fire tactics at the squad level weren't employed during the war is a huge over-reach.

I've got no axe to grind Andy, and my father was a combat veteran too who fought in five operational campaigns, over three years "in theater". Still, as my training as an historian requires, there must be contrary documentation if someone maintains that these squad tactics weren't utilized.

If you want to forward a caveat to your position, that tactics evolved, or were further refined over the years of the war, yes, of course. Lessons learned, absorbed, and integrated, and weapons innovated, and tactics for these also developed.

Andy, when you have the chance, could you list Wigram's book title here, and/or a link to his report?
This sounds like a very interesting resource.

A link to Wigwam's report is here: link

I'd also highly recommend this blog post on infantry tactics in Chain of Command. The comments have some back and forth on Wigram and the reality of squad level Fire and Movement in the British Army. toofatlardies.co.uk/blog/?p=1742

As far as my father was concerned, fire and movement involved movement and fire by section rather than sub sections.
This is what he was taught and it's what he in turn taught.

If this is what those Canadians were taught then that also fits the answers in the questionnaire Rich refers to.
Section level is finer grained than Wigram observed which could well also explain Sidney Jary's comments.

Bear in mind that the German manuals specified not splitting sections. ( As referenced above ).
Somehow one nationality's troops needed immediate leadership whilst another's did not?
We British just made naturally better soldiers than Germans did we?
And somehow my father managed to get trained and re-trained multiple times whilst missing that lesson on splitting his sections up.

PV, thanks for both links!

Yet again, as advice for WW2 rules design (games played where "the player controls roughly a platoons worth of individually based infantry" – OP), the task isn't to compartmentalize squad tactics to just one nation, or those tried in the final months of war – but those employed during the war's entirety. As Big Rich wrote about rules scope and design parameters in the linked webpage above:

"However, whilst I am keen to allow the players to adopt a free-style approach to tactics, I do think that we need to reflect the fact that soldiers fight best when fighting in the manner in which they have been trained to fight. On D-Day your average British infantryman had been in action or training for four years. Battle drills had been drummed into them by instructors and NCOs. It seems wrong to not reflect that in our games. Not by penalising the use of "different" tactics, but by rewarding the use of real tactics."

Additionally, Lt-Col. Lionel Wigram starts his paper linked above touting the use of small teams for infiltration tactics, first example for the Japanese in "ones and twos", and by "employing minute parties of specialist trps armed with TGs and MGs".

Infantry in periloous situations not mentioned nor gamed
Average infantry and replacements We all like our Elites and Veterans, yet as wars progress, there are many less capable troops. At for example Dien Bien Phu, the elites themselved had a large portion of shirkers. SS troops encountering British Matildas at Arras ran away.
Massed artillery fires against the platoon, even if it is entrenched.
Fighting in defended woods and forests such as the Heurtgern
City fights
All of these reduce the platoon to a squad in a few game turns

I wonder if Big Rich has talked to anyone who taught battle drill.
I have.

Units did not continually train. For example, Kings Liverpool spent some time guarding Manchester Airport.