Hi JMP,
When I read through your blog posts regarding "Chaos, Confusion and Casualties", I thought for certain that you must have read du Picq. I'm surprised that you have not, but I believe that you will find him a kindred spirit
Du Picq was an infantry officer in the French Army during the mid-19th century. He fought in the War of Italian liberation and in the Franco-Prussian war until his untimely death in combat in 1870. His book, however slim (< 300 pages) is considered a French military classic. Its English language translation has been on the US Army's reading list since first translated around 1920 IIRC (my copy, printed by the Military Service Publishing Company is dated 1946 and 1958). in it, Du Picq shared both his historical studies and personal campaign experience, commenting principally upon the true moral and psychological aspects of combat. I still take it out and re-read it from time to time.
To say that it opened my eyes would be an understatement. One point, for example, related to the topic of what drives a unit toward combat ineffectiveness. Du Picq argues that it is not casualties per se, but the fact that for every actual casualty suffered over the course of a battle, two or three perfectly healthy soldiers will often choose to disengage themselves from participation. He illustrates this case with an analysis of McMahon's great column attack at Wagram -
"AS long as the ancient masses moved forward they did not lose a man and no one lay down to avoid the combat. Dash lasted up to the time of stopping; the run was short in every case. In modern masses, in French masses especially, the march can be continued, but the mass loses while marching under fire. Moral pressure, continually exerted during a long advance, stops one-half of the combatants on the way. Today, above all in France, man protests against such use of his life. The Frenchman wants to fight, to return blow for blow. If he is not allowed to, this is what happens. It happened to Napoleon's masses. Let us take Wagram, where his mass was not repulsed. Out of twenty-two thousand men, three thousand to fifteen hundred reached the position. Certainly the position was not carried by them, but by the material and moral effect of a battery of one hundred pieces, cavalry, etc, etc. Were the nineteen thousand missing men disabled? No. Seven out of twenty-two, a third, an enormous proportion may have been hit. What became of the twelve thousand unaccounted for? They had lain down on the road, had played dummy in order not to go on to the end. In the confused mass of a column of deployed battalions, surveillance, difficult enough in a column at normal distances, is impossible."
The book is still available via Amazon, etc, but a free PDF is available here – link
B
