Splitting the squad/section in practice?

[Ivan Sorensen]

So the British Sections and US squads were intended on paper to function as two teams at least part of the time, but how often do you suspect this was done in practice?

Memoirs, AARs and other accounts of combat make it hard to really get any details on, since it isnt something that the writers usually address (the nature of it presumably being obvious to them).
The impression I get is often that the squads/sections mostly operated together (and in any event were often understrength making breaking them up less viable) and in some cases it seems the platoon may mostly have functioned as more or less a single unit, or as two (with the LMGs set up together as unit one and everyone else as unit two going up the hill).

BUT impressions can be wrong and I am finding rather little to actually firmly say one way or the other.

Pre-empting obvious replies:
Yes, in a war of millions anything was done somewhere by someone. My question is what may have been the most common thing.

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

Meaning the fireteam operates independently from the squad or platoon, beyond line of sight or at least hearing?  Rarely.   Teams are to facilitate fire and maneuver/overwatch leap frogging, much as squads are for the whole platoon, not independent maneuver units. A MG or ATGM equipped team in a nest, or a listening/observation post well in front of a fixed defensive line might just be a team in size and several hundred yards distant from the rest of the platoon, but it was not intended to maneuver except maybe to fall back towards the platoon if pressed.

the only teams that might fit this sort of use would be sniper teams and they are usually 2 soldiers.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Tony S]

It’s my understanding that according to the 1944 British infantry training manual, it was SOP to do when the enemy was contacted, to split into the Bren gun team and assault team (rifles) and maneuver seperately.

Here’s a good article about it.

The Rifle Section: Backbone of the British Infantry

 

[MartinR]

In WW2, most sections/squads were too poorly trained and/or lacking in effective leaders to split up, instead the platoons (generally) fought with the individual sections performing the fire/movement /assault functions. Rather like Crossfire… This was commented on in much detail in Lt Colonel Wigrams report on the British Army in action, a report suppressed by Montgomery.

Some units may have grouped all their support weapons together, many didn’t. Some u its also scrounged all the extra support weapons they could fine. Many didn’t.

Some units were well enough trained and led to perform Battle Drill as per the diagrams above.

The contrasting approaches can be amply demonstrated by reading Jarys “18 Platoon” and Firbanks “I Bought a Star”. The former fought his platoon by sections and led them by waving a 45 while wearing a jumper and a dubious hat so they knew who he was. The latter fought his way through Tunisia and Sicily using Battle Drill, but was a Paratrooper, and end the war commanding the Parachute Infantry Training School.

 

 

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[MartinR]

Ps the Russians always fought by sections, in both WW2 and the Cold War.

 

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Guy Farrish]

There’s an informative, if ,unintentionally amusing YouTube of British infantry section battle drill on the parade square (without all that messy terrain stuff) here: Battle Drill 1942 which essentially replicates the picture above.

But I guess Ivan wants evidence of whether anyone actually did it in action, vice the square or battle training course.

Offhand I can’t remember any detailed descriptions of carrying out a section attack as per the book.

I’m guessing no-one had the time or inclination to write down an immediate after action report of such events beyond ‘third platoon took the crossroads’.  Many books say attacks in Normandy in the British sector came to resemble WWI style artillery stonks followed by infantry advances, with tanks if you were lucky,  on a large scale. But of course all operations come down to the tactics of the few men at the pointy end. If your platoon can’t take that hill covering the crossroads nobody will be advancing in that lovely chinagraph/mouse sweeping arrow on the map.

Jarry thought there was too much ‘Big Picture stuff’ that forgot this: ‘Infantry had to fit into the big picture, rarely operating without artillery and armoured support. The most successful actions by 18 Platoon were fought without the support of either. We learned in a hard school how to skirmish, infiltrate and edge our way forward.’

How this was achieved does not appear to have been recorded in detail very often. Were these platoon actions with a fire base of a couple of sections and an assault by one or vice versa, as complete sections or all the bren teams grouped and a massed rifle group attack? Or some variation thereof with a reserve section including bren team not committed? I don’t know.

It comes down to what the individual members of the section and the constituent rifle group and bren group did when they hit opposition. Whether a lead section set up the bren group to engage and suppress a strongpoint and assaulted with the rifle group as per the manual, without support from other sections of the platoon or company assets is unclear from written evidence that I can think of.

(Edit: Sorry  Martin – what you said – I wrote most of this and then had to break off and take my wife to the station and posted on return without checking  for follow up.)

[Whirlwind]

In Sebag-Monefiore’s Dunkirk, there are definitely instances in the fighting in 1940 when British sections split up, either to attack from two directions or for one half to give covering fire to another.

[Ivan Sorensen]

I do recall reading in a book discussing the Volksgrenadier machine pistol type platoons late in the war that it was intended to operate as 3 sections (Gruppen I suppose) that didn’t break into teams, because the calibre of platoon leader and NCOs could no longer coordinate the teams.
As Martin mentions (and I’ve also read elsewhere) Soviet units also moved as sections (I don’t know the Russian word for squad).

On the American side, one of the 1942 manuals called for 2 men in the squad to move forward as scouts (separate from the other two teams). From what I’ve read, it seems that was dropped pretty quickly since the men were likely to just get themselves pinned down.

[John D Salt]

Mick Hayman (Aethelflaeda was framed) got it right first go, in my opinion. Platoons are intended to fight together, not spread themselves all over the world like a madwoman’s breakfast.

I think people have different ideas of what “splitting the squad (section to the British)” means. The much-quoted and sometimes-doubted British tactical habit of having the Bren give covering fire while the rifle group assaults does not, in my mind, constitute splitting the section. During the course of a section attack, the gun might get as far as a couple of hundred metres from the rest of the blokes, but it should always be possible for the section commander to control it. One of the things I liked about being given the GPMG in my UOTC time was that I could fight my platoon attacks lying down, instead of doing all that fearful running about the riflemen had to do; but you did sometimes get a bit of exercise at the end of an attack, when the section commander gives you a hand signal to come in and rejoin the rest in a single bound. It’s a motivation to be generous with your fire support during the attack, you have less to carry when you do finally get up and run.

I am sure that it is entirely ordinary for people to alternate firing and moving in sub-divisions of the rifle group, too, whether done by bricks, or buddy-pairs, or by individuals within buddy pairs. I have heard it suggested that “pepper-potting” is a mark of advanced infantry training, which I find absurd, as it was a perfectly routine and instinctive mode of tactical movement in my TA regiment. I do not buy the idea that performing fire and movement within the squad demands a particularly high level of training; it is the sort of thing that is quite straightforward to teach to a bunch of bloodthirsty schoolboys during the course of an afternoon out in the fresh air.

There are two things that I think support this idea.

First, the idea of a fireteam, although it has been around since (I believe) the 1930s, has only recently, and I suspect only in NATO armies, become a rigid and quasi-permanent organisational subdivision. A squad can, in practice, be divided up any way the section commander thinks appropriate; we used to call such subdivisions “blobs”. You will see such blobbery given the imprimatur of officialdom in all sorts of tactical diagrams showing things like an anti-tank ambush, or woods clearing, or an assault on a pillbox, with all sorts of specialist parties such as a breaching party, smoke party, demolition team, cut-off group, each with a few blokes assigned to a specific task. In the good old days, you would also have had soldiers functioning quasi-autonomously as runners or as connecting files. But these are all doing something that fits into the overall activity of the platoon.

Second, let’s not forget the micro-terrain. People who haven’t tried it often fail to realise just how far you can’t see when you are playing at infantry tactics in close terrain, and possibly limited visibility. Regardless of what the formal organisation is supposed to be, there are going to be times when a tactical grouping is defined simply by being the blokes who are all taking cover in the same hole.

As a concrete example of blobbery run wild, I recall David Fivecoat’s “Fine Conduct Under Fire: The Tactical Effectiveness of the 165th Infantry Regiment in the First World War” describing a platoon organisation that consisted entirely of what we would now think of as fireteams, with no squad organisation being used tactically. Must have been a bit of a brain-ache for the balloon banana, but no doubt works with keen soldiers.

The simple idea of a platoon breaking down progressively into squads, fireteams, and buddy-pairs taking it in turns to cover each other as they get closer to the objective is explained at some length in General C B Fry’s “Assault Battle Drill”. It is based on the tactics he used with 88th Division during the war in Italy, and they seem to have worked well, as Trevor Dupuy’s historical data collection when he was assessing relative national performance identified 88th Division as being unusually effective.

Another American worth a look is Barry Basden’s “Crack! and Thump”, a memoir of his WW2 service. He had the unusual experience of being taught British battle drill (including the “crack and thump” technique for finding the enemy which gives the book its title). He found it worked, and he used it throughout the war.

As a kind of refutation of the idea that everyone is a Russian squad has to do the same thing, I have had a quick and unscientific googledoodle, and come up with the following two snippets from recorded combat examples from the Great Patriotic War. This is from ТАКТИКА В БОЕВЫХ ПРИМЕРАХ (Tactics in combat examples), http://www.soldat.ru, sketch no. 9, “Rifle platoon attack against prepared enemy defence”.

As usual, it is a Google Translate effort kicked the rest of the way into English by me.

Находившийся со 2-м отделением командир взвода вызвал артиллерийский огонь по пулемету противника, а отделению приказал одной группой (из трех человек) сковать противника с фронта, а другой группой (из четырех человек) во главе с командиром отделения обойти его слева.

The platoon commander, who was with the 2nd squad, called for artillery fire at the enemy machine gun, and ordered one group (of three people) of the squad to pin down the enemy from the front, and another group (of four people) led by the commander to flank it on the left.

Когда с гитлеровцами завязался бой, командир 1-го отделения оставил на месте двух человек и приказал им вести огневой бой, а Сам с пятью солдатами решил обойти противника справа и нанести удар с тыла.

When combat with the Nazis began, the commander of the 1st squad left two men and ordered them to conduct a firefight, and he himself decided to flank the enemy with five soldiers on the right and strike from the rear.

Finally, there’s the ad-hoc organisation for a combat patrol mentioned in the classic song by Vladimir Vysotsky:

https://shorturl.at/1u6zw

All the best,

John.

[Paint it Pink]

John D Salt wrote:

Mick Hayman (Aethelflaeda was framed) got it right first go, in my opinion. Platoons are intended to fight together, not spread themselves all over the world like a madwoman’s breakfast. I think people have different ideas of what “splitting the squad (section to the British)” means. (snip)

I have heard it suggested that “pepper-potting” is a mark of advanced infantry training, which I find absurd, as it was a perfectly routine and instinctive mode of tactical movement in my TA regiment. I do not buy the idea that performing fire and movement within the squad demands a particularly high level of training; it is the sort of thing that is quite straightforward to teach to a bunch of bloodthirsty schoolboys during the course of an afternoon out in the fresh air.

There are two things that I think support this idea. First, the idea of a fireteam, although it has been around since (I believe) the 1930s, has only recently, and I suspect only in NATO armies, become a rigid and quasi-permanent organisational subdivision. A squad can, in practice, be divided up any way the section commander thinks appropriate; we used to call such subdivisions “blobs”. (snip)

Second, let’s not forget the micro-terrain. People who haven’t tried it often fail to realise just how far you can’t see when you are playing at infantry tactics in close terrain, and possibly limited visibility. Regardless of what the formal organisation is supposed to be, there are going to be times when a tactical grouping is defined simply by being the blokes who are all taking cover in the same hole. (snip)

All the best, John.

I’ve snipped and added a line break for clarity, but I’m just here to second John’s post.

Especially, the micro terrain comment. Having played at this with former Army people while LARPing using airsoft weapons, I can attest that blood thirsty enthusiasm also plays its part.

I think the problem is understanding the assumptions of small unit tactics from the real world and how they translate into a tabletop wargame. A player who lacks this perspective will likely get all tied up with the pedantry of the rules application in representing the confusion of even simulated chaos. 😉

One is good, more is better
http://panther6actual.blogspot.co.uk/
http://ashleyrpollard.blogspot.co.uk/

[Not Connard Sage]

Part of the problem, as John and PiP have ambled around, is us as wargamers.

We want nice discrete units that we can move around as we wish. Doesn’t work like that in real life, and if you try to apply tabletop generalship to proper warfare things are going to go sideways very quickly.

Cover, and its use, has long been a bugbear of mine. There’s never enough of it in a wargame, and its use isn’t understood. It’s a bit more complicated than -1 to a spotting roll and -1 or -2 to firing (depending if it’s ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ 🙂 )

Take yourself off to the nearest field, lie/crouch down and photograph what you can see. Take some friends, do the same. Go on, off you go. I’ll wait.

Every wargamer should try paintball/airsoft. It’s an eye-opener, and you don’t die if you feck it up.

 

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[John D Salt]

I am of course tremendously old (cue traditional and ancient remarks about joining before the Dead Sea reported sick and being in Bagdad before you were in your Dad’s bag) and so can remember a time when young kids, even if they weren’t in the cadet force, were in the habit of playing games in the open air that involved an element of stalking and fieldcraft, sometimes at night, too. Anyone too young to remember that, or never having had the privilege of free access to the countryside, is, in my opinion, never going to understand how infantry minor tactics work (flicks aside net curtains to make sure there are no kids on the lawn).

Phil Barker is even older than me, and horsy, and has I believe made similar remarks about kids these days being unable to comprehend a world so alien as to rely on horse-power to do almost everything not done by human muscle. But that’s not my period, so I hope I’m excused horses.

Not Connard Sage wrote:

Take yourself off to the nearest field, lie/crouch down and photograph what you can see. Take some friends, do the same. Go on, off you go. I’ll wait.

No need to wait, I did this with a TA pal of mine over 40 years ago on the walk back to Horsham from the Wheatsheaf at Plummer’s Plain (back in the days when I thought nothing of walking five miles there and five miles back for a pub lunch). We didn’t take photographs, but we did write notes for a trial set of intervisibility rules he was trying to develop that would properly show the tactical effect of convex slopes on the wargames table. We had to explain all this to the nice policeman who turned up after one of the locals reported two young men with short hair and DPM jackets behaving in a suspicious manner. One thing that impressed us particularly was the vast difference in the size of viewshed between lying, kneeling, standing, and standing on a fence. I understand (I think it was mentioned in “The Defence of Duffer’s Drift”) that a fairly common mistake in the rifle-and-sabre period was for officers to choose sites for fire trenches without bothering to get off their horse, failing to understand that the magnificent vista they could see was not shared from worm’s-eye level.

Not Connard Sage wrote:

Cover, and its use, has long been a bugbear of mine. There’s never enough of it in a wargame, and its use isn’t understood.

For infantry games, there is a strong argument that there can never be enough of it. When I worked at Fort Hatstand, I remember being shown a very nice graph with a log-log plot of the size of a geographical feature against how long it stays around. Teeny tussocks come and go in days and weeks, tectonic plates tend to stick around a lot longer. When considering the representation of terrain in computer simulations, the point was made that dismounted infantry (or “infantry”, as I liked to call them, but there were donkey-wallopers present) properly trained in fieldcraft can exploit micro-terrain at the teeny tussock end of the scale. No possible terrain database could capture such fine detail, which would in any case have changed before you had finished collecting it. The answer for computer simulations was that you had to generate random micro-terrain. For the tabletop wargamer, the answer is that your spotting rules should probably allow people to miss things even if there is no tabletop terrain obstructing the view.

Wargamers, of course, while frequently fanatical about researching the correct muzzle velocity for the 7.3cm L/23 Sonderkartoffelwerfer or what colour plumes the Hussards de Pelaw should be wearing at the Battle of Nevers-sur-Dimanche, don’t give much thought to terrain and its effects on intervisibility.

All the best,

John.

[Not Connard Sage]

John, I am a similar vintage. Cowboys and Indians. Jumpers for goalposts. Black & white telly.

AHH, those were the days ,

Nevers sur Dimanche 🤣🤣🤣

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Ivan Sorensen]

On the other hand I was born after inventions like the camp fire and the wheel, so I may be one of the younger posters on here 🙂

A fun exercise Ive done with the kid when we are in a forested area is to pace out distances from each other and see how close you really have to be to spot a person crouching or prone (and getting eaten by ants) when there’s even a modest bit of vegetation around.

Even just lying down flat on a sports field makes it pretty easy to miss you at a couple hundred paces, if you aren’t wearing something bright and making a nuisance of yourself.

[kyoteblue]

That has been my case.

[Author]

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