[LMB] OT: pour encourage les autres was Convert and quotation

[Marna Nightingale]

Richard Suitor wrote:

> Paula:
> 
>> That was how the British Army operated, the enemy MIGHT kill the 
>> soldiers,
>> the British officers WOULD kill them, if they turned tail and ran.
> 
> I believe many armies have that as the bottom line.  Have no idea of
> relative incidences.  I understand it was not good for career or
> health to be a repatriated Soviet POW after WWII.

Well, in the case of the Brits it's mythical.

Probably mythical in most cases, though DESERTERS is another matter.

Note that (most) officers carried a single shot pistol and a functional 
but by no means heavy-duty sword. Oh, and they had a horse, which can be 
an advantage, but.

Troops carried a musket and a bayonet, and outnumbered the officers 
10-1, minimally.

If the troops had been more afraid of them than they were of the enemy, 
there'd have been a lot more scragging then there was.

Also, you cannot run large operations with troops who don't trust you. 
They will go where they like instead of where you send them, and they'll 
die of it.

(Now, the man on your flank -- or your NCO -- were another matter. You 
ran, you broke the line. You broke the line, your mates were dead. 
Either nobody ran, or a whole section did, generally, and it wasn't 
unkown for a panicker to be shot or clubbed down to stop it spreading.)

The English had troops break and run all the d*mn time in the Peninsula; 
Wellington famously said once he didn't mind if they ran, they all ran 
sooner or later. Just so they came BACK.

By Waterloo they had so many raw troops on the field that one of 
Wellington's tactical issues was putting the regiments who averaged 
older men and veterans where they'd keep the boys steady. Still didn't 
always work, because by then the seasoned troops were half in North 
America.

They were kids. They panicked. They ran. Mostly, they came back.

Marna.