|
|
|
| Phantom Soldier: The Enemy's Answer to U.S. Firepower Throughout most of the
modern era, any non-Western military force that wanted to fight Western armed
forces had to copy them. It had to
adopt Western military discipline, tactics, training, and technology.
Failure to do so meant inevitable defeat, as the Chinese, among others,
found over and over again in the 19th century. But this is no
longer true. In the second half of the 20th century, a new pattern began
to emerge: when Western armed
forces fought non-Western opponents, they lost.
The French were defeated in Vietnam and in Algeria, the Soviets in
Afghanistan, and the Americans in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia.
The Israeli Defense Forces, once the best “Third Generation,”
maneuverist armed forces in the world, were defeated in Lebanon by Hezbollah and
are currently being defeated again by the Intifada.
As we move into a world not just of nations but of cultures in conflict,
the implications of this vast sea change are profound. In this book,
John Poole explains one non-Western way of war, the Oriental way of war.
He does so not in academic or theoretical terms, but practically, in
terms of small-unit tactics and techniques — the sort of thing NCOs and junior
officers need to know. A former
Marine Staff NCO himself, John Poole understands what is important in enabling
others like him to stay alive and prevail in small-unit combat. Soldiers and
Marines in Western countries need to understand the Oriental (and other
non-Western) ways of war for two reasons. First,
they are likely to come up against it. For
no good strategic reason, the United States and China seem to be on a collision
course. The Chinese now have and
know how to employ modern weapons. But
their techniques, tactics, and strategies are not likely to be simple copies of
those used by the West. They have a
long military tradition of their own, and it leads them in some fundamentally
different directions. The better we
understand the differences beforehand, the fewer lessons we will have to learn
in combat, the hard way. Second, as we
study the Oriental way of war, in this book or elsewhere, we may find that, at
least in some cases, their approach makes more sense than our own.
This is especially true for a Second Generation military, which is what
the U.S. Armed Forces largely remain, official U.S. Marine Corps doctrine to the
contrary (as Marines often put it, what the Marine Corps says is great, but
it’s not what it does). Second
Generation warfare reduces war to little more than the methodical application of
firepower to destroy targets. The
Oriental way of war is far more sophisticated.
It plays across the full spectrum of conflict — the moral and mental
levels as well as the physical. Even
at the physical level, it relies on the indirect approach, on stratagem and
deception, far more than on simple bombardment.
Seldom do Asians fall into mindless Materialschlact or “body counts”;
and while Oriental armies often can (and have) taken many casualties, their
tactics at the small-unit infantry level are often cleverly designed to spare
their own men’s lives in the face of massive Western firepower. A truly
professional military is always looking for better ways to do things.
One of the most common sources of new and better ideas is foreign
practice. Between the World Wars,
American military journals were full of articles on foreign tactics and
techniques. Sadly, that is no
longer the case. Perhaps because of
the delusion that wars are won by the side that has the most complex technology,
we have largely stopped trying to learn from others. This book
offers an important, perhaps a life-saving, opportunity to reverse our
short-sighted current practice. It
presents the Oriental way of war in depth, but also understandably.
If official field manuals remain largely unimaginative and uninspired,
there is no reason squad leaders and platoon and company commanders must let
their own tactics and techniques be set-piece and predictable. Here, as in his previous books, John Poole offers a better
way. -- William S. Lind author of Maneuver
Warfare Handbook When Marco Polo
returned from the Far East to Venice in 1295, he warned of the Karauna raiders
in the barren deserts of Upper Persia. Of
Indian and Mongolian descent, the Karaunas were said to have the power to
conjure up a magic, choking gloom through which to approach lucrative caravans.
In India they acquired the
knowledge of magical and diabolical arts, by means of which they are enabled to
produce darkness, obscuring the light of day to such a degree, that persons are
invisible to each other, unless within a very small distance.
Whenever they go on their approach is consequently not perceived.
— Marco Polo
Marco Polo’s
perception may have been clouded by superstition and sandstorm, but those with
whom he had lived in China firmly believed in mystical occurrences. Wind can be acquired by
sacrifice, rain can be obtained by prayer, and cloud, fog, thunder and
lightening can be summoned by conjuration.
— Tou Bi Fu Tan A Scholar’s Dilettante Remarks on War The
public-television documentary — All the Kings’ Men — describes a
hauntingly similar occurrence at the beginning of the 20th century.
It would seem that the British Sandringham Company vanished forever after
advancing into a cloud of “golden mist” at Gallipoli in 1915.
The documentary concludes that the Turks must have somehow used the mist
to conceal a massacre. While the
Allied soldiers’ fate may be hypothetical, the mist wasn’t. According to
many writers . . . , hundreds of British troops were mysteriously “abducted”
by a cloud that settled over them as they advanced toward the Turkish positions
during one of the battles of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915.
The source for this story is a statement written 50 years after the
incident by three New Zealand soldiers, who deposed that they had watched a
dense, solid-looking cloud shaped like a loaf of bread settle on the ground in
the path of an advancing column of troops.
After the men walked into it, the account went on, the cloud lifted,
leaving no one behind. In Into Thin
Air, Paul Begg concluded that this disappearance could not have happened as
described. The battalion named by the New Zealanders was not unaccounted
for. Another battalion had been
decimated in battle, but that was nine days before the date given in the
statement, and the report of the postwar commission that investigated the
disastrous Gallipoli campaign included mention of an unseasonable mist that
blinded Allied artillery gunners but aided their Turkish counterparts in wiping
out a British unit. Significantly,
that report was only fully declassified in 1965 and its publication may have
brought forth a confused recollection by the New Zealanders. Although the
details are questionable, a mystery concerning the fallen still remains.
As Begg notes: “Of the
34,000 British and Empire troops who died at Gallipoli, 27,000 have no known
grave.” More recently,
Karen rebels from Myanmar (formerly Burma) have claimed adolescent leaders who
can read minds, smell distant foes, and become invisible.
Though farfetched, their belief is nonetheless useful to understanding
Oriental military tradition. Still
available in Buddhist bookstores is an ancient document providing its reader
with a step-by-step procedure on how to appear not to exist. Whether the
Karaunas, Turks, or Htoo brothers could really disappear from view is not at
issue. All that must be
acknowledged is that Eastern soldiers have long tried to disguise their presence
on the battlefield. As this book
will show, many have managed to do just that during some of the fiercest
fighting in U.S. history. On
offense, they have sprung from nowhere to damage targets of strategic
importance. On defense, they have
tactically withdrawn while pretending to succumb to bombardment or languish
below ground. Though critically
short of armor and air support, they have suffered far fewer casualties than
previously thought. To survive the
more lethal weaponry of the 21st century, U.S. infantrymen must do what the
“phantom soldiers” did.
To the United States of America and its Armed Forces goes a heartfelt thanks for
the opportunity to serve. To the Good Lord goes the credit for any insight
into how to minimize the loss of life in war. |
|
|
