Evening star., 1941-03-06
Fort Meade Training
Emphasizes Tactics
OF Small Units
Stuff Officers Decline
To Make Robots of
Squad Leaders or Privotes
BY CARTER BROOKE JONES,
Star Staff Correspondent.

SUR cLalI SOIIeSpOnutub.
FORT GEORGE &. MEADE, Md,
March 6.-Tactics. says a leading
dictionary, is 1.-The art of handling
troops in the presence of the en-
emv," and. in these mechanlzed
days, tactics may seem to concern
only vast movements OF troops,
planes, machines and guns.
Yet, take it from the staff officers
who are directing the training OF
the 29th Division. tactics in the
American Army is just as much
involved in deploying a squad OF
8 to IL men or a platoon OF SO or
less.
In fact, a colonel remarked today
as he watched from Division Hill
small knots of brown men scattered
over a brown field below, there's
more tactics in handling a squad
or a platoon than in maneuvering
a company, a regiment or a brigade.
Unit Command Stressed.
Thus, as the men of this National
Guard division from the District,
Maryland, Virginia and Pennsyl-
vania round out the early phases
of the schooling that is to flt them
for combat, the responsibility OF
platoon and squad commanders
lieutenants, sergeants and cor
porals-is stressed. So is the i'm
portance of the soldier himself, the
buck private, who is still the back
bone of any army.
Those detachmentS which moved
about independently over the bare,
frozen meadow we're learning to
think and act for themselves, not
to be mere cogs in a machine. They
must carry out orders, of course,
but much is left to their judgment.
These are principles laid down by
the War Department in the emer-
gency training plans, and Maj. Gen.
Milton A. Reckord, commanding the
29th Division, is seeing that they are
carried out.
If warfare of the blitZ era has
made soldiers into robots, who are
valuable only in the aggregate and
as operators of bigger machines, our
military experts are not ready to
admit it. They deny it. They recall
also that Pershing was told that his
army would have to discard all the
old ideas of mobile combat and learn
to fight in the trenches. He dis
agreed Well, they add. the Argonne
was fought in thte open and won.
"Tactics?" repeated 1t Col. Ed
win Cox, executive officer OF the
88th Infantry Brigade and chief
instructor of the non-commissioned
officers school. Watch those pla-
toons and squads There you'll find
tactics" And. after their outdoor
drill in deploying small units, the
sergeants and corporalS were called
into brigade headquarters. Col. Cox
had prepared a dummy combat field
of sand poured into a long box.
The sand was shaped into hills,
with green string for a river and
tinsel for underbrush. Pins denoted
small bodies of troops here and
there. The non-Coms were given
problems and asked how they would
move squads and platoons against
obstacles and enemy positions.
Every clunp of bushes, ravine
and rise Of ground becomes impor-
tant to the small unit" Col. Cox
explained. "a division commander
wouldn't be concerned with these
problems. But a whole battle might
hinge on how the platoons and
squads made their advances in GER
tain areas"
Every lieutenant and non-com in
the l76th Infantry from Virginia, is
being taught to take the field with
his men and work out his own STRAIT
egies in advancing toward the OBJ
iective laid down by his superiors,
1t. Col. Edwin P Conquest of Rich
mond, commanding the regiment,
pointed out
And so there is ample evidence in
this typical training area that the
American soldier and his squad
mates are far from nonentltles,
"nen in the mass Their import