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asl3d -> RE: Heroes and Leaders mod (2/21/2019 5:43:10 PM)
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US G.I. BAR:
The origins of this popular nickname are somewhat murky. A popular theory links the term to the early 20th century, when “G.I.” was stamped on military trash cans and buckets. The two-letter abbreviation stood for the material from which these items were made: galvanized iron. The prevalence of the term led soldiers in World War II to start referring to themselves as "G.I.'s". Some servicemen used it as a sarcastic reference symbolizing their belief that they were just mass-produced products of the government. Here, the term G.I. refers, in a generic way, to the "Green Infantry", that is, to US combat units well equipped and well trained, but without any experience in combat.
In 1939, the US Army only had 174,000 soldiers, including the Army Air Forces. At its peak during the war, the Army grew to over 8 million men and women in uniform, joined by an additional 3.4 million in the Navy. The new additions were mostly young Americans who would normally have been pursuing jobs, schooling, and family life, but instead were answering the nation’s call to arms. Many of them had never even traveled outside their home state, let alone Europe, Asia, or the Pacific Islands. Preparing these millions of civilians for war would be one of the military’s most daunting challenges. The American soldiers were, both tactically and psychologically, different from the Germans or the Russians. They surrendered more easily than those under enemy fire, but they also recovered more quickly. Moreover, their lack of tactical sense, often, led them to try some fearful and sometimes unwise actions. They loved the mechanisms of any kind and they liked extraordinarily capture weapons and equipment. Probably the best person to summarize the characteristic feature of the American soldier, was Erwin Rommel himself, who claimed never to have seen worse soldiers in his first battle, nor any who learned so much from his second. Any attempt to reflect a national fact, characteristic of the American units, must be based on the variable experience in the battlefield, taking into account the different relative constants always present in the American army: instruction, armament, and physical condition. Rarely American units are represented by uniform types of infantry. Normally was be a mixture of experienced and inexperienced troops, due to the constant disorder in the line of replacement. Even the veteran squads were a mix of seasoned troops with inexperienced replacements, who knows how, up to the line of fire. The G.I. they tended to demoralize under fire more easily than their counterparts in the European armies, but he was also an independent type, who, once hardened in combat, retreated more quickly and often fought with a calm and efficient revenge. The G.I. they were more adept at cooking the dish than at eating it, and they did not react well under fire. It was not strange that they suffered a tremendous amount of punishment during prolonged battles only alleviated by the ingenuity of the troops, which endowed them with a special resistance against the attacks of the enemy. Even if it is true that this phenomenon occurred in all armies, (especially among the remnants of the German army in 1945), the American army was especially affected.
[image]local://upfiles/56084/7DA0646273084F29AD5DFA2CC4855CBF.jpg[/image]
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