Introduction to 'Forward into Battle', a study on the evolution of small-unit tactics from the 19th to the 20th century

British military writer Paddy Griffith's Forward into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to the Near Future' (first edition 1981; 2011) is a work that explains how small-unit tactics changed from the 19th to the 20th century. With its lighthearted tone, I believe it is a book that should be read as a general educational text rather than a specialized academic volume.

Griffith, P. (2011). Forward into battle: fighting tactics from Waterloo to the near future. Presidio Press.

The reason the author went out of his way to address the theme of small-unit tactics in the 1980s was his recognition that the importance of small-unit tactics would only increase in modern warfare.

In 19th-century combat, infantry battalions engaged by advancing in orderly lines, aiming their weapons at enemy units spotted 50 to 100 meters away, and firing in unison upon the commander's order. However, this method of fighting was replaced by new approaches during the battles of the early 20th century, specifically World War I.

From World War I onward, the operational unit for small-unit tactics shifted to the company and even the platoon. Unit commanders stopped forcing soldiers into rigid formations, instead requiring them to maintain wider intervals so that a single enemy strike would not kill or injure multiple men simultaneously. Control over the movement of individual units was also relaxed, and personal camouflage and concealment became standard for protection. The distance at which one engaged the enemy increased to over 200 meters in many cases, making it impossible for commanders to fully control the fire of their subordinates. Consequently, subordinates were required to participate in combat more independently and proactively than ever before.

The author argues that in such small-unit tactics, the ability of combat units to demonstrate mobility is more important than anything else, and that the efficiency of battlefield maneuver is the factor that determines victory or defeat. This theory served as a critique of contemporary researchers who believed that the application of firepower was the primary influence on combat outcomes. For example, in the first chapter, he provides a detailed rebuttal to the theory of the British historian Charles Oman, who claimed that the British Army's line infantry during the Napoleonic Wars excelled in marksmanship.

The author acknowledges that the 19th-century British line infantry were trained to deploy in two-rank lines to maximize frontal firepower and engage in firefights while facing the enemy. However, when the author investigated the tactics actually used in combat by the British Duke of Wellington, he found that Wellington rarely employed such textbook methods. The author states that the Duke of Wellington's specialty was skillfully luring enemy units to close range, delivering intense fire to disrupt them, and then annihilating them with a bayonet charge. This argument was likely the most controversial part of the book.

Of course, the book's discussion is not limited to small-unit tactics of the Napoleonic Wars. Chapter 4 describes how infantry equipment gradually diversified throughout World War I, with mortars, machine guns, flamethrowers, and hand grenades being used in addition to traditional rifles and bayonets, and how the application of firepower in small-unit tactics became extremely complex as a result. However, the author notes that even during this period, what was important for the success of small-unit tactics was not the superiority of firepower, but the appropriateness of maneuver.

After 1916, stormtrooper tactics developed within the German army, which adopted penetration as a method of offensive maneuver. In previous frontal attacks, artillery would shell the enemy for a sufficient amount of time before a large force launched an assault on the enemy's defensive positions. In contrast, penetration emphasizes using small units to flexibly bypass areas of heavy enemy resistance and penetrate deep into the enemy's rear. By doing this, the enemy's communication between units is severed, they are isolated, and they become unable to exert organized combat power.

From this perspective, the author highly evaluates the tactical capabilities of the North Vietnamese People's Army, which fought against the U.S. military in the Vietnam War. The U.S. military's small-unit tactics in the Vietnam War relied in many respects on the superiority of firepower provided by aircraft and artillery. However, in the tropical rainforests of the Vietnamese battlefield, it was difficult to obtain sufficient visibility and fields of fire, making it hard to accurately track the North Vietnamese People's Army. The author introduces cases where U.S. units were ambushed by the North Vietnamese People's Army to explain the significance of maneuver in small-unit tactics.

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