National Defense: Handbook to War

This week, the first peacetime conscripts of the U. S. Army were called to the colors, began their military education. For many, lessons will be based on a new textbook, a 344-page, brown-covered book, replete with illustrations, maps, prose, all of which tell wearers of blue-corded infantry hats about new tricks they will have to learn, old tricks to be forgotten. The book : Infantry Field Manual FM 7-5. The editor: No. 1 U. S. foot soldier, hand some, white-haired Major General George Arthur Lynch.

Periodically Army books on waging war are overhauled, precepts modernized. No last-minute second-guesser, the Infantry’s chief sat down one day in mid-1939, pondered French and German infantry texts, began to pencil a revision of the U. S. foot soldiers’ bible. Editor Lynch concurred with German theories of fluid movement, frowned on French notions of static, dig-in defense. Last June, dispatches from Paris indicated that he had been dead right.

In simple, sometimes classic phrases Soldier Lynch told his men that changes in tools caused change in rules, affected whole Army corps as well as single buck privates.

Typical points of Lynchlore:

> Today’s foot soldier will move too fast for his artillery, will probably enjoy only the benefits of a big-gun “preparation shoot,” plus coverage by aerial bombardment.

> Infantry must carry into action hardhitting, fast-fire weapons—semi-automatic rifles, light & heavy machine guns, mortars, tank-killers.

> An offense, like a river, must flow around strong points of enemy resistance as if they were islands, and go on, leaving isolated conflicts behind.

> In battle, squad leaders no longer need wait for minute instructions from above when they and their squads get ahead of the attack. Lynch-taught, noncoms will keep moving, do their own thinking.

> Private soldiers must learn Indian-fighting methods which beget fewer casualties than Light Brigade charges.

> Observers will operate largely on their bellies, peer around the right (not left) side of trees, rocks, fence posts. Reason: Right-handed observers must be ready to shoot from their right shoulder. The Army tries to turn lefties into righties. The Lynch manual makes no provision for lefties.

> Best chance a rifleman has against tanks is to draw a bead on an open turret, fire port, pot driver or gunner. (More common will be the officially sanctioned practice of seeking the nearest ditch.)

Immediate effect of the Book of Lynch on U. S. infantrymen will be to reduce hours spent in antiquated close-order drill, increase the days devoted to field maneuver. Smart boys will catch on in two or three weeks; chuckleheads who look to left of trees after month’s end will be demoted to the awkward squad.