Military Totemism and its Impact on Small Wars

[One_of_the_Strange]

I thought I'd break my posting duck by pointing out some UK views of combat fashion. The aim for the soldier concerned is to be seen as "ally", that difficult to define blend of professionalism and style. It's trying hard to appear as though you've made no effort. It varies from conflict to conflict - Falklands "ally" was very different to Herrick (Afghanistan) "ally".

http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/...c/t=46346.html

http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/...c/t=53077.html

Failure results in being labelled as a "walt", as in Walter Mitty. But that's a whole new topic all by itself.

[Stan]

Hey 120mm,

While an OTT to Aberdeen, MD to introduce ground forces weapons to the Estonian military as potential FMF sales, the Estonian NCO and his Colonel were offered to try various weapons on the range and at the end of the day, both seemed to favor the M-14 over any other weapon.

Turns out, one of the NCO's distant relatives was part of an Estonia sniper unit trained by the Germans in the early 1900s. The unit then and today is know as the Kuperjanov Single Infantry Battalion. Formed as a partisan troop in 1918 by 1LT Julius Kuperjanov, their enemies often referred to them as a death squad.

Kuperjanov's battalion lacking sufficient ammo to sustain a long firefight, would simply wait hiden in a dense growth of trees for an adorn officer and use a single 7mm round.

The Kuperjanov battalion today still practice the one round-rule, but now use US-donated M14s.

Regards, Stan