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Icon Of Sin posted:It’s such a clusterfuck that I don’t think anyone even knows. I think the US 82nd was originally a light infantry division, and they (along with the 101st) got chosen to be AIRBORNE!! in WWII (when it was a new thing). They could’ve been consecutive at one point, but between founding, disbanding, and reflagging (changing the name and keeping the personnel intact) it’s a massive clusterfuck. That’s before you even get into the regiment system, which a lot of units still retain up to the battalion level. For example… Nah, it makes sense. Regiments are not, anymore, units of any actual organization, so they just carry their regimental heritage and tradition and insignia. To preserve that, and to prevent the regimental tradition dying if one unit shuts down, the regiment gets splintered into tiny, usually battalion sized, units that belong to actual units. Like the 503rd Infanty Regiment, regimental elements have been assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division, the 11th Airborne Division, the 24th Infantry Division, 25th Infantry Division, the 82nd Airborne Division, 101st Airborne Division, and the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. Today only the two battalions, 1-503 and 2-503 are active in the 173rd, all other battalions deactivated. Essentially the regimental system is a shadow organization of purely tradition behind the current unit formations that do not have any actual practical meaning. It makes sense once you understand how it works. The 75th Ranger Regiment is the only actually administrative regiment in the US Army.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 00:31 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 01:30 |
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Vahakyla posted:Today only the two battalions, 1-503 and 2-503 are active in the 173rd, all other battalions deactivated. It only makes sense if your point of view starts with “pageantry is more important than creating shared understanding and simplicity in military operations.” Heraldry departments employ GS Historians who will pore over records to recommend what combination of numbers and letters might kind of sort of make sense to assign to a brand new unit with a new weapon system, using the most tenuous academic ties to a unit that has not been active since 1874 or something and was armed with a mishmash of rifles, a donkey, and two flat-bottomed canal boats. Also units are not deactivated. They are inactivated. You deactivate a bomb.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 00:44 |
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There's also an opsec reason to use nonsequential numbering for unit designations. If you stand up or draw down a unit in wartime (about the only time this wouldn't be accompanied by a press release in the US) The new number doesn't instantly indicate a change in force structure. At least that's the theory. With the drawn down nature of the current force structure it's pretty easy to keep track of the major formations if your job is to study US capabilities.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 00:46 |
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Kaiser Schnitzel posted:As far as I can tell there is no real rhyme or reason to it. Some of the numbers seem to be inherited from successor units to Soviet formations, some of them seem to be sort of sequential? There are 79th, 80th, and 81st brigades in the Ukrainian Air Assault Forces, but also a 95th Air Assault brigade. and the 81st is an air mobile brigade not Air Assault, so I have no idea. All those predate the 2022 invasion, but the 82nd is an entirely new formation.There is a 1st Special Purpose brigade, a 1st Tank Brigade, a 3rd Separate Assault Brigade and a 3rd Tank brigade, even a 4th, 5th and 17th Tank brigades, but no 2nd tank brigade that I can find. If there's no rhyme or reason to it, you'd think there'd be far more 69th and 420th brigades. Thanks to everyone who had an answer!
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 00:47 |
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Vahakyla posted:Nah, it makes sense. Seems like they would be better off converting the regiments to battalions instead of creating a giant mess like this. mlmp08 posted:Also units are not deactivated. They are inactivated. You deactivate a bomb. From everything I've read in GIP comparing units to bombs is pretty accurate.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 00:53 |
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mlmp08 posted:It only makes sense if your point of view starts with “pageantry is more important than creating shared understanding and simplicity in military operations.” Ukraine did some of that history digging recently, with units receiving designations related to history of Ukrainian People's Republic, so, say, the 72nd Mechanized is simultaneously named after WW2 72nd Guards Rifle Division and nicknamed after a UNR cavalry regiment...
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 00:57 |
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A.o.D. posted:There's also an opsec reason to use nonsequential numbering for unit designations. If you stand up or draw down a unit in wartime (about the only time this wouldn't be accompanied by a press release in the US) The new number doesn't instantly indicate a change in force structure. At least that's the theory. With the drawn down nature of the current force structure it's pretty easy to keep track of the major formations if your job is to study US capabilities. The US just publishes lists of its units and forces and details exactly how many tanks and IFVs it is paying to maintain. This goes out in public congressional record, etc. And they simplify the counts, so that they aren't presenting congress with a list of nonsensical unit names. That doesn't mean there can't be secret programs or that they publish every capability or munitions counts or the like, but the US isn't being precious about how many BCTs exist. On regimental history, it can get pretty goofy even for the very big-name and famous ones. quote:On 3 March 1791, Congress added to the Army "The Second Regiment of Infantry" from which today's First Infantry draws its heritage. In September of that year, elements of it and the original 1st Infantry Regiment (today's 3rd United States Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard)), with sizable militia complements, all under command of General Arthur St. Clair, were sent against the Native American nations of the Ohio country. Let's take a look at the regimental history of the 52nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment. Today, there is one battalion under this regimental affiliation. quote:Organized 22 July 1917 in the Regular Army at Fort Adams, Rhode Island, as the 7th Provisional Regiment, Coast Artillery Corps (CAC), from units of the Coast Defenses of Long Island Sound, Eastern New York, Southern New York, Narragansett Bay, and Port Royal Sound.[2][3] The regimental system is a federal jobs program for historians. And when units get merged or activated, there's a big line of priority to either subsume the lesser/younger regiment or to determine which regiment is first in line to slap its lineage onto a new and unrelated unit. But hey, historians gotta eat; it's not a job I envy. e: bonus quote:The Combat Arms Regimental System (CARS), was the method of assigning unit designations to units of some of the combat arms branches of the United States Army, including Infantry, Special Forces, Field Artillery, and Armor, from 1957 to 1981. Air Defense Artillery was added in 1968.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 01:01 |
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I did in fact remark about how the military publishes everything.. except in time of war.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 01:02 |
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Fair enough, the global war on terror service medal stopped being given out on 14 September 2021 unless serving in a specific operation as part of the global war on terror, so we are now at peace.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 01:05 |
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mlmp08 posted:Fair enough, the global war on terror service medal stopped being given out on 14 September 2021 unless serving in a specific operation as part of the global war on terror, so we are now at peace. Nah we are still fighting korea
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 01:07 |
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Tunicate posted:Nah we are still fighting korea oh yeah fuk
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 01:16 |
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mlmp08 posted:The US just publishes lists of its units and forces and details exactly how many tanks and IFVs it is paying to maintain. This goes out in public congressional record, etc. And they simplify the counts, so that they aren't presenting congress with a list of nonsensical unit names. That doesn't mean there can't be secret programs or that they publish every capability or munitions counts or the like, but the US isn't being precious about how many BCTs exist. I never considered the complexity of this level of organization when it comes to keeping units functional at all levels, being both useful and cohesive. Numbering sounds absolutely terrible.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 01:17 |
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An interesting write up on training: https://twitter.com/Teoyaomiquu/status/1699193558685618235#m
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 01:28 |
OddObserver posted:An interesting write up on training: I hope NATO militaries are paying close attention to feedback like this, as well as how the fight is playing out generally. I recall reading stories here about OpFor clowning on units at NTC for similar issues: not paying due heed to drones, clustering up the motor pool and other problems that are capitalized on by the bad guys. We oughta be learning from Ukraine's pain.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 03:35 |
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McNally posted:The Obama Administration was pressuring the Ukrainian government to remove their prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, because he was turning a blind eye to corruption and going out of his way to not investigate things. There was a multi-year lawsuit of Burisma tried in London with Burisma losing. Ukraine had signed treaties to obey the results of those kinds of trials. Shokin refused. For years. Upholding international treaties and international courts is “corruption” in MAGA land.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 03:37 |
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Arrath posted:I hope NATO militaries are paying close attention to feedback like this, as well as how the fight is playing out generally. I imagine part of the disconnect is the trainers not being able to realize a situation where air superiority isn't an immutable fact of nature like gravity or the sunrise shame on an IGA fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Sep 6, 2023 |
# ? Sep 6, 2023 03:37 |
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Stuff like the hesitance to train for EOD seemed weird
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 03:44 |
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mlmp08 posted:The regimental system is a federal jobs program for historians. You say this like it's a bad thing. Anyway it leads to funny things like an NG regiment having battle honors for Yorktown, Normandy, and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Or the oldest American units having priority over almost every regiment in the British Army in a joint parade. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Sep 6, 2023 |
# ? Sep 6, 2023 04:01 |
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While there's some selection bias going on, I've been surprised how videos so regularly show Russian soldiers ignoring, abandoning, or even seemingly looting their own wounded. On the one hand, this speak to a failure in training and broader esprit de corps, but, on the other, I wonder how well soldiers in Western militaries might hold up in a peer to (near-)peer fight. If I somehow survived a near hit from a shrapnel shell, cluster munitions, and a suicide drone attack all in the span of 15 seconds, the urge to get myself the gently caress out of dodge would be hard to overcome.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 04:25 |
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psydude posted:I dunno, a lot of East Germans really seem to be pining for the good old days of Russian proxy rule. Fair enough. I fully cop to my observations being 15 years old, and limited to a region near but not by American bases in Franconia. The only time I ever made it to East Germany was to the Lausitzring, to watch Scott Speed represent the USA by crashing in turn one, lap one of an A1GP race. On unit numbering chat, I had somewhat of an inkling of what a clusterfuck it was, but when I was doing intake to my first real unit, the 121st Signal Battalion, I was getting spoonfed how glorious it was to be in the oldest Signal unit in the Army in the Big Red One, and I had to ask "what happened to the other 120 signal battalions"
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 04:26 |
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Cugel the Clever posted:While there's some selection bias going on, I've been surprised how videos so regularly show Russian soldiers ignoring, abandoning, or even seemingly looting their own wounded. On the one hand, this speak to a failure in training and broader esprit de corps, but, on the other, I wonder how well soldiers in Western militaries might hold up in a peer to (near-)peer fight. If I somehow survived a near hit from a shrapnel shell, cluster munitions, and a suicide drone attack all in the span of 15 seconds, the urge to get myself the gently caress out of dodge would be hard to overcome. I mean, these guys probably haven’t known each other much longer than the bus ride to the front.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 04:35 |
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shame on an IGA posted:I imagine part of the disconnect is the trainers not being able to realize a situation where air superiority isn't an immutable fact of nature like gravity or the sunrise I'm under the assumption they had no training at all when they went in. In this case they are trying to guess at what information and training might be most useful. Theres a compromise between developing the fundamentals enough for them to be effective and learn/adapt on their own while also imparting useful specific knowledge. Along with this, the trainers probably didn't have an easily applied training module built out for the things they were asking about. They were also looking at deploying around the start of the summer offensive so maybe the focus on attack was part of that? This is just from my recent experience trying to teach 90 cadets engineering when they have 0 knowledge and I have no support, time, or pathway to get them everything they need.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 04:45 |
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OddObserver posted:An interesting write up on training: That's a pro-click. It's an excellent article and leads to one clear conclusion. NATO needs Ukraine, they have so much to teach. Or rather, the survivors will.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 05:07 |
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mlmp08 posted:The US just publishes lists of its units and forces and details exactly how many tanks and IFVs it is paying to maintain. This goes out in public congressional record, etc. And they simplify the counts, so that they aren't presenting congress with a list of nonsensical unit names. That doesn't mean there can't be secret programs or that they publish every capability or munitions counts or the like, but the US isn't being precious about how many BCTs exist. 6-52 belongs in the idiots thread, thank you.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 05:44 |
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shame on an IGA posted:I imagine part of the disconnect is the trainers not being able to realize a situation where air superiority isn't an immutable fact of nature like gravity or the sunrise German trainers, apparently: "No, the doctrinally sound option is to drive around the minefield".
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 08:48 |
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A.o.D. posted:There's also an opsec reason to use nonsequential numbering for unit designations. If you stand up or draw down a unit in wartime (about the only time this wouldn't be accompanied by a press release in the US) The new number doesn't instantly indicate a change in force structure. At least that's the theory. With the drawn down nature of the current force structure it's pretty easy to keep track of the major formations if your job is to study US capabilities. greasing up 4 regiments numbered 1st 2nd 4th and 5th and turning them loose
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 09:18 |
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Is this why a unit's colors is such a treasured object? It's one thing that they have carried through wars and ages and has not changed?
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 09:35 |
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In the warfare of the 17th century it had a concrete meaning in the contracts of mercenaries. If you fled a battle while the flag was still flying you could be executed for cowardice, but if it was lost your contract was done. Those who guarded the flags tended to be well paid since the owner of the regiment would lose their investment (read: regiment) if they lost it in battle.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 10:17 |
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shame on an IGA posted:I imagine part of the disconnect is the trainers not being able to realize a situation where air superiority isn't an immutable fact of nature like gravity or the sunrise US doctrine doesn't presume air superiority. It's a combined arms effort that assumes a 50% casualty rate for the breaching unit, which means you need an rear end-ton of equipment. The 6 mine clearing vehicles or whatever the Germans donated are nowhere near enough for something like that. The error, I think, was assuming that the Ukrainians would be fully equipped with NATO-standard MTOE. They definitely were not.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 11:13 |
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lightpole posted:I'm under the assumption they had no training at all when they went in. In this case they are trying to guess at what information and training might be most useful. Theres a compromise between developing the fundamentals enough for them to be effective and learn/adapt on their own while also imparting useful specific knowledge. Along with this, the trainers probably didn't have an easily applied training module built out for the things they were asking about. They were also looking at deploying around the start of the summer offensive so maybe the focus on attack was part of that? One of Kofman's criticism of the NATO trained units is that they took green recruits instead of experienced soldiers. The context for him is that the advantages of the western equipment would have been leveraged better by experienced soldiers, but it also suggests the newly trained units only got a rushed training program with little to no field experience or previous instruction.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 13:28 |
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Diarrhea Elemental posted:6-52 belongs in the idiots thread, thank you. Oh yeah, I forgot about 6-52. So the other 52d reg unit is on another continent from 5-52 and assigned to a different division.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 13:57 |
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Every training deficiency mentioned pretty much jives along with the training deficiencies I received in OSUT Infantry training, so I'm not surprised if it was Americans training them. For context, I went through Benning School for Wayward Boys in 2002. The early OEF Vets weren't in TRADOC yet, and of course, Iraq hadn't happened. We got the bare minimum with the caveat of "You'll learn this at your unit." Good, great, grand- when you get that luxury. I get that everyone does it differently, and that there is never enough time, but the things that were cut were vital and probably got kids hurt and killed.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 14:05 |
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https://twitter.com/ArmeniaMODTeam/status/1699297627865542665 jealous gf meme
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 14:56 |
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Fragrag posted:Is this why a unit's colors is such a treasured object? It's one thing that they have carried through wars and ages and has not changed? It's a holdover from old timey battlefields where a unit's colors were the rally point for the unit and its point of pride (for example, in the American Civil War, a regiment's colors were usually presented to the unit by the women of the town the regiment was raised, sometimes even having been sewn by them). To lose your colors in battle was just about the ultimate disgrace, as either they had been taken by the enemy (a clear defeat of the unit) or somehow left behind (a sign of cowardice). Now it's just tradition that the colors are An Important Thing.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 15:18 |
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NATO/CSTO joint exercises when?
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 15:20 |
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No Russias Allowed Club
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 15:23 |
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McNally posted:It's a holdover from old timey battlefields where a unit's colors were the rally point for the unit and its point of pride (for example, in the American Civil War, a regiment's colors were usually presented to the unit by the women of the town the regiment was raised, sometimes even having been sewn by them). To lose your colors in battle was just about the ultimate disgrace, as either they had been taken by the enemy (a clear defeat of the unit) or somehow left behind (a sign of cowardice). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG7daMnrNuY
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 15:33 |
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bulletsponge13 posted:Every training deficiency mentioned pretty much jives along with the training deficiencies I received in OSUT Infantry training, so I'm not surprised if it was Americans training them. I went through Benning in 1985, and the majority of my senior drill sergeants were all Vietnam vets, primarily from the 173rd. We learned everything about jungles and nothing about deserts.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 15:54 |
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Alan Smithee posted:No Russias Allowed Club "But you guys let Kaliningrad in!" "It's the No Russias Allowed Club, we're allowed to have one."
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 16:18 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 01:30 |
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McNally posted:It's a holdover from old timey battlefields where a unit's colors were the rally point for the unit and its point of pride (for example, in the American Civil War, a regiment's colors were usually presented to the unit by the women of the town the regiment was raised, sometimes even having been sewn by them). To lose your colors in battle was just about the ultimate disgrace, as either they had been taken by the enemy (a clear defeat of the unit) or somehow left behind (a sign of cowardice). Yeah, at least in British army the colours are supremely important to the identity and history of the unit even though their purpose is purely ceremonial now. The British regimental system seems to work fine in that it produces an extremely strong identity and esprit de corps.
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# ? Sep 6, 2023 16:41 |