Is it true?

[Aphex_Twin]

that during WW1 and WW2 only something like 20% of combatants ever fired a shot on the field of battle?

I find it a little hard to believe, especially since it's been uttered on the Discovery channel

 

[Verbose]

I looks as if that figure is based on the proportion of frontline troops.

Prolly kosher for WWII — huge numbers were used for the logistics that kept the frontliners fighting. Expecially for the US and UK, that didn't suffer massive defeat at some time. (That tends to mess with the best laid plans and organisations.)

Considering how WWI was an infantry war the figures look a bit suspicous.
France lost approx 1.3 million dead out of 8 million mobilised — that indicates a huge proportion in harms way at the front, way more than 20%.

OTOH when looking at French WWI photos, people only seldom carry rifles. Usually the lug ammunition, handle artillery pieces, trench mortars etc, or man machine guns. Which is consistent with the French empahasis on technology in WWI.
This makes sense. Rifle rounds accounted for no more than the odd % of the casualties anyway, so 'firing shots on the field of battle' may not have been a priority compared to firing mortars, arty, opening gas cannisters, crushing people under tanks or any of the other unpleasantness going on.
(Weirdly enough in their photos the Brits almost always carrry their heavy Enfields.)

 

[cidknee]

could be...sounds about right,, Vietnam was the same, like 30% of all troops ever engaged the vc.

 

[greekguy]

well considering you need only 1 guy with a machine gun to take out hundreds of people running at you, i wouldn't be surprised. so say 500 guys charge a trench, you only really needed like 5 people to shoot their machine guns, and their all dead. so most of them didn't fire a shot.

...just realized this only works for WW1....

 

[Bugfatty300]

Those numbers are pretty accurate considering a huge majority of US and British troops served non-combat roles, like logisticians, desk jockies, mechanics, radio men, intel and such.

Then take into account the combat roles like sailors, airmen, AA gunners and artillery men, all of whom rarely got close enough to the enemy to need to resort to small arms.

This is true to a lesser extent for Japanese and German troops. But not really true for Soviet troops.

This was probably just as true in WWI as it was in WWII.

So I would say they are true.

 

[Gelion]

This could work for some countries in World War 1 and countires not actively engaged in land combat in ww2, but I think the figure is much lower than what it is supposed to be.

 

[superisis]

But not really true for Soviet troops

I heard somewhere that the russians where paired up in twos, one pair = one gun. The point was to take the gun from your partner after he had been shot (uplifting instructions right?), so if thats true then you'll have to considder al those russian soldiers in combat without a rifle.

 

[Gelion]

I heard somewhere that the russians where paired up in twos, one pair = one gun. The point was to take the gun from your partner after he had been shot (uplifting instructions right?), so if thats true then you'll have to considder al those russian soldiers in combat without a rifle.

That was in the beginning of the war when guns were where soldiers weren't and vice versa. However the main reason (as I try to explain it) is that the Soviet mobilization machine was organised in such a way that at least 5 (10?) million men were to be mobilized in case of a war and that did happen. What also happened is that most of military storages and factories were so quickly captured by the Germans that it as imossible to arm them all. So on paper you have a brigade you move them in. No matter if they dont have guns they might slow the enemy for some time.

This is a very sad page in Russians history but we more than made up for it when our weaponry was sufficient and better quality and quantity than the German ones.

 

[Adler17]

Well, Gelion concerning the quality we could argue...

Adler

 

[Gelion]

Yes we could, but would it better if I say "a combination of quality and quantity"?