Edward L. Rowny
way to inject realism into the instruction. Instructors were not teaching out of a
book, but from their own combat experience.
Q ..
I don't seem to remember anything like that going on during the Vietnam War.
A
I don't either, but there should have been. There probably wasn't one because they
didn't have a General Robert Young, an officer dedicated to the notion that officers
should learn from the experience of others. Moreover, Young greatly streamlined
the review process that instruction had to undergo before the instruction was
approved. His idea was that the best is the enemy of the good. The normal
one-year review cycle for new instruction was cut to three months.
Q ..
When you left the Infantry School, did you feel you had left your mark on the
school?
A ..
Yes, I had a feeling of satisfaction about the job I had done there.
We were able
to rewrite the infantry instruction manuals, bringing World War II tactics
up-to-date to reflect the lessons learned in Korea.
Essentially, these lessons were that infantry tactics could benefit from more
mobility and greater fire power. Mobility and fire power were always a part of
infantry tactics but now they got more emphasis. The main idea was to avoid
set-piece operations, to get away from the idea of slugging it out with the enemy.
The object was to out-maneuver him, to move around the enemy rather than hit
him head-on. By using either more mobility or greater fire power, or a
combination of both, the object was to destroy the enemy and capture the high
ground more quickly. Importantly, it would be done with a minimum of friendly
casualties Korea had also taught us the value of paying more attention to logistics.
It takes good logistical support to achieve more mobility and greater fire power.
We taught that we were trying to avoid the set-piece tactics of World War II which
resulted in so many casualties. What we were seeking was the combination of the
shock effect of superior fire power and the surprise effect of moving quickly
against the flank or rear of the enemy.
Besides, I was able to see two of my basic concepts advanced. One was to see if
we could use tactical nuclear weapons in our infantry doctrine. The second was
to use helicopters to achieve greater mobility and deliver more accurate and
discriminating fire power. We tried to improve on ground cavalry by utilizing
helicopters to create sky cavalry. The two concepts really dovetailed. A tactical
nuclear weapon exploded in the rear of an enemy could be exploited by moving
troops into the area of the explosion. If we could move our troops quickly i n t o the
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