throughout some people who are a little
bit confused as to the nature of certain
military units such as platoons and
companies this definitely extends to
script writers for movies so for
instance in the low-budget British
horror flick Dog Soldiers a dying man
says to one of his colleagues the
platoons yours yeah there are only six
of you to start off with and now a few
of you have been eaten by we're wolves
that's not a platoon that's not even the
section that's just a few soldiers or in
first night with Richard Gere as Salons
a lot and a Sean Connery as King Arthur
Guinevere has been captured and won in
further the knights of the round table
says to his king I will get it back give
me a battalion of men and I will get her
back no that's exactly what they want
you can have a brigade a brigade is way
more men than the battalion so come on
script writers at least look up this
sort of thing it's not difficult now I'm
going to use the example of a British
infantry platoon from World War two but
actually pretty much everything I'm
going to say is relevant to platoons of
all sorts in the modern world and of all
nations because there's a natural sort
of reason that the platoon is the size
that it is which is about 30 men max
it's the largest number of men that one
officer can command in reasonable detail
in the modern battlefield men are not
marching shoulder-to-shoulder but
they're quite scattered going to ground
and so forth and there's a lot of firing
going on so there's a lot of noise and
there are only so many men that you can
actually wave to and expect to be seen
by or you could blow a whistle and
expect it to hear you and if you've got
a runner and you're trying to to keep
track of where everyone is and send
runners out to give orders and come back
to you and give reports again there are
only so many men that you can actually
control and the answer is it's about a
platoons worth now a platoon will be
commanded by an officer and that officer
in the British Army
would most likely be a left tenant he
might be a captain now a left tenant is
called a left tenant because he is left
with the tenancy of command he is in new
if you like of the captain he is the
lieutenant or he is the left tenant or
if you ignore the derivation of the word
he's the lieutenant okay and then he
would have helping him
who would normally in common with the
the officer be armed with a submachine
gun although sergeant's very often
preferred rifles quite often they've
come up through the ranks and so it was
their old weapon that they're more used
to and the rifles of the British Army
were very powerful reliable accurate and
so forth but there was another reason if
you're carrying a submachine gun you
look like an officer and snipers love
shooting officers so a lot of sergeants
would actually and say oh that's all
right sir I'll just carry on with my
rifle and the sergeant major would be
the number two running the platoon and
any sensible commander would listen to
the quite often more experienced opinion
of the sergeant major the sergeant major
would be a steady guy who would be sent
round during the battle to make sure
everyone's doing their job and - but
people up if they were flagging a bit
and with the the sergeant major that and
the officer there would also be the
Batman that is to say the the personal
assistant of the the leftenant and there
would be a runner who would be who would
have the job of running back and forth
often with the sergeant major to find
out what the heck's going on now
also in the the oh group command group
there would be a couple of weapons teams
and in World War two four British
infantry platoon that would be a two
inch mortar and a pea at that is a
projector infantry anti-tank so that's
the platoons anti-tank weapon if the
tank comes along you need something to
defend yourself with and that would do
the job and it was a very effective
weapon so it would be one man carrying
the weapon one man carrying the
ammunition for it
similarly the mortar now in World War
two very few soldiers carried smoke
grenades so the mortar was very useful
for firing smoke and a good accurate
mortar user could drop smoke blinding
the enemy and allow you to make some
move he was a very useful asset it was a
very useful weapon and it went out of
favor because people thought it a bit
old-fashioned or we don't use those
anymore but then people realized in
their absence no these are really useful
weapons so they brought them back in
again but they will no longer two inch
mobile they were still two inch mortars
day was - exactly the same weapons in
fact but then when they came back they
became fifty one millimeter mortars yeah
you can just imagine can't hear the din
of battle
hand me the two inch is really quick and
easy to say but how many the 51
millimeter I mean just delays like that
there could be do life and death of
someone and
there would be then the rifle sections
and each rifle section as its name
suggests would have some rifles now here
I have three men on the base
representing a rifle group these men
will be armed with principally rifles
bayonets and grenades there would be at
least three maybe as many as five of
them seldom more than that and their job
will be to get up close to the enemy
these were the guys who actually get in
there with the bayonet and grenades and
do the dirty up-close fighting but how
do they get close to the enemy well
that's where the gun group comes in the
British used something called a Bren gun
it was a light machine gun box
magazine-fed very accurate very reliable
very popular and the Bren gunner would
have a number two who would carry the
spare barrels and so forth and the Bren
group would be commanded by a lance
corporal now everyone in the group was
quite reliant on the firepower of this
weapon and they would often carry a lot
of spare magazines themselves to help
their Bren team out because bullets are
heavy and these would give covering fire
for these guys so they could then get in
close and do their job and commanding
the section would be a corporal and he
often would be armed with a submachine
gun but again he might prefer his old
rifle for the reasons that I've outlined
above now you would have usually three
sometimes with some units and some
armies two sometimes four but but three
is the typical number and so these are
the men who would make up a platoon and
the commander has these if you like
playing pieces he won't send all his men
individually all over the places he
thinks in terms of the rifle group and
the Bren group for each of his sections
so he might say to one of his corporals
right corporal take your team up onto
that Ridge over there
set up your Bren gun team trying to get
your riflemen round to that house there
or whatever and then when up on that
Ridge it will be the corporals job to
decide exactly where to put the Bren gun
and then it was usually the corporals
job to then lead the rifleman in the
attack using the covering fire of the
Bren team and then at some point you
would have advanced as far as you needed
to go and then the Bren team would move
to
the location covering the next Avenue of
fire and so forth so in the movies what
you see is the captain just sort of said
attack and just loads of men who don't
appear to be in any cohesive unit at all
just loads of guys will just charge
forward towards the enemy and usually
get killed in droves because it seems
that directors think that lots and lots
of men being killed very quickly is
action but this annoys me because these
are the playing pieces we don't see in
the movies what platoon officers
actually do they are using these playing
pieces intelligently you don't in a
modern army just say okay everyone
forwards because if the enemy's got
machine guns they'll just mow you down
no you've got to get people into
positions where they've got decent
amount of cover and a decent amount of
line-of-sight and they give each other
covering fire and they they leapfrog
they they move past each other into
another position and say okay we've got
this position it's now safe to advance
we'll give you covering fire and so
forth and these various sections could
cover each other and and you use these
tactically in ways that the movies just
never show us I would quite like to do
actually I would quite like to present a
mainstream broadcast television program
called something along the lines of what
a platoon officer actually does
Lindy man