How do you win a counterinsurgency campaign, if you can’t catch the enemy?
Imagine, friends, four combatants in march order, as they march to, through and from history. One is a Macedonian phalangite, a pikeman, accompanying Alexander and trudging toward Herat. Then next is a Roman legionary of the middle Empire, on his way to drub some band of barbarians or rebels. Third is a Pashtun fighter in Afghanistan, whether he is fighting us or was fighting the Soviets makes little difference. Last, in more ways than one, comes an American soldier, also in Afghanistan.
What is the phalanglite lugging on his body? Sources for things like this are always a little iffy, with ancient military history, but modern scholarship, driven in good part by finds at Vergina, believes that the typical phalangite carried about 23.1 kilograms (about 51 pounds) of arms and armor, consisting of his Sarissa, shield, helmet, dagger, sword, torso armor and such. He may have also started his march, nine days prior, carrying some 30 pounds of food. Now he’s down to about three pounds and expecting the trains to keep him supplied from here on. Water, clothing, footwear, camp and cooking utensils, might have added 20 pounds or so to that (I’m swagging that, of course; we really don’t know). Call it a 73 pounds on our pikeman’s back, just before he settles into camp outside Herat.1 He goes into action with about 51 pounds, but nobody expects him to be all that mobile on the battlefield.
Read more: http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/06/23/politics/the-soldiers-load-the-immobility-of-a-nation/#ixzz37gC0HHnu
http://www.everyjoe.com/2014/06/23/politics/the-soldiers-load-the-immobility-of-a-nation/