GERMAN "STORMING TROOPS."

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 9 November 1917, Page 1

GERMAN "STORMING TROOPS."

[Hilaibe Bellocj in ' Land ,and 'Water.'] These " storming troops " consist, of -battalions, not only specially trained, fbttt specially selected ; the men are picked l for -their physique, or tkei> character, or their intelligence, from all manner of units, and are then subjected to special training. Their functions are highly differentiated. They are themselves imbued with the idea of superiority to the rest of the army, and that.remainder has to treat them as superiors. - They are exempt from duty in the -trenches aud kept before action at some distance behind the lines. They.ar* saved as far. as possible all unnecessary fatigue, and when they are to be used they are distributed in comparatively email groups among the other troops ., to> form " spear 'heads '' as it were for the attacks contemplated. The disadvantages of such a'system "of last resort'' are very welL known, and have been discussed in pretty well every text book dealing with such s&ajxa, -nor would enemy have been driven te it but for that degree of deterioration,; itself the. consequence of excessive casualties of which we have spoken. The mass of an army out of which its best elements are thus taken losas in quality quite out of proportion to the numbers "withdrawn. The parallel to this' is within the experience of everyone. If yon take the best bowler and the best batsman from a cricket eleven you. weaken your team by a great deal more than two-elevenths. If you withdrew from a political society the 5 per cent, or" so of its educated men yon would weaken, its competitive power against foreign societies by much, more than 5 per cent. And though the picked men chosen for the storming troops have not the same sort of < superiority over their fellows, yet this superiority is sufficiently marked for their absence to involre a further serious depreciation-in the quality of the mass from winch they are withdrawn. This drawback,' however,, is not the greatest of the reasons that have always made commanders hesitate till the last moment before adopting such formations .under . the pressure of necessity. A far graver consideration is the effect upon the mass of the checks inflicted npon chosen bodies of the sort. It is a paradox, but it is true, that the very conditions , which compel the formation of such selected units are those which render the use of t-hem dangerous. This is even true in the much broader and more general case of the Corps d'Elite, and it is worth noting that the latter, usually appear hi military history, like Napoleon's Guard, in moments of success, and fail to Tetriove a lost cause when the downward process is far advanced.