… the recruits return on the appointed day and are reassembled, probably on the campus Martius (the field of Mars, just outside the city), which in any case is where the whole process will end up moved to in the first century (probably to accommodate the larger number of Roman citizens). Moving the process outside of the ritual boundary of the city, the pommerium, would have been important, because the power of certain Roman magistrates to command armies (imperium, a crucial concept we’ll deal with when we get to the series on the Republic) only exists fully outside this boundary. It also keeps them from being hassled by the Tribunes of the Plebs (a distinct and entirely different office from the military tribunes!), whose powers don’t exist outside the pommerium. That said, Polybius doesn’t tell us where this part takes place and I don’t myself know of any source that explicitly does.
I should stop to note that this phase gets short shift in the scholarship. Brunt, Italian Manpower (1971) 625ff somehow manages to miss it entirely, conflating it with the selection of recruits in Phase I, but it is clearly a distinct stage in the process. Polybius is not subtle here: after the oaths are taken, the [military] tribunes dismiss the recruits (Polyb. 6.21.6), designating a time and place for them to reassemble without arms and then when they show up then (Polyb. 6.21.7), they are divided into units, are ordered to get their equipment and then sent home again (Polyb. 6.26.1) to reassemble one more time (Polyb. 6.26.2) when the army is properly formed. That is three clear stages: selection, apportionment and mobilization, which occur on different days in different places.
The function of this phase is the division of recruits into their constituent units. First the pedites (again, “infantry”) are split into four types: velites, hastati, principes and triarii. Polybius notes that the “youngest and poorest” are assigned to the velites, then the next to the hastati, and so on, creating a sliding scale by both wealth and age; one paragraph down he reiterates that the velites are mostly the youngest soldiers (Polyb. 6.22.1). In practice, we know that the centuries of the pedites were stratified by wealth and that wealthier soldiers were expected to bring heavier, more expensive kit (even Polybius notes this, Polyb. 6.23.14). The equipment of the velites, who were light infantry skirmishers that screened and supported the legion, would have been much cheaper than the equipment of the rest of the infantry (who were all armored, heavy infantry), so I think the right reading of Polybius is that the velites consist of both the young of all of the classes of pedites (putting green soldiers in a position to both prove their courage, but also one where if they falter it doesn’t cause the line to collapse; light infantry can retreat and advance freely) as well as the very poorest of the pedites who couldn’t afford heavier equipment even if they wanted to.1
The velites carry a sword (Livy tells us it is the same sword as the heavy infantry, the gladius Hispaniensis, Livy 38.21.13), a small shield (the smaller version of the parma; cavalry use a larger version of this shield), and javelins (Livy clarifies they carry seven of them; these are lighter javelins, the hasta velitaris, Livy 26.4) along with a modest helmet.2 The velites themselves emerge as a distinct arm of the Roman army during the Second Punic War, but an integrated light infantry skirmish force existed earlier; it’s not clear how the velites would have differed from earlier light infantry leves milites or rorarii. Perhaps not very much.
Meanwhile the heavy infantry (hastati, principes and triarii) carry a large oval shield (the scutum), a sword (the gladius Hispaniensis, a versatile cut-and-thrust sword), two heavy javelins (pila), and wear both a metal helmet (the ubiquitous bronze Montefortino-type) and body armor. Poor soldiers, Polybius tells us, wear what in Latin is a pectorale (and thus in English a “pectoral”); this gets represented as a single smallish bronze plate over the upper-chest, but our evidence for this equipment suggests a more complete cuirass consisting of a front and back plate joined by side and shoulder plates, with a broad armored belt protecting the belly, a sort of “articulated breastplate” […] Wealthier Romans were required to furnish themselves with mail. Once again, the fact that the tribunes are likely to have access to the census, and thus the self-reported wealth figures of the recruit’s households (tied to their century assignment) is going to facilitate these divisions.
Each class (except the velites) then elect ten senior centurions and ten junior centurions, with the very first fellow elected being the primus pilus, the most senior centurion of the legion. Centurions then handpick their supporting officers (the optio). We are given no clues as to how this election would be accomplished, but the numbers here we’re now dealing with are fairly small (1200 infantry per type, except just 600 triarii), so the procedures here don’t have to be that complex. The centurions then assist the tribunes in breaking up each class into maniples (120 men) and centuries (60 men), with the velites being attached to the maniples of the heavy infantry rather than getting their own, because they’re a supporting force. Meanwhile, the cavalry is being divided as well into ten squadrons, each with three officers (decuriones), who have their own optiones.
Once all of those divisions are complete, the tribunes instruct the men on how they are to arm themselves and then send them home (Polyb. 6.26.1). I should note here the Paton translation (rev. Walbank and Habicht, but I don’t think they change anything here) reads, “The tribunes having thus organized the troops and ordered them to arm themselves in this manner dismiss them to their homes” but a more strictly literal translation would run, “The tribunes, having made the divisions and given them orders concerning equipment then dismiss the men to their homes”. There’s an assumption worked into the translation that soldiers arm themselves; I think this assumption is correct, but it is not required by the text.
But of course the staging of this process only really makes sense if soldiers do self-equip. Otherwise, why send them all to their homes at this stage, when you have the entire army gathered and divided into units? If equipment was state issued, it’d be trivial to hand it all out right at this stage and then march off to war. Instead, soldiers are dispatched home with orders concerning their equipment.
Meanwhile, the process for the socii is running in parallel. We know basically nothing about this stage of their process, but it is certainly happening. All Polybius tells us is that “the magistrates [of the socii], choosing the men and administering the oath in the manner above described, send them off, appointing a commander and a paymaster” (Polyb. 6.21.5). The implication is that the socii have a similar process to the Romans (albeit in miniature as there are many communities of socii who collectively provide about as many troops as the Romans, so their dilecti – whatever name they really went by – will be much smaller). This is reflective of the Roman attitude towards the socii – they do not care how the troops are raised or paid, only that they are raised. So long as the socii show up at the appointed time with the right gear, ready to fight, the Romans are fine with the process.
But the system here mirrors the Roman one quite strongly. Each Roman army has a presiding magistrate (like a consul) and an assigned financial magistrate (a quaestor), just as each socii detachment has a commander and a paymaster. The commander of these socii units show up in our sources as praefecti cohortium and seem to have been drawn from the local elite of those communities (just like the Romans). So while the Romans are dividing into units and then heading home to buy, fetch or borrow their equipment, the socii are at work recruiting their own troops to the numbers and of the types demanded at the dilectus, arming them, making arrangements for their pay (the Romans supply food, but not pay, for the socii) and then sending them to the planned rendezvous.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: How To Raise a Roman Army: The Dilectus“, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2023-06-16.
- In Polybius’ day, there may have been significant overlap between these two definitions just because Roman military success was likely to put enough loot in the pocket of a seasoned veles to enable him to afford the equipment of the heavier infantry.
- Perhaps in some cases a leather or textile head-covering rather than a metal one; evidence here is very thin.
November 2, 2026
QotD: Organizing a Roman Republican army
October 28, 2026
Operation Maple Curbstomp – an imaginary US invasion of Canada
As every red-blooded American knows, an invasion of Canada would be as one of the Founding Fathers put it, “a mere matter of marching”. So glance at the thumbnail summary of the two nations’ military capabilities should some future American president decide that the US should formally own “America’s Hat”, courtesy of Operational Art of War (most of the article is paywalled … this is an excerpt from the teaser email send out to cheapskate free subscribers like me):
Manifest Destiny, 2025? Big Serge’s updated map for the Ontario portion of the old US War Plan Red for an invasion of Canada.
The first two posts looked at the capabilities and force structure of the Canadian and American side of this highly unlikely conflict. This post will look at what Force structure America would be able to assign to an invasion of Canada given its other security concerns.
The short answer is that the U.S. military can only deploy a minority of its combat power against any one enemy. This is a geostrategic problem faced by every global great power in history. It explains why the British Empire was strangely vulnerable even at the peak of its power. It also explains several patterns in post-World War II American geopolitical strategy, such as holding back the majority of its Corps HQs during Desert Storm or currently being quite silent about China while it resolves the Iran conflict.
A Summary of Military Capabilities
Conclusions about Canada
The first post concluded that a significant insurgency in Canada is very unlikely. The groups capable of one are rarely those interested in one, mainly because Canada’s rural-urban gap in firearm ownership is far wider than America’s.
The Canadian military is a different story. At least initially, it would resist a US invasion if ordered. Those citing political, ideological, or cultural reasons otherwise misunderstand the profession of arms.
It is small but highly professional, largely because its non-commissioned members serve nearly twice as long as their US counterparts.
Counting all categories, it has about 103,000 personnel, rising to about 123,000 with 30-60 days’ notice. Lower figures usually reflect misunderstandings of the Canadian Armed Forces’ structure.
Canada’s small but capable navy and air force cannot challenge American air and sea dominance, and their expeditionary design would make them near non-factors in a US invasion.
Against an invasion, Canada could field about 8.5 maneuver brigades:
- Regular Force Army: 3x CMBGs (equivalent to US Combined Arms Brigade Tactical Groups).
- Regular Force special forces at brigade (-) strength.
- Reserve Force: 10x CBGs (motorized infantry at brigade (-) strength) and an Arctic reconnaissance brigade. The CBGs currently generate 10x TBGs (equivalent to US light infantry task forces or British infantry battle groups).
- Under total mobilization after an invasion, the CBGs would likely generate 15x TBGs, about 5 infantry brigades.
At brigade level and below, Canadian Army equipment roughly matches that of US Army field units. America’s on-paper advantage stems mostly from strategic reserve stockpiles, which Canada lacks but which would not matter in a 2-4 week war.
Conclusions about America
In defense spending and high-end weapon systems, America is the unquestioned dominant power. At the highest level, America outnumbers Canada 21:1 in military personnel and 63-14:1 in key equipment (aircraft, tanks, and AFVs).
But raw-number comparison is the hallmark of poor military analysis. To understand the U.S. military, we must look at what it is designed to do and what combat power it could bring to bear in an invasion of Canada.
Militaries broadly fit two types: Volunteer Professional Expeditionary and Continental Conscript. Expeditionary militaries field a few maneuver brigades that can fight anywhere indefinitely, at enormous cost in money and manpower per brigade.
Continental militaries mass maneuver brigades to defend the homeland and its borders. This is far cheaper, but they can only mobilize briefly and cannot project power.
The U.S. has the most expeditionary focused military in history, able to project power globally on a scale matched only, perhaps, by its own World War II and Cold War forces.
Conversely, it devotes a smaller share of resources to ground operations than almost any other nation. Within its ground forces (the U.S. Army and the USMC’s non-air component), much of the personnel and spending goes to capabilities of little use in invading Canada.
The brigade slice ratio illustrates this best: for every soldier in a maneuver brigade, how many serve in supporting units outside it? Continental militaries run about 0.5 to 0.6:1, other expeditionary militaries 0.8 to 1.3:1, and the US Army 3.1:1. That reflects capabilities like a flat-pack petroleum port and over 100,000 soldiers whose only job is moving supplies between continents. These let America project power like no one else, but they are largely irrelevant in an invasion of Canada.
After all this, the Active Duty US Army has 32 maneuver and 3 special forces brigades; the National Guard adds 27 more.
Sixty-two brigades is huge by modern standards, but small for an army of 1,028,6000 and a $954 billion military budget.
Investing half your budget in strategic and operational logistics does little in a war needing no strategic and minimal operational logistics. A 2-4 week invasion of Canada would be almost entirely tactical logistics, where America has an edge over other Western militaries, but not a dominant one.
So while America outnumbers Canada 21:1 in personnel, the ground ratio is 15.9:1 and the maneuver brigade ratio just 8.8:1, still enough to curb stomp Canada. But as this article explores, Canada can commit every maneuver brigade to defending its homeland; America cannot commit even most of its brigades to invading Canada (or any single country).
I’m sure the full article considers this in-depth, but the Canadian military would be extremely vulnerable to a “bolt from the blue” attack, given where the bulk of troops and equipment are located relative to the most likely areas of incursion from the continental US.
The major population centres of central and western Canada are in easy reach of the border and it might be a race between American advances and Canadian reaction forces to get to most big cities. Activating the reserve would also be very difficult, as it’s highly likely the US would degrade or interdict most channels of communication at the start of such an operation, and as Canadian reservists do not keep their personal weapons at their homes, they’d need to get to their local armouries to draw weapons and what minimal amounts of ammunition stored locally. Forming the reserve units into combat-ready formations would take a lot of time that the Canadian military might not have …
QotD: “Our Gallant Allies, the Kurds (and other fairy tales)”
My first experience of the Kurds – rather, of how the rest of the area thinks of and feels about them – was before I’d ever met my first one. This was at a majlis, in the town of Judah (or Goodah), Saudi Arabia, sometime in December or so, 1990. Citizenship is kind of an iffy and flexible concept in that part of the world, so there were folk from Saudi, from Oman, from the Emirates. There was even one Arab who insisted he was a citizen of the Gulf Cooperation Council, since he was a fully documented citizen of so many places in the GCC. I had my doubts right up until he pulled out a bilingual ID card which, indeed, did seem to list him as a citizen of the GCC. One of the attendees had brought with him a book detailing the results of the chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja by the army and air force of Saddam Hussein.
It was really heartbreaking, all those picture of gassed, dead, discolored, and decomposing Kurdish kids, who are, in fact, every bit as cute as the papers and television made them out to be. At least when they’re not dead they are. My team sergeant, Sig, and I were duly appalled and sickened.
The Arabs, though, didn’t seem to understand. To paraphrase, “What’s the problem? Don’t you understand that these were Kurds who got gassed?”
At the time, I found that attitude completely inexplicable.
Fast forward a few months; we’ve incited the Kurds and Shia to rise up and overthrow Saddam. They didn’t, of course, while such an uprising would have looked difficult and might have done us some good. Oh, no; instead the Shia – whose rebellion was spontaneous, anyway – waited until it looked like the Iraqi Army was crushed and such an uprising would be easy. The Kurds – who were organized – waited even longer.
Sorry, boys, but when we offer you a quid pro quo, that doesn’t translate into “free lunch”. Moreover, when we’ve already offered someone a ceasefire it’s a bit late to try to get us to start hostilities again. In short, we owed them nothing.
Fast forward, again, to late May, 1991. I’d come home from the Middle East, hung around a while, and been sent back, this time to Operation Provide Comfort, the Kurdish Rescue, there to quasi-govern a few towns, run refugee camps, coordinate humanitarian relief, and such like. While we’re waiting in the camp on the Turkish side of the border, not too far from Silopi, overwatched by a Turkish police fort on a hill, some Kurds got in position to fire at the fort such that, should the fort return fire, the Turks will be shooting at us. So much for gratitude from people you’re trying to save, eh?
Fortunately, Turkish discipline held firm and enlightened Kurdish dreams of advancing the cause of having a homeland of their own by getting their rescuers killed came to naught. After a couple of days at the camp, the crew I’m with and I are ordered forward to link up with the British Marines and their Dutch counterparts, already inside Kurdestan. We’re riding in on the back of a British Bedford Lorry, one which, based on the comfort of the ride, probably crossed the Rhine with Monty in 1945 … after enduring the entire war in North Africa. If it had a suspension it was tolerably hard to see, and impossible to feel.
Sitting next to me is a Staff Sergeant Farnsworth. Farnsworth and I are both grunts, so we’re doing what grunts do when there’s nothing better to do and neither sleep nor playing cards nor reading are possible; we’re analyzing the terrain. It is fiercely rugged, with winding roads going through narrow passes between hills and mountains difficult enough to climb on foot and impossible for vehicles. Reverse slopes were of such an angle as would make defenders largely invulnerable to artillery and would make even high angle mortar fire of much reduced effect. In any case, at a certain point, looking over a particularly defensible pass, Farnsworth and I looked at each other. I no longer remember who spoke first but the conversation went like this: “If the Kurds” “couldn’t defend themselves” “in this kind of terrain” “they don’t deserve” “their own country”. And that was before we even knew how much they used mines.
A little digression is in order here. As mentioned previously, Kurdish kids are adorable. (The women are also quite fetching, right up until they’re worn out, usually by age twenty-four or so, from being used like mules, which is to say, beasts of burden, but who, unlike mules, can still bear young … and must.) Most people shy away from or are at least ignorant of the reason so many of those adorable kids died. It’s simple; the Kurds starved them to death themselves. It’s a cultural imperative among them, when times get hard, to let the little girls die of starvation (first, of course), and then the little boys. Good guess, dear reader; why, no, I didn’t like that for beans. As a matter of fact, now that you ask, I’m not much for multiculturalism, in general, either.
Interestingly, before we even arrived in our area, there had been an incident – a firefight resulting in several Iraqi dead – between the British Marines and some Iraqi troops guarding one of Hussein’s palaces in that part of Iraq. I asked a British officer about it and his answer was to the effect that, “As near as we can figure, as one of our patrols was passing, two Kurds, from different positions but surely with coordination, took a shot each, close to simultaneously. One shot was at our patrol, the other at the Iraqi on the gate to the palace. Both shots missed, but the Iraqis and our men, thinking they were under attack, reacted as one would expect. We were just a lot better shots, better led, than they were. Poor bastards. One of the reasons we’re quite sure that the Iraqis didn’t shoot first was that, as our men passed, they waved at each other, as soldiers will who have no particular reasons for enmity.”
The main town I ran was Assyrian and Christian, Catholic, actually, having their own rite but being in full communion with Rome. It was an experience to attend mass held in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, a memory I rather cherish despite not understanding a word of it. They are nice people, the Assyrians, seriously nice people. I’ve dealt with a lot of different kinds of foreigners, over the years, even married one, for that matter, and liked almost all of them. But the Assyrians have a special place. They’re also amazingly hardworking. They can’t defend themselves or, at least, they don’t think they can, which amounts to the same thing.
Everyone knows about the Armenian genocide. The genocide of the Assyrians, around the same time period, was about as bad and may have been worse, as a percentage of the premassacre population. And among the chief agents of that genocide? Of both of them, really? You guessed it, the Kurds.
I asked my Assyrian translator there, once, what he and the other Assyrians really wanted. He answered, “We’d like the British to come back and run the place, permanently. Failing that, we’d be very happy to be subjects of the American Empire, if you would just declare one. If that’s not possible, then letting the Iraqis back would be minimally acceptable. Under no circumstance, however, do we want to be under the Kurds.”
That main town was the only one in which no Kurdish babies died, of the smallish number that the Kurds didn’t let starve anyway, and the only one in which there were no political or ethnic murders in that time period. Part of that was probably my own rather forthright approach to domestic harmony – “One incident, just one, and I’ll cut off your food, medical care, and other goodies, causing all your followers to desert you for other groups and leaders I haven’t proscribed!” – but part of it, too, at least for the long term maintenance of the thing, was probably the perception among themselves that the various Kurdish groups needed one safe area in which to engage in local diplomacy, and, since this one area was peaceful, well, why not? That meant a lot of luncheons, meaning, yes, I had the chance to meet most of the bright lights of Kurdish domestic politics and self-determination of the day. I’ve long since forgotten their names, but am pretty sure I could identify most of them in a police lineup and wouldn’t, of course, mind doing so. One in particular stands out in my mind, a rather distinguished looking middle aged barbarian who had once, over what amounts to a domestic dispute, murdered some thirty-seven Christian men, women, and children. And then there was the day the Kurds demanded to be paid. Paid? Why, yes, we were providing free food, free medical care, free shelter, and free security, but they saw no reason not to be paid for unloading the free food and other goodies. I sent the trucks back with the food until they knuckled under.
Thus, it might be better for the United States, before pinning too much hope and faith on the Kurds, to understand that they’re military imbeciles with an unearned and undeserved reputation, that their culture is barbaric, they their one talent seems to be propagandizing and manipulating liberal Western opinion, which is eager to be manipulated, anyway, that any kids who die usually do so because of their own neglect of those kids, that they have no sense of gratitude for any help you give them, that they treat women like donkeys, and that they place zero value on the lives of those who try to help them.
Why we, or anyone, would place our faith and trust in them … well, it eludes me. To help that lesson stick in your mind I offer a Kurdish National Anthem, written by my team sergeant, Sig, in a moment of complete disgust with them. Every line tells a story: (Tune: O Tannenbaum)
A voice without a hint of shame
Cries, “It’s all your fault; you’re all to blame.
We must be clothed, we must be fed
And when that’s done build our homesteads”Chorus:
A Kurd can have no greater love
Than his brand new Kalashnikov;
O Kurdestan, my Kurdestan,
Do what you want; grab what you can.You gave us shelter overhead
Doctors and blankets for our beds.
You’ve saved us from Iraqi raids,
Now tell us when do we get paid?Chorus
We fought the Turks, we fought Iran
We fought Iraq for Kurdestan.
And now you’ve made us free and strong,
We’ll kill the Christians when you’re gone.Chorus
This column is dedicated to the memory of Father Hanna Marko, of Mangesh, Iraq
Tom Kratman, The social media site formerly known as Twitter, 2026-07-25.
October 22, 2026
“Insurgent math”
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, InfantryDort recalls the promotion of “insurgent math” — deterring American troops from killing enemy forces as if they were hydra heads made real:
“Afghanistan 2010 43” by david_axe is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
Do you guys remember the “insurgent math” the generals taught us in GWOT? “If you kill an enemy, you’ll make 10 more.” Remember that? Another in a long list of points to make us practice “courageous restraint” and be reluctant to pull the trigger.
What fascinates me is how full of shit they were. Because many of those retired leaders and the politicians they back today advocate for doing the EXACT opposite within the borders of their own country.
They don’t all wish death. Some do. But the same principles apply to lawfare and harassment against people they disagree with.
So why was “insurgent math” created to give compassion to 80IQ Taliban retards but the exact opposite is given to 100IQ+ innocent Americans who are far more dangerous when they get mad enough to band together?
What even is this? Another stunning failure and hypocritical point of the War on Terror and the national lesson over the last 2 decades as a whole.
There is a large number of influential “Americans” who’d rather bow to their enemies and put the boot to their own countrymen.
They fear the wrong people. If they casually mention ruining the lives of innocent people simply because they disagree with them, then they have no fear.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
America is the greatest result of successfully insurgency in human history. This country literally has insurgency in its blood. That’s how we started. Stunning to believe some think it’s wise to poke that bear.
The stupidity is off the charts. Truly.
Update, 23 October: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
October 19, 2026
Aimpoint CS: Revolutionary Battery Life for the Swedish Home Guard
Forgotten Weapons
Published 19 Jun 2026The Aimpoint CS is an optic designed specifically for the Swedish Home Guard, which wanted a red dot that was extremely durable and also capable of being left on for 10 years on a single battery. This was a very challenging requirement, and Aimpoint considered two paths to meet it. One was a pulsed LED to reduce actual “on” time of the dot, but this did not prove successful. The other was a traditional red dot, with improved design and power circuitry to allow an extended battery life. The new system was integrated into Aimpoint’s other optics (including the US M68CCO contract).
Along with the improved electronics, the CS used a large (approximately AA size) 3.7V battery hard-wired into the case. Per Swedish request, the battery was not user serviceable, and the optics are returned to Aimpoint for battery replacement every 10 years (they are on their third such cycle now). It also includes a set of hard rubber backup sights on top and a small length of picatinny rail that was never really used (it was intended for accessories like laser modules).
The Aimpoint CS was developed in 2001, adopted in 2002, and deliveries of about 60,000 total began in 2003. It was used on Home Guard AK4 rifles, and also on AK5s. They were not sold on the commercial market, and are very scarce in the US.
(more…)
October 17, 2026
Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel, the true rival to All Quiet on the Western Front
Every year, Scott Alexander invites Astral Codex Ten readers to submit anonymous book reviews, and the most recent contribution is one of Scott’s reader’s review of Storm of Steel:
All Quiet on the Western Front ranks as the definitive anti-war novel of World War I, perhaps for all wars, and to some the most important war novel of all time. It was widely banned in the inter-war period yet went on to sell more than 20 million copies and has three film adaptations, the most recent the acclaimed 2022 version. It’s so famous, so prominent, so dominating, that the novel I think is the best war novel ever written can only point back at it from a “see also” link on Wikipedia. That novel is Storm of Steel, by Ernst Jünger.
You may recognize that name from 2023’s ACX book review, On the Marble Cliffs. It was my first serious look at Jünger as well; he is described as a “serial killer” and a “sociopath”, the kind of modern psycho who nowadays would take glee in uploading videos of drones blowing people up, someone perhaps who sees war as the chance to visit death upon human beings with the state’s permission. I had heard of Storm of Steel, heard the acclaim for it, but never read any of his works. What kind of man was this?
The Wikipedia page is light on details, but it’s beyond impressive. Jünger fought throughout World War I in the thick of it, starting as a private and ending as a company-commanding Lieutenant. He saw action at the Somme and Cambrai, the Battle of Arras then the Third Battle of Ypres and finally the Ludendorff Offensive. He was wounded 14 times, sometimes quite severely, and came out of it with the Pour le Mérite (the most prestigious Prussian officer’s decoration) alongside numerous other awards. Storm of Steel is, basically, his diary of his time in the war. After the war he was a very famous writer, and if you want to know more about him you should read the previous ACX review which covers his story more and is interesting in its own right.
So there was nothing to do but read it myself. Storm of Steel is not a very long book by page count. What I will call it is dense. It is not a diary that Jünger used to explain his theories, his ideas or his politics except as cursory asides. It is a book about WAR, hundreds of pages of it, from the mundane to the bloody to the idyllic. Storm of Steel is, in my humble opinion, the best war novel ever written.
I did not say that it is the best _anti-_war novel; I also did not say that it is a _pro-_war novel, although in some places and versions Jünger claims war can be glorious or make someone stronger in a rising-to-the-challenge sense. It is at its core an account of a war, a war more bloody and terrible than any of us could imagine, written by someone intelligent and gifted in writing who happened to see much of it and survive to tell the tale. It is by turns harrowing, riveting, insightful, terrifying, humorous, disgusting and soul-shaking. I had read All Quiet and Storm of Steel years ago, and for this review I read both again, then got a different version and translation of Storm of Steel to read it yet again; I can say that it was all worth it. There is nothing like it, and I hope that nothing like it will come ever again.
The Elephant in the Room
If you will forgive me a meme, if I had a nickel for every German World War I war novel I read that featured a bug-collecting protagonist who drank oily machinegun water during an attack, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let us truly begin. I opened with All Quiet on the Western Front for a reason: you probably know about it, and it’s also a German infantryman’s perspective of World War I. All Quiet also describes the horrors of trench warfare from the perspective of a veteran serving for years, of seeing death and destruction around every corner, breaks up its action with humor and levity, and ends with the war. The comparison is natural.
The truth is that All Quiet on the Western Front is a work of fiction with a thesis. It covers nearly three years, but Remarque was only on frontline duty for about five weeks. It’s unlikely that Remarque ever participated in the actual combat he describes: an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung describes his service as mostly rear-area construction work; certainly dangerous, he certainly lived through shelling and gas attacks, and it’s a matter of record that he was wounded, but he probably didn’t see the relentless action he describes in All Quiet.
Storm of Steel was first published in 1920, while All Quiet came in 1929. Remarque was aware of this other famous account of World War I in his own language. I open with the bug-collecting and drinking cooling water because it’s those sorts of shared details that popped out to me after reading them both, but Jünger was an independently-famous entomologist and a stormtrooper commander and Remarque was not. He was on the periphery of such things, and between his time at the front and his time in the hospital, I’m sure he experienced enough and met those who did experience the combat he describes to create the agonizing story, but Remarque was justifiably reticent about discussing his own war experiences or explaining himself.
All Quiet intersperses brief periods of combat with long scenes of Paul returning home, of soldiers discussing how it’s really the leaders who should fight, of how training is miserable and the food is lousy and so on. It pontificates about the causes and horrors of war, about the damage it does to one’s psyche and soul, about how it makes men who should be brothers into sincere enemies, how it alienates the soldier from the civilian; it crafts a story for you to do all that. But it is a craft, and I think that detracts from its power.
Storm of Steel is true. It really happened, and it reports those happenings with minimal commentary. Many books start with an idea and write a world around them; Atlas Shrugged is a vehicle for getting the reader to an 80-page monologue about Objectivism. All Quiet is in that vein; it wants you to be anti-war, to feel the horrors of it, to know the unfairness, the blundering and chaos and death. It starts with the conclusion and works its way backwards. Storm of Steel works the other way around, describing it as it happened and drawing conclusions from that, but it barely draws anything itself and instead lets you do it, with barely a suggestive nudge. If you want to be pro-war, Storm of Steel will satisfy you with heroism and duty and camaraderie in the face of noble adversity. If you want to be anti-war, it will satisfy you with horror and futility and bloodiness in the face of a cruel industrial war machine. If you want to know what World War I was like for an infantryman, banally, you will hear about tasteless food and unceasing work and moments of absurdity and silly training. If you want to know what World War I was like for an infantryman, notably, you will hear about impossible situations and near-misses then grievous wounds and feats of daring and moments of sheer, unadulterated terror tempered by steely courage. If you want a few jokes, it even has some of those. But above all, Storm of Steel offers one man’s true and unflinching account of The Great War, and what an account it is!
October 14, 2026
He really is the model of a modern Major-General
InfantryDort reacts to a retired US general’s opinions on public executions on X (that is, the post is on X, not the executions … but now that I think on it …)
Why does it consistently appear that the criteria to be a General officer is historical illiteracy, suicidal empathy, and being toxically egalitarian? How did we get here?
This one thinks its “fundamentally unamerican” to publicly execute people. Well I guess George Washington is unamerican too. Or Abraham Lincoln.
You know what’s “fundamentally unamerican”, General? Simping for terrorists.
I hear this guy talk and I can’t help but think: no wonder GWOT didn’t end the way we wanted it to. The militarily crucial act of killing people disgusts this type of leader.
No wonder why it was so easy for guys like him and Stan McChrystal to make us practice “courageous restraint” on the battlefield. Letting the enemy gain the upper hand in every engagement, on purpose.
Out of what? Some wayward sense of nobility? That we’re the “good guys”?
No, General. Being the good guys doesn’t mean allowing our enemies to have a monopoly on violence. WE MUST HAVE THE MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE.
Why am I constantly explaining this to Generals? Especially of the retired variety? Why am I having to explain that killing people is not only important to our profession, but for protecting western civilization itself?
The bar for General officer has been so low it’s practically in the basement. And no matter what institutional changes we make, these types always choose themselves to replace…. themselves.
So it’s more of the same. Same bad experience, same bad channel. Same feckless worldview. Incapable of victory. Incapable of common sense. Incapable of doing their jobs. But completely capable of making Instagram videos about how mean and cruel we’ve become.
BEING MEAN AND CRUEL TO OUR EVIL ENEMIES IS THE ENTIRE POINT!
Pathetic filth.
To which Tom Kratman responds:
Did I ever … hmmm … maybe not. Wait a sec …
Not only will you be rated or senior rated by about 100 people, in 30 years in the Army, but you can never have pissed one of them off. These men, however, will range from the bright to the ignorant, the moral to the immoral, and will have vastly diverging experiences which will drive their judgment. And you cannot disagree with them if you want stars. It would be one thing if they were all the same and you learned to echo just one theme. But when they are all different, and you still agree with every trivial thought they ever had, it can only be because you lack any center of your own, any moral compass whatsoever, since everything in the military has a moral aspect to it. In other words — with only very rare exceptions; I thought well of Foss, LeMoyne, and Petraeus, for example — the man who rises to stars usually has nothing, no values of worth, inside him.
Which is worse than contemptible; it’s absolutely pathetic, given how useless it is to become a general.
True story: Some people thought there were stars in my future. There came a day, early 1988, I was on my second company command, of three, and I was shooting the crap with the brigade commander in his office. I’d been ambivalent about stars for some time by then, but it was a very amorphous thing. I couldn’t have told you why. Eventually, I realized that my brigade commander (Annapolis, oddly enough) was trying to mentor me into stars. “You need to do this, Tom, then you need to do that. Then you need to …”
And it all came clear, an epiphany, a blinding flash of the obvious, and I said, “Sir, I don’t want to be a general.”
“Wha … what … WHAT?”
So I stood up, walked across the office to his LCE tree, and took his helmet in hands.
“Sir, do you remember General Meyer?”
“Shy Meyer? Chief of Staff?”
“Yes, sir, him.”
“Sure.”
“Sir, Meyer was a reformer. He had a bag full of good ideas for improving the Army. I counted thirty-seven once, about half and half trivial and important. I may have missed some.”
“Yes, so?”
Then I turned the helmet around to point at him the two silly bits of glow in the dark tape on the camouflage band around the helmet. “Sir, of all that, this is all that’s left of Meyer. Everything else is gone. In a matter of a few years it’s as if he never existed. So what, sir, would be the point of becoming a general, if, even if I rose to be Chief of Staff of the Army, I could not possibly have a good and lasting effect?”
Which is, in any case, why I turned to writing. My brigade commander didn’t get it; he still tried to stick me as the incoming CG’s Aide, but I wanted nothing to do with that.
October 12, 2026
Australia’s first military action in WW1
Australian troops got into action much earlier in 1914 than most people might remember, acting to shut down German wireless stations and coaling facilities in the south Pacific islands and invading the German colony of Neu Guinea in September:
German reservists at Neu Guinea
Photo from Chris’s Naval History Substack
On the 11th September 1914 the Australian army launched its first campaign of the Great War and it was pretty much as far away from the Dardanelles that you could possibly get which is where many people think their War began. The first Australian Expeditionary force were walking up the beaches of German Neu Guinea towards an undefended shoreline.
But why are the Australians fighting there?
Officially these were moves to neutralise the Wireless stations and possible bases for von Spee’s Cruiser squadron which would then mean Allied shipping was secure. However Australia had long coveted the German colony of Neu Guinea since before it was a German colony. When Germany finally made a move to establish itself on the island, they really wanted it and the British Crown was not too bothered about the malarial jungle that was too thick to really carve a niche out. If Germany wanted to pour money and resources into such a backward colony for little return then they were welcome to it. The rest of the island was owned by the Dutch East Indies and the British, soon to be Australian Papua Guinea in the south looking over their border jealously. The First World War offered the Australians a chance to absorb the territory without any repercussions.
Defensive measures
As War commenced, German colonies around the world had to try and figure out what the best course of action was. Togoland made a bid for neutrality, Sud West Afrika got ready for invasion and Tsingtau began fortifying itself.
But for the German island colonies there was not much in the way of defences and out on the “Australian Station” the majority of defence was supposed to be carried out by the Ostasiengeschwader‘s ships, sailors or marines. For local issues each colony had local armed police officers led by a German officer which could hold down local problems until the cruisers arrived as they had during Sokeh’s rebellion in 1910. In Neu Guinea there were 125 Melanesian policemen backed up by a small group of German reservists amongst the colonists under a regular Army officer who had been sent out by the Colonial Office. By the 6 August the Colony had put out the call for assistance and managed to swell the force to two regular Army officers, seven reservist officers, fifty-two reservist soldiers and 240 native soldiers.
Defending the beaches against an armed invasion would be a really poor decision as the Australian navy’s guns would decimate their trenches and positions as well as the nearby town drawing death to the civilian population. The Germans knew that the main target of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force would be the wireless station. Ultimately, they could not stop the colony;s eventual fall but they could make the Australians pay for the advance and try and buy as much time as they could for transmission time and setting demolition charges. The pathway through the jungle would be defended by snipers, trenches and hit and fade attacks against an enemy who wouldn’t know the terrain.
October 9, 2026
CMAR – Canada’s Newest Service Rifle – 2026
Josh Bortolotti
Published 5 Jun 2026Connaught Range Primary Training Centre
The Canadian Army is in the final stages of testing for the C25 General Service Rifle, the first weapon being delivered by the Canadian Modular Assault Rifle project. Since awarding the contract to Colt Optics to provide the 1-6x LPVO, key stakeholders are brought out to Connaught Range to fire the weapon from differing distances and provide feedback. Some members of the Army Headquarters also got the opportunity afterwards to have a familiarization shoot with the C25 and C26.
C25 General Service:
Colt MRR 5.56x45mm (13.7″ barrel)
Colt Optics 1-6x Low Power Variable Optic (LPVO)
Millbrook Strategic Sciences Multi-Function Muzzle Device (MFMD)
Magpul Back Up Sights and FurnitureC26 Full Spectrum:
Colt MRR 5.56x45mm (15.7″ barrel)
Colt Optics 1-10x Low Power Variable Optic (LPVO)
Millbrook Strategic Sciences Multi-Function Muzzle Device (MFMD)
Magpul Back Up Sights and Furniture
October 2, 2026
Britain’s best general in World War II
If you’ve been following for a while, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Field Marshal Bill Slim, the best but also least well known British general of the Second World War. His achievements in Burma and India are overshadowed in popular memory by the struggle against the Nazis in Europe and the vast Pacific campaigns against the Japanese by primarily American forces. In recent years, there’s been a bit more attention paid to the XIV Army’s long and bitter fight, but there’s always more to discover about that incredible struggle:
Field Marshal Sir William Slim (1891-1970), during his time as GOC XIVth Army.
Portrait by No. 9 Army Film & Photographic Unit via Wikimedia Commons.
But I see him clear, with that robber-baron face under the Gurkha hat … looking like a rather scruffy private with a general’s tab — which of course is what he was.
– one of General Slim’s soldiers remembers
A search on Amazon using the term “military memoir” yields more than forty thousand results. With so many choices, why read Field Marshal William Slim’s World War II memoir entitled Defeat into Victory? Interestingly enough, there are two answers. The short answer was revealed in 2011 when the National Army Museum in London held a debate and a public poll to answer the question — Who is Britain’s greatest general? Great Britain, of course, has a long and distinguished military history with a great many famous military commanders who could all vie for this honor. In what turned out to be a surprise to many, Field Marshal Slim tied with the Duke of Wellington as the winner. So, if you are considering whether to read Slim’s memoir, ask yourself — how much do you know about someone who might be one of the greatest generals in history?
Before continuing this essay with a longer, more structured answer about the value of Slim’s memoir, a few words about William Slim himself. He began his military career as a temporary lieutenant at the beginning of World War I, without the benefit of a university education or Sandhurst training. By the end of World War I, he had achieved a sterling military record — wounded twice, awarded the Military Cross and temporarily promoted to major. He spent the inter-war years assigned to the Indian Army and was notably associated with the 6th and 7th Gurkha Rifles. At the beginning of World War II, he was given brigade command in East Africa and then command of the 10th Indian Division in the Middle East. His memoir begins in early 1942 when Slim is suddenly and unexpectedly told to leave his command and report immediately to Army Headquarters in India. The summons was so abrupt that Slim thought he was being relieved of command. He didn’t know it at the time but he was about to spend the rest of the war in India and Burma.
A distinct three-act narrative arc forms the structure of his book. In Act I (1942), Slim takes command of Burma Corps. This was an ad hoc two-division force that was in the middle of conducting a fighting retreat while being overwhelmed by the surging Japanese Army. Slim and his men end up suffering through a one hundred day, nine-hundred-mile retreat back to India in what historians have called the longest retreat ever conducted by a British army. By May 1942, the remnants of his Corps finally reached safe haven in India.
In Act II (1943), Slim regroups, retrains and resupplies his forces in preparation for his reconquest of Burma. This was not as straightforward a task as it sounds. Slim now commands the Fourteenth Army which, at its height, consisted of nearly one million soldiers and was one of the largest armies in the world. But the size of the Fourteenth Army was not as striking as the diversity of its composition. Slim had to make a disciplined, cohesive and effective fighting force using regiments from England, Scotland, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and a vast array of Indian units including Sikhs, Rajputs, Pathans and Gurkhas from Nepal. Later in the war, Slim described a routine tactical operation: “The Japanese had for some time been harassing 28 East African Brigade Group … and a Punjabi battalion had been sent in to stiffen it”. The Japanese counterattacked “and a British battalion was hurriedly transferred from the east bank and joined them”. One routine tactical operation — involving allied soldiers from three continents.
In Act III, (1944-45), Slim and his army return to Burma and achieve triumph after triumph. The first triumph is the battle of Imphal (March-July 1944). The famed novelist George MacDonald Fraser was a young Scottish soldier in Slim’s Fourteenth Army and he later wrote; “I imagine that every teenager today has heard of Stalingrad and Alamein and D-Day but I wonder how many know the name of Imphal … where Japan suffered the greatest catastrophe in its military history”. The subsequent battle of Meiktila (February- March 1945) was equally significant and has been characterized by British military historian Corelli Barnett as, “the cleverest, boldest and most brilliant single British victory in World War II”. By mid-1945, Slim’s victorious Fourteenth Army had retaken Rangoon and destroyed the Japanese army in Burma.
There are three dimensions to Slim’s memoir that make it so memorable. It is a tale well-written, it is a tale of wonder and it is a tale filled with wisdom.
September 27, 2026
QotD: “Friction” in military actions
Bret Devereaux, “Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-25.
September 26, 2026
Jacob Rees-Mogg says the quiet part out loud
Despite British news popping up here fairly regularly, I don’t closely follow individual politicians, so I didn’t have strong opinions about Jacob Rees-Mogg. I guess I had mild positive feelings about him based on what he’d said on various issues several years ago. I’d rather assumed he’d be out of politics by now with the collapse of the “Conservatives” after the Boriswave, but no, he still thinks of himself as a voice worth listening to … unfortunately.
Thoughts from the Shire suggests that we not blame Rees-Mogg too much, as he merely said out loud what they all think:
Don’t be too hard on old Jacob Rees-Mogg.
His recent call for the return of duty and the stiff upper lip, along with his warning that some of us may once again have to fight and die for our country, has predictably, and rightly so been met with howls of derision.
But here’s the thing, Mogg isn’t entirely wrong.
Duty does matter, courage matters, and sacrifice matters. A people incapable of defending themselves will eventually find themselves at the mercy of people who can, this is the story of world history. The problem is not the principle, the problem is the state of the nation, and perhaps more importantly, the relationship between those asking for the sacrifice and those expected to make it. People have rightly been pointing out that Millionaire Mogg, and his progeny are not likely to be the ones enlisted for the frontline, and that too often in our history the likes of Jacob have led many millions of good men to war. It is great that many have seen through Moggs BS rhetoric, and are telling him where he can stick his future war.
However we should not think that the masses of working class men that fought in past conflicts all did so out of patriotism, or because they listened to their betters, or were too stupid to see through the propaganda. Most knew their leaders were full of shit, most despised the upper crust types like Mogg.
It’s rather amusing that both the British and Canadian powers-that-be have spent a long time doing things to diminish the patriotism of their people — not least by mass immigration against the will of the voters — and denigrating the patriotic feelings they haven’t managed to fully suppress. Both ostentatiously treat immigrants, especially illegal immigrants better than they treat their own citizens, both with public support and judicial slight-of-hand to minimize or eliminate punishments when they do find themselves in court.
Now, British elites want the downtrodden young white males to ready themselves to go die for Ukraine, while Canadian elites want their downtrodden young white males to become, as John Carter put it, the Hoser Taliban and fight against the Yankee hordes of the Bad Orange Man. As if everyone will just magically forget that they spent the last decade and more actively trying to erase our history and blacken the reputations of the men who built our nation.
Sorry for the interruption, I’ll get off my hobby horse and let’s get back to Thoughts From the Shire:
Canadian troops going “over the top”
In the Past, the Upper Crust also Paid a Great Price in War
Nor, incidentally, did the upper classes always remain safely at home like old Mogg, and his ilk today. In the Great War, aristocratic families lost sons in extraordinary numbers. In 1919 the House of Lords recorded 160 sons of peers dead, “in many cases the hopes and heirs of their line”. Prime Minister Asquith lost his son Raymond. Bonar Law lost two sons. Public-school boys died in the same mud as miners and millworkers, and actually in a higher proportion. Go further back and the connection between leadership, and physical danger becomes even clearer. Kings fought, Chieftains fought, aristocrats fought. Martial ability was not the only qualification for leadership, but for much of history its obvious absence could certainly be a disqualification. It would have been unthinkable for a Celtic chief not to have been a great warrior, in fact the greatest warrior was often made chief precisely because he was the best warrior. Put the above into the context of today, the weak effeminate excuses for leaders we have in the West, not one of them would have the backbone to stand and fight for anything, let alone for you or me.
Contrary to common belief, in the past the man saying “Lets go to war” was frequently going with you, and on WWI the junior officer was actually going in front of you.
That matters.
Because the great change in our own age is not that ordinary men have suddenly become cowards (although it’s no doubt many are) and the upper classes armchair generals. It is that the bond between sacrifice, and belonging has weakened. My ancestors lived in mill-owned houses. They knew perfectly well where they stood in the social order, right at the bottom. Yet they fought in both world wars, remember there was no conscription in Ireland so they volunteered.
The thing is they were not fighting for an amorphous administrative machine called “the state”. They were fighting, in however complicated a fashion, for home, hearth, wives, weans, neighbours, streets, churches, towns, regiments, and the men beside them. They knew what was behind them, and beside them, they knew what they were trying to preserve, and that is where Mogg has the problem a bit backwards.
You cannot spend decades hollowing out common identity, weakening attachment to place, treating inherited loyalties as embarrassing, and reducing citizenship increasingly to an administrative relationship, then suddenly reach into the cupboard when war threatens and pull out words such as duty, honour, country, and sacrifice. You cannot look down your nose at the oiks and their gammon like ways, and then suddenly point out that they may have to die with honour and dignity.
Virtues like duty, honour, and sacrifice require roots, common beliefs and identities, a people!!!
So perhaps Mogg is right, we do need to toughen up. Perhaps we have become too comfortable, too passive, and too frightened of hardship. But the courage required of us may not be the courage to march obediently towards the next foreign battlefield for the virtue signalling elite, and their banker friends. It may be the courage to ask our own rulers some very uncomfortable questions first.
On Substack Notes, John Carter links to a Morgoth post on the topic, saying:
Jacob Rees-Mogg has been lecturing Brits about their “duty” to the nation, in particular their duty to die in Ukraine, while at the very same time he denies that the English people even exist as a nation at all. A “nation of mongrels”, he calls them.
He adopts the mannerisms of a grand old lord of times gone by, one of the landed gentry who bled and died en masse when they threw themselves into the trenches of the Great War, answering the very same call of duty to God, king, and country that Rees-Mogg cynically invokes. Will Rees-Mogg die in a slit trench in the Donbass? Will any of his four sons? Peter is 19 — old enough to fight. Will he? To ask the question is to answer it.
Rees-Mogg speaks of duty to fight for a country he will not fight for. He speaks of duty as he smiles upon the invasion of that country by the hordes of third world primitives he and his class continue to invite in. He speaks of duty, as the regime he supports bends itself to persecuting the men and women doing their duty to their country by attempting to fight back against the invasion.
September 22, 2026
The US Army has an institutional aversion to admitting mistakes
Tom Kratman, retired US Army officer, has strong opinions about a lot of topics, but especially on things related to the US military in general and the US Army in particular:
The US Army, all of the US armed forces, can never admit to a mistake, no matter how trivial. The reason the RS71 became the SR71 was because some senior officer had a slip of the tongue when briefing Johnson, called the RS71 the SR71, and the Air Force, rather than admit the mistake, changed the name. The reason there was no resistance training in Ranger School (that’s POW resistance, not weight lifting) was because someone, Navy, I think, said that the only resistance training in US armed forces was Navy run (they do run the big important school graduates are forbidden to talk about), so the Army and Air Force, rather than let Navy be embarrassed, killed their programs until rather recently. The reason the Army kept the OH-58 Kiowa was because, after being browbeaten into buying that recon helicopter, it would have been admitting a mistake, to say nothing of some measure of corruption and moral cowardice, to switch to the OH-6 which EVERY chopper pilot in the Army would tell you was a better bird for the mission.
And then, just for the cherry on top, we can contemplate my old slimy toad of a scum-sucking battalion commander who, as a brigade commander, browbeat his HHC commander [Wiki] into falsifying a PT test for him and, when the HHC commander went to the IG, and the story came out, was allowed to pin on BG stars and retire rather than being sent to play rock hockey, as he should have been, at Leavenworth. Why? Because the Army had made a number of serious mistakes with him; they let him command two infantry (one of them a Ranger) battalions, and had promoted him to colonel, selected him to command a brigade, and then selected him for promotion to brigadier general. That could never be allowed out because the army cannot admit to a mistake, let alone five of them.
Now, with that inability to admit a mistake in mind, roll back the sands of time to the late 1950s, when a certain Airborne Mafia general, serving as Chief of Staff of the Army, Max Taylor, had, as generals will, an incredibly stupid idea, that he, as generals also will tend to, thought was just fucking brilliant. He created the pentomic division [Wiki]. I’ve written on the iniquities and stupidities of this at length and won’t repeat myself here. Suffice to say it was a disaster, a complete, total, unmitigated, moral, operational, administrative, tactical, utter, unbefuckinglievable disaster from every perspective. One feature of the Pentomic Division was that regiments were done away with and replaced by one or more “battlegroups” bearing the same regimental number but not necessarily under the same command.
The Army could not admit that mistake. So they dumped the Pentomic Division and battlegroups as soon as possible but, rather than reverting to regiments, went to brigades [Wiki] composed of different battalions of different arms and regimental numbers. This was nothing but a way to pretend that the Pentomic Division hadn’t been a mistake, that it had been a great idea that just needed a little fine tuning.
Brigades, by the way, also sucked but not as much as the new, Pentomic 2.0, Brigade Combat Teams suck [Wiki].
Wiki links added for those (like me) who are not intimately familiar with US military formations.
September 21, 2026
QotD: Military doctrine
Bret Devereaux, “Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-25.
September 18, 2026
Worrying about post-combat lawfare will crush initiative and morale
As mentioned in Dr. Robert Lyman’s account yesterday, the British government wants to turn back the hands of time to change the rules of engagement under which British Army troops and police conducted themselves during “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. It may be an exciting prospect for law firms, activists, and other anti-military groups, but it would set a terrible precedent for British use of military force from this moment onwards. At The Critic, Alexander Gray explains why this is a dangerous and stupid idea that should be dropped forever:
“British Army working during the Field Training Exercise” by U.S. Army Europe is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0 
.
The debate about the hounding of veterans through the courts has long been presented in terms of fairness. This is indeed one side of the story. No decent country should tolerate servicemen being dragged through repeated investigations decades after the events in question, often without new evidence and after previous inquiries have already reached their conclusions.
But focusing only on veterans misses an even more urgent point: this has become a national security threat.
Over the past two decades, the legal framework governing military operations has changed. Courts have increasingly applied standards developed for peacetime to scrutinise wartime situations of uncertainty and danger which often demand split-second judgement. Human rights law, designed principally to regulate relations between the state and individuals, has increasingly been applied to military operations, including to situations already governed by the Law of Armed Conflict.
This is having consequences on the battlefield. Personnel who believe that a lawful decision taken in combat may be reconstructed years later in a civilian courtroom are now incentivised to be more cautious, more process-driven and less willing to exercise initiative. That hesitation can slow decisions in situations where delay may place lives and the success of an operation at risk. The prospect of repeated investigations and prolonged legal uncertainty is also damaging morale and contributing to experienced personnel leaving the service, depriving the Armed Forces of skills and judgement that are difficult to replace.
This is why the Prosperity Institute has published the Military Operations Bill, presented to Parliament this week by Sir David Davis MP. It reasserts the principle that combat operations should be judged primarily by the Law of Armed Conflict. Courts have an important role in punishing wrongdoing, but they should not become alternative command structures reviewing military judgement from the safety of hindsight.
Update, 19 September: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
