Stardate 20030426.1715

(On Screen via long range sensors): I thought about titling this "They also serve, who stand and digitate."

When someone thinks of an army, what one usually thinks of as the paradigmatic soldier is the front-line rifleman, or maybe a guy buttoned up in a tank. Think of ancient armies and one images the Roman legionary, or a knight on horseback. Basically, we think of the guys who are doing the fighting. That's quite natural.

But in order for guys like that to be where they are, doing what they're doing to the enemy, there are other people elsewhere doing other less glamorous jobs. For every fighter pilot doing wing-overs and patrolling the air over the battlefield, there's a squad of mechanics on the ground responsible for keeping the aircraft flying. For every front line platoon, there are other guys responsible for moving a steady flow of supplies to keep that platoon fed and watered and supplied with ammunition.

The usual term for these roles are "tooth" and "tail". The "tooth" part is all the guys who are actually in the position of being able to kill enemies, and the "tail" guys are the ones who may find themselves in the position of fighting but don't usually expect to do so. (But all of them can die; everyone is potentially a target even if they aren't all shooting.) We speak of the tooth-to-tail ratio, though it usually makes more sense to talk about tail-to-tooth: how many men must there be behind the front doing unglamorous work to make it possible to put one man directly into combat? In some cases it's greater than 10 to 1.

There have been military forces in history which had virtually no "tail" at all. Two notable examples of that are the Mongols and the Zulus. The Mongols fielded the only substantial military force in history before the 20th century where every man in the field army was mounted. The Mongol army relied on its horses, and in fact moved with a huge herd of excess horses, often as many as ten for every man. When the army was on the march, it would stop every hour or two and every man would change mounts. That made it possible for the entire force to move much further on a sustained basis without killing their horses than any other cavalry force in history. The "fuel" for the march was grass and vegetation, and horses need no spare parts or regular repair. Any animal which was injured would be slaughtered (and, I assume butchered and eaten by the men) and since the men could also hunt or forage (i.e. "loot") for most of their food in the areas they moved over, it meant that the force overall didn't require much supply during extended non-combat movement. As a result, the Mongol force was also able to "project" its force literally thousands of miles across land, without any kind of naval support.

The Zulu leader Shaka ranks as one of the great military innovators of all time. The force he created was not technologically competitive with contemporary European military forces, but compared to the other tribes and nations in the region it was radical and overwhelming. He introduced an entirely different form of spear and taught his men an entirely different way of using it. The Zulu assegai looks a bit like a spear, but the head was much longer and larger and flatter and was sharpened on both edges. It wasn't really a spear; it was actually more like a short sword. The extended "spear shaft" served the function of the pommel in a European sword, balancing it. Though it could be used something like a traditional spear, it was normally used underhanded. Shaka also developed a new kind of shield to go with it, and independently created something like the infantry combat tactics used by the Roman legions.

He also trained his men in formation fighting and demanded much more discipline in holding ranks, and introduced a semblance of formation movement.

But what was also interesting was the system of supply he created. The Zulus were herders; they didn't even farm heavily. Zulu villages all through their land maintained herds of cattle, who grazed on the grass of the veldt. In the Zulu nation in time of war, an impi (anywhere from 500 to 3000 men, all born the same year, who served together their entire lives; basically, a regiment) could move from place to place and rely on the nearby villages for supplies. Because of that and because of their superb physical conditioning due to constant training, an impi could move at a sustained rate of more than 20 miles per day. (They actually tended to travel at a slow trot, with each man carrying only his shield and his assegai.)

And in both cases, there was no need for any support force to move supplies. That's not possible for any army which relies heavily on technology, and as you look at the history of European war in particular, over time you find a rising number of "tail" men for every "tooth" man.

For something like the US Army in Europe in 1944, it's hard to see how it could be otherwise. They were consuming supplies at a ferocious rate, and most of the supplies were created in the heartland of America, moved to Atlantic ports, carried over the Atlantic ocean on Liberty ships or Victory ships, landed at ports in the UK, unloaded and sorted and reloaded onto other ships to cross the channel, unloaded at French harbors, and then carried to the front by truck. The tooth-to-tail ratio was at its lowest in the US Army Air Corps, where the "tooth" was air crew, and "tail" was everyone else.

The modern US Army a