"Abruptly [Magnusson's] extra force went into hyperdrive - risky, that close to a stellar mass, but their engines were especially well tuned, so losses were light - and entered the fray." (p. 283)
"...losses were light..." That means that there were losses. Some crews went into hyperdrive and immediately died. Magnusson gave the order, knowing that that would happen. The crews obeyed the order, knowing that, for some of them, it would mean instant death. However, those that die instantaneously do not know that it happens. Commanders cause the deaths not only of the enemy whom they are trying to kill but also of a predictable percentage of their own crews. This is most strange - and therefore, as a stranger, give it welcome - especially the part about some crews obeying the order and instantly ceasing to exist.
This afternoon, in Lancaster Priory Church, I attended the funeral of a man who had been violently murdered. Unfortunately, violence is not just in fiction - and not just abroad. Wherever it happens, for someone it is here.
15 comments:
War means killing and dying. Professional soldiers know this, and Magnusson's crews were pros.
I remember during the Falklands War, an American reporter asked some British troops what they thought of the rights and wrongs of the struggle.
They looked at her as if she was from Mars, and then their sergeant answered, with the patronizing politeness you use with the truly stupid:
"Well, miss, that's not rightly any of our business, now is it? We're soldiers. We took the Queen's shilling, we go where she sends us, we fight whoever the officers tell us to fight. We're soldiers. It's our trade."
SM - Professional soldiers/sailors/etc. understand the principal of calculated risk. In general terms, knowingly sacrificing X percentage of one's forces to "possibly' secure a tactical advantage is one of those gambits that a) rarely achieve the desired end; b) intentionally grinding down one's own forces leads to very real problems in terms of combat effectiveness and morale, as well as c) the support of the non-combatant elements of the trinity; and c)
Anderson was a gifted writer, but his knowledge of all things military was ... limited, to be kind.
It sells, of course. ;)
Kaor, Paul!
I don't understand your point. As Stirling said, war is about killing and/or dying. Professional military understood and accepted that when they took Uncle Sam's dollar, the King's shilling, or the Emperor's credit.
And I'm only a civilian!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
That was Dave. I certainly don't understand military tactics so I read others' comments with interest.
Paul.
Any opposed combat operation is going to involve losses. You balance that against the possible gain.
Playing it safe means attrition, which is only acceptable if you have vastly superior reserves to draw on and even then necessarily involves a lot of casualties.
Taking a high risk gamble means a big downside if things go wrong, and a high upside if they don't.
The German thrust through the Ardennes in 1940 is an example.
First they advanced through Belgium, which was the obvious replay of 1914 that the French and British were expecting, and drew in their reserves.
Then they did a left hook through the (very unfavorable, hilly, sparsely roaded) territory on the left flank, just above the northern end of the Maginot Line, and forced the river-line beyond the hills. That exposed the rear of the Anglo-French forces in Belgium and forced a precipitous retreat.
This necessarily relied on imponderables -- on the French being slow to realize what was happening and getting caught flat-footed and not moving fast enough to remedy the situation.
It was a case of "rolling the iron dice", as the German military slang put it.
As it happened, the dice rolled sixes for the Germans that time.
Note, however, that this was not cost-free.
The Germans lost 59,000 dead and many more wounded in the Battle of France in 1940.(*)
The French were gobsmacked and caught off-guard, but contrary to rumor at the time their forces fought hard when they could, particularly in the later stages.
In 1944, the Germans tried a reprise (Battle of the Bulge) and while it was dicey for a while, it failed miserably. The Allied forces rolled with the punch, pushed in reserves, and sealed off the attempted penetration, and German losses were cripplingly high.
(*) note that in the fighting in Poland in 1939, which was a curb-stomping if there ever was one, the Germans still lost 16,000 dead, 27,000 seriousy wounded, and 5,000 missing in a single month -- a bit over 500 dead every day of serious combat.
So between Poland in 1939 and France in 1940, the Germans lost about 75,000 dead, more than the British lost on the first day of the Somme in 1916.
The difference being, of course, that they -won- those battles and got important strategic results, whereas the head-butting at the Somme didn't accomplish much, to put it mildly.
Kaor, Paul!
I think I have some faint glimmerings of understanding tactics and strategy, assisted by reading reading military classics such as Sun Tzu's THE ART OF WAR, Flavius Vegetius' DE RE MILITARI, and Carl von Clausewitz's ON WAR. But I don't claim to have an adequate understanding of these things. Which is a big reason why I read Stirling's mini essays with such interest!
Sun Tzu's chapters about the use of spies was esp. interesting!
Ad astra! Sean
Of course, an offensive is going to run the risk of losses (so is the defensive), but that's not the point being made above.
At all times, as has been said, "do everything you ask of those you command."
On the offensive, as has been said, "no dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
And on the defensive, as has been said, "never give a sucker an even break."
As has been said many times, "write what you know." The number of SF authors who know literally zilch about war is up there with the percentage of Sturgeon's Law about SF quality, generally. ;)
It's not the -risk- of losses, it's a -certainty-.
Even against the Sudanese in 1898, Kitchener lost 48 men. Not quite in the same league as the Mahdist losses of 10-15K, but then he wasn't fighting a peer opponent.
I think I know a fair bit about war. I've studied it intensively for decades,
On the personal side, my grandfather was gassed at Paschendaele, his father fought in the Boer War, my father was a professional from 1939-64 and I was born and grew up on military bases, two of my brothers were fighter pilots (and once came down to the States and volunteered for Vietnam), another brother is a graduate of Royal Military College (Canada), and I was in the Canadian equivalent of the National Guard (militia, jg. -- Governor General's Foot Guards, to be specific).
And while Canada wasn't at war while I was in the relevant age groups, I have been in kill-or-be-killed situations a few times... and I'm not dead.
Dave Drake, who -was- a combat veteran, told me more than once while we were collaborating on some books that I was about as good at realistic battle scenes as he was.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Now that I thought of it, I think the battle and combat scenes in your stories are more detailed, and grimmer, than similar scenes in David Drake's books. At least the ones I've read.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: mostly based on descriptions I picked up from people who'd been through the mill.
For that matter, my grandmother was bombed by Zeppelins in London in 1916... 8-).
Kaor, Paul!
And I appreciated your skill in writing those combat/battle scenes.
Your family has been much more adventurous than mine!
Ad astra! Sean
SM - Yeah, not really the point; commanders who throw lives away do not last long in command. They are removed, either from above, below, or by their opponents, but they are removed.
Kaor, Dave!
Not always, such as in wars of attrition where one side fights so well and desperately that the victor has to ground down its opponent by sheer weight of numbers and greater resources. A classic example being the US Civil War where it took unrelenting determination and acceptance of appalling casualties by the Union before the Confederacy was destroyed. The most prominent Union generals who rose to high commands from 1863 on: Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, etc., were not removed.
Ad astra! Sean
DS: not in WW1 they weren't.
In fact, in the British army for most of the 1914-18 period, if your command -didn't- suffer heavy casualties, you'd likely be removed because that was considered evidence of you not showing enough aggression.
No *hit, that actually happened fairly frequently.
Not in the Russian army in any era either.
The Red Army lost something like 4-5 million in 1941, and at least half that every year for the rest of the war; total military deaths somewhere between 9 and 10 million. Overall population dropped from around 195 million to 170 million.
They lost around 80,000 dead and several times that badly wounded just taking Berlin in 1945 -- as opposed to total US losses of 405,000 for the entire war.
The Vietnamese communists lost at least 1.1 million military dead between 1964 and the end of the war -- 20x the American dead, from a much smaller population.
There have been plenty of armies where heavy to very heavy losses were just shrugged off as a cost of doing business.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I do think some of the Anglo/French generals on the Western Front in WW I deserved being cashiered with ignominy because of how cavalierly they needlessly wasted the lives of so many of their men.
A big part of the problem being how bone headed generals couldn't figure out ways to break thru the German defenses that did't come with appalling casualties.
Compared to its Soviet successor Tsarist Russia was far less wasteful of its men. And the losses due to the never ending purges and deaths in the gulags should also be factored in to the WW II Russian population drop.
Ad astra! Sean
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