Fighting Germans, now that is a nightmare.
One thing the Germans learned early was that you have to have infantry to support Armor. You can’t just sent out the armor by itself.
Since my Father was in the Combat Engineers, I have noticed that infantry typically speak highly of the Engineers.
I also read a German book about their armor while attacking Russia. The author said they were going through heavy artillery fire but they were safe in their tanks but the “sappers” which they called their engineers, had nothing but their helmets to protect them while they were building and repairing bridges.
You often hear the point that today’s infantry fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq have seen more infantry combat than most infantry during WW II in NW Europe, while serving multiple tours of duty. While that may be strictly true in terms of the total time in combat, it is misleading in the sense that the reason for such relatively short tours in WW II was owing to the 8 months from D-Day untill VE-Day and the fact that units in combat had such extraordinarily high turnover in personnel owing to the staggering casualty rate. There is no way that so many of today’s warfighters would have survived to complete so many tours of duty were our enemies in the Middle East able to project the same relative combat power and skill of the German enemy.
This is not meant to detract from the enormous sacrifice, diffuculties experienced and bravery of our contemporary warfighters in their struggles against a ruthless enemy. I just think it helps to place it all in historical context.
Finally as we cosider placing women into combat, let us not refight the last war. The next one may be a contest similar to WWII, if not in style than in the casualty rates. As the article shows, EVERYONE in the Army is ultimately an infantryman if needed. Just ask the men of the Word War II Army Specialized Training Program who had been trained in relatively rear area jobs such as radar technicians, aircrew, anti-aircraft artillery, engineering, dentistry, medicine and the like. Most of them were transferred to combat units has infantry to replace the unbelievable losses in the line infantry and armor units and in preperation for the invasion of Japan.
This possibility does NOT bode well for large percentages of women in the Army.