I remember being taught in SCHOOL that the russians in WW1 (or quite possibly 2) had squads where they marched in a straight line and the guy in front had a rifle and they each had a bullet and when the guy in front of you died you picked up the rifle and loaded your bullet. Which when I heard it as a kid I was like “what? No fucking way they did that. That would be idiotic.”
In WW1 Imperial Russia, they didn’t march in a straight line, but unarmed troops were expected to retrieve (and use) the rifles from casualties, whether dead or just wounded. Ideally, the issue of being unarmed wouldn’t come up - you wouldn’t be sent out on patrol with nothing. But if, say, an attack on your section of the front happens, you might be one of the third sitting twiddling your thumbs (or rather, running other minor tasks) until a rifle is ‘freed up’.
I remember being taught in SCHOOL that the russians in WW1 (or quite possibly 2) had squads where they marched in a straight line and the guy in front had a rifle and they each had a bullet and when the guy in front of you died you picked up the rifle and loaded your bullet. Which when I heard it as a kid I was like “what? No fucking way they did that. That would be idiotic.”
It’s a common myth about the Soviet Union WW2.
In WW1 Imperial Russia, they didn’t march in a straight line, but unarmed troops were expected to retrieve (and use) the rifles from casualties, whether dead or just wounded. Ideally, the issue of being unarmed wouldn’t come up - you wouldn’t be sent out on patrol with nothing. But if, say, an attack on your section of the front happens, you might be one of the third sitting twiddling your thumbs (or rather, running other minor tasks) until a rifle is ‘freed up’.
Yeah see that makes infinitely more sense.