@Mogador @Bakkerbaard From the British aspect you can go down all sorts of rabbit holes. By the end of The Great War the entire middle section of young British Officers was wiped out. The ratio of killed officers to Tommy was enormous, with German machine gunners attacking their distinctive look of flat cap and pistol against a Tommy’s round metal helmet and rifle. This meant twenty odd years later those war veterans should be now in senior command positions were missing. We had a brain drain with many senior officers having no war time experience at all. Before D-Day at the start of WW2 Britain sent across to France the BEF. This fiasco turned into Dunkirk (my great Uncle was killed there). This resulted in a heavy defeat of our main land army. Our only experienced soldiers. By the time of D-Day, we as a force had little to no veterans. British Army landed at a much safer beach than the Americans and suffered less causalities. However, read up on Caen our major objective. We ran into German veterans. The difference was obvious, and the German vets fought hard. I’m not blaming senior command, but lack of real experience was apparent. Remember the German regiments had all served on the Eastern Front. Our top-down planning could be better, also politics between Generals playing a huge part in decision making. Egos... If you want a veteran Texan who was in WW2, then look at the Banana Wars and Haiti. Or the occupation of Nicaragua. If he was a 17year old private in 1933 then by 1942 he’d be an experienced hard-nosed vet at 26. Domestically, dust bowl issues and southern civil unrest would keep him busy. MartinM
I'll give that a quick read later, but this is literally the first I've heard of a banana war. I'm kinda set on the Omaha Beach thing. It's more iconic, if you'll forgive the use of that word. Easier for the reader to picture, too, and for me. Since making deals with the devil is a recurring theme in my story, it seems like walking into a hell made of sand, water, and MG42's is the best way to go. Which reminds me: Those were 42's in the casemates overlooking the beach, right?
@Bakkerbaard No-no you are absolutely spot on Omaha Beach is more iconic. The thing is if you want to have a MC as a US veteran on Omaha Beach. For any US vet to be there at that point in time he would have served in the Banana Wars. That’s his back story. My issue, shown in Band of Brothers is the lack of real vet experience passed onto new troops. The same goes for British forces. The very few that have any real world up close CQC xp from the US served in the Bananas Wars. In Saving Private Ryan, the so-called Vet was a school teacher and this was his first outing...! MartinM.
That was why Kurt Vonnegut subtitled Slaughterhouse Five as "The Children's Crusade." World War II was different from later wars in that the rank-and-file soldiers were selected from a broader range of ages. Since the standing army at the time was so small, draft notices went out to everybody from 18 to 35 (or 36?), whereas most of the recruits from later wars were straight out of high school. College students were usually exempt from the draft, and the luckier ones went directly into draft-proof situations like war industries. So the military skewed a lot younger than that of WW II. In those later wars, lieutenants usually came from military schools and ROTC units and had four years of college under their belts, so they would have entered the officer's corps at around 22 years of age. I don't know about WW II. But I can say that my father was drafted in 1942 when he happened to be 26 years old. He started out as a private and was a corporal when the war ended. I expect that officers were recruited in part from people who had some college but had gone into the workforce instead of the army, which would have put them in their middle twenties.
Lieutenant is a junior rank, in commissioned officer terms. A 2nd Lt. is probably going to be straight out of university when he joins, so early twenties on commissioning and mid-twenties when he makes lieutenant. That's why the British army in particular leans so heavily on experienced NCOs like platoon sergeants; those guys will have ten years or more under their belts and know how things are meant to work. I know the Americans work differently, but I imagine the age brackets are pretty similar. Those are for professionals, following the normal entry pipeline, mind you; in wartime all bets are off and you'd have reserve, short-service and hostilities-only officers from a variety of backgrounds getting mobilised, though infantry is a young man's game, so expect the older guys to be streamed elsewhere.
In the U.S. Army, the ranks are 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Lieutenant, and then Captain. 2LT could be fresh out of West Point, fresh out of college/university ROTC, or a recent graduate of OCS (Officer Candidate School). 2LTs are usually platoon leaders. 1LTs may be platoon leaders or possible company XOs (Executive Officer -- second in command). In rear echelon units, a 1st LT may serve as a company commander. In general, however, company commanders are usually Captains. I don't know if the U.S. does direct commissions these days, but I know they did in WW2. My father was in his 30s when WW2 broke out. He was a college graduate, working in an engineering-related discipline. He received a direct commission as a 2nd Lieutenant. IIRC, he entered the service in late 1942. By the time he returned from overseas (India and China, not Europe) in 1945, he had made Captain.
In WW2, things were heating up fast. The United States had a very small army, so if you were a fresh lieutenant (ROTC or West Point), you was likely to make captain fast. Like weeks or months after the opening of the war. In fact, many who were only a year or two into their college programs were instantly upgraded and moved to active service. I mention this because 1944 was a ways down the pike from 1942 (when the war really started for America). Any lieutenant at that point in the war was newly made, so he would be young. If you had any college at all, they'd sent you to OCS and put your through the 90-day-wonder program. Others who were professionals (teachers, doctors, lawyers, business men) were also elevated. The twenty-five age, to me, seems a bit high, but who am I to argue. The second part of the question is that any landing craft (Higgins boat) carried 30 men. The driver was a navy man, and he gave the orders to disembark, upon which time he turned about and hightailed it back to the ship. Consider the compliment of 30 men. An army infantry squad (in 1944) was 12 men. A platoon was basically 3-4 squads (led by a 2nd lieutenant). A company was roughly 200 men, of 3-plus platoons. That is led by a captain and entertains at least 4 lieutenants. A battalion would be 700 more men (lt Colonel). A brigade is 3000 men, run by a full colonel. Now, imagine a bunch of soldiers hitting the beach. 30 men per boat. 100 boats. That's a brigade. In amongst all those privates would be a colonel, three lt. colonels, several majors, 30 captains, 100 lieutenants, 300 sergeants and 2600 privates or corporals. When the gate opens on one of those Higgin boats, damn near anything might pop out, perhaps no officers at all. Perhaps the brigade commander and a couple of his staff.
