CoC, OC, CO

The British army is a different kettle of fish here the designations are generally

GOC = General Officer Commanding = In charge of a Division normally Major General in Rank

CO = Commanding officer= In charge of a Regiment of Cavalry or a Battalion of Infantry will normally hold the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel

OC = Officer Commanding = In charge of Squadron of Cavalry or a Company of Infantry generally either a Major or Captain.

It is worth noting that an OC can also be an Officer Cadet or an Officer Candidate - that is, an officer in training , but which one is applicable is usually obvious from context

You also sometimes get OinC (which is often pronounced 'oink') which stands for Officer in Charge and generally applies to an officer selected to command a detachment from a parent unit - oinks are often lieutenants , but sometimes captains

 

Another random difference is that American units usually use six to designate a commander in on the radio and sometimes in general conversation - thus two six would probably be the commander of 2nd platoon, delta six would be the company commander and so on.

In the British army the unit commander is usually Zero , or sometimes Sunray

 

I think the Americans refer to oinks as 'detachment commander' but I could be wrong - the point about 'officer in charge' is that is not technically a command position , in that its usually temporary while a team from the parent unit is detached to a different unit, so it wouldn't be a CO or OC and the oink would still be responsible to his OC for his conduct of the detachment's mission.

Thinking about it I've seen OinC with the same meaning used as an american naval term - referring to officers in charge of detachments of helicopters assigned to different ships during the Vietnam war ... I don't know if the army and USMC use the term or not

 

Incidentally in the British forces CoC is usually an acronym for "Chain of Command" - the operations centers are generally known as TOC (for Tactical Operations Centre)

 

The military love their TLA (three letter acronyms) and each part of the forces will be slightly different even between the US army and and the USMC ... when you start looking at Uk vs US it gets even worse, and god forbid that anyone invited the Australians or the French to the party ... in multinational operations it can get very very confusing.

And if you add special forces to the mix as well if you aren't confused you are misinformed

For example if you take the command designations i'm using in after the wave - these are borrowed from C&C operations in vietnam one zero team leader, one one deputy team leader and so on down. Although I haven't gone into it the reason they did it like that is that command was predicated on time in country and experience of recon operations rather than rank, so it wasnt unusual to have a sergeant as one zero giving order to a lieutenant as one one. Also they were operating joint teams with Americans and Montangard tribesmen so the americans were One zero, One one, One two, and the tribesmen were designated zero one, zero two etc in order of seniority.

 

C&C in Vietnam was Command and Control - that war in particular was rife was misleading acronyms. C&C was part of SOG , which rather than standing for Special operations group as you might expect , stood for Studies and Observation Group. C&C was split into three bases south central and north (CCS, CCC, and CCN) and their cover story was that they were training montangards for the self protection force , wheras what they were actually doing was running small unit penetration ops into Laos and Cambodia (and North Vietnam in the case of CCN).

It was at the time this was very secret and deniable as America didn't want to broaden the war and give the Russians and Chinese the excuse to do likewise, so any Americans killed on C&C operations was reported as being killed in South Vietnam. (those books i mentioned to you before 'Blackfoot is missing' is about ops out of CCC and 'the Dying Place' is about CCN both are 'fiction' but based on factual occurences )

 

On your other question the reason for easily identifiable call signs - whether six , zero or other codenames, is that being in a contact or wider combat is confusing and disorientating even for trained soldiers so it is essential that everyone is clear on who is giving the orders.

Penetration of communications is a concern - but in the modern age this is pretty much defeated by encryption , so the concern isn't so much that the enemy is listening, as that the venemy know where you are by DF (direction finding) your transmissions. Of course once a contact has started the enemy pretty much know where you are anyway so this is then only a concern for commanders behind the line who might be targetted by artillery or airstrikes if their position becomes known

 

The slack man walks behind the point man and is there to pull him out of whatever shit hes got into (or to return fire at whatever kills the point man). these days the slack man is often armed with a SAW (squad automatic weapon - a light machine gun) or similar to give him more fire power, and both point and slack can be specialist positions, but in the Nam era point and slack was rotated between men, squads, platoons etc in a 'share the risk' type way. - its basically the difference between a conscript/draftee arm and one composed purely of professionals.

(In ATW I have this with Potter walking point with a silenced weapon and Ozzy at slack with a Minimi - well I did earlier on, these days Potter is MIA and Ozzy is dead)

Depending on the unit there may also be a space between the slack and the 3rd man in the file in order that the unit can reorganise to face whatever threat the point and slack have encountered

 

In regard of DF - its very accurate for pinning down stationary targets like command posts ... its often done by scout helicopters who would then call in gunships or air, or artillery to deal with them. The reason for this is that the soviets had a much more command driven millitary model so in preparing to fight WW3 Nato doctorine was to take out the command groups asap.

Its not anywhere near as accurate at pinning down a small moving target - which is why it is of limitted use in say identifying a taliban commander for a drone strike ... however for SF units its still a threat as even a rough location could allow the enemy to flood that area with men. Of course satellite radios aren't (easily) DF'able anyway

 

Tbh even LRRPs (usually said lurps - which also applied as a noun to the rations they ate when distributed to the rest of the army) could have been conscripts. At the time US special forces were selected straight out of basic training, so it wasn't unusual for someone to be in the field as C&C, Alpha team, Lurp, seal, or Force recon with no actual previous experience of combat.

This is of course anathema to the military now (apart from the Russians) but it was a different time - point being that they might have been special forces, but they weren't as different from the green army as SF units are today

( to digress even further the SAS in ww2, and in the malaya/borneo campaigns were similar - that is they were largely composed of people who didn't fit in to the green army, and were often 'volunteered' by parent units that wanted rid of trouble makers ... very different to the elite selected force of today. )

 

I suppose strictly speaking the Vietnam era SF were volunteers in that you had to volunteer for SF training regardless of whether you were orginally a volunteer or a draftee (in the case of C&C they were double volunteers because you also had to volunteer for command and control ops after finishing your SF training)