A few words in favor of the much-derided individual replacement system for soldiers

As MajRod knows, I
sometimes like to take a look at icons like readiness and ask, Do we really
need to do it that way? I especially like to do that on Fridays so we can talk
about it over the weekend. But I am doing it today because I don't plan to post
on Thanksgiving or the day after. 

So I was pleased to read an essay
on the individual replacement system by Robert S. Rush, the only retired
command sergeant major I know who has a Ph.D. from Ohio State, one of the best
military history departments in the country. Now, "everyone knows" that, just
as readiness is "good," so is unit rotation. Or at least that unit rotation is
better for cohesion, and so for military effectiveness, than the stinking
individual replacement system used in World War II and Vietnam.

Or so I thought. Then I read CSM
Rush's essay "The Individual Replacement System: Good, Bad or Indifferent?" (It
was presented at a conference about 10 years ago, but I don't believe it has
been published.) Among his surprising findings, based on an intense study of
the replacement system in the U.S. Army in Europe in late World War II:

"Units fail most often when not
maintained at strength, not because the soldiers lack long-term bonds with one
another."




"Units are more combat-efficient
when there are combat-wise veterans within the unit."

His bottom line is worth quoting
at length:

"Success results NOT from
rotating organizations in and out of combat but from sustaining those
organizations while in combat. Battalions fighting at near battalion strength can
accomplish missions that battalions fighting at company strength cannot, even
when it is a company of grizzled warriors. It is only when the veteran cadre is
sustained by a continual influx of new soldiers who in turn coalesce around
this battle-hardened core that a unit's combat power increases."