Infantry Survivability

[2ndLt_Fjun]

Being an infantrygrunt was just about the safest combat job (so not counting rear area beancounters etc) there was and is.

That's backwards. All statistics show that the being an infantry grunt up front was the most dangerous job there was in WW2. Well, there are two positions that statistically were more dangerous. The grunts NCO's and platoon commanders had even higher casualty rates. See e.g. the classic "The sharp end" by John Ellis (highly recommended) or more or less any other serious statistics where someone made an effort to sort the actual rifle battalions out from the large non-combat part of the infantry forces.

This is a quote from an officer in the 1st Gordon Highlanders (from Ellis book):
'It occured to me to count the number of officers who had served in the battalion since D-Day. Up to March 27th, the end of the Rhine crossing, it was 102... I found that we had 55 officers commanding the twelve rifle platoons, and that their average service with the Battalion was thirty-eight days, or five and a half weeks. Of these fifty-three per cent were wounded, twenty-four per cent killed or died of wounds, fifteen per cent invalided, and five per cent had survived'.

Safe job? Not really.

About HE effectiveness. Most casualties in WWII were from HE fire in one way of the other, in contrast to WWI where 80% was gunshot wounds. I'm right now reading "With the jocks" by Peter White (highly recommended too) who was a British rifle platoon commander during the latter part of WWII in Netherlands and Germany. He had more than half of his platoon wiped out twice. Once in a vulnerable position where German mortars caused a whole lot of casualties. A second time in a prepared defence position where half the platoon was wiped out by HE fire from own tanks.

Not going into the debate about game mechanics though. I think SPWW2 models infantry combat much better than most games out there, and it's not an easy thing to do in a game for sure.