The
Value of Military Manuals In General |
Military manuals are a great resource, one which people, even people
in the military, don't generally appreciate. The common complaints
include they are hard to read, boring, poorly written, etc.
But as they are not great literature and they were not intended
to be, they are working instructions and notes.
They are loaded with a vast amount of information, accumulated
with great difficultly, often at the cost of many peoples'
lives. A lot of effort, a vast amount of experience, time and
thinking, not to mention money, went into making them.
New military manuals are useful explanations of what is the current
doctrine. Old manuals are sources of historical doctrine, procedures
and techniques. They are often repositories of lost knowledge
which can be reapplied, often saving people from having to
'reinvent the wheel'. Manuals in general are useful for many
different types of people when properly read and used.
Lost Knowledge
Military manuals have short working life spans. Field manuals are
usually replaced every ten years. Technical manuals are in print
as long as the army has the piece of equipment in inventory. Then
they are thrown away. The military like the rest of the modern
world has a tendency to believe that new is always better. In my
experience, after paying attention to them for over thirty-five
years, this is not often true.
Reinventing the Wheel
Often when a new manual is written, it conforms more to the current
fashions and fads of the time when it is written. Many pieces of
information are declared not necessary, because they do not fit
in current doctrine and are deleted. Many techniques and ideas
are lost in this way. Then several cycles of manuals later the
wheel has to be reinvented because the military has forgotten what
it has learned.
Warfare has a tendency to recycle old techniques because they become
new again when reapplied in a different fashion. The old often
becomes useful when everyone has forgotten about it, because
on the battlefield, forgotten techniques become a surprise.
The old, when reapplied, is a surprise because the old ways
of coping with the forgotten technique have also been lost
and needs to be rediscovered again.
Examples of this happening can be found in many places in Military
History. For example old fashion sapping tactics, which were
successfully used at the battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954) during
the French Indochina War, were out of fashion at the time.
In 1900 rockets were considered obsolete just to be rediscovered
again in World War Two. Often fortifications, particularly
of old massive designs, are found to be almost immune to current
weapons, because the weapons were designed to fight 'modern'
war.
Usefulness
Many people can find a military manual useful. This includes military
personnel, military historians, law enforcement people, collectors,
museum curators, scientists, survivalists and wargamers.
For military personnel they are a repository of information which
can often prove to be useful in many circumstances; manuals are
their guidelines, which coordinate them with other soldiers and
old manuals, can supply them many useful miscellaneous techniques
which are not commonly used. For the historian military manuals
are an invaluable statement of the doctrine of the time they were
written, a record of the capabilities of equipment, and a record
of how everything was suppose to work. To law enforcement people,
military manuals are sources of useful military techniques which
can be selectively applied. For the collector and museum curator,
old manuals are often the only record left on how their relics
work, to be maintained and repaired. Scientists can find them to
be useful for starting points in research, to document what is
already known, or once known. To the researcher and scholar they
are massive pools of knowledge to be used to fill in many of the
missing pieces of the puzzles which are missing in the subject
they are studying. For survivalists, they are sources of hard to
find information. For wargamers, military manuals are over all
guides on how things are suppose to work.
How to Read and Use Military Manuals
Manuals were never intended to be read like a pulp novels. They
are meant be to used when needed, not read for pleasure. What is
important is knowing where to find something in them. Memorizing
them is silly. They were either meant to be guidelines or to give
specific instructions.
For example, Field manuals are meant to be guidelines on how to
do something, and meant to be tailored to a situation, not
to be quoted as gospel. They are also designed to keep everyone
working together, so everyone has some idea of what to expect
of people on their own side. Technical manuals were meant to
be specific instructions and should be followed exactly, especially
the ones which have a lot of changes attached to them to correct
earlier mistakes found in them.
So remember what manuals are and make use out of them. They are
valuable resources
