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Which Is A Tougher Soldier? A Marine Recon, Seal, Or Ranger?
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the nature boy
New member
JavaGuru said:
yeah but a lot of those poor buggers died. the survival rate wasn't too pretty if I imagine.
the nature boy
New member
JavaGuru said:
tough. or lucky.
javaguru
Banned
I don't know a combat veteran that doesn't consider himself lucky for surviving. It's been estimated that 60% of the casualties caused during WWII were caused by artillery, with artillery there isn't a lot you can do other than learn to recognize the "close" ones, take cover, and hope for the best. So, IMO luck is certainly part of the equation. However, being able to survive nearly four years of almost constant combat would take a little bit more than just luck IMO. Especially considering how harsh the conditions were on the front, especially during winter.
Regardless, the mental "toughness" required for such a feat would be staggering. In 1944 army psychiatrists concluded that combat fatigue begins to set in after four weeks of constant action, by the late stages a soldier becomes so unable to function he is not only a danger to himself but also his unit. The human body didn't evolve having the fight or flight instinct triggered 24/7 for weeks, months and years. Eventually, the person jsut loses all hope and resigns themself to their fate.
Testosterone boy
New member
Maybe some of them hid instead of fighting. Or hung around a general, they stay at a safe distance.The Nature Boy said:
S
Spartacus
Guest
panzer jaeger unit DORAII
It was in the last weeks of the War, in April 1945, that one small detachment, Commando Unit DORA II of the SS 500th Bewahrungs (Punishment) Battalion, fought its last and most memorable battle.
To overcome the shortage of trained infantrymen and of adequate weapons in the months and weeks of Germany's military decline more and more use was made of small groups of dedicated hard and skillful men who were prepared to undertake operations of the most hopeless sort to help save their native country. The name of one of these men, Otto Skorzeny, was, to his contemporaries in the German Army, synonymous with cool bravery and daring. This account, however, is not Skorzeny's but that of an SS company which had formerly been part of his commando battalion. This had been split up to form a closely woven network of small groups charged with the task of blocking the advance by the Red Army, as it made that great thrust towards Berlin which STAVKA intended would end the war in Europe. Separated from the parent SS commando, the next step had been the conversion of this assault company into a para-commando and then into an anti-tank company. These were not, however, conventional gunners with conventional anti-tank guns, or those Panzerjaeger who fought with self propelled anti-tank gun (Jagdpanzer, Jagdpanther, etc.) who were protected by thick armor and killing their victims within the range in excess of thousands of meters, but a group of bicycle-riding, determined tank hunters, individual destroyers of enemy machines who went out with hollow charges and other close combat weapons to launch themselves at the Soviet vehicles, to clamber onto the moving machines and to plant their explosive charge firmly so that it exploded and destroyed its victim. There were other methods of killing the Red armour of which a favourite one was to rise from the ground, to stand in a wave of tanks, to select a victim and then to smash it with the missile from a single- shot rocket launcher.
The soldiers who, in this particular account, carried out this type of dangerous mission were men of long experience and years of combat on the Eastern Front. They were led by Untersturmfuhrer Porsch. Born in 1924, he had joined the Waffen SS in 1941 and before he was nineteen years of age was a Company Commander who had been awarded the Iron Cross First Class. The actions which are here recounted won for him the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross to add to the other visible emblems of his bravery. On his upper left breast glittered the assault badge in gold and on his right breast pocket was the German cross in gold. Then there was the golden badge for close combat, a mention in the Army's book of honour and no fewer than four tank destruction badges.
In the fighting which marked the last days of April 1945 in Brandenburg the heights of Seelow were lost to the Germans, and the Russian forces, following the classic Blitzkrieg tactics, had probed for and found a gap through which their tanks had driven and had by-passed the few remaining pockets of German resistance in and around the town of Seelow. One of those pockets was that which held the DORA II and soon it had become clear from the volume of Russian fire as well as from its direction that the SS unit was outflanked and in a salient. The Soviet spearheads were now far to the west and to destroy this remaining opposition in Seelow part of an armoured regiment of JS tanks and T 34s was sent in.
A Red tank squadron charged with the tanks fanned out, and far beyond the range of DORA II's close quarter weapons opened fire upon the SS detachment. The commander and his grenadiers accepted the losses which the Soviet tank gun and machine gun fire inflicted upon them, holding themselves ready for the time when the great machines would approach to within killing distance. Porsch named his men, allotted to them the tank they were to destroy and then the two groups of combatants met in battle. On the one side the human with his explosive charge or rocket launcher, whose only defence was mobility, against, on the other side, an opponent heavily armoured and strongly armed.
One JS tank which rolled towards the small group of men who made up the company headquarters suddenly swung on its tracks, halted and began to burn. A Panzerfaust had torn into its vitals and fire consumed the vehicle so quickly that none of the crew escaped. This first 'kill' was the signal for a general melee as the men within the tanks and the men outside them fought to destroy each other.
It was in the last weeks of the War, in April 1945, that one small detachment, Commando Unit DORA II of the SS 500th Bewahrungs (Punishment) Battalion, fought its last and most memorable battle.
To overcome the shortage of trained infantrymen and of adequate weapons in the months and weeks of Germany's military decline more and more use was made of small groups of dedicated hard and skillful men who were prepared to undertake operations of the most hopeless sort to help save their native country. The name of one of these men, Otto Skorzeny, was, to his contemporaries in the German Army, synonymous with cool bravery and daring. This account, however, is not Skorzeny's but that of an SS company which had formerly been part of his commando battalion. This had been split up to form a closely woven network of small groups charged with the task of blocking the advance by the Red Army, as it made that great thrust towards Berlin which STAVKA intended would end the war in Europe. Separated from the parent SS commando, the next step had been the conversion of this assault company into a para-commando and then into an anti-tank company. These were not, however, conventional gunners with conventional anti-tank guns, or those Panzerjaeger who fought with self propelled anti-tank gun (Jagdpanzer, Jagdpanther, etc.) who were protected by thick armor and killing their victims within the range in excess of thousands of meters, but a group of bicycle-riding, determined tank hunters, individual destroyers of enemy machines who went out with hollow charges and other close combat weapons to launch themselves at the Soviet vehicles, to clamber onto the moving machines and to plant their explosive charge firmly so that it exploded and destroyed its victim. There were other methods of killing the Red armour of which a favourite one was to rise from the ground, to stand in a wave of tanks, to select a victim and then to smash it with the missile from a single- shot rocket launcher.
The soldiers who, in this particular account, carried out this type of dangerous mission were men of long experience and years of combat on the Eastern Front. They were led by Untersturmfuhrer Porsch. Born in 1924, he had joined the Waffen SS in 1941 and before he was nineteen years of age was a Company Commander who had been awarded the Iron Cross First Class. The actions which are here recounted won for him the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross to add to the other visible emblems of his bravery. On his upper left breast glittered the assault badge in gold and on his right breast pocket was the German cross in gold. Then there was the golden badge for close combat, a mention in the Army's book of honour and no fewer than four tank destruction badges.
In the fighting which marked the last days of April 1945 in Brandenburg the heights of Seelow were lost to the Germans, and the Russian forces, following the classic Blitzkrieg tactics, had probed for and found a gap through which their tanks had driven and had by-passed the few remaining pockets of German resistance in and around the town of Seelow. One of those pockets was that which held the DORA II and soon it had become clear from the volume of Russian fire as well as from its direction that the SS unit was outflanked and in a salient. The Soviet spearheads were now far to the west and to destroy this remaining opposition in Seelow part of an armoured regiment of JS tanks and T 34s was sent in.
A Red tank squadron charged with the tanks fanned out, and far beyond the range of DORA II's close quarter weapons opened fire upon the SS detachment. The commander and his grenadiers accepted the losses which the Soviet tank gun and machine gun fire inflicted upon them, holding themselves ready for the time when the great machines would approach to within killing distance. Porsch named his men, allotted to them the tank they were to destroy and then the two groups of combatants met in battle. On the one side the human with his explosive charge or rocket launcher, whose only defence was mobility, against, on the other side, an opponent heavily armoured and strongly armed.
One JS tank which rolled towards the small group of men who made up the company headquarters suddenly swung on its tracks, halted and began to burn. A Panzerfaust had torn into its vitals and fire consumed the vehicle so quickly that none of the crew escaped. This first 'kill' was the signal for a general melee as the men within the tanks and the men outside them fought to destroy each other.
S
Spartacus
Guest
Porsch alone scores 17 kills(man against tank)
A sudden change of direction was made by the Russian commanders aiming to take DORA II in flank but this failed when their machines were caught and destroyed by Skorzeny's group holding position on Porsch's right. Vehicle after vehicle stopped, 'brewed up' or blew up. In Porsch's company area six were on fire and the remainder pulled back to allow waves of Red Army infantry to storm forward, hoping to achieve the victory which the tanks had been unable to gain.
The MG 42s whose rate of fire had been increased to over 2,000rpm came into action, swinging backwards and forwards along the brown-coated files, smashing the cohesion of the attack and destroying it before the assaulting Russian regiment had had time to shake out into tactical formation. The killing was prodigious and the survivors of the crumpled Red battalions pulled back and withdrew out of range of this small group of determined defenders.
For the outflanked German groups in the salient there was only one course of action and the exhausted detachments were pulled back, but not to rest. DORA II was ordered to move on Lebus and there to attack a Soviet tank group which was concentrating around the town. The road forward was choked with retreating troops and columns of refugees who hindered the advance so that it was not until just before dawn that the small SS column of men and machines reached the objective they had arrived too late. The town had fallen and under the relentless pressure of massed Soviet tank assaults DORA II and its flank detachments were pushed further and further back. But there were successes even on that black day. The company scored its 100th kill and Porsch his twelfth and thirteenth victims.
At nightfall the detachment rested in a farm set some 300 metres behind the main German firing line which was held by men of a dozen, mixed sub-units separated from their parent bodies. At some time during the night the front line was driven or taken back and Porsch was awakened to the news that his unit was now almost alone, was unprotected and that the farm courtyard was full of Russians. These were killed and then a cautious reconnaissance showed the village to be empty of all German troops except for a detachment of about eighty assault engineers who joined forces with Porsch's 100-strong company. This mixed group filled the gap and formed a temporary battle line. Later again during the night a group of grenadiers from the Dutch SS Division Nederland came up as reinforcements and with this increase in strength the German commander felt his group strong enough and they struck forward in a counter attack.
The company continued to score victories. The 125th victim was gained and Porsch destroyed his seventeenth. Other attacks by the German group pushed back the Russians in the Neu Zittau area and during one thrust on 20 April Porsch and his men, mounted on bicycles, smashed through the Soviet line held by a whole battalion reached and then captured its headquarters staff of fourteen officers and some women
On 26 April Porsch was informed that he had been awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and as if to set a seal upon this decoration he destroyed with Panzerfaust and machine pistol fire a pair of Russian anti-tank guns which had sought to halt his company's advance. Later during that day his bicycle-mounted troops, accompanied by a handful of men from the SS Division Frundsberg made a swift assault upon a battery of mortars whose fire was particularly destructive and wiped out most of the Soviet battery. Eight mortars were captured.
The very success of the advance which the SS group had made was its downfall, for then it once again formed a small salient which was under constant and heavy bombardment. Then Soviet troops cut the neck of the salient. By this stroke the German force became a pocket, cut off from the main body and surrounded on all sides by the Soviet enemy. The defiance which it still maintained attracted to it soldiers from every type of German front-line unit and of every rank: men who had been cut off from their own formations. Women and children, old and young entered into this tiny enclave of German-held territory, enduring the bombardments, the aerial assaults, the privations and shortages and often sharing with the soldiers the common end of death. The civilians would endure anything just as long as they could stay with the pocket now trying to fight its way through line after successive line of Soviet defences. Death and wounds continually reduced the number of fighting men. The dead were hastily buried and then the pocket rolled on to meet and overcome in fierce fire fights some new Russian obstacle between it and the main German line.
A sudden change of direction was made by the Russian commanders aiming to take DORA II in flank but this failed when their machines were caught and destroyed by Skorzeny's group holding position on Porsch's right. Vehicle after vehicle stopped, 'brewed up' or blew up. In Porsch's company area six were on fire and the remainder pulled back to allow waves of Red Army infantry to storm forward, hoping to achieve the victory which the tanks had been unable to gain.
The MG 42s whose rate of fire had been increased to over 2,000rpm came into action, swinging backwards and forwards along the brown-coated files, smashing the cohesion of the attack and destroying it before the assaulting Russian regiment had had time to shake out into tactical formation. The killing was prodigious and the survivors of the crumpled Red battalions pulled back and withdrew out of range of this small group of determined defenders.
For the outflanked German groups in the salient there was only one course of action and the exhausted detachments were pulled back, but not to rest. DORA II was ordered to move on Lebus and there to attack a Soviet tank group which was concentrating around the town. The road forward was choked with retreating troops and columns of refugees who hindered the advance so that it was not until just before dawn that the small SS column of men and machines reached the objective they had arrived too late. The town had fallen and under the relentless pressure of massed Soviet tank assaults DORA II and its flank detachments were pushed further and further back. But there were successes even on that black day. The company scored its 100th kill and Porsch his twelfth and thirteenth victims.
At nightfall the detachment rested in a farm set some 300 metres behind the main German firing line which was held by men of a dozen, mixed sub-units separated from their parent bodies. At some time during the night the front line was driven or taken back and Porsch was awakened to the news that his unit was now almost alone, was unprotected and that the farm courtyard was full of Russians. These were killed and then a cautious reconnaissance showed the village to be empty of all German troops except for a detachment of about eighty assault engineers who joined forces with Porsch's 100-strong company. This mixed group filled the gap and formed a temporary battle line. Later again during the night a group of grenadiers from the Dutch SS Division Nederland came up as reinforcements and with this increase in strength the German commander felt his group strong enough and they struck forward in a counter attack.
The company continued to score victories. The 125th victim was gained and Porsch destroyed his seventeenth. Other attacks by the German group pushed back the Russians in the Neu Zittau area and during one thrust on 20 April Porsch and his men, mounted on bicycles, smashed through the Soviet line held by a whole battalion reached and then captured its headquarters staff of fourteen officers and some women
On 26 April Porsch was informed that he had been awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and as if to set a seal upon this decoration he destroyed with Panzerfaust and machine pistol fire a pair of Russian anti-tank guns which had sought to halt his company's advance. Later during that day his bicycle-mounted troops, accompanied by a handful of men from the SS Division Frundsberg made a swift assault upon a battery of mortars whose fire was particularly destructive and wiped out most of the Soviet battery. Eight mortars were captured.
The very success of the advance which the SS group had made was its downfall, for then it once again formed a small salient which was under constant and heavy bombardment. Then Soviet troops cut the neck of the salient. By this stroke the German force became a pocket, cut off from the main body and surrounded on all sides by the Soviet enemy. The defiance which it still maintained attracted to it soldiers from every type of German front-line unit and of every rank: men who had been cut off from their own formations. Women and children, old and young entered into this tiny enclave of German-held territory, enduring the bombardments, the aerial assaults, the privations and shortages and often sharing with the soldiers the common end of death. The civilians would endure anything just as long as they could stay with the pocket now trying to fight its way through line after successive line of Soviet defences. Death and wounds continually reduced the number of fighting men. The dead were hastily buried and then the pocket rolled on to meet and overcome in fierce fire fights some new Russian obstacle between it and the main German line.
R
revexrevex
Guest
Java Guru - let me give you an example, and for record I agree with everything you say
My grandfather was a sniper during World War 2. Whenever I would specifically ask him how many people he had killed, he would start crying. He walked from Ukraine to Poland on foot, for a whole MONTH. Imagine walking and walking, with no good shoes, no clothing, during the harsh winters. He told me how many people died, and the only one left were the most determined, the most physically gifted. When he arrived in Poland, he met a friend with whom he had lived in Ukraine. His friend told my grandfather that the Nazi's invaded a small city in Ukraine where my grandfather's relatives lived. THe Nazi's burried my grandfather's 6 sisters, a brother, and both of his parents ALIVE. Grandfather's friend told him that they were heard screaming for 3 days after, and the people could not dig them up because the Nazi's were standing there and shooting anyone who would come close. Imagine the kind of physical and mental anguish he had to go through? He told me once how he was sitting on a tree, with his rifle, and looking at a piece of glass and shaving. All of sudden a bullet whezed by, hit that glass, and the pieces were engrafted into his leg and his chest. The enemy sniper saw the light shining on the glass, and quickly picked my grandfather out. Death missed him by a few centimeters. My grandfather was very simple man, he only finished 4th grade before he was drafted into army. I think that ignorance had saved him from going crazy, he was too simple minded to analyze the horrors that had happened to his family, and during the war. He had recently died, after his son (my uncle) died of a heart attack. He was a very tough man, physically he had a bigger back at 80 then I did at 18. No amount of training can teach you what this man had to go through during the 4 years of pure hell.
My grandfather was a sniper during World War 2. Whenever I would specifically ask him how many people he had killed, he would start crying. He walked from Ukraine to Poland on foot, for a whole MONTH. Imagine walking and walking, with no good shoes, no clothing, during the harsh winters. He told me how many people died, and the only one left were the most determined, the most physically gifted. When he arrived in Poland, he met a friend with whom he had lived in Ukraine. His friend told my grandfather that the Nazi's invaded a small city in Ukraine where my grandfather's relatives lived. THe Nazi's burried my grandfather's 6 sisters, a brother, and both of his parents ALIVE. Grandfather's friend told him that they were heard screaming for 3 days after, and the people could not dig them up because the Nazi's were standing there and shooting anyone who would come close. Imagine the kind of physical and mental anguish he had to go through? He told me once how he was sitting on a tree, with his rifle, and looking at a piece of glass and shaving. All of sudden a bullet whezed by, hit that glass, and the pieces were engrafted into his leg and his chest. The enemy sniper saw the light shining on the glass, and quickly picked my grandfather out. Death missed him by a few centimeters. My grandfather was very simple man, he only finished 4th grade before he was drafted into army. I think that ignorance had saved him from going crazy, he was too simple minded to analyze the horrors that had happened to his family, and during the war. He had recently died, after his son (my uncle) died of a heart attack. He was a very tough man, physically he had a bigger back at 80 then I did at 18. No amount of training can teach you what this man had to go through during the 4 years of pure hell.
