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Then another comment on Rommel that he was excellent managing a force like the Afrika Corp of about 6 divisions??

But then also I wonder that as the victors write the history do they pump up the image & ability of their defeated enemy to make their victory seem all the greater??????...........

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ORIGINAL: NorthernGent

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ORIGINAL: airborne92

You may want to reconsider how you wrote your posts. They way they are written right now says that while actually fighting the troops were only concerned with getting drunk and laid. If you truly believe that, then my point that you have no understanding of what you are talking about stands as a fact.

Those things are a concern of the troops only when they are not fighting for their survival. While in a combat zone, but not actually fighting, they do concern themselves with those things, but never when actually fighting.

Yes because it's obvious I meant that the French and the Americans were engaged in a scrap with the Germans but put their guns down to fight one another over women.

Perhaps you missed the edited version of my post; otherwise you may need to reconsider your methods of comprehension.

In terms of drink here's a few snippets for you:

1) Sergeant Harry Finch of the Royal Sussex Regiment advanced into no man's land on the eve of the Passchendale offensive in 1917. He was struck by the the fact that most of the men in the section fell asleep as they lay waiting to attack - in part through exhaustion; in part through the rum ration.

2) A soldier wrote in the Aussie trench paper:

You say we're mad when we strike the beer
But if you'd stood in shivering fear
With the boys who bring the wounded back
Cross no man's land where there ain't no track
You'd read no psalms to the men that fight
You'd take the drink to forget the sight
Of torn out limbs and sightless eyes
Or the passing of a pal that dies

3) Ernst Junger (famous for something after the war - can't remember what) repeatedly refers to orgies of drunkenness:

We drank heavily until we treatd the whole world as no more than a laughable phantom that circled round our table.......All the devastation of every kind that surrounded one was seen in the light of humour and in a state of bliss however fleeting it might be and was finally lost altogether in light hearted independence of time.....One broke through time....and rejoiced in an hour or two in a boundless world.
 
Incidentally Ernst Junger relished the war and was comparatively fearless.

I could give you snippets from memoirs for women and food too but I think the above answers the question. Drink/women/food/clothing were extremely important for the morale of the soldiers.

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The basic point being, and this has been proved throughout history, is that when the military strategy is controlled by the civilian leadership of the country it is doomed to lose any war it is involved in. It is always best when fighting a war to let the military commanders do their job. Give them the support, materials and manpower they need, but let them run the show.

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it is when they begin to tell the Generals how to go about achieving the strategic aims they have set forth where the trouble begins.

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I wonder how things would have panned out without Rumsfeld or Cheney.