A GAMER’S GUIDE TO GROUND MILITARY LIFE
A Misguided Attempt to Teach the Civilian Gamer the Military Mindset
By Carl Hicks Jr.
Veteran, Geek, and Veteran Geek
Ok, so you’re playing Call of Cthulhu, or Traveller, or any one of a million RPGs that allow you to generate a ‘soldier’ or ‘marine’ character. But you have a problem. You don’t have any experience with military life outside of war movies and one of the people at your game table is an old war mutt who is constantly telling you that ‘grunts don’t act like that’. Well, my goal is to help you with that. My intention is to give you a few basic instructions on tactics and how ground military people think and act so that you can play a reasonable facsimile of one at the game table.
Before we get started.... FORGET EVERY WAR MOVIE YOU’VE EVER SEEN. War movies, even the ‘good’ ones, are first and foremost entertainment. They have as much to do with what an actual troop does for a living as a medical movie does about being a real doctor.
This article describes life for a lower enlisted man, a private. Once leadership tasks get involved, a troop’s life changes drastically. The responsibility increases exponentially, the blame by orders of magnitude, and the benefits aren’t nearly as big as people think they are.
For purposes of this article I am using the generic term ‘troop’ [plural, troops] for soldiers and Marines.
I have made a serious effort to be as generic as possible; my own experience is with the US Army, but I have friends who’ve served in foreign militaries and other branches of the US services. I want to thank all of them for providing me with a sense of commonality in all our experiences. This is NOT a tactical manual or a compendium of all military experiences ever. It is intended to be a short and generic guide of gaming tips to help you roleplay the common training most ground military soldiers receive. The pool of military history and tactical doctrines is very deep, and this article doesn't even get all your toes wet.
1. SAFETY FIRST.
• A troop NEVER walks around with his finger on the trigger unless you intend to fire that weapon in next 5 seconds. As the old saying goes, ‘booger hook off the bang switch’.
• A troop NEVER points a weapon at someone he’s not willing to kill. Not threaten, kill.
• A troop never points a weapon in an unsafe direction without somebody racking his ass for it. When your character points a weapon, it is always in a safe direction... away from people or vehicles. Pointing a muzzle up is usually a good choice.
• When a troop is walking on a patrol, the weapon is usually pointed forward if he’s on point or to one side of the formation or the other [that is, left or right].
• If you’re trying to be non-threatening to the locals, point your weapon at the ground at a 45-degree angle from your body. This keeps the muzzle away from your feet.
2. ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK.
• Troops are taught to describe tactical directions [differentiated from map directions] in terms of a clock. 12 O’clock is the direction of travel. Ninety degrees right is 3 O’clock, 180 degrees behind you is 6 O’clock, ninety degrees left is 9 O’clock.
• Always ‘check your six’... what’s behind you is oftentimes as important as what’s in front.
• When an infantry unit is moving on foot, the lead troop is the point-man. The next guy back points his weapon towards the flank either left or right. The third man points his weapon the opposite direction from that of the second, and so on down the line [in a herringbone pattern] till you reach the rear. The last two troops are responsible for checking the unit’s six. The unit leader and commo troop [and possibly the medic] try to stay in the middle of the formation in order to be available to lead or assist whichever direction a threat may develop.
3. SUPPORT YOUR SUPPORT
• Every infantry squad has one or two support weapons. In the early 21st century US Army, those support weapons are a squad automatic weapon and a grenade launcher. In Traveller, it’s probably a VRF Gauss weapon.
• It never looks like it in the movies, but these two weapons do better than 50% of the squad’s job, and everybody else in the squad supports these two weapons. Most often that support is either hauling around ammo for the automatic weapon or covering the grenadier while he gets into position to fire. But even if the technology changes the principle remains the same... a rifleman’s job is provide covering fire for the support weapons.
4. SHOOT, MOVE, COMMUNICATE
• A well-trained unit communicates with each other. Somebody who goes tearing off by themselves is heading for a date with a body bag. This is true of infantry troops, tank companies, aircraft squadrons, and starship fleets. Most of the time, ‘solo is a no-go'.
• There are two basic tactics when a unit is under fire: Fire and Movement and Bounding Overwatch.
• Fire and Movement. A portion of the unit takes fire and immediately both returns fire and tries to maneuver out of the enemy’s prepared fire zone. Once the enemy is located, the unit then pours on fire to pin the enemy in place. The squads behind then move to either side of the unit under fire, trying to find the flanks of the enemy. Once these are located, reinforcements are fed in to flank and displace the enemy out of their prepared positions and into the open, where they can more easily be defeated.
• Bounding Overwatch: This is a method of travel for ground units that expect that the bad guy is out there somewhere close by. It’s really simple. Two units work as a team. One moves forward a set distance [meters if you’re on foot, kilometers if you’re in vehicles], while their partner watches their back and flank. Ideally, the watcher is on a bluff where they can also see ahead of the mover, but that rarely happens in actual practice. Once the moving unit reaches their stop line, they stop and deploy. At this point they become the overwatch as the unit to the rear advances, catching up with the first unit and moves forward of it the predetermined distance. If at any point in the process one unit takes fire, it is immediately supported by its ‘buddy’ unit.
• Whenever anyone moves under fire, be it individuals in a firefight or battalions in a battle, they
a] tell their supporters what they’re doing and when, and
b] moves in such a way as to leave a clear lane for the support to fire through.
The principle is the same if your using infantry hand signals or you’re a Starfleet captain ordering ‘Helm, evasive pattern Sigma 2 Delta, engage!’
5. THE BUDDY SYSTEM
• Ground troops live in a small ecosystem. There is their unit and their leadership and everything else is might as well be orbiting Pluto. Almost everything that matters to a troop [food, sleep, pay, promotion, whatever] happens because something in the company effected it. If the unit is in garrison, then wives and children add in. If the unit is deployed, then wives and kids are a distraction that might get you killed.
• In most services, troops are assigned a buddy, usually an older troop with more experience. These buddies are family in every sense of the word. Buddies room together in the barracks, take turns sleeping in the field, eat together, and usually go into battle together. Buddies are mutually dependent on each other. A buddy watches his buddy’s back, puts down covering fire in combat when he moves, saves his buddy’s ass when he’s hurt. If someone is gossiping about you, your buddy will find out. If someone sticks up for you, likely it’s your buddy that did it.
• You don’t have to like your buddy. They might be the dumbest, angriest, most ignorant idiot to ever pass Basic Training, but he’s yours. You take care of them, and they take care of you. Period. Failure to take care of your buddy when you had the chance and the choice to do so is the greatest single crime a troop can commit in the eyes of his fellows. ‘Unreliable’ is NOT a label you want attached to your name.
6. HAVING A ‘TOOD’
• There are certain attitudes [aka ‘tood’] that are common to troops everywhere. Let me explain....
• Every troop soon realizes that the military doesn’t see them as a person, but as an asset. They are a piece of government property, to be used and expended as military needs require [in the US it’s called ‘the exigencies of the service’, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find a similar phrase everywhere]. The only difference between a troop’s life and truck tire is that the company commander doesn’t have to write a letter to the family of the truck tire.
• Troops are tired ALL the time. Every Department and Ministry of Defense the world over knows *precisely* how much work they can get out of their nation’s 19-year-olds. And they get it every single day. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. When I served, a 12-hour worked day was just a normal day, 18-hour days were not at all uncommon, and 36-hour days were bound to happen as sure as the sun rose in the morning.
• Meals are important to troops. If you want to seriously annoy your military, give them lousy food. Life is hard and physical in the services and an active troop needs something like 2500 calories a day in garrison and 3000+ in the field.
• If a unit is deployed into combat, there is a good likelihood that a percentage of the troops will come home with a host of psychological issues. This is why troops have a black sense of humor and oftentimes poor coping skills, alcoholism the least of which.
• Troops complain. A lot. About everything. The food always sucks, the commander is always an idiot, the company first sergeant always hates them, their equipment is always a piece of shit. Even if they actually like it or them. A troop that’s complaining is alright. It’s when they stop complaining and start whispering to each other that you have to worry. And if they’re sitting around in an angry, sullen silence, unit leaders have a serious problem on their hands.
• The mating rituals of the enlisted man are famous for their indiscretion and, in some cases, depravity. Totally not kidding. In every military unit of 25 personnel, there is almost guaranteed to be somebody who has some kind of sexual issue. Add to this that most 19-year-old males [at least most of the once I’VE ever met, from several countries and military branches] have poor judgement when it comes to partners and that is often reflected in break up letters, unfaithfulness, loud arguments, spousal abuse, and other symptoms of growing up. Every single troop has a bad break up story of one kind of ugliness or another.
So, there you have it. I hope this has been useful and informative. I hope I gave you enough to work with, without boring you to death. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. I’ll answer them as quickly and honestly as I can