The opening scenes of both the movie Enemy At The Gates and the Russian campaign of the computer game Call Of Duty feature a sequence in which the main character arrives at the docks on Stalingrad in late 1942, and is promptly queued up in front of a truck, in which Commissars are issuing rifles and ammunition to the conscripts.
The catch is, that only every other soldier is getting a rifle. The Commissars are usually saying something like “One man gets the rifle, the next man gets some bullets. The second man follows the man with the rifle, and when he is shot, picks up the rifle and carries on fighting!”
Now, this is exactly the sort of thing the Russians would have done (They also shot anyone who tried to run away from battle in the back, but that’s another story)- but I’ve been unable to find reliable proof of this happening. I’ve got stories of soldiers being sent into battle unarmed because there weren’t enough guns (“Your weapons are in the hands of your enemies- go and get them!”), but nothing reliable on the “One man gets the rifle, the next man gets the bullets” thing.
Anyone know if it actually happened, or was it propaganda that somehow got mixed up with the truth somewhere along the way?
I know this doesn’t constitute any kind of cite, but I’ve seen this in a movie. I can’t remember the title, but there was one scene that was just a bloodbath and the protagonist escaped by playing dead and lying amongst the corpses of all his fallen comrades.
according to Wiki - not at stalingrad - pehaps earlier
Soldiers being sent across the Volga without weapons/soldiers being issued one rifle for every two men, etc: in reality, they were armed before being sent across, otherwise they would be unable to fight back in case of always expected German attacks.The German author Paul Carell mentions attacks made in that fashion in his book “Operation Barbarossa” in the first phase of the German invasion in 1941.
It supposedly happened at the start of Operation Barbarossa, when the Russians were caught with their pants down, so to speak. Many units had guns but no ammo, and other units thought the whole thing was part of some training exercise that Moscow had forgotten to tell them about. By the time they worked out they really were being invaded, a lot of military units were in complete disarray, and when they received the order to counter-attac, they had no guns or ammo. That’s fine, says Moscow, Tthe Germans have plenty of them. Here’s a shovel/tree trunk/crowbar/molotov cocktail. See if you can trade it in for a slightly used Mauser or MP-40.
I have also seen similar things said about the Chinese offensive during the Korean War. No cite, it was on a TV documentary. Not that the bullets and guns were separate but that the initial wave had weapons but the followup forces were supposed to get their weapons and ammo from those that fell in the first attack.
It doesn’t seem to me to make a lick of strategic sense to separate guns from ammo. **No one ** can do anything until someone dies, and the counterpart picks up his kit.
You might as well let at least one of two soldiers shoot back before they get killed.
Plus, keeping the bullets and rifles together just seems like a good idea. That would suck to have several “bullet guys” in a group separated from the “gun guys”.
If there were not enough rifles but a relative surplus of ammo, it might make sense to issue some ammo even with no rifle, as I would imagine it’s easier to find and pick up a rifle faster than ammo in the heat of combat.
Seems to make plenty of sense if you have plenty of ammo and a shortage of rifles. All of the ammo carriers would be taking cover during the initial assault and rifles would free up over time. And if you had a rifle and ran low, you could get another clip from your buddy. If they were unwilling to give up the clip, you could threaten to shoot them (since they don’t have a rifle, haha)
OK, that’s the key then. I’ve thought about this before and remember thinking that in Enemy at the Gates they said, “One man gets the rifle, next man gets THE bullets”
“SOME bullets” makes a lot more sense, as posted in the OP which I should have read more carefully.
Wasn’t this also a scene from “Saving Private Ryan” where the wimpy translator was given the job to supply ammo to the real fighters when they ran out?
I’d never heard the rifle and ammo thing before, but I had heard it claimed that during the Korean War the Chinese would send enough food to the front to feed half the men there; the presumption being that half of them would be dead soon anyway.
If I see one more movie portray the support personnel as wimpy, I’ll puke all over Speilberg. In my experience, the people that go out to fight want to stay in, and the ones that stay in want to go out and fight. In real life, I suspect the ‘wimpy’ translator would be saying “F’in A, it’s about time!”
There was a draft on at the time - it’s not like everyone there was all gung ho to shoot and get shot.
The “wimpy translator guy” had the job of ferrying ammo from one machinegun team to another. They apparently thought a dump in the middle was a good idea.