Reply #72: I disagree, at least on the usefulness

[greengestalt]

However, I've actually talked to vets from Korea.
It's a waste. A pathetic, deadly, murderous waste.


They had the same thing about minefields, they really agreed with the lampooning of it in M.A.S.H. like Winchester shooting a bird and dropping it hits a mine, though they are in the middle of nowhere.


But in the RL war they had good minefields. The Chinese who were backing the N. Koreans then did this: They had an army march one after another, each in the footsteps of the guy ahead of him. Sure, some got killed by mines, but nothing compared to what would have been if they'd run willy-nilly all over the minefield. They lost far more from enemy fire, but kept marching. One guy I knew who was there shot a machine gun all day and when he was out of ammo and water to cool his gun, he just had orders to scuttle and run.


The Chinese have actually mellowed out a bit from their "Slave Society" (The Emperors) days. There was one battle where they faced an entrenched opponent (I think a revolting provence) and made a show of "We do not need this many troops to deal with you" and had at least 1000 kill themselves on the spot in perfect precision. It worked, the enemy panicked and instead of at least making a "300 Spartans" worthy stand that would have gotten the general beheaded (if he was lucky) they cut them all to bits with far less casualties overall than expected.


Mines are a waste, but they are still a cash cow to the "Merchants of Death" and the big companies of the "Military Industrial Complex".