Post Battle Question

[AndyFettes]

Ok I have never served in the Armed Forces, so Ive got a question about what happens after a battle

who clears what up ?

Does anyone go round and picks up unused ammo empty ammo cans etc etc etc ?

Does anyone go round and pick up the dead uns ?

of course there could be 2 different scenerios dependant on who wins the battle

Its something Ive just not thought about before

 

[moon puppy]

Andy, I don't think you're going to get one single answer here. I was in the Air Force and only had to pickup dead beer cans from the day room.

I suppose it depends on what type of battle it was, the scale and scope of the battle, where it's fought at and even who fights it.

The individual units would likely be the one's who got treatment for the wounded. You also had graves registration units who would identify and bury the dead, even if temporary until they can be move to a larger cemetery.

But say it was a small engagement like the battles we see today in our insurgent/counter insurgent type of warfare, I would suppose that the small fire team, squad level units would pretty much police themselves in the area they are in.

Sometimes it's not really cleaned up. I don't think it's so frequent now but I know when I was younger you'd hear about construction crews in and around Charleston digging up old Confederate era cannon balls and shot, sometimes having to get ordnance disposal to check if it's something that might have powder associate with it.

I have a friend in North Carolina who's building a house on the side of a mountain and he has found a drawer full of Indian artifacts, pottery, arrow heads, the tools they used to make the arrow heads, just all sorts of stuff.

Saw on History channel that in the fields of France they still dig up stuff left from the Great War, things that were lost in the trenches.

I can't say if they have any crews today that go in behind a firefight or an air attack to clean up all the bits and pieces.

 

[bob letterman]

Andy,

As MP said, you could get several answers and they could all be correct. IMO, particularly in the ETO, the victors picked up their dead and in some cases, the enemy dead. To my knowledge, nobody, at least in WW II, policed up the brass. The American army left unbelievable quantities of vehicles and fighting equipment on the battle fields everywhere, especially in the pacific.

Dave Harper was one of the world's foremost experts on the pacific theater and he told me that when the Marines conquered an island, we left the equipment including tanks, LVTs, Dukws, artillery and so on where it was. They were re-equipped for the next landing with new equipment. Salvage units maybe came behind, I'm not sure, my impression from Dave was it sat there.

Americans have always been viewed by other cultures as wasteful. After WW II, Europe was covered with tanks and artillery. When my ex-partner, Francois Verlinden, was a kid, he helped his father salvage Shermans and Stuarts from the farming fields of Belgium. His father owned a salvage yard. The armor and trucks were everywhere. The Europeans were still using American and British WW II military trucks for civilian purposes in the 80s. I spent a lot of time in Europe and saw them frequently painted red or blue or black, but, unmistakably, our trucks.

The big diorama I am currently building is a scene of the aftermath of a large battle of land and air forces over a German city. I think as fast moving armies went from victory to victory such as Patton's Third Army, the land behind them was littered with American supplies and equipment.

Bob

 

[AndyFettes]

Cheers Bob, that is a great insight into things.