Spear vs Sword

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

So that 10% figure seems like it'd be more judged by "a super-significant loss that does NOT destroy the coherency of the entire unit" to me, but which is nonetheless felt deeply. It might also be a good lower bound on serious casualties: we can lose up to 10% and still be effective, more than that and we degrade performance out of proportion to damage.

In the 20th century it was generally considered the point at which a unit would need to be rested and reinforced (or restructured if replacement soldiers were not available) before it would be combat-ready again.

30%+ losses in a single battle, even an extended one, and if the unit was still capable of fighting effectively it was moderately miraculous and afterwards you'd probably want to shuffle the survivors around within the unit as you brought it back up to strength, so the changes in roles and position in the unit helped them lose sight of how many of their comrades were gone.