Coolness survey: Corps or Regimental traditions

[Agemegos]

I'm revising my SF setting FLAT BLACK, incorporating into the main text all the stuff that has been inaccessible in forum posts, e-mails, unwritten conventions, and secondary documents, and taking advantage of the opportunity to chuck out everything that isn't cool enough to justify the page space it takes up. And one one point I'm torn between too kinds of cool.

The Empire in FLAT BLACK is the descendant of an organisation that stumbled into a long, interstellar war. Leading up to and during that war it had a plethora of ground forces, ranging from the security staff on its spaceports through boarding action units on its warships to specialist meteoric commandos. After it won the war and became the Empire it consolidated all its troops into a single corps and started reorganising, standardising, and basically dealing with all the anomalies that it never had time to fix before. The existing units were combined into regiments based on where they happened to be at the time, reorganised, and gradually retrained and re-equipped.

In about a century since then the number of planets the Empire has had to deal with has risen from about sixty to about 1,000 (though the most advanced and populous planets were in the initial sixty: neither population, nor economic volume, nor the military task has grown by anything like a factor of sixteen). Rather than build new units from scratch, the practice has been to take a battalion out of an existing regiment and use it as cadre for a new regiment, rebuilding the old regiment at the same time. The Empire now has over 264 regiments in its Imperial Corps of Marines.

A regiment in this organisation is about 1,500 all ranks. Such are the operational strictures that an Imperial Marines regiment is like a Napoleonic army corps or a WWII division: a self-sufficient unit with a balanced mix of troops, including its own hospital, engineers, reconnaissance, etc., sufficient to operate independently without specialist support (though it does require logistical support, and a few warships in orbit for fire support are always considered handy). But in practice regiments are seldom deployed to the field that way. They spend about 30% of their time in "sector reserve", nominally formed up but in fact often with a battalion or a few companies detached to do something, 10% of their time in training, 30% split up into platoon-sized and company-sized detachments on warships, and 30% split up into platoon-sized to battalion-sized garrisons in Imperial "residences" (ie. guarding spaceports and embassies).

* * * * *

Sociologists and operational researchers investigating the performance of US Army units in WWII found that men tended to form "primary groups" in training, and that soldiers fighting in their primary groups were both more effective and safer than replacements who were attached to those units later. This was not merely an effect of experience: experienced soldiers who were wounded and returned to their own units were less often wounded again in the next six weeks than soldiers who were wounded, sent to the replacement depot, and returned to the line among strangers. (Replacements did eventually establish themselves in new units: their excess casualty rate tapered off after six weeks or so.)

Learning about this, the US Army undertook slight but effective reforms to strengthen and protect primary groups. For instance, they abolished the regulation that a soldier who had been wounded and who took more than a certain number of days to recuperate must be attached to the replacement depot, not returned to his unit. the US Army started putting organisational and psychological emphasis on personal ties between a soldier and his buddies.

Other organisations had slightly different experiences, and two that I want to consider are the US Marines Corps and the British Army.

As I understand it (and I'm standing by to be corrected) the USMC approaches things a bit differently. Rather than encouraging the formation of primary groups among marines, it tries to encourage the formation of a long-term non-personal tie between the individual marine and the Corps as a whole, as a brotherhood or tribe. This is sometimes described as getting the recruit to change his primary thought of self-identification to "I am a Marine", or even, in lurid metaphor to "tearing down the recruit's civilian identity and building up a new identity as a Marine". The idea is that if you transfer a marine into a new unit he will fight for the marines beside him, not because they are his buddies, but because they are marines like him. And they will look out for him not because he is their buddy, but because he is a marine like them. And so (as I understand it) a replacement in a Marines unit in combat is not significantly less effective nor in more danger than he would be in his old unit.

One of the marks of this approach is a high degree of uniformity across the USMC. All marines wear the same uniform, the same cover, the same cap-badge. There are USMC anniversaries and days of commemoration. Not different uniforms, head-dresses, cap-badges, and battle honours for each battalion.

The thing that most conspicuously confronts a stranger about the British Army is the bizarre profusion of rococo (not to say recherche) regimental customs. Different regiments have not only different insignia on their uniforms, but different uniforms. They have different rank titles for equivalent ranks, and also different rank insignia (a corporal of horse in the Household Cavalry does the job of a sergeant and wears the insignia of a staff-sergeant). Some regiments wear roses in their head-dress on Minden Day (a code-word for 1 August which no-one else knows about). Others cut off the tops of their hackles (whatever hackles are!). Troopers in tank units are taught to ride horses. As if that weren't bad enough, some regiments are parts of other regiments, or have other regiments as parts of them. For example, the Royal Regiment of Artillery consists of 21 regiments of artillery: some of those regiments are divided into batteries and others into troops.

Under the British regimental system a soldier is recruited and trained by a particular regiment. (This caused delays in providing replacements for casualties in British units in WWII, apparently. There was no central depot of vanilla replacements who could be switched to the units that had taken casualties.) And apparently all the regimental customs and regimental history and regimental costumes and what have you encourages recruits to form a tribal identification with their regiment, so that, for example, Grenadier guardsman feels the same sort of tribal brotherhood with other Grenadier guardsmen that a US marine feels for other US Marines.

(Not directly relevant, but I am told that on the rare occasions when a British soldier is transferred to a new regiment it typically takes him less than a week to adopt a new tribal identity and learn the necessary secrets about cut-off hackles, shoulder-chains, and regimental bulldogs. It's not as efficient as USMC globalism, but it is quicker and more reliable than forming new personal ties with a primary group.

Sociologically, you can liken the USMC to a gigantic British regiment. Or the British Army to a collection of tiny and remarkably eccentric USMCs. No comparison of their merit or quality is implied.

* * * * *

Until now I have figured that each regiment of the Imperial Marines in FLAT BLACK ought to have its own regimental customs, and that there ought to be a network of family resemblances among them, reflecting the relationships created as new regiments were created out of cadres from existing regiments. Some of these customs would have been inherited for the pre-Marines units out of which the units were originally created. Some would have been adopted as innovations when distinctive regimental berets and cap badges were authorised. Some would have been deliberately cultivated to act as tribal fetishes and shibboleths, for psychologico-sociological reasons having to do with creating a distinctive regimental identity.

Thing is, that takes page space to explain. A corps-wide uniformity like that of the USMC or the Royal Marines would be easier to explain. And maybe it would be even cooler.


Opinions? Advice?

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Brett

Or the British Army to a collection of tiny and remarkably eccentric USMCs

Heh.

Originally Posted by Brett

Thing is, that takes page space to explain. A corps-wide uniformity like that of the USMC or the Royal Marines would be easier to explain. And maybe it would be even cooler.

Opinions? Advice?

I am conflicted. On the one hand, I think uniforms should be just that, uniform. However, I think that the Imperial culture is a lot more tolerant of diversity than the culture of the USMC.

Imperial Marines recruit anyone who volunteers, yes? It's not majority Imperials, but lots of colonials?

I think that if the above is true, and that the Marines are recruiting from a remarkably diverse group of cultures, it will be very important to replace that widely varying cultural background with a uniform one that places service to the Empire before service to a colony.

Oh, and I'd like to note that the Marines still have their cultural divisions, especially between logistical/admin/supply types, combat support types, and combat types. Most air wing guys look down on legal guys, most comm guys look down on air wing guys, and most grunts look down on everyone else. And individual Marine combat units also tend to tribalize, keeping elaborate track of an individual unit's history of combat engagements. So it's not quite as pure a separation as you may think.

But when it comes down to it, yes, they very much do replace your cultural identity with "Marine." Had a guy in my unit from Ecuador. I didn't think of him as from another country, he was a fellow Marine, even though we both had very different experiences prior to joining. And I think cultivating that is very important considering the nature of the pool the Empire is recruiting from, and better served with uniform service traditions.

[Agemegos]

Further information:

Imperial marines in FLAT BLACK are highly-trained elite long-service professional soldiers. Standard initial term of service is seven years, with subsequent terms of five years. The pension age is eighty, so sixty-two-year veterans are not impossible.

The population of the Human Sphere of Settlement is 367 billion people. There are fewer than half a million Imperial Marines. That's the equivalent of 410 troops selected from among all the volunteers in the USA. Recruitment standards are high, including psychological standards.

Initial training is 48 weeks. 16 weeks basic military syllabus, 16 weeks commando school, and 16 weeks of either infantry school, meteroic drop school, or riot school. A marine picks up a new military trade every five years.

The regiments rotate slowly through the 21 sectors. As operational requirements allow, they are supposed to get three five-year postings (one in Fleet, one in Garrisons, one in Combat Reserve) and eighteen months of training in each sector before being moved on. A recruit is typically trained in the sector where he or she was recruited (or if recruited in Central Sector is sometimes trained in the nearest outer sector to his place of recruitment), but by the time he or she retires he or she will have served in four or five sectors, in garrisons on at least five worlds, in at least four ships, seen scores of worlds.

Regiments receive a constant thing stream of replacements, who are spread around in different platoons. Any given regiment will include marines from over a hundred different homeworlds, and fewer than 10% (usually many fewer) from any particular world. The senior NCOs and old privates come from different worlds than the recruits and younger privates come from. Turnover and promotion are slow, marines can serve in the same regiment for a very long time.

Transportation is rather slow. It takes days to travel from a planet to its nearest inhabited neighbour, sometimes weeks to reach sector HQ, and three months to cross the Sphere.

Imperial marines are commandos, and neither shock troops nor heavy campaigners. They are much more often deployed as small detachments from regiment than in two or more regiments brigaded together.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

Imperial Marines recruit anyone who volunteers, yes? It's not majority Imperials, but lots of colonials?

The vast preponderance of marines (other ranks) are from colonies, not Imperial Direct Jurisdiction. People who have grown up to think of worlds as concave and of twenty kilometres in any direction getting you back where you started tend to faint when they see a horizon. Well, I exaggerate for comic effect, but a youth spent eating biscuits and shooting varmints is a lot more common on the middling-developed colonies than in orbital habitats. Mink don't grow up practising fieldcraft.

The preponderance of colonial recruits is not quite so great among marines officers. But basically you find majorities of mink in the Navy and non-mink in the Marines. {I need to coin a slang term for the impies who are not mink.}

[sir_pudding]

I rather liked the tribalism of the various regiments, and would like to see them stay that way.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I rather liked the tribalism of the various regiments, and would like to see them stay that way.

See, I thought it was interesting and different, but I'm not sure it makes sense.

[Langy]

See, I thought it was interesting and different, but I'm not sure it makes sense.

Eh, I'm not sure tribalism of various regiments is even interesting, at least the way Brett described the UK system. It sounds silly, and not in a good way.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Langy

Eh, I'm not sure tribalism of various regiments is even interesting, at least the way Brett described the UK system. It sounds silly, and not in a good way.

Well, to be fair, I might have been emphasising the bewildering character of the whole thing more than a Briton would have done.

As for it being silly. Well, the UK might have had a bit of trouble with its officer class within living memory, but it has been fielding troops with excellent fighting qualities for a very long time. Not as good as Aussies or Kiwis of course, but excellent by world standards. Whatever they do to produce the most dangerous men to wear skirts in Europe, it works.


Anyway, I didn't see the Imperial marines as being quite as eccentric as the British Army--not refusing to use the title 'sergeant' or wear its insignia "because 'sergeant' means 'servant'", nor wearing kilts and bearskin caps. More a matter of regimental berets and cap badges, ceremonial uniforms, nicknames, mottos, slogans etc. Even that takes space to describe, and I find it hard to make up regimental nonsense without repeating myself.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Brett

Anyway, I didn't see the Imperial marines as being quite as eccentric as the British Army--not refusing to use the title 'sergeant' or wear its insignia "because 'sergeant' means 'servant'", nor wearing kilts and bearskin caps. More a matter of regimental berets and cap badges, ceremonial uniforms, nicknames, mottos, slogans etc. Even that takes space to describe, and I find it hard to make up regimental nonsense without repeating myself.

Do you really need to describe it any great detail for all the regiments? I think just mentioning that regiments have nonsense, and then describing one or two should be fine.

[Langy]

More a matter of regimental berets and cap badges, ceremonial uniforms, nicknames, mottos, slogans etc

US Marine regiments all have their own nicknames, badges, mottos, etc. It sounds like the only difference would be different regiments would have different uniforms, which I still find a silly idea (uniforms should be uniform), but not as silly as the British nonsense.