Word: anti-tank
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...Gerhard Thörnell, Commander in Chief of all Swedish armed forces, has 600,000 men at his command. The standard yardstick allows about half of these as combat divisions, but more could be mobilized in a pinch. Sweden has plenty of small arms, Swedish-made Bofors anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns. The army is well trained, but not battle-tested. It lacks sufficient tanks and heavy armaments, is woefully weak in fighter planes, which were ordered from the U.S. in 1940 but later diverted to China. When German military power was at its height on the Continent...
...Commando requirement. On Britain's coast, selected soldiers merged the lore of the Royal Navy with their own. They learned how to "get in and out of a small boat in all kinds of weather"; to swim, fully equipped, holding their firearms above water; to know about mortars, anti-tank rifles, high explosives. They also had to learn the double lesson of cooperation, individual initiative. Each man was encouraged "to do everything with a friend"-fall in beside him, handle the magazine of his Bren gun, scout with him, conquer with him the tough assault-training course known...
Bloody Embarrassment. A British major who was at Dunkirk remarked: "Their discipline is far worse than ours was at Dunkirk. They had anti-tank guns and artillery and could have held us off and put up a better show than this. They have had no refugees to contend with either. I think this rather more than makes up for Dunkirk...
...mountains guarding a pass, force the pass and spread out on the plain to Kairouan. Those who watched a brigade of Guards take the dominant hill north of Fondouk in half an hour, who later saw the British armor plunge through a 450-yard-deep minefield covered by twelve anti-tank guns and speed for Kairouan, felt that there was something essentially wrong with the 34th, which had been unable to take the hills on the south side of the pass. The four U.S. correspondents who saw that battle went to Major General Charles W. Ryder's headquarters...
...many a job to do. When the Allied invasion of Europe unfolds full scale, fast armored divisions may be able to fan out over great stretches of terrain, chewing up opposing infantry and communications. But even that can happen only after Allied infantry has disposed of the German anti-tank artillery, which is poison to spearheads of tanks...