Word: anti-tank
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...good a show for war machines. The President saw five anti-aircraft guns, about 40 World War I 155 mm. howitzers mounted on more modern carriages, a larger number of 75 mm. guns, a few more than a hundred aircraft. There were no automatic rifles in sight, nor a single anti-tank gun. They were not needed. There were no tanks. The President asked Major General Clifford Powell about the equipment of the 44th Division. The Major General replied : "It is pretty good, what there is of it. But we are using broomsticks for machine guns and rain pipes...
Past the reviewing stand trotted the Sixth Cavalry's first squadron (cavalry-talk for battalion): 424 horses carrying troopers armed with Garand rifles and automatic pistols, 48 pack horses loaded with machine and anti-tank guns. After them in a cloud of blue smoke snorted the second squadron: 68 armored scout cars, no motorcycles, trucks, rolling kitchens, ambulances. Spectators found the motor squadron old stuff. More interested in the horse squadron, they watched it trot up to 58 truck-trailer combinations, unsaddle, walk its mounts up inclined tail gates, tie them inside. Within 10½ minutes horses were loaded...
...World War I, General Brooke invented a barrage map for directing artillery fire which came into wide use. He is called Britain's best-informed tank and anti-tank man, "Wizard" because his knowledge of gunnery is so well-rounded he is also an anti-aircraft ace. Spectacled, dark, pinched, with a close-clipped mustache, he looks more like a "City" broker than the soldier-sportsman that he is (in the Army since 1902). His fox-hunting Irish father was Master of the Pau pack (supposed descendants of hounds with which Wellington's officers hunted in Spain...
Italian divisions have but two regiments each, 10,000 men. Three semi-mechanized celeri (swift) divisions are built around light tanks, horse-drawn and motorized artillery, with Bersaglieri (sharpshooters) on bicycles, motor trucks, motorcycles. Three armored divisions, and six armored regiments have heavier (eight-to-twelve-ton) break-through tanks, besides assault tanks, infantry in trucks, an engineer company with bridging equipment, anti-tank and anti-aircraft units...
Weygand had his men disposed flexibly in depth-the approved "accordion" pattern of defense against mechanized power. Behind the front line were carefully camouflaged batteries of anti-tank and heavy machine guns, spaced fairly widely down the valley and highway pathways of assault. Successive, deeper rows of similar weapons were spaced more & more closely until they were backed finally by batteries of 75-mm. field guns, weapons able to knock out heaviest tanks when fired pointblank. The defense plan was to let heavy tanks push back into this final network, to have the advance units destroy motorcycles, armored cars, troop...