Best trained soldiers?

[bigsky]

hmmm... best trained but undisiplined by military standards would be blackfeet warriors. their nation was only broken by biowarfare, wool blankets laden with smallpox, that killed 2/3rds of the entire blackfeet tribe. when lewis and clark explored the west that was the tribe that all the other tribes warn them of. but that was before the us govt. killed them off. and they were wise to stay well clear of them. as far as toughest, my pick is my uncle al's unit in ww2. "merrill's marauders" he was a mule skinner in that unit in burma.

[Hortlund]

Waffen SS,
2nd SS Das Reich to be exact, the Deutschland Regiment to be very specific. That is the best trained unit and the unit with the best combat record.

Closely followed by 12th SS Hitlerjugend, the combination of 17-19 yr old fanatic ex-hitlerjugend kids as soldiers and 25-30 yr old eastern front veterans as NCO's and officers proved to be extremely efficient.

[cpxxx]

To stick to the letter of the title.
Ancient: The Spartans in their prime, unsurpassed I think.

Mid millenium: The Janissaries, captured boys usually Christiian converted to Islam and trained to be the elite warriors of the Turks.

Napoleonic: The British army.

WW1: Toss up between the German and the British armies

WW2: Probably Das Reich as Hortlund says, or any Waffen SS but only mid war. Late in the war fanaticism made up for training. Same goes for any German formation. The Fallschirmjager were diluted by transfers of Luftwaffe personnel  late in the war. in fact the paratroops of America, Britain were directly comparable and just as good.

Current: The Royal Marines, no contest.

Man for man though in fighting qualities, the Germans have it. I suspect that's still true even though they don't fight warsnowdays. It's a national characteristic.  Let's not forget Israel, quite simply they have to be the best, their survival depends on it.

An of course, although I admit bias here, the Irish. Few are the wars where no Irishman or Irish unit served. Sometimes on both sides. We love trouble.  In any squad size battle the Irish would win or get wiped out. LOL:D

[Dowding]

A third of the British army in the Napoleonic wars was Irish.

[Monk]

The  2nd US Calvary.

[batdog]

Whats w/indiv's feeling the need to get a dig in on US soldiers?

Our guys are trained well... they have repeatly done thier job through out our history as a nation. They have repeatly won alot more than they have lost as well. They have shown bravery equal to anything displayed by other nations through out our short lived history.


I was trained in Ft Benning. It wasnt no cake walk but it certainly wasnt some sort of super duper training course designed to make hardcore killing machines..lol. You are trained to be able to kill in battle w/out remorse...or at least w/out thinking about the rights or wrongs of it. The physical min's MUST be met to graduate and no,,they are not particualry hard. If I remember it was like 45 pushups, run 2 miles in like 16 min's or so and 45 situps. My bet is that many of the wanna be's I see trolling these boards couldnt meet those standards.

Soldiers learn to be real soldiers in thier units. This is where they train. Guess what you do as an American Combat type... TRAIN...TRAIN,PT PT PT TRAIN TRAIN TRAIN w/inspections and other crap thrown in between.

I can remember training beside Brit's. We did fine..they did fine. Guess what... we werent much different.

I was a US soldier and I'm pretty Golly-geen proud of what I did/saw and the way I trained. I take hard core offense to any mush mouth on these boards that feels the need to bust on us/myself. My money is that I could of layed the smoke on most of you pathatic mealy mouthed wanna be's w/out much effort when I was in.

[qts]

A bit touchy, aren't you Batdog? I don't see anyone dissing American soldiers in this thread.  So, people are saying that other units are better, so what?

[Patches]

The Sixth US Army had the best trained US Soldiers in WWII in a unit that is not well known, and was theatre specific. I am, of course, refering to the Alamo Scouts. Alamo Scouts served from New Guinea to the Phillipines and did not suffer a single combat fatality during the war. However, 2%, or thereabouts, fatality rate was suffered during training because all training was done with live ammunition.

Is there any other combat unit the US Army in WWII that can claim
that they never suffered a single combat fatality? Alamo Scouts often operated deep behind Japanese lines.

You can find out more about the Alamo Scouts by doing a search on the web.

[Steve]

QTS, look further up the thread to Animal's post.  
The first thing he says is:  Not American...
Others mentioned their opinions without saying something so blatantly bigoted.  It was a totally unnecessary remark made by a POS.

[llyr69]

I'm surprised the 442nd Regimental Combat Team hasn't been mentioned yet.

[Kevin14]

Originally posted by Patches
The Sixth US Army had the best trained US Soldiers in WWII in a unit that is not well known, and was theatre specific. I am, of course, refering to the Alamo Scouts...

Yes, I read a book where they talked about them, it was called The Death March or something.  

Originally posted by batdog
If I remember it was like 45 pushups, run 2 miles in like 16 min's or so and 45 situps. My bet is that many of the wanna be's I see trolling these boards couldnt meet those standards...

That's it? In my 8th grade gym class more than half of the class could meet those requirements.  Especially 45 sit-ups, which would be a piece of cake.  I could also easily make the 2 mile run but the 45 pushups would be the only part I might have a problem with.  

batdog, we are not bashing Americans in any way, I myself am an American.  Like Steve said, some people may have different opinions than you, which is human.

[batdog]

Originally posted by Kevin14
Yes, I read a book where they talked about them, it was called The Death March or something.  

 

That's it? In my 8th grade gym class more than half of the class could meet those requirements.  Especially 45 sit-ups, which would be a piece of cake.  I could also easily make the 2 mile run but the 45 pushups would be the only part I might have a problem with.  

batdog, we are not bashing Americans in any way, I myself am an American.  Like Steve said, some people may have different opinions than you, which is human.

Kevin, I TAKE NO offense to indiv's saying they think other miltary units/branch's rate higher than that of the United States. I do take offense to indiv's feeling the need to bash them for no reason other than perhaps thier dislike of the current political party in the oval office at this time.

Soldiers ask not...sometimes its sad but true.


As far as the physical requirements go...yea..they aint special by no means. I will say that your PT will improve depending on the unit you go to. If for example you end up in a light unit say..the 7th in Frt Ord or perhaps the 10th Mtn you WILL get stronger and your endurance WILL increase. 10-15-20+ mile road marchs/forced marchs will make you strong.

PT is wierd...I've seen guys max PT tests yet rot on a forced march. I've seen chubby guys barely pass the min's for PT/age groups yet excel in a field enviroment. This IS rare..usually the PT stud will excel of course... a strong body supports a strong mind.

[-Concho-]

Originally posted by Kevin14
That's it? In my 8th grade gym class more than half of the class could meet those requirements.  Especially 45 sit-ups, which would be a piece of cake.  I could also easily make the 2 mile run but the 45 pushups would be the only part I might have a problem with.  
 

Let's see you do it with someone trying to kill you, which is the reason for the being "highly" trained.

[Patches]

Batdog,

This thread was started as a way to enhance our knowledge via individual opinions and studies. That you are proud of your US Army service goes without challenge. I served in the US Army from 1968-1970, including a tour in Viet Nam. Then,  in 1973, I joined the US Marine Corps and served until 1979.  Sofar, I have taken no offense to anything anyone else has posted, and have been educated along the way. I don't think anyone has posted " out-of-line ", nor offensively.

Take a deep breath, feel the lungs burn on the last few hundred yards of a 10 mile run, and thank the Good Lord that there is great beer and ale in this world to heal wounded lungs.

[cpxxx]

A third of the British army in the Napoleonic wars was Irish.

Good point, Dowding, as was Wellington himself although he didn't like to admit it. There is an enormous monument to him in a park near here listing an impressive roll of his victories.

I would like to add to my list because in effect the Pacific was a seperate war:

Pacific WW2: US Marines, no contest there either and to be fair the Marines are up there with the best of them to this day.

I read the article about the porcelain soldiers. Good points were made but the author was at pains to point out these were support troops training and things were different at places like Fort Benning. Modern armies depend heavily on support troops, there is no real need to turn out warriors when their whole career, which can be as short as a year is spent at a computer keyboard.  Many aircrew can barely hold a gun but you would hardly call them untrained. Basic training is just that, basic training. As anyone who has been through it knows it's more about mental attitude than physical attributes.  I had no problem with it but several guys, couldn't march, couldn't shoot, couldn't run or even wear their uniform probably.  They just made our lives harder because they annoyed the instructors who got on our case.  Every army is the same on that subject I think.