Quote:
Originally Posted by ofogs
It'd say it's a lot of organized chaos. If you look at the whole process, it's really impressive how it happens. For the individual on the ground, it can very well appear to be very confusing. Masses of people moving around and tons and tons of cargo. Friction abounds. Stuff gets misrouted and lost. People just work it out on both ends to get everything fixed. The good news is we're learned a bit from the UPSes and FedExes of the world and have better ways of tracking cargo than before, but it's still far from easy.
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That is what makes Patton's move during the Battle of the Bulge so remarkable. He pulled III Corps out of the line in the middle of an attack to the east, had it move north perpendicular to his line of attack across the rear of 2 other corps which continued to attack east for abotu 120 miles and then conduct an attack against the German Seventh Army...all in winter and on atrocious roads. It is a testimony to his leadership, his staff's planning abilities, his finally learning and paying attention to logistics.
Rerouting combat units is pretty easy. Rerouting the logistics tail to support it, along with the communications, MP support, transportation networks and mountains of "stuff" is hard.