Read on Twitter
1/ On this day in 1951, the 23rd RCT received the best Valentines Day you could ask for:
A front row seat to one of costliest underestimations of the French Army.
See just after midnight the PLA forces thought a bayonet charge on the French positions was in order,
A front row seat to one of costliest underestimations of the French Army.
See just after midnight the PLA forces thought a bayonet charge on the French positions was in order,
2/ And since the PLA’s bayonet charge MDMP was pretty thorough, they remembered to sound their bugles and whistles whilst mid-charge which they assumed would augment their chosen COA. A poor assumption, but not their last before daybreak would arrive. Call this “PLA Whoopsie #1”.
3/ The French, who as you’ll remember were led by “previously-a-General-but-recently-self-demoted-to-meet-force-cap-requirements-because-deployment-OERs-are-king-LTC Monclar” were well notified by the PLA’s musical preparatory fires and fixed their own bayonets.
To the PLA’s surprise (but no one else’s) the French whipped out their OWN noisemakers, the mighty hand cranked siren, and added their own clamor to the fight and (in my head at least) completely drowning out the PLA’s bugles and whistles.
The PLA continued their charge, because the kind of people who order bayonet charges preceded by music are rarely the kind of people who make accurate and timely battlefield decisions, assuming they would wash over the French positions they’d already identified.
Call this “PLA Whoopsie #2”. The French decided that a gentleman never remains seated when speaking to another gentleman, and leave their foxholes in their OWN bayonet charge, some of whom are somehow still cranking hand sirens AND wielding their pointy firearms
The PLA then think, “ah we have forced them to fight on our level and they have ignored their own combat multipliers” (PLA Whoopsie #3) and are understandably surprised when the French employ the little used Throw-Grenades-In-The-Direction-You’re-Charging Battle Drill.
Initiative at stake and the PLA questioning their branch choice, the French used the only other thing at hand (aside from the bayonets, hand sirens and hand grenades) so they did the only logical thing they could, and screamed their fucking faces off. Because of course.
That was enough for the PLA and they backed off the French, FOR THE REST OF THE WAR. And be real, the rest of the Allied RCT units feeling sorry for themselves watched all of this go down and thought “well shit. Not letting the Frenchies show us up” and sucked it the hell up.
And for yet one more time, the French showed the US Army that the hand that holds cheese and wine is also very capable of slapping the shit out of people that fuck with their friends.
