Four brave men who do not know each other, wrote Ardant du Picq in his Etudes de Combat, will hesitate to attack a lion; four less brave men, but knowing and trusting each other, will do so resolutely. The point of the tale is this: of all the organizational problems an army has to solve, that of how best to merge replacements into existing units so as to ensure the cohesion of the whole is one of the most crucial, since on it depends the unit's fighting power. The sheer size of the problem may be gauged from the fact that, on the average, three months of intensive combat in World War II cost an American infantry regiment a hundred percent of its personnel in casualties.

wrote Martin Creveld in his book Fighting Power. German and U.S. Army Performance, 1939-1945.

Tag words: unit's fighting power; World War II; American infantry regiment; Martin Creveld; Fighting Power German and US Army Performance, 1939-1945; American Army; replacements; Replacement Training Center; repple depples; repple depple syndrome; Seventy-ninth Infantry Division; General Ira T Wyche; Stephen Ambrose; The Victors; Eisenhower; Bradley; Patton; ETO; GIs; ComZ; General JCH Cox; The General Who Wore Six Stars; Russell Weigley; Eisenhower’s Lieutenants; Ground Forces Reinforcement System; GFRS; 761st Tank Battalion; Terry Allen; 104th Division; Black Timberwolves; General Benjamin Davis; General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell; Carlo d’Este; Eisenhower A Soldier’s Life; The Service Reminiscences of Lt Gen John C H Lee; American Way of War; Field Marshal Montgomery;