The Infancy of Infantry

Any decent military-minded person will tell you that infantry is one of the most important (if not the most important) resources of winning wars. There are some who would say otherwise and claim things like artillery, logistics, naval and air supremacy, or armour are paramount. The artillery can soften up the enemy forces; the supply officers can make sure the troops are well-supplied; the navy can control the sea and air routes; the armoured divisions can sweep across the battlefield and outflank the enemy.

However, without infantry, I believe all of the above are moot points. Well-entrenched soldiers on the ground can hunker down and keep casualties from artillery strikes to a minimum. Even if they're undersupplied, a well-trained grunt will keep the fight going in whatever way he or she can. The navies and air forces can sweep the seas and skies but they may miss a hidden trooper who can alert the rest of his/her forces. Armour can take on most ground threats, but the moment they run out of fuel or are surrounded, all the infantry has to do is bring in a cheap anti-armour weapon or shove grenades into the hatches.

As a U.S. Navy brat, it almost feels wrong for me to admit to preferring the typical (army) foot soldier over a navy's sailors, but the ocean can't sustain life on a grand scale - land can. And how does one win land wars? With actual people on the ground, armed and ready to take the land from the other guy (or stop the invader from doing so). The other things I listed above can support the infantry, and at times they may prove to be superior. In the end, artillery is useless without someone on the ground calling in the strike. Supplies are useless if no one can use them. Naval support (in the case of a marine force) and air support also need a set of eyes on the ground to ensure lethal accuracy (or to call off a strike if friendlies are getting hit). An armoured vehicle is (from a financial standpoint) a much more valuable target than one measly soldier and is more likely to get hit hard with something.

Of course, everyone will have their own counters to my lines of reasoning, and I'm sure there's some general who's going to dismiss my logic simply because "tank beats everything" - and in some cases, it does.





So what does all that talk above have to do with today's entry? Well... to be honest: everything. After sitting down from a long day at work, sometimes I like to tinker around with the plethora of Lego pieces, figures, and what-have-you. After some considerable playing around with minifigs and emulating a war zone on my desk serious construction, I began to put pieces together - pieces that have now begun to tell a story.

While tank desant seems like a very risky position for the modern infantryman, there's just something cool-looking about a bunch of guys riding on top of an armored vehicle of death.

And that story... is infantry. This project's still too far off from becoming a full-blown reality, but for now I'm just having fun and enjoying myself and the creations I'm now giving birth to.

One of those creations is the topic of this entry: a full platoon's worth of infantry for one faction plus several squads' worth of infantry for other factions. I just wanted to show this to you so I can prove that I was totally doing nothing but Lego construction. Those sounds you hear in the background where it sounds like a man-child making explosion noises with his mouth? Totally part of the creative process and totally part of your imagination.

...I'm just going to go back to playing building more things. Don't worry - you'll get to find out more soon enough. For now, I'm just going to go, uh... "work." Yeah... *hides*