Serbia '14

[Volcano Man]

And since you mentioned it Ed, one thing that captured my attention in testing was around the Marsch brigades. For example, in the 1st Invasion, there is 13.MarschBrig. You noted in the OOB that these Marsch battalions weren't supposed to be in battle, but the AH command threw these barely trained replacements into action throughout, massed with other untrained units. So wasteful of men's lives, and just one more weak point in the AH lines, even if they were placed in what was hoped would be quiet areas - that sure didn't always happen.

Rick

Right, they found this to be an issue (similar to what the Germans ran into with the ersatz battalions).  That is, if you have a full battalion of troops standing around, acting as replacements, then the over commander of that replacement force (corps or army level commander) was very likely to commit the replacement battalions directly into the fight in "emergency situations".

The temptation was too great not to.  And of course the brigade HQ for those formations was very minimal and not capable, since they were not intended to lead those units into combat, so indeed it was both a wasteful and often abused system.