Our replacement policies didn’t work well. Germans were befter able to keep vet units together.
Absolutely. Uncle B was a "replacement" in the 47th Infantry insofar as he was not with the unit when it was in North Africa/Sicily, but he had time in England before D+4 to train with the core of the unit. Once the Fall of 1944 was underway, the replacement policies became a serious problem that wasted many lives. Uncle B was wounded, sent to the rear, and rather than end up in the "repple depple," he busted out of the hospital, hitch-hiked to his unit and lost a stripe for doing so. He knew that he and his buddies kept each other alive, staying alive had already become hard enough, and there was always time for another stripe if he wanted it (which he did not).
Mr. niteowl77
Our casualties in frontline combat infantrymen were so high, trying to keep a unit together through the repple depple process wasn’t all that effective anyway. My dad, a squad leader in the 29th ID, 116th IR, was twice wounded in action. On both occasions, he was evacuated to hospitals and returned both times to his original L Company. The second time he was in hospital for about a month, and when he was returned to his unit (as a newly-promoted Sergeant) there wasn’t one single man remaining in his squad that was known to him.