I never understood the concept of marching in ranks into cannon fire, or massed musket fire for that matter. Never really thought about it until I was watching a documentary on the making of "Gettysburg". The author of the book, Shelby Steel IIRC, mentioned that had Lee ordered him to march in ranks into massed gun and cannon fire he might have been shot as a coward, or words to that effect. I thought about it for a second and decided I'd probably have been shot with him. Why men were sacrificed like that is simply beyond me. I'm all for honor and courage, but there comes a point where it's just sheer carnage to walk men into overwhelming fire. Cover and conceal, suppressing fire and movement, that seems more common sense to me and a better way to win a war. In my mind the idea of marching into fire should have died out when firearms became common. When it's swords and lances, fine, hack away at each other. Once the effective range of your weapons exceeded 50-75 yards, then it became a game of picking off the other guy when he showed himself. And once machine guns came into being, oh heck no! Going "over the top" might have been a faster and maybe easier death than dying of dysentery in the trenches, but it's still suicide. Must be that enlisted mans thinking kicking in, but guys like the aforementioned Custer that built their careers on the backs of dead "cannon fodder" never impressed me whole lot. Japan, China, Korea, Russia and the Brits all had people running the show that seemed unconcerned with how many of their own dead they racked up in various fairly recent wars. Our own American higher ups seemed to be in competition between sides on who could lose the most men at some of battles in the War Between the States. I find it all very sad, so many lives lost.