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Cannon fodder is an informal term for military personnel who are regarded or treated as expendable in the face of enemy fire. The term is generally used in situations where soldiers are forced to deliberately fight against hopeless odds (with the foreknowledge that they will suffer extremely high casualties) in an effort to achieve a strategic goal. An example is the trench warfare in World War I. The term may also be used (somewhat pejoratively) to differentiate infantry from other forces (such as artillery, air force or the navy).

The term derives from fodder - food for livestock - however in this case soldiers are the metaphorical food for cannons.

Origins of the term

The concept of regarding soldiers as nothing more than "food" to be consumed by battle was known at least as far back as the 16th century. For example, in William Shakespeare's play "Henry IV, Part 1" there is a scene where Prince Henry ridicules John Falstaff's pitiful group of soldiers. Falstaff replies to Prince Henry with cynical references to gunpowder and tossing bodies into mass grave pits, saying that his men are "good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit as well as better [men]..."

The supposedly first attested use of the expression "cannon fodder" belongs to a French writer, François-René de Chateaubriand. In his anti-Napoleonic pamphlet "De Buonaparte et des Bourbons", published in 1814, he criticized the cynical attitude towards recruits, that prevailed in the end of Napoleon's reign: "On en était venu à ce point de mépris pour la vie des hommes et pour la France, d'appeler les conscrits la matière première et la chair à canon" — "the contempt for the lives of men and for France herself has come to the point of calling the conscripts 'the raw material' and 'the cannon fodder'."¹

Human wave attacks

Main article: Human wave attack

Cannon fodder infantrymen are the core participants in human wave attacks, where massive waves of poorly armed, poorly trained, and ill equipped soldiers are sent in a charging attack designed to overwhelm defenders with sheer offensive human mass (as opposed to superior strategy, movement, or technology).

These attacks are popular among militaries which possess very large numbers of conscript soldiers, but lack the means or funding to train or arm them to the same standard as their enemy.

With the advent of military weapons technology specifically designed to annihilate massed infantry attacks (such as air and artillery-borne cluster munitions), the technique has largely been abandoned (at least doctrinally) by modern armies. Unusually long periods of peace following the development of nuclear weapons and consequently increased funds have also enabled most large Third World nations to develop their combined arms training and technology to a point where more contemporary military strategies have been implemented; thus, the tactic of human wave attacks has become obsolete, being no longer economically feasible or necessary.

Other uses

In popular culture, the term has become an example of a stock character. For example, in works of fiction, particularly science fiction, cannon fodder is a (sometimes collective) term used for unnamed or otherwise unimportant characters whose sole purpose in the story is to die in battle or other types of conflict to add to the bodycount in order to give the appearance of grandiose battles (see also "Stormtrooper Syndrome", redshirt).

In more recent times it has taken on the meaning of individuals who toil and work with little regard to work load, stress, and hours without any credit so that others may reap the rewards of their labor.

In video games, cannon fodder is a term for small, easily destroyable enemies, like those found within scrolling shooters.

See also

• Forlorn hope, the initial wave of troops attacking a fortress or other strongpoint, who usually took horrendous casualties.
• Redshirt, a character whose sole purpose is to die violently soon after being introduced. This term was originally used to describe the red-shirted security personnel of the original Star Trek series.
• Sacrificial lamb, a metaphorical reference for a person who has little if any chance of surviving an upcoming challenge, but seeks to sacrifice him or herself for the common good.
• Meat shield, informal and often derogatory expression for someone put forth to absorb an attack or shelter another, such as a hostage held to block bullets.
• Penal military unit
• Principle of Evil Marksmanship
• Kamikaze

References

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 20 December 2008, at 20:39.

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