Officers carry pistols so they can coerce enlisted men to stand up and run into machinegun fire, not because they're meant to engage in combat. What the genera

Officers carry pistols so they can coerce enlisted men to stand up and run into machinegun fire, not because they're meant to engage in combat. What the general is talking about is just one of those head games to make people put on their war face, like making someone attack a scarecrow with a bayonnet on a plastic M-16 while they scream about blood making the grass grow green.