my favorite parts were handheld Claymore mines to arm soldiers. I'd love to see someone use it as the basis for an alternate history space movie.
That idea, or a kind of precursor thereof, had been tried in the battlefield in WW2.
There were a couple of cities/towns on the Eastern front still held by the Wehrmacht/SS when the front had long moved past them.
Such cities were surrounded and besieged by the Red Army but no active attempt was made to break the sieges as this would draw too many soldiers away from the front and lead to a loss of momentum.
In one of these cities (possibly Poznan, can't remember*), the defense basically collapsed due to having too little ammunition left. When the city was basically conquered except for the SS-HQ, the SS commander sent out his last defence that didn't include himself - a group of about 100 schoolchildren and decrepit pensioners, some of whom had
Panzerfäuste (a weapon like the RPG7), and the rest were given broomsticks with attached landmines activated by a rigged timer (They were told to press them onto Soviet military equipment and activate the timer).
Fortunately this "elite corps" never saw battle, as they heeded a call to surrender or get machine-gunned.
*I know this was in the part of the front commanded by Gen. Chuikov, and was even mentioned in his memoirs, my copy of which I lent to someone who still has it.
PS: How were the operators of the American version supposed to be shielded from the concussive effects of the weapon? ( as "Use soldier once only" is not very practical away from Earth)
