Aggressors may use unarmed, untrained, or deliberately poorly equipped members of the colonized people (civilians or forcibly mobilized persons) for frontal assaults. This technique is used to directly and physically deplete the enemy's ammunition, reveal its concealed firing positions, and clear minefields with human bodies. Unlike the use of a "human shield" (T0111), where people serve as passive cover to protect the aggressor's troops, here the colonized population is actively used as free, single-use expendable material ("cannon fodder") to preserve the personnel reserve of the metropole's troops.
The use of untrained conscripts as expendable material: they were "thrown into combat often at once, without undergoing military training in reserve units, sometimes unarmed, not even changed into military uniform (hence the name)"[1]. The scale is visible from a single episode: "after the Red Army first took Kharkiv in the spring of 1943, about 15 thousand people aged 15 to 45 were mobilized into it and sent to the front without training," with "1 rifle per 5-10 men"[1].
The USSR put Chechen-Ingush volunteers into the line, but denied them weapons, supply and an army number - and on 3-4 August 1942 threw them, with sabers and miscellaneous rifles, against German tanks at Kotelnikovo. Chechens and Ingush went to fight without any imperial coercion: already in the first year of the war over 18 thousand were at the front, by the third year - 32 thousand, by other accounts up to 50 thousand[2]. After the USSR cancelled the call-up of Chechens and Ingush, Chechen-Ingush officers of the Soviet army obtained permission to recruit volunteers; their requests to arm the recruits properly, army-style, went unanswered. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, who wrote about these events in emigration, names them one by one: "On the initiative of the Chechen Soviet general Supyan Mollaev, the Ingush colonel Abadiev, Major Visantov, Captain Akhtaev and others, the Soviet government permitted the Chechen-Ingush republic to recruit volunteers"[3]. Two divisions gathered, an active one and a reserve one; after the evacuation of Kerch the active division went to the Southern Front. In Krasnodar the commander of the Southern Front, Marshal Budyonny, drew it up facing the division that had retreated from Kerch and addressed the retreaters, as Avtorkhanov renders it, with these words: "Look at them, the highlanders: their fathers and grandfathers, under the leadership of the great Shamil, fought bravely for 25 years and defended their independence against the whole of tsarist Russia. Take them as your example of how to defend the Motherland!"[3]. Neither of the two divisions was taken onto the supply rolls of the Soviet army or received an army number. Avtorkhanov writes: "They were uniformed by the Chechen-Ingush republic itself, and from there they received their provisions as well"[3]. Of the fighters' weapons and footwear he writes: "the entire armament of these divisions consisted of sabers alone and of chance rifles of the most varied systems"[3]; "Many of the fighters were barefoot, as their homemade highland chuviaki had long worn out"[3]. The officers asked Budyonny to take the divisions into the army and arm them army-style. Avtorkhanov continues: "Budyonny promised to think it over. While Budyonny was thinking, the Germans crossed the Don, and the Chechen-Ingush division, in the same condition, without any support, was thrown literally under the hurricane fire of German tanks racing toward Stalingrad. At Kotelnikovo, on 4 August 1942, German tanks rolled over the corpses of many fighters of this division. A small part was taken prisoner; another, led by the staff, managed to break out of the encirclement and retreated. But the rout of this division, together with the rout of whole corps and armies of the Southern Front, served as a bad attestation for the entire Chechen-Ingush people"[3]. The historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov describe the events differently: a single 114th Chechen-Ingush Cavalry Division was being recruited - volunteers came a thousand over the establishment of 4.5 thousand - Moscow disbanded it, and the 255th Chechen-Ingush Cavalry Regiment of Major Movlid Visaitov, created on its base, was thrown by the USSR toward Stalingrad[2].