I am not so sure who is "everyone". I play CoC with 3 other players, I play with each independently and we all have always played it as Rich described.John, I don't think it was obvious at all. Everybody was pretty surprised when Rich played it that way in the BoW video, they'd been playing it differently for years.
Since I do not have a military or historical backgound a lot of the knowledge base behind a WWII was completely unknown to me when I started playing CoC. I know a bit now, all learned from you and the others on the forum and it is much appreciated.
Because of this, I really have to rely on the RAW. I ask a lot of questions about the mechanisms of the game rather than the historical basis for them, not that I am not interested.
I am slowly figuring out how to interpret TFL rules, and most of the time they are exactly as written. If it is not written you can not do it etc etc. I think the recent discussion about Bunkers and the off-table 88 was an excellent example of this.
John