So in Ender's Game, at a certain point, Ender figures out he can shoot his own legs to turn them into shields using this strategy to win the “war games” he was participating in.
Later on Ender finds out he was actually directing human armies.
When Ender employed the leg freezing strategy,
did that translate to earth forces shooting their own ships (and or soldiers) and using them as shields (and or meat shields)?
The point where Ender employes the leg freezing strategy is where he is still in Battle School, playing the zero-G laser tag "Battle Room" game that all kids their played.
He spends about 3 to 4 years there, before graduating, spending a few months earthside, and then traveling to Command School at Eros.
At Eros he interacts entirely with a simulator, and does not move around in zero-G and freeze his legs or direct others to. Instead he's directly controlling ships. (And even then, it's only after a few months of the using the simulator before they start giving him real battles instead of simulations.)
So when Ender employed the leg freezing strategy, it did not translate to anything, because at the time he did this he was not directing human armies. It just translated to the forty kids he was commanding to freeze their own legs.
The freeze-the-leg trick was specific to the mechanics of the war games. It followed from the following observations:
The idea of intentially shooting yourself in the leg follows from the first three observations to a tactic that negates Observation #4. It's the thought process that lead to the discovery of this particular tactic, rather than the tactic itself, that marks Ender as a strong candidate for leading the actual war.
I will contradict ibid said. It's not direct proof, but you can reasonably argue that he learns a couple of important tactical principles, that later translate to real battles, even when you realize freezing legs was in Battle School 0G training that had nothing to do with actual ship combat in Tactical/Command.
Create your own environment. Don't have a shield? Freeze your legs. Don't have a conglomeration of enemy ships to use M.D. device on? Blow it up on the planet.
Sacrifice your own units when warranted. Arguably, this was more of a lesson learned from the last battle ("In that final battle in Battle School, he had won by ignoring the enemy, ignoring his own losses; he had moved against the enemy's gate"). But the concept of using parts of yourself to sacrifice for tactical win also came from the freezing idea.
