Seriously people, the game itself says that sometimes you will get rolled over. Jamesman--Points accumulate just fine: my best run, I killed 1400+ Germans with 24 dead, 11 upgraded to officer, one officer upgraded to major, and that's only because I surrendered because I had somewhere to go. Other times, I get crushed after 10 minutes. The first couple of waves should be very easy to survive--use your cover and buy an engineer and get trenches instead of bunkers (save bunkers for later) and your men will survive fine for a while.
Need a hint on how to survive? Use your sigs, officers, and medics to collect supplies and they'll have enough xp to call in a rapid arty strike and heal your guys. Put a frenchman in a sandbag position out in front to draw fire from your valuable guys. Invest in snipers and tanks. The badges are just fine in terms of balance--they provide you the edge you need later to get through tough waves without being gamebreaking.
As for whoever get rolled over by a paradrop--as soon as your men have full auto weapons and some xp, big paradrops are like the motherlode in terms of xp.
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