| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The training of an infantry company
Author: Kirkpatrick, Edward
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The training of an infantry company" ***
COMPANY ***
Transcriber’s Note
Italic text displayed as: _italic_
Bold text displayed as: =bold=
THE TRAINING
OF AN
INFANTRY COMPANY.
=CATECHISM ON FIELD TRAINING=
(=INFANTRY=).
A series of Questions and Answers on all subjects of field training,
extracted from the latest official TRAINING MANUALS, together
with miscellaneous information, practical exercises and examples
progressively arranged.
_Revised and brought up to date by_
=COL. H. O’DONNELL, p.s.c.=
(WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT).
_SIXTH EDITION._
CONTENTS.
Elementary—General Principles of Attack and Defence—Miscellaneous
Tactical Operations—Warfare in uncivilised Countries—Protection
on the Line of March—Protection when at Rest—Methods of obtaining
Information—Quarters, Camps, and Bivouacs—Field Engineering—Diary of
Training.
_Fully illustrated with 30 pages of Plates and Diagrams._
=One of the numerous Press Opinions.=
“The book is most comprehensive, for every branch of the soldier’s
life is touched upon, and every situation or emergency seems to be
anticipated. Colonel O’Donnell’s publication is quite a military
encyclopædia.”—_Empress_, Calcutta.
=PRICE 3/- NET.=
_From the Printers and Publishers_,
GALE & POLDEN LTD.,
WELLINGTON WORKS, ALDERSHOT,
And at London and Portsmouth.
= _The_ TRAINING=
OF AN
=INFANTRY COMPANY=
_By_
Major E. KIRKPATRICK, I.A.
—————:O:—————
2ND EDITION.
_London_: GALE & POLDEN, LTD.,
2, AMEN CORNER, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
Nelson House, PORTSMOUTH &
Wellington Works, ALDERSHOT.
Obtainable from all Booksellers.
_TWO SHILLINGS & SIXPENCE_ (_Net_)
(_Copyright under Act of 1911._)
ALDERSHOT:
PRINTED BY GALE & POLDEN, LTD.,
WELLINGTON WORKS.
1914
PREFACE
This booklet has not been written for the use and benefit of officers
and non-commissioned officers of long experience and proved skill
in the profession of training men for battle. To such as these it
may only provide an object of criticism, for in the course of years
spent in turning recruits into trained soldiers they will have
formulated to themselves, and adopted, some system of training which
they found productive of the best results under their own guidance.
But there are many at present, and at a future time, should certain
circumstances arise in the life of the nation, there may be very many
more who may not have such stores of experience to draw on, and yet
may be faced with the problem of rapidly converting an untrained or
only partially trained body of men into a force capable of acting
successfully in real war, both in attack and defence against trained
and disciplined troops. Again, it is written, not for officers
commanding battalions, nor for officers of cavalry and artillery,
but only for officers commanding companies or other similar units
of infantry, though it may, perhaps, be of use in training mounted
troops for dismounted action.
Meantime, while the pipes of peace are still smoking, it is hoped it
may be of some use to officers and non-commissioned officers when the
time comes to prepare schemes of company training and put them into
execution.
E. K.
_September, 1913._
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
Since the above was written, the issue of new or amended Manuals
of Training has necessitated a revision of the book, which is now
presented in a form agreeable to the four-company organisation.
The Empire is now confronted by those circumstances to which allusion
was made in the Preface.
E. K.
_September, 1914._
CONTENTS
PAGE
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS—
I.—The Intention of the Book 1
II.—Making the Best of their Companies
to Train the Modern
Man for the Modern Battle 4
III.—The Standard of Training
assumed to have already
been acquired and its application
to further Exercises 9
IV.—Ground for Training—Its Use
and Influence—Palliation of
the Lack of a Training
Ground 11
V.—Company Organisation—Moral
and the Personality
of the Commander 16
VI.—Discipline—Moral and Means
of Supervision 22
VII.—Organisation by Files and its
Effect on Moral—Cohesion 27
VIII.—Method of Training 31
IX.—As to Scouts and Working
Dress 37
EXERCISES
I.—Individual Advance in Extended
Order 38
II.—Retirement by Pairs 48
III.—Individual Training in Use of
Fire and Fire Discipline 52
IV.—The Assault 60
V.—The Section and Platoon in
Attack 64
VI.—The Section and Platoon in
Retirement 74
VII.—The Section and Platoon in
Independent Attack 78
VIII.—The Platoon as Advanced and
Flank Guard 84
IX.—Preliminary for the Attack by
the Company in Battalion 89
X.—The Company in Attack with
the Battalion under Artillery
Fire 93
XI.—The Company in Attack with
the Battalion under Rifle
Fire 97
XII.—The Company in Attack Acting
Alone 105
XIII.—The Company in Retirement 107
XIV.—Outposts 112
XV.—Defence 142
XVI.—Hasty Expedients 163
XVII.—Night Operations 171
————
A SCHEME OF COMPANY TRAINING 181
REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS.
I.T., 128 (3) = Infantry Training, 1914,
Section 128, para. 3.
F.S.R. = Field Service Regulations,
Part I. Operations, 1909
(Reprint 1912).
T. & M.R. = Training and Manœuvre
Regulations, 1913.
M.F.E. = Manual of Field Engineering,
1911.
A FEW PRESS OPINIONS.
“UNITED SERVICE MAGAZINE.”
Major E. Kirkpatrick is the author of a small book on “The Training
of an Infantry Company.” There have been so many books and pamphlets
of this kind—short cuts to knowledge—that one is apt to regard
each fresh one with suspicion and even with aversion, but Major
Kirkpatrick has much that is helpful to say, he says it well, and
he shows how much good work may be done even in the training of the
emasculated companies such as our military system so often leaves us.
His instructions cover a wide field, and there must be few company
officers who will not be grateful to the author for many valuable
hints.
“UNITED SERVICE INSTITUTION OF INDIA.”
There are few junior officers of infantry who will not benefit by a
study of this book. The thorough system of training elaborated in the
seventeen exercises, which form the major portion of the book, is
worthy of the attention of Regular as well as Territorial Officers.
These elementary exercises deal with the essentials in the war
training of the Infantry soldier, from the work of the individual
in advance and retirement, and of the section in action and on
protection duties, to the training of the company in attack and
defence, and outpost.
As an example of a system of training illustrating the necessity of
attention to detail in the early instruction of the soldier, this
series of exercises is valuable, and their value is increased by the
constant reference to training manuals. The author wisely recommends
the study of all the official books referred to as he recognises
that his exercises and comments are only of value in so far as they
illustrate and explain the principles laid down in training manuals.
THE TRAINING
OF AN
INFANTRY COMPANY.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
The authorised handbooks of training rightly confine themselves to
broad principles, and do not attempt to give detailed examples of
their application, the idea being that officers should study these
regulations and apply the principles by the light of local conditions
and their own experience. Infantry Training and the Field Service
Regulations are, however, very pregnant little books, containing,
as they do, a summary of the whole of Modern Tactics, as far as
they concern infantry and the combined action of all arms. Time
and thought are necessary, if the principles contained in them are
to be translated into such intelligent action that the men trained
on the lines laid down may be capable of doing their duty in real
warfare, without first undergoing a bitter and costly schooling of
useless casualties or, perhaps, even of defeat. But if an officer
is called on to achieve this result, being himself without much
previous experience in training, he will find himself faced with a
task of great difficulty, and, with the best intentions, he may waste
precious time, as well as his own and his men’s patience and energy,
in doing parades and exercises, which are either not indispensable,
or of minor importance for the main object. As an extreme example,
it would be better, in a hastily raised corps, to combine the
disciplinary training of obedience to the word of command, with
instruction in the use of their arms, by practice in smart work in
aiming and firing, than merely to study precision in “sloping” and
“presenting arms,” which look well, but do not immediately affect
fighting efficiency.
For these reasons, it has occurred to me that I might do some of my
brother officers _in esse_ or _in posse_ a service by setting out
certain elementary exercises in training infantry soldiers, which
I have found of value in bringing them up to a standard of battle
training sufficiently high to need only battalion training and a
baptism of fire to turn them into steady and reliable troops. It is
not contended that these few examples are anything but concrete
instances of the application of the principles of the Training
Manuals. They are intended, as has been stated, merely for those
who are short of time and experience, and, therefore, references to
the manuals are given when the exercise illustrates some particular
section of those works, and it is recommended that officers who
intend to use these examples should look up and read the sections
referred to before going on to the parade.
Though this book is not meant for officers commanding battalions,
I have one word to say to them, and it is this, that if they wish
to have an efficient battalion they must let the company officers
have proper opportunities of training their companies, apart from
the time of company training, when the whole company is struck off
duty. If there are six parades a week, let three or four of them be
company parades, ordered and carried out by the company commanders;
the balance will be quite enough to secure combination between the
companies in battalion. On company parades, the battalion commander
should supervise, but never interfere, unless things are being
manifestly mismanaged. (See T. & M.R., 2 (2 and 3)). The days of
the one man battalion are gone for ever. The company is the thing
that matters; a good battalion can only be composed of well-trained
companies. It is the work of the battalion commander to propound
the general lines of training and to use the companies to the best
advantage in combination, but the training of the individual soldier
must be in the hands of the man who is to lead him in war.
II.
On ordinary parades, the captain of an infantry company is seldom
able to get together more than a fraction of his men. The calls on
the company for men for duties and odd jobs, leave and furlough,
and, in the Territorial Force, the private occupations of the men,
allow of only a few being assembled on any one parade. This being
so, there is a temptation—sometimes yielded to by officers who have
not much experience, to say to themselves: “This is rot; what can
I do without any men?” Such a question is the result of confusing
the individual instruction of the men with the tactical practice of
the leader in handling his company as a whole. The answer too often
takes the form of an hour’s close order drill or something similar,
which may do some good, but not nearly as much as if the officer
stoutly made up his mind to make the best of a bad job and took out
those few men and did some practical training in field operations.
The fewer men there are on parade, the more individual attention
will the company commander be able to give them. He will be able
to look at each man’s work more carefully, talk to the men and get
to know their characters as soldiers, spot who are likely to make
good non-commissioned officers, and coach them far more than if the
whole company were on hand at once. So do not turn up your nose at a
company only twenty strong, but make up a scheme of exercises to be
gone through, and, since the men who are not on parade to-day will be
so to-morrow, arrange to do the same exercise on two, or, if needed,
three, consecutive days, so as to catch all, or, at least, most of
the men, and your non-commissioned officers, who are not usually so
drawn on for off-parade duties, will become well acquainted with each
exercise, learn what to do and how to run things, and so become both
a help to you as instructors, and themselves gain authority and power
of command from the knowledge of their own competency.
It is quite likely that these exercises and the explanations given,
may seem to some readers to be absurdly simple and needlessly
long-winded, while there is also a good deal of repetition. To this
I will make early reply that they are written for officers who are
not too proud to accept other people’s advice in training a company
of young soldiers of the stamp which would be forthcoming if some
cause[1] or other tempted or constrained into military service that
great proportion of our male population who are at present quite
ignorant of a soldier’s work, and who, from apathy, or a hundred
other causes, do not join the Territorial Force. Such men probably
have never in their lives given a thought to soldiering. The majority
of them are town born and bred, and have passed most of their lives
among bricks and mortar. If they have ever looked carefully at the
large or small features of a bit of country, it has been from an
industrial, sporting, or, perhaps, sentimental, but never from a
tactical, point of view. They have everything to learn in making use
of ground for fighting. Their ideas of using modern arms are equally
crude; the primitive fighting instinct will be uppermost in their
minds, and would express itself in an incontinent desire to get to
close quarters with their enemy, when bayonet, butt or hand grips
would seem the proper way to settle the matter. A very laudable
desire it is—this of wanting to close in—and one to be encouraged by
every means, but however brave troops may be, they cannot in general
indulge their desire to attain close quarters and the resulting
facilities of fighting by the light of their natural instincts unless
they have first been successful in the fire fight—the strife of the
arms of artifice—which is waged by bullet and shell at distances
which Nature never contemplated.
It is the artificiality of the fire fight which makes the task of
turning town-bred men into skilful soldiers such a difficult and
lengthy process. They must be led to look at ground in relation to
its capabilities of increasing the effectiveness of their own fire
and also of diminishing the result of that of the enemy, i.e., they
must learn to select good fire positions and good cover. The problem
of finding the latter for himself against a civilized foe begins, for
the individual soldier, as soon as the enemy’s rifle fire becomes
effective and compels the use by his side of extended order; this
is held to be on open ground about fourteen hundred yards from the
enemy’s infantry (I.T., 118 (4)). Prior to this the responsibility
for cover rests with his leaders, as he will then be in some close
formation. Fire positions he must choose for himself as soon as
his section commander ceases to be able to indicate his wishes, or
to secure combined action by the whole unit. This will probably
happen at about six hundred yards from the enemy, when individual
fire is expected to replace controlled fire by sections. These two
aspects of fighting—the use of ground, and the use of the rifle as a
far-reaching weapon of almost absolute precision, if truly sighted
and aimed—are foreign to our instincts, and the average man has to
be trained till he is able to override his instinct and fight an
artificial war, so as to work his way to charging distance. Some men
need less training than others; a stalker in a deer forest is an
adept in the use of cover, and in general, country-bred men should
be easier to train than town-bred, but the majority of our men
being the latter, we must lay ourselves out to teach them from the
beginning this business of the fire fight, since success in this is
usually necessary before the assault can succeed (I.T., 121 (7)).
This can only be done by training them in extended order and putting
them through various exercises chosen for the purpose. Any exercise
which does not in some way tend to fit men for battle is mere waste
of time; aimless perambulations of an extended line fall under this
category, but are quite often to be seen on parade grounds. No amount
of smartness in close order drill will compensate for a deficiency of
field training.
III.
The exercises which I have drawn up, simple though they are, are of
the nature of “Instructional Operations,” as defined by T. & M.R.,
40 (12), and it is presupposed that the men have received, or are
in course of receiving, sufficient instruction in the use of the
rifle (musketry in all its branches), and of the bayonet (bayonet
fighting), in drill in close order, and the drill grounding of
extended order work, including signals (I.T., 90-96). We are then to
consider ourselves to be at the stage in which the soldier is to be
taught to work over broken country as directed in the latter part
of para. 90, above quoted. But do not think the lessons learned at
musketry instruction are to be forgotten and left behind by the men
when they begin to work in extended order across country. Demand
from your men that the rifle shall be deadly, and, by unceasing
supervision, breed a habit among them of aiming and firing in
extended order, whether with or without blank cartridge, with the
same exactitude as when firing their course of musketry on the range.
Take the high standard—a hundred men’s lives in one man’s bandolier,
instead of a hundred bandoliers for one man’s life. The higher
standard of the two is at least possible, though not common, but why
not try and work towards it, so that when bullets are flying within
decisive range of the enemy, it will be your men’s fire, that is the
deadly close-hitting kind, that makes afraid, and not the haphazard
jet of bullets whose inefficacy lets unhurt familiarity breed
tolerant contempt?
In the same way, when men are in close order at any time during a
field parade, keep up the same smartness, and quick obedience to
orders which are exacted in close order drills, in order that the
men may become truly disciplined, and not merely so in appearance,
so when they come under fire without being extended, as may happen
in the early and distant stages of a fight, they will, as a matter
of course, submit themselves to their commander’s wishes, and ignore
their own inclinations, which, just at the first experience, even
with very brave men, might be for an immediate and independent rush
in some direction—perhaps forward, perhaps in another direction—they
will be “in hand,” and free of the liability of raw troops to suffer
from sudden panic or to become a mob, full of fight, perhaps, but
still a mob, and as such, a force which cannot be controlled or used
in furtherance of any general plan.
IV.
The want of a suitable and accessible bit of ground on which to train
our men is one of the chief difficulties we have to meet in the
United Kingdom, and, of course, it is greatest in the case of town
corps, varying with the size of towns, while in large cities ground
is not to be had at all, save at a distance of several miles from the
men’s dwelling places. Unfortunately, there is little doubt that the
possession or lack of suitable training grounds has a great effect
on the readiness, or otherwise, of troops to give a good account of
themselves when they come under fire for the first time in their
lives. The lack of it takes away reality from the work of the men
in the ranks and cramps the initiative of their officers, who are
given no opportunity to exercise their wits in figuring out practical
situations which might occur on service.
I can give no recipe for obtaining the use of ground, but from what
I have just said I hope it is clear that the officer commanding a
battalion or company should use every blandishment or art of which he
is capable to get the use of a stretch of ground, and also, if it is
at a distance, and the attendance of the men at parades voluntary,
he should try to provide facilities for getting them to and from the
ground. The worst bit of country is better than the barrack square.
The ideal ground is that which gives conditions suited to each phase
of the training, the principal requirements being fire positions
and cover, and these should occur so as to provide illustrations
of the use to be made of them in individual training, and in the
collective training of sections, platoons, and the larger units.
Thus, for training individual men, good ground would be that with
an irregular surface, giving many places twenty to fifty yards
apart, which each man could use in firing and taking cover. The
usual seaside golf course of hummocks, furze bushes, and occasional
watercourses, is good to teach individual men over—I say teach,
for we must not imagine that an enemy will be so kind as to leave
easy ground like that in his front, if he can help it. For section
or platoon training, the surface should be similar, so that the
individuals should still be called on to look out for their own
halting places, but, in addition, there should be a certain number
of small features, hillocks, banks, and so on, one to four hundred
yards apart, which will serve as fire positions and cover for the
whole unit, and provide the commanders with successive objectives,
to which it will be their duty to bring their men in good order,
and without needless exposure to the enemy’s fire. When the company
is training together, the ground should be similar, but of greater
extent, both broader and larger, so that sections and platoons may be
practised in supporting each other, some being halted in these fire
positions, and covering by their fire the movements of the others who
are in process of gaining fresh vantage points. And so on for larger
units and the combined action of all arms; good ground for early
instruction is that whose features, from their nature and distance
from each other, lend themselves to illustrate conditions under which
the power of each unit and arm may be most profitably employed in
conjunction with others. Troops trained over ground that gives the
above advantages will acquire an eye for country. A knowledge of the
uses to be made of ground will be common to all ranks, so that when
they find themselves fighting on bad ground, which does not give much
cover or good fire positions, they will be the more apt to search for
such cover and fire positions as are obtainable, while troops trained
on flat and open ground would be much slower in making the best of
a bad job. We are not concerned with anything more than a company;
therefore, get for your own use, if you can manage it—failing help
from higher powers—a bit of ground of some sort, golf course, common,
city park, or what not. It need not be very extensive. Even if it
gives only three or four positions suitable for occupation by a
section working in conjunction with another, say, six hundred by
three hundred yards, it will give room for useful instruction; but,
of course, a larger extent is preferable, as giving room for more
extended and varied exercises. If your training ground is of limited
extent, it should, nevertheless, if possible, have a wide field of
view on all sides beyond its own confines, and leave you the right
to send a few men to take positions on the adjoining country, even
if not allowed to manœuvre about it, so that when carrying out your
exercises you may be able to use men with blank cartridge to act as
a skeleton enemy, when such is needed. But if you are not allowed
to send men on to the neighbouring ground, the wide field of view
will still enable you to indicate certain distant positions as
_supposed_ to be held by the enemy. By this means you will be able
to use the whole area of your permissible ground to represent a bit
of the battlefield, and escape having to place the supposed enemy
absurdly close to your manœuvring troops, e.g., at the edge of the
training ground, or in some other position which makes heavy calls
on the imagination. Britishers are not imaginative. Lastly, if all
else fails, and you have nowhere to go except the flat parade ground,
or even the drill hall, which in large towns is often very spacious,
do not, I beg you, become discouraged and throw up all effort to get
your men ready for field work. Do the exercises on the flat, limiting
the extent of movements, if there is little room, and use flags or
anything else to represent fire positions for sections and platoons,
and let the men kneel or lie down between advances, if there is no
cover. A great deal may be done in this way to lay a good foundation
for extended order work. Your men will know the mechanism of it, and
you will save much time when you do manage to have them out on a
proper training ground. I.T., 107 (2), requires company commanders,
in preparing their schemes of training, to have regard to the ground
at their disposal; do so, therefore, even if the ground aforesaid
is only a parade ground, and make the most of it; it is better than
sitting still and either doing nothing, or only a weary round of
company drill in close order. Of course, you must let the men know
what you are driving at, or they will get bored and lose interest.
V.
Having got a company of men and ground to train them on, the first
step is to organise that company for its battle training. A company
is organised into four platoons, each under a subaltern, with a
sergeant as his second-in-command (platoon sergeant). Each platoon
has four sections, and the sixteen sections of the company are
numbered one to sixteen. The men of each of the above units remain
permanently in that unit. _If possible_, maintain this organisation
on duties and fatigues, though this is often a counsel of perfection,
but quarter the men together, and insist on the maintenance of the
organisation, _without deviation_, on parades. Have lists made up of
the men of each platoon and section, and let men who so wish, belong
to the same unit. Once these lists are made up, see to it by means of
the section commanders that these men fall in on parade together in
the place in the company where their section is standing, no matter
how few there are; if there are but two men of one section on parade,
they should fall in as front and rear rank men of one file. Avoid
disseminating the men of a platoon or section among other units in
order to raise the latter to a sizeable strength. Instead of this:
supposing you have three weak platoons and one strong one on parade;
of the four sections of one of the weak platoons, send two to each of
the other two weak platoons. This will give you three platoons of,
perhaps, unequal strength, but sufficient for work—and this without
taking the responsibility of section commanders off their shoulders,
and the cohesion of each unit is preserved. Some further suggestions
on the subject of organisation will be put forward when speaking of
_moral_.
The officer who aspires to develop whatever capabilities his men
possess of becoming individually and collectively formidable
in battle, must pay attention to much more than mere physical
considerations. Napoleon’s dictum, that the moral is to the physical
as three to one is early dinned into the ears of the officer of
Regulars, but may stand repetition in pages meant for the perusal
of others. No officer can expect to get the most out of his men
unless he directs his attention to the study of the psychical side
of the training. There are two fields in which the study must be
pursued. One is the officer’s own personality, the other that of
his non-commissioned officers and men. T. & M.R., 8, deals with the
former, and should be read and pondered over.
In battle good men have sometimes achieved victory in spite of the
shortcomings of their officers, but good officers, as well as men,
are necessary for consistent success in the series of battles which
make a campaign. Now, good officers, given time for training, will
infallibly produce good men, provided the latter are of the average
physique and courage. Therefore, study thyself, and try to see
what you lack, in order to become a good officer. Cultivate your
skill in handling your men by reading any books you can get; there
are, unfortunately, not very many that deal with the work of such
small units as companies or even single battalions. Go out into the
country, or, if you have not time, recall to yourself some bit of
country you know, and import an enemy into the landscape. Perhaps a
few riflemen are holding ground on the flank of a road along which
your battalion wants to march, but cannot, without undue loss, until
these riflemen are driven off; and your commanding officer tells
you to do the driving. In imagination, or on the ground, decide
what position you would hold, if you were the enemy, in order to
make yourself as nasty as possible—though having no hope of being
reinforced—to the battalion trying to come along the road. Then
settle in your mind what you, as commanding your company, would do to
get rid of the annoyance. Be quite clear, what would you do? Go at
them bald-headed? There are times and enemies when this is the best
way; you would have to be fairly close, and the enemy not shooting
very straight, and rather careful of his skin; or will you march a
long way round till the enemy sees you are getting behind him, and so
manœuvre him out? Then your battalion will be a long time waiting.
Or will you look at the ground and find, let us suppose, a spot to
which you will send a section or platoon to open a fire on the enemy,
while another works its way to a point you have noted from which
fire can be brought to sweep crossways a little knoll, or some such
supposititious feature which seems to form the enemy’s left flank,
and to be occupied by ten or twelve men, and which gives command
over the rest of his position? Then, while the second lot is on its
way, you plan to lead the remainder a little way round, under cover,
in order to get to fairly close range of the knoll, so that when the
second party opens fire on it, and its defenders are hampered both
by this fire and by that of those you first posted, you may surprise
them by an outburst of fire from your reserve, and either drive
them off their perch by cross-fire from three directions, or, if
they do not shift, run in at them with the bayonet, trusting to get
across the intervening space at the cost of a few casualties, when
your superior numbers at that point should ensure your success even
if they actually await the bayonet. Learn to consider quickly how
many ways there are of doing such a job as the above, and to decide
quickly and rationally which is the best.
These schemes, involving only a company or two, will not be presented
for your solution by your battalion commander; you must set them
yourself, and their solution, and the thinking necessary thereto
are the best methods an officer can get of training himself without
having his men on the ground. In your mind’s eye, put your company
into every situation you can think of, and get it out again, and you
will have acquired an enormous reserve of capacity for acting quickly
and rightly when your men and your enemy are both on the ground. But
beware of dealing in too short distances, or you may produce unreal
pictures of war. Do not imagine manœuvres at four hundred yards from
the enemy when every man exposed would be hit in a few minutes. The
clearness and decision of thought you acquire will be reflected in
the orders you give. Your men will give you their confidence when
they see, as they are quick to do, that you know your job. There
is nothing more disheartening for a subordinate, be he private or
colonel, than to feel he is under control of a duffer, whose mistakes
he will have to correct. This feeling saps discipline, and quickly
destroys the fighting value of a body of men. In peace training, the
men become sulky at being “bothered about,” lose interest in their
work, and wish themselves done with parade. In war, their personal
characters usurp the control of their actions, and they become a mob
in uniform.
* * * * *
But in addition to possessing the confidence of the men in your
tactical ability, you should seek all other means to increase your
influence over them. Gain their respect in other ways, by honesty
of purpose, by example, tact, devotion to duty, and so on. Gain
their goodwill by watching over their individual and collective
interests, though in this you must play to the gallery sufficiently
to let them identify you as the source of benefits received. Keep
an even temper, and do not show anger without good cause. Personal
attachment to their officer shows itself most when men’s powers are
taxed by hardship, fatigue, and danger; it is then a great auxiliary
in maintaining discipline among the mass.
VI.
As regards the _moral_ of the men, I.T., 1 (4 to 10) must be referred
to. You _must_ introduce discipline—the habit of subordinating
personal inclination to the orders of the superior promptly and
without cavil. If your men are raw, you have to go slow just at first
till they all know what is expected of them. Let them understand that
orders are not given haphazard, but are invariably based on some good
reason, which, being so, there is no need for reasons to be always
stated, nor for recipients of orders to feel unhappy for want of
them. If you can induce a feeling among the men that slackness on
parade, slowness in obeying orders, and so on, are bad form, and
tend to disgrace the company, you will do well, and this good spirit
will enable you to enforce discipline without having recourse to
punishment, if you are vested with the power of inflicting it.
I have already said that when in close order during tactical
exercises, you should maintain discipline in the ranks. I now go
further and say that you should maintain it when the men are extended
or detached from the company singly or in small groups. Evidently
the discipline here needed is something more than mere mechanical
obedience. What it is, is to be found in T. & M.R., 39 (4), and
F.S.R. 12 (13), and I.T., 116 and 117. Make the men understand that
when they are extended they must obey their unit commander’s orders
and signals as to fire and movement at once, and without hesitation,
and must be always on the look-out for them. Allow no talking, except
what relates to the business in hand, such as passing of orders or
information, results of fire, and so on. Hold the men responsible
that if they are out of reach of the control of their leader, it is
their duty to carry out the spirit of the orders under which they
set out. To bring their responsibility home to them, you must make a
point of calling men occasionally to give an account of what they
did when detached, and why they did it, so that they may pause for a
moment if they are of the sort that take advantage of opportunity to
sit behind a hedge and smoke a cigarette when they ought to be up and
doing.
Here you will naturally say that this is all very well, but how is
one to look after men scattered here and there over several hundred
yards of rough country? Here come in the non-commissioned officers,
of whom, so far, no mention has been made, and also your subaltern
officers. Since success in battle will depend largely on the
efficiency of fire unit commanders, and the normal fire unit is the
section (I.T., 6 (4)), it is evident that the section commander is a
very responsible person, and much must be expected from him.
Your subalterns and platoon sergeants you must use as your delegates
in supervising and leading the platoons to which they belong, except
when they are needed to act specifically as platoon commanders,
keeping themselves constantly on the move among the men, looking
at the details of the work, sighting of rifles, aiming, use of
cover, choice of lines of movement, not lying down themselves nor
participating in the operation as combatants. When you wish to give
them practice in setting exercises themselves, turn the whole company
over to one of them and act yourself as critic, or act as subaltern
under his orders. This is one means of supervision.
The next is your non-commissioned officers. They are in direct
command, and you must hold them responsible for their sections,
but when their units are acting in conjunction with others, it is
evident they cannot act both as commanders and instructors unless
certain concessions are made, for if the non-commissioned officers
as well as the men of a section were to act as they would have to do
under real fire, each non-commissioned officer might be able only to
supervise a man or two on his right and left, the rest being too far
off. Therefore, at the beginning of an exercise, you should tell the
non-commissioned officers whether, in addition to giving executive
commands, they are to be at liberty to move about freely and act as
instructors also. Needless to say, in instructional exercises, and
until the men are quite seasoned, you should let them do this, but,
on the other hand, in exercises meant to illustrate actual conflict
and the limitations imposed by the presence of an enemy, they should
pay attention to those limitations so that they, as well as the
men, may be prepared to endure the disabilities imposed by Service
conditions.
Next comes yourself. Once you have given your subordinates your
orders for any exercise, leave them to carry it through, and make
yourself as ubiquitous as may be in supervision. Keep criticism for
the end, and interference only for the prevention of absurdities. To
make yourself ubiquitous, the best way is to use your horse, and make
the noble animal do the running about with you on his back. You can
then get through about six times what you can on your own feet, by
cantering from one section to another, and you get a better view of
the whole performance, but you must remember when correcting anything
the men are doing that you are mounted, while they are probably
kneeling or lying, and much that you see is invisible to them. Equip
yourself with a pair of field glasses, and also with a megaphone,
which latter should be about fourteen inches long, and carried by a
strap over the shoulder, the strap punched so as to be capable of
being made long or buckled up close under the arm, according as you
need to use the megaphone, or wish to get it out of your way. Use
your glasses to look at what sections and individual men in them are
doing. They will reveal to you small mistakes that escape notice at
some distance with the unaided eye. The megaphone saves you a lot of
small excursions to get to earshot of men, and also a lot of shouting
at a distance, which is fatiguing, and is apt to lead to exacerbation
of tempers, both of the shouter and the listener. Moreover, it
enables you to hear as well as speak from a distance. This is done
simply by holding it aimed at the other man with your ear instead of
your mouth at the mouthpiece. Use your whistle to call attention to
orders or signals, carry it in your hand, not in your pocket, and
put a loop in the cord and pass the loop over your middle finger,
or you will be always dropping it. Instead of a cane, carry a small
semaphore flag, and give your signals with it. This saves a good deal
of arm-waving, and tends to smarten up movement, as it is more easily
seen than the arm. By bringing all these aids into your service,
you will find that you can make your influence felt, although the
sections are separated by the greatest distances which they are ever
likely to be called on to take up in battle.
VII.
Besides discipline, there are certain other moral influences which
give strength to an Army. These are indicated in I.T., 1 (4 and 5).
The two mighty forces of religion and patriotism are not treated
of here, as they have their roots not in any system of training,
but in the upbringing of the youth of the nation, but there is one
force which you, as a humble commander, can call into play, and that
is shame—the dread of losing the respect of oneself and of one’s
comrades. During peace training you may make men dread the public
shame of misbehaviour by the aid of those means of supervision which
I have suggested, but in war the power to supervise is greatly
curtailed, and it is very desirable to find something to replace it,
and, at the same time, to supplement a too absolute reliance on the
stoutness of men’s hearts, for this may prove a broken reed when the
troops are largely composed of unseasoned soldiers.
* * * * *
To a certain extent, the organisation of the company into permanent
sections provides us with the substitute we desire, as the men of
sections are likely to be cognisant of how their comrades behave
when out of view of the rest of the company as long as the whole
of the men of the section are in view of each other; but this will
not always be the case: for example, in wood fighting or in house
fighting, both of which would assuredly occur if our men have to
fight in Europe. In such fighting everything comes down to the
pushfulness of the individual soldiers, for even sections will lose
their leaders. Therefore let us carry the principle of the company
organisation logically one step further, and make the men of a file
as they fall in on parade in the section act in conjunction for the
remainder of that parade. This arrangement is recognised in the last
edition of the Musketry Regulations, and has, at various times, been
adopted in former drill books of our Army, and has given excellent
results, while, if the present book does not prescribe it, at least
it countenances it (I.T., 123 (12)), and I strongly recommend your
introducing it into your company. It is likely to produce emulation
in the fire fight among men whose hearts are in the right place, and
in the assault it must produce the advantages of combination, for two
men coming on with the bayonet in conjunction are far more likely to
do someone an injury than if they each came on independently, since
in the latter case a cool and skilful antagonist might dispose of one
and then the other, even as the Japanese are said to have stepped
aside when charged by the Russians, who, running forward blindly and
head down, fell an easy prey to their alert little enemies, and were
bayoneted in succession as they arrived. The proof of this pudding is
the eating thereof, and if your company ever happens to be alongside
a company told off daily into haphazard sections, as is sometimes
done, in spite of rules, you will then see the difference, even if it
is only at manœuvres. In close order they may still look alike, but
let them be extended in rough country, and you will see that yours
is the blade of steel; the particles of its metal are coherent; it
will bend, but not break. The other is of wrought iron, polished on
the surface but of brittle material, and sure to fly to pieces in any
rough usage. By this file organisation you will produce in the men
in the ranks the highest degree of cohesion—the habit of regulating
their own actions in accordance with the actions and needs of others
in furtherance of one general aim.
Having secured this cohesion among the men, you have still to
produce it within the company as between platoons and sections.
For cohesion is the coping stone of the edifice of efficiency,
and rests on a basis of discipline, moral and training. It makes
possible the application of the principle of mutual support
which is indispensable in the attack (F.S.R., 105 (4)), and it
enables retirements and defensive action to be carried out without
disorganisation, and with the minimum of loss. Whenever sections act
together, see to it that the non-commissioned officers keep an eye
on the movements of the others, and question them as to the extent
their orders to their sections should be influenced by the needs and
movements of the others. By this means they will be induced to check
the inclination to play only for their own hands, and to remember
always that their unit is part of a combination which can best attain
success by acting accordingly.
VIII.
Training is the preparation of officers and men for the duties which
they will carry out in war. These duties consist in the application
of the principles contained in the training manuals, and it is your
business to provide concrete examples. But in these days of long
range arms combats take a very long time, and you cannot expect in
a parade of perhaps one or at most two hours, and with a limited
extent of ground, to carry out all the varied phases of an operation
which, in warfare, would take anything from six to eighteen hours to
complete, and would extend over perhaps five or six miles of country,
even if we limit ourselves to the extreme ranges of heavy artillery,
and take no account of movements not within the range of possible
fire. Therefore, in your training, you must be analytical, choosing
for one parade such phase or phases as you have time and ground for,
and doing the others later on. When your company knows all it can be
taught thus piecemeal, it will be early enough to try to get time and
ground to perform continuous operations.
* * * * *
For instance, infantry in the attack will usually have to go through
three phases: first, the advance to fire positions; second, the fire
fight (I.T., 121 (6)); and, third, the assault, which latter must be
divided into the charge and the steps which follow it according as it
is successful or not. You will have to train for these three phases.
The first, against an enemy armed with guns and rifles, would consist
in opening out from column of route into little columns—sections or
platoons—and moving forward in this formation, the main object being
to escape being smashed to pieces by his artillery fire before being
able to do him any damage (I.T., 118 (3)). Later, you would come
under his rifle fire, and your little columns must scatter out into
lines of men in extended order (I.T., 118 (5)). These movements seem,
and are, very easy, but still they must be practised in peace if they
are to be done coolly and without confusion in time of war when the
first intimation of the necessity for opening out may be the shriek
and crash of what will be to most of the men the first shrapnel they
have ever seen, and withal aimed at themselves. This phase requires
the presence of all four platoons of the company, and so may be kept
over till the men have been trained in the phase which it precedes,
namely, that of the fire fight.
* * * * *
The fire fight begins when the attacking infantry have got as far
forward as they can without having to reply to the enemy’s fire, and
it is quite distinct from the preceding phase of passive endurance.
Success in the fire fight is an absolute necessity for a successful
assault. Possibly your enemy has prepared your success before war
broke out by abstaining from training his men in musketry, but even
if his shooting is inferior, the fire fight will call into play
all the qualities and skill of which your men are possessed, both
individually and collectively. Accordingly you should practise them
in the fire fight from the opening of their fire up to the assault,
first individually and then collectively.
The assault can be dissected into the fixing of bayonets with
as little cessation of fire as possible, the charge itself,
followed, according as it is held to have been successful or not,
by the rallying of the troops, pursuit of the enemy by fire and
strengthening of the captured position, or the withdrawal or such
mitigation of the results of failure as may fairly be attempted.
Thus, by considering the attack as made up of phases as above, it
is, I think, possible and instructive to practise each one of them
separately, on a short parade, and on limited ground, by placing
the men in the order in which they would be at beginning of any one
phase, and carrying on from there.
Before beginning any exercise, call your non-commissioned officers
out to the front, and explain to them and to the men, in very full
detail, what the exercise is intended to be, what points particularly
require attention, how you want it done, and the sequence of events,
if it involves combined action between the different units; whether
the company is supposed to be acting by itself or as part of the
battalion, and, if the latter, whether your side are having the
support of artillery fire or not, where the enemy is, and what he
is, i.e., is he infantry only, or has he also cavalry and guns, what
he is supposed to be doing, attacking, defending, retiring, marching,
or what. Deal with all such points before you start, otherwise you
will find your non-commissioned officers and men filling in the
blanks each according to his own bent of imagination, and everyone
in consequence playing at a different game. To be thus able to
define the scope and arrangements of the exercise, you must have it
clearly planned out in all detail in your head. This you should do if
possible the day before the parade, so that you will have the thing
well thought out, and events marshalled in logical sequence.
At all exercises, if possible, have the enemy represented by a
skeleton force, as directed by T. & M.R., 48, a few actual men with
blank cartridge, and a red range flag or two to roughly define the
enemy’s position. Use for this purpose old soldiers, if you have
them, or, at least, men who have already performed the exercise
you mean to do, and it is better to take one or two men from each
platoon than to send off a whole section, and so break up the company
organisation. Six or eight men are quite enough to form any skeleton
enemy that is needed for a company to manœuvre against. You must give
the skeleton enemy definite orders as to what they are to represent,
where they are to go, and what to do and not to do. If they are given
at all a free hand, especially if under the enterprising British
subaltern, they are very apt to indulge in far-reaching manœuvres,
and subject you to sudden raids and onslaughts which upset your
scheme for the parade, and leave you no enemy at the very point you
wished to have him. If you cannot arrange for a skeleton enemy, at
least never fail to indicate some position as supposed to be held
by an enemy. If your exercise ground is limited in extent, fix the
enemy’s position outside it, regardless of whether you have, or
have not, licence to traverse the intervening space, so as to avoid
carrying out your exercise within impossibly close range of the
enemy. In default of a skeleton enemy to provide you with a target,
tell your men to aim at any members of the public who are about the
enemy’s position. This is better than snapping at inanimate objects,
as it gives more interest and so keeps up careful aiming. As regards
the general method of training, follow commonsense and the manuals,
and work from individual up to collective, bearing in mind always
that collective work is built up of the work of the individuals who
throughout have to be kept up to the collar by the various arts which
I have touched on. The less of the iron hand that is shown the
better.
IX.
I make no mention of scouts, as they are specialists. They must be
selected after you have got to know all the men of your company and
their capabilities. Their training as scouts cannot be carried out by
you personally at the same time that you are training the company.
To be really of use, it will be a whole-time job for one officer,
and you will either have to turn them over to one of the subalterns,
or go with them yourself, preferably the former, if the subaltern
is capable. When they are trained and fall in on parade as scouts
in their sections, it is a good plan to have places permanently
reserved for them as third files from the left of sections (the blank
file’s place) so that they can leave the ranks without disturbing the
formation for forming fours.
As regards dress one thing is quite certain, and that is that with
only one suit of uniform men cannot appear clean and smart off duty
in it, and yet use it for field work with all the lying down and
knockabout wear involved. In time of national danger, appearances
will go to the wall, and men will do their work at the expense of the
fit of their one and only suit of uniform.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A cause now exists, and the men have come out.
EXERCISE I.
INDIVIDUAL ADVANCE IN EXTENDED ORDER.
The exercise portrays what men will have to do when the rifle fire
of the enemy becomes effective, and necessitates extension of the
small columns which are used to dodge his shell fire (I.T., 118 (3)).
This will be somewhere over one thousand yards from the enemy, and
perhaps fourteen hundred may be taken as a maximum. From the point
at which extension from the small columns is made up till the time
of the assault, a line of men in extended order is the suitable
formation, unless there is some covered way leading forward which
can be traversed in file or other formation. Once the advance has
begun it should be carried through as quickly as possible without
exhausting the men too much, and fire should not be opened until it
is absolutely necessary to neutralise that of the enemy, firstly,
because it lessens the speed of the advance and so increases the time
during which the attackers are exposed to the enemy’s fire; secondly,
because once men start firing it is more difficult to lead them
forward; and, thirdly, because it uses up cartridges whose value and
difficulty of replacement increases at every yard nearer the enemy’s
position.
The exercise is then to train men to gain ground to the front with
the minimum of exposure to the enemy’s fire, and as quickly as may
be, firstly, without firing, and, secondly, while firing themselves,
but in the latter case speed must be subordinated to the development
of a fire of sufficient accuracy and volume to largely neutralise
that of the enemy, for at this stage of the battle advances under
fire will only be possible if it is inaccurate; and the only certain
means of causing it to be inaccurate is by disturbing the enemy’s
nerves and aim by bringing to bear on him the fire both of supporting
troops and of the firing line itself (I.T., 118 (6)).
The regulations do not encourage the opening of fire by units less
than two platoons at ranges over one thousand yards as the results
do not compensate for the delay. Under one thousand and up to six
hundred it is desired that fire should be controlled and directed,
i.e., the amount, and the target should be specified by commanders
(I.T., 116). Under six hundred yards it is recognised that
individual fire gives good results, and, moreover, control becomes
almost impossible.
Divide your exercise accordingly. First, teach merely the advance
without firing, letting the men know that they are not to fire, as
a rule, without orders under six hundred yards, and then let them
advance firing at each halt behind cover, choosing their own target
and times of firing as they would do in the stage of “close fire,”
i.e., six or perhaps eight hundred yards up to assaulting distance,
which latter is about two hundred yards from the enemy’s line of
defences.
This parade is one that can be done with very few men present, but it
is necessary to form them up into sections with a large proportion
of non-commissioned officers. Keep the men in their proper sections,
but, if necessary, join two or three together, so as to form sections
with three or four non-commissioned officers to each. Thus, if you
form four sections, they should each be in reality a boiling down of
the platoons. In future exercises I will also suppose that you thus
concentrate your men, keeping the members of each section together,
and form them into sections of size suitable to the work of the day,
and no further allusion will be made to this.
Before taking the men on to the exercise ground, you should choose
a point on it from which you intend to start your advance. Some
fourteen hundred or less yards from this choose a position for your
skeleton enemy, who will consist of three or four old soldiers with
forty rounds of blank each. If men are not available, put up a few
red range flags. Whichever are used, put them into some position that
an enemy might reasonably occupy; do not simply dump them down on to
the ground. The skeleton enemy must be told to show up occasionally,
and to open a slow but regular fire as soon as they see your men
advancing, but only to keep it up as long as your men show themselves
in making their advance. A complete cessation of fire will denote
that your men are making such good use of cover as to be invisible
to the enemy. Let your men also know that these instructions have
been given, and that such an advance is the ideal to be sought for,
provided always that it is not absurdly slow. If neither men nor
flags are available you must make believe and point out a supposed
position at a supposed distance. I have already pointed out the
advantages of having a skeleton enemy to work against.
In front of your starting point, and about four hundred yards from
it, decide on some point at which you will let the men halt after
they have made their way across the intervening space. Here I will
refer you to the diagram. The line AA´ is your starting point, CC´
the enemy’s position. Your exercise consists in showing individual
men how to gain ground from AA´ as far as BB´, distant about four
hundred yards from AA´, with the minimum of exposure to the enemy’s
aimed fire. Draw up the sections, supposing there are two, on the
line AA´, fifty to one hundred yards apart, and let the men sit down
facing away from CC´ and, if possible, under cover, so that they may
not see how their comrades negotiate the course. Space the available
non-commissioned officers of each section along the course from A to
B and A´ to B´, with orders to supervise and criticise the advance
of each man within the limits of their beats. Allow a belt of twenty
to thirty yards broad from A to B and from A´ up to B´, within which
men must seek their cover. This belt is made broad here to afford
instruction, but when the men work together in their sections, it
will be much narrower, as they will then be extended at intervals of
five or six paces only. Start off one man at a time from each section
to cross from AA´ to BB´, to move as if under fire from the enemy in
rushes from one cover to another. As soon as a man reaches BB´ he
may fall out and watch the movements of the remainder. Do not send
off a fresh man until the preceding one has nearly reached BB´, so
that your non-commissioned officers may have good opportunity to look
at each man as he goes. As for yourself, be active in supervising
both sections, using your horse if you have one.
DIAGRAM I. FOR EXERCISES I. & II. [Illustration:
CC´ = Enemy’s position about 1400^X from AA´. Enemy being
represented by men with blank cartridge or flags.
AA´ = Starting points 1400 yards from enemy’s position.
Men start from AA´ to cross to BB´ without exposing themselves to
the enemy at CC.´
Crosses indicate cover, and the chain dotted lines routes by which
men may advance.
AA´ to BB´ is about 400^X]
The following are points to be attended to:—Before leaving their
cover, men must decide where their next halting place is to be, and
make for it quickly, and with decision. There must be no emerging
into the open, and then looking about for a bit of cover to go
for. The length of each rush should not be enough to let the enemy
have time for deliberate aim—fifty yards or so is quite the limit
for this. If there is no cover the men must lie down flat between
each rush. Occasionally it is advisable to make a long rush from
one good position to another at sprinting pace without stopping at
all (I.T., 121 (12)), so this should be practised sometimes, the
non-commissioned officers at that part of the beat being ordered
to tell the men what is needed. Once a man has decided on his next
halting place, and is in wind, he should leave his cover with a jump.
The slow uprising of a figure is sure to draw the enemy’s attention,
and make his fire more accurate than it would be if no intimation
were given him. Similarly, on reaching cover, men should fall down
quickly, and not lower themselves slowly to earth.
Insist on a careful choice of cover, a very small depression or
elevation, even six inches, is enough to give cover from view, and
therefore helps in escaping aimed fire, but in peace time men will
not take trouble over apparently trifling things like this unless it
is rubbed into them by close supervision. Noticeable objects should
be avoided as the enemy may have taken their range, and they help
him to define a point on which to concentrate fire. If a man makes
mistakes and shows indecision at any part of the course, call him
back to the last cover he left, and let him start again from there
after pointing out what he has done wrong.
_II. The advance combined with individual fire._
The second part of the exercise is done in the same way as the first,
the men advancing and taking cover as before, but now using their
rifles. They have to be taught to use the cover to advantage, both
as a protection and as an aid to their shooting, and to take pains
in searching for a good target, and in their sighting, aiming and
firing. For purposes of instruction, six hundred yards is rather a
short range to open fire at, and I recommend your making a start at
eight hundred or so, i.e., two hundred yards beyond BB´ towards the
enemy, working up to four hundred. This necessitates judging distance
at beyond the practically point-blank ranges of the Lee-Enfield
rifle, and makes the men use their eyes keenly to spot the enemy,
while it avoids a certain amount of unreality which is apt to attach
to instructional movements carried on in front of a skeleton enemy at
the deadly short ranges under three hundred yards.
Points which should be considered are:—
To fire from the right and lower edge of any cover, not over the top.
Make the men keep a count of the number of times they snap over the
course (i.e., cartridges used), and report to the non-commissioned
officer at the finish of their course.
Let the men do their own judging distance, and let non-commissioned
officers drop at once on any man who either fails to do so, or
forgets, as they often do, to adjust the backsight.
Cultivate a habit among the men of looking about for different
targets, not firing only straight in front of themselves, but on
their right and left, so that when they come to fire collectively
they may feel nothing new in being told to open the enfilade fire
recommended by I.T., 116 (11), and also get the custom of watching
for the enemy all along his front.
These two exercises of advancing with and without firing are
the groundwork of the fighting efficiency of the soldier in the
attack, and will be found to call for every natural and acquired
qualification the individual possesses. Good shooting, quick
judgment, activity, wind, and everything else are needed if the
work is done with full observance of the conditions which would
exist under fire. Put the men through exercises of this sort several
times, and, if possible, on different ground, till they acquire
quickness in choosing cover and the arts that make an expert fighter.
Confidence in themselves will come with the skill they acquire,
and with confidence comes decision of mind, which is really more
important than bodily efficiency. If you have time, a useful rider to
this exercise is to work the men by pairs, as is recommended in the
Musketry Regulations for the observation of fire, and so introduce
them early to the use of the file organisation which I have advised
you to adopt.
EXERCISE II.
RETIREMENT BY PAIRS.
A sound provision against panic among young troops is to accustom
them to regard a retirement as all in the day’s work, and not as
an exceptional undertaking which their anxiety may invest with
possibilities of disaster. The essence of successful retirement in
face of an enemy lies in the continuous opposition, or appearance
of it, offered to the enemy by one portion of the troops, while
others draw off to take post to cover the withdrawal of the rearmost
portion. I.T., 137, gives the idea in few words. It does not mention
individual training in this, but it is useful to put men through the
movements, both to cultivate cohesion in the ranks, and as a tactical
exercise. It may happen in war that an extended line has to give
ground when engaged with the enemy, and this under so heavy a fire as
to make movement except over short distances impossible without great
loss. Such a withdrawal would mean that the troops are in a very
tight corner, and would test them very highly, but that is another
matter. It may happen, and should be prepared for. A withdrawal
under these conditions might perhaps be carried out by the alternate
movement of men in files covered by the fire of the others, until
such a distance from the enemy had been obtained as to allow sections
or companies to take up the alteration. Up to that distance it will
be simply a reversal of what was done in Exercise I., but worked by
files—a front rank man and his rear rank man, one going back a short
distance, and the other firing to cover the movement. Again, men on
patrol or otherwise detached may have to retire to avoid capture, or
for many other reasons, when they might not be under close and heavy
fire, but still would be under the necessity of preventing the enemy
closing in on them or surrounding them. In this case, the length
of each withdrawal would be much longer than in the former case;
one man would fire while the other made off perhaps two or three
hundred yards at his best speed. Train for both contingencies; it
can be done in one and the same parade. Skeleton enemy as usual. For
the withdrawal under heavy fire, let the sections sit down and fall
out at BB´ (Diagram I.), and put out the non-commissioned officers
between BA and B´ A´ as before. Call out the men by files, tell them
to work back to A and A´, one firing, the other retiring. As a rule
they should retire past each other before halting. The same points
must be observed as in Exercise No. I, and the quicker they are in
movement the better, but they must be taught to go in quick time also
when so ordered (I.T., 137 (4)).
For the retirement of a file as on patrol, do exactly the same, but
you should work over six hundred yards of ground or so to correct any
tendency to import the short rush into this exercise, which would
be out of place, and also to let men have more practice in looking
for suitable fire positions from which they can both fire on the
enemy, _and from which they can get away when their turn comes_, a
point they often neglect at first. The different nature of the two
exercises must be made quite clear.
At this exercise you should bring before your men the need of using
all sorts of _ruses_ in a retirement, the use of rapid fire just
before withdrawing, the sham withdrawal acted by ceasing fire, and
retiring a few yards, but only to halt and re-open fire after a few
seconds if the enemy has been tempted to expose himself, thinking the
coast clear, the real withdrawal effected so carefully that the enemy
is not sure whether you are there still or not, and so on; and make
them put their own ideas of these plans into action and tell them if
they are doing what is feasible on service or not. Bar all “manœuvre
slimness,” i.e., anything that could not be done on service.
EXERCISE III.
INDIVIDUAL TRAINING IN USE OF FIRE AND FIRE DISCIPLINE.
Early lessons in fire discipline can be given in single rank on the
parade ground, but the open country and extended order are wanted for
training men to the fullest extent under service conditions. Only
in the open country can be got the variety of targets, ranges and
the visual training which are necessary for a complete education.
Men must be taught, and taught again, that the taking up of extended
order, and movement over all sorts of ground, in no way mean that
they are to pass at once beyond the control of their unit leaders, or
that it is optional to continue to take any sort of pains with their
shooting just because their non-commissioned officers cannot stand
over them, but have to shout orders from a distance.
This exercise consists in advancing and retiring in extended order
with fire and the use of cover when halted; but to allow for more
prolonged shooting practice and closer supervision than are possible
when carrying out an attack or retirement as on service, the halts
are longer and movements should at first be made in quick time.
Put out your skeleton enemy on a good broad front, so as to allow
room for change of targets, and do not have them all in one straight
line, so that each target shall call for a change of sighting. Let
the sections work independently of each other under their section
commanders, who, with the other non-commissioned officers, will have
to act both as commanders and instructors. Bring the sections up to
about twelve hundred yards from the enemy; get them into a line with
intervals between them, i.e., spaces measuring from the flank of one
to the flank of the other, sufficient to admit of each section being
extended to two or three paces between men without its flank men
coming too close to those of other sections, e.g., with two sections
of eight file, i.e., sixteen men each; you must leave room for half
of each to extend to two paces towards the other, and keep a fair
interval; that is, from the centre of each of the above sections of
eight men in each rank you want 8 ÷ 2 (half the number in the front
rank) × 2 (two ranks) × 2 (two paces extension) = 16 paces for the
line extended and an interval of, say, 30 yards, which gives 46
yards between each section centre to centre. Now, let the section
commanders order the men to extend, lie down, take cover and open
fire. The unit commander, the non-commissioned officer in charge of
the section, is to name the target and distance and also the rate of
fire, rapid or slow, at all distances over six hundred yards from
the enemy (I.T., 116 (5)), unless it is desired on occasion to train
men to do this for themselves. After fire has been delivered, direct
section commanders to proceed with the exercise, giving orders for
advancing, halting and firing, the advance to be made from cover to
cover as in Exercise No. I, but in quick time. Yourself supervise in
chief, and tell section commanders when you want to give orders as
to the firing or movement, and let them give the executive commands,
after which you and they should pass along the lines and scrutinise
each man’s actions in carrying out the orders, questioning them, and
repealing hints you may have given when telling them the object and
methods of the practice, if they appear not to be giving them effect.
The value of the practice depends on the orders you give as to the
firing and the following are suggested:—
(_a_) Switching the fire of all the rifles on to different parts
of the enemy’s position, sometimes straight in front, _but quite
as often_ at his extreme flanks. This is to introduce the use of
enfilade fire (I.T., 116 (11)) and the habit of giving support by
fire to other units (F.S.R., 105 (4)), by concentrating the fire on
to particular targets.
(_b_) Distributing the fire laterally along the whole or a part
of the enemy’s front (I.T., 116 (10)). This may be done by giving
the section a particular extent of the enemy’s front, e.g., “from
the dry tree to the gate in the hedge.” The section commander
then allots those of the enemy, who can be viewed within his bit
of front to individual men, or preferably files of men, who are
to treat them as their especial charge and keep on firing at them
till otherwise ordered, or till the enemy shifts. Of course, if
there is not enough of the skeleton enemy to give each file in the
section a live antagonist (and there won’t be on your parades), the
commander must indicate bits of cover which individual men of the
enemy might be expected to use and tell his men to fire at these
spots. This is a most important practice, and needs a good deal of
attention and application before the men get really quick at it. It
means, of course, that on service you will make it your business
to allow as few of the enemy’s riflemen as possible to be free of
the distraction of having some bullets landing about them, to upset
their nerves and aim. Unless some plan is adopted to do this all
along his line, it is all too probable your men will be exposed to
some accurate fire from rifles held in steady hands, and even one
rifle so held has, to my knowledge, caused a loss of eleven men in
as many minutes. This lateral distribution is rather difficult, but
it is easy, compared with the concomitant task of spotting where the
men of the enemy are hidden, if they really try to hide, at anything
but the shortest fighting ranges. The only remedy for this is for
each private to carry field glasses of sorts; you will not get them
from Government, but if any of your men are keen enough to go in
for spotting a hidden enemy for themselves with glasses and would
bring their own to parade, forbid them not, but encourage it. I have
been told that in some of the yeomanry corps in the South African
war nearly every trooper raised somehow and somewhere a pair of
glasses—some were mother o’ pearl and silver-mounted, but did the
spotting all right in spite of that.
(_c_) Passing orders and changing targets. Under heavy fire
non-commissioned officers will not be able to move along the line,
and orders must be passed either by word of mouth or by written
messages passed from hand to hand; the former is apt to be slow,
and the orders garbled en route unless practised beforehand; the
latter is not very practical as men in action are too busy to read
bits of paper or trouble themselves to see that they are passed on
(I.T., 119 (4)). To practise the verbal method while the men are
engaged in firing at any particular target, give orders to one man
in a low tone (you would have to speak loud if ball cartridge were
being used) to fire at some other target, and to pass the word.
The man then tells his neighbours on each side, and yourself and a
non-commissioned officer then follow the order each way, and when a
man varies it admonish him to repeat just what he got from the last
speaker, no more and no less. In a little time the men will become
exact in taking and passing messages. This method should be confined
to directions about firing; orders for movement should invariably
be given by commanders by word themselves or signal, and men should
not be allowed to repeat these, as it may lead to grave mistakes on
service, as a signal may be seen and acted on by someone for whom it
was not intended.
(_d_) Besides firing at the skeleton enemy or bits of cover, let
fire be directed at civilians who are moving about in the field of
view. Call on some individual man by name to choose some such target,
and tell him he has to pass the word to the rest of his squad what
target he has chosen and to fire at it. This gives practice in target
definition, i.e., describing its position so that other men can know
just where to look for it. It is not easy in a landscape devoid of
noticeable objects to do this quickly, but it is important, as the
difficulty of locating a well-concealed enemy with smokeless powder
requires that every pair of eyes in the ranks should be engaged in
the search till all the positions of the enemy’s riflemen are seen,
and the information given to everyone in the firing line. Until this
is done, the affair is one of trying to neutralise aimed by unaimed
fire, a pretty hopeless task. Hence train your men to use their eyes
for seeing and their tongues for description.
(_e_) Accustoming the men to judge distance, and use their backsights
without orders. Judging distance for the men as a formal practice is
confined to ranges under 800 yards, but it does no harm to let them
judge greater ranges. Let the unit commanders define targets to be
fired at, omitting to state the range, and let the men judge it for
themselves and fire. Walk up the line and see that no man forgets to
adjust his backsight for the distance he estimates. If possible, have
the correct ranges taken previously with a range finder, and let the
men know what they are after they have aimed. Each change of target
gives the men a useful lesson in judging distance.
(_f_) Having put the men through all sorts of paces in the way of
firing while advancing and retiring, in quick time do the same thing
again, but with the movements in double time, and, in addition,
carry out the increases and decreases of the extension, inclines and
changes of direction given in I.T., 93, throughout insisting on the
same steadiness in firing as when in quick time. All this will at
first probably get the men “rattled,” and the benefit of it is that
after some of it they will get over being “rattled,” and will not let
hurried orders or speed of movement interfere with deliberation and
steadiness in shooting.
EXERCISE IV.
THE ASSAULT.
Exercise III. can suitably be wound up by a practice in delivering
an assault, as this does not take long, and the moral may be pointed
that all fire training is only a preparation for a successful
assault. The fixing of bayonets before assault commonly leads to
a complete cessation of fire in the firing line. This is quite
wrong, as such complete cessation of fire by the firing line must
largely surrender for the time being that superiority of fire which
facilitates the delivery of the assault (I.T., 121 (7)), for it gives
the enemy a chance to take aim again. Supporting fire by artillery
or infantry not in the firing line cannot be relied on when the
firing line has reached assaulting distance. Therefore, do not have a
simultaneous fixing of bayonets, but let one-half fix while the other
fires, and the best arrangement is evidently one that ensures a fire
being kept up along the whole front and not in patches. The system I
have found most satisfactory is to fix bayonets by ranks, the front
rank fixing while the rear rank continues firing, and then the rear
rank fixing while the front rank fires. It may be done by odd and
even files, or other ways, but, the company being organised in files,
the same men are usually in the front and rear rank, and there is no
difficulty in their remembering which they are. The important thing
is to adhere to one system once it is adopted, and have it well
understood by all. It does not matter much if a few men fix bayonets
out of turn, so long as the fire is merely diminished and not stopped
during the time bayonets are being fixed. In the charge, the men
should work by their files, i.e., the two men of each file should act
together and run at the same objective. The meaning of this is that
in actual conflict two men would go together for the same individual
enemy, and between the two of them they would be pretty sure to bring
him to an untimely end, if the enemy really waited for the steel, and
with less chance of his doing damage than if the combat took place
man-to-man; thereafter they could turn their attentions to some other
person.
For the practice choose and indicate any position for assault; work
sections up to about two hundred yards from it, and then order rapid
fire and bayonets to be fixed. As soon as all are ready, order the
charge to be sounded. (I.T., 124). When the men hear the bugle they
must at once jump from their cover and go straight and hard at the
position; there must be no waiting by individuals to fire a last shot
or two. The rush should be made suddenly and swiftly, so that the
enemy has no time to see what is happening before the men are well on
their way at him. When the position is reached, pass right through
it and well beyond it, to escape hostile gunfire (I.T., 124 (5)),
and then order the “Halt,” when the men may lie down under cover and
open a pursuing fire. Walk along the line and see, with the help of
non-commissioned officers, whether men of each file are together; if
so, it will be proof that they have obeyed the directions to keep
together during the charge. Allow a minute or two of the pursuing
fire, then let section or platoon commanders sound their whistles,
close and reform their sections under cover. On the whistle-sound
(a succession of short blasts), men rise and double to where the
commander is, resume their places, and lie down. This re-organisation
is very important for you as company commander, for by it you get
your men formed up quickly into platoons and ready to be closed
into company or to take fresh orders in the minimum of time. The
usual thing seen is that after the assault the ground is covered
with a mixture of men of all companies staring about, and apparently
thinking the show at an end, whereas on service this is the very time
you may expect either a counter-attack by infantry or a burst of
artillery fire directed on the lost position.
To repeat the orders of the assault: “Rapid Fire; Fix Bayonets;
Charge; Halt and Take Cover; Commence Fire; Rally and Close Under
Cover,” and be ready for further happenings.
EXERCISE V.
THE SECTION AND PLATOON IN THE ATTACK.
Having trained the individual men in the work needed of them, the
next step is to make use of that individual skill to the best effect
in combination under orders of a commander. The section is the
lowest unit recognised for _training_ (I.T., 107), and it also is
the normal unit used in firing (I.T., 6 (4)). When the company is
advancing in the attack, or retiring, its sections and platoons will
often be widely separated from each other, and the company commander
cannot look after each one in detail, so that the platoon commanders,
and under them the section commanders, must be fully competent to
lead their men without supervision, in accordance with the general
intention given them before the company opened out. So the training
of men in combination must be accompanied by the training of your
section and platoon commanders.
The duties of fire unit commanders are laid down in I.T., 116 (5),
and those of section commanders in I.T., 116 and 123 (10). Before
you proceed with this exercise have up these non-commissioned
officers and devote ten minutes to an exposition of what is contained
in the above paragraphs. Dilate on them, and show how neglect of
those duties hampers the company commanders. At the same time,
desire them to maintain among the men during sectional exercises the
standard of individual training which was obtained in the preliminary
exercises. Unless they do so the men will soon cease to apply what
they then learnt, and so forget it in battle until the occurrence of
casualties impresses its value afresh in their minds. Also give them
the gist of what follows as to the advance and description of fire
phases.
The exercise gives commanders the opportunity of doing what they
will have to do when the company is attacking or retiring, but
without their having to keep an eye on the movements of the other
platoons. The men should now be extended at full intervals as on
service, five or six yards apart, this being held to be the most
that is needed. Put out the skeleton enemy in groups, one group as
objective of attack for each section or platoon on parade, and the
groups sufficiently apart to prevent them interfering with each other
when extended as above, for they are to act independently. Take up
the advance as if at fourteen hundred from the enemy, when his rifle
fire on open ground would compel you to change from small columns
of sections or platoons into the line of extended men (I.T., 118
(5)). The advance up to assaulting distance, from fourteen hundred
yards, consists (I.T., 121 (7)), in the first place, of an advance
to fire positions. Now Musketry Regulations lay down that fire by
less than two platoons is of little effect over one thousand yards,
so do not encourage commanders to open fire till one thousand yards
at least, and use the space fourteen hundred to one thousand yards
for instruction in getting their sections or platoons forward as
quickly, and with as little exposure, as possible. Secondly, the
advance consists of a fire fight combined with further advances up
to the assaulting position. In this fire fight controlled collective
fire is better than individual fire (I.T., 116 (7) (iii)), so up to
six hundred yards let firing take place, only on the specific orders
of commanders, who accordingly are to name the targets and ranges. In
this phase therefore make them choose forward fire positions and work
their units forward, using controlled collective fire at the same
time.
Under six hundred yards it is apparently held best to accept the
inevitable and allow individual fire, the unit commanders being still
responsible for getting their men forward up to the position of
assault—about two hundred yards from the enemy. Still at this close
range unit commanders should do what they can to direct the fire, and
especially they should see that men fire slowly and carefully. In
general the rate of firing or snapping is far too fast, and pouches
would be empty long before the assaulting position would be reached.
Owing to the great importance of training the sections, it is
advisable to let them do this exercise, through both the phases
below, separately from each other, and not in platoon. When they know
all about it, let them work in platoon.
Having drawn up your sections in line at fourteen hundred yards,
order the section commanders to extend and move on, and signal the
skeleton enemy to open fire.
_First Phase: Fourteen to One Thousand Yards, Gaining Ground Without
Firing._
Practise the section commanders in all ways of getting their sections
forward without undue exposure or delay, by rushes of the whole
section, man-by-man from one and both flanks and by files, together,
and any other way that suggests itself. Stand over the section
commanders in turn and tell them to advance the section by one method
and then by another, and ask them which seems most suitable for
various conditions of fire and ground (I.T., 118 (4)). The advance
should be steady and determined. Before starting the advance from one
position to another, section commanders are to decide and _must tell
the men_ to what point they mean the next advance to be made (I.T.,
108 (2)), in the same way as individual men were taught to mark their
next halting places.
Attention must be paid to the way in which advances are inaugurated.
Rushes must be sudden and simultaneous (I.T., 92 (5)). The men have
been trained to leave their cover quickly. The unit commander must
give his directions for the next move without getting up (if himself
lying) and tell the men to be prepared; when all are ready, he and
the men must jump up together and rush at once on the word or signal.
The object of this, of course, is to avoid a concentrated fire being
directed on the unit commander, and, perhaps, the two or three men
nearest him, if they get up before the others, which would make it
likely that some of them would be hit immediately, while the rest
of the unit looked for a new leader, and so no advance take place;
whereas if everyone gets on the move together a casualty or two will
not bring the whole to a standstill. Of course, commanders should
lead the way, but they must get in front by sprinting the first few
yards.
_Second Phase: One thousand to Six Hundred Yards (Collective Fire)
and Six Hundred to Two Hundred Yards (Individual Fire)._
As soon as a section begins to fire, it becomes possible for it to
practise the lessons in the use of fire which were learnt in Exercise
III., such as concentration and distribution of fire. From one
position the commander must choose his next fire position, and work
his section up to it in whatever way is most suitable. On flat and
open ground this position may simply be the halting place of the next
rush, thirty or forty paces to the front, but it is more instructive
and practical to have positions far enough from each other, say one
hundred and fifty or two hundred yards, to necessitate the advancing
section making several successive rushes and using various devices
to gain ground without attracting the enemy’s attention. Practise
sections in all ways of advancing from one position to another,
as was done before firing began, and encourage the use of covered
ways. This exercise, if properly done, represents what the section
would have to do in battle. For the purpose of instruction, the unit
commanders should be allowed to move about as instructors, but when
all ranks have been through the exercise and know what is needed, you
should practise it under service conditions, and tell unit commanders
to behave as if under fire; this is important, as it lets all see
how much will be asked of the individual man under fire, and how
difficult it is to exercise any wide control.
For the same reason you must in this exercise begin the practice of
ordering casualties of leaders, and carry it on through the whole of
the rest of the training. Order section commanders to be casualties,
and let the next senior man carry on, then order that man to become
a casualty, and let the next one take command. Collect these
casualties with you and let them go round with you, and have for a
time the onlooker’s view of the game. Do not stint in ordering them,
but let every man be ready to take up command. This readiness to
assume command and to carry on the advance in spite of the absence
of leaders is most valuable in battle and on parade for training,
keeps men’s attention fixed on the business, and helps to counteract
disorder when companies and sections get mixed up in reinforcement in
battalion attack.
Under six hundred yards let the men use individual fire, choosing
their own targets; at this time try to get them into the way of
looking for the targets which most require to be shot at at the
moment—they must be always looking along the enemy’s line, and must
not acquire the paralysing habit of only seeing straight in front of
themselves.
Call on unit commanders to keep in view the question of expenditure
of ammunition. It is no good ordering men to snap-fire 200 times in
the course of an advance when they would only have 100 rounds in
their pouches on service, and no means of getting more; when blank
is being used they should see that the ammunition of casualties is
collected and redistributed.
At some time in the course of this exercise the section must be
practised in improving cover as if under fire, i.e., working lying
down. The nature of the work depends on what tools you have, but it
should be attempted if possible. Order the section to do it when
halted together in some fire position. At first they will shape
badly and expose themselves a lot, but if you have time for practice
they get into the way of digging in very quickly. If there are stones
pile up “schanzes.” Attention should be paid to concealment of the
cover, so as not to make it a target for the whole countryside, and
it must give cover from fire or view, or both; one often sees men
making molehills which show up their position without being capable
of stopping a bullet. Better not make them at all than that way.
Wind up the advance occasionally by an assault, as it is a mistake
to let the idea take hold that the fire fight is the end of all
things. This, I think, is the reason that the word “skirmishing” has
disappeared from the book of training, as it connoted an indecisive
action, whereas the whole spirit of the present training is that it
shall be directed to the delivery of an assault and the ousting of
the enemy from his position. Scouts are the only people who may have
to skirmish in the former accepted meaning of the word, and they
only do so until the firing line joins them, or they withdraw after
reconnoitring.
_In Platoon._
Next work the sections together in their platoons on similar lines.
Practise again all ways of gaining ground; by rushes of the whole
platoon, or if one or more sections, man by man, and so on, as taught
to the section. Fire should be directed by the platoon commander, and
controlled by the section commander. Teach the lateral distribution
of fire along a given front among the four sections of the platoon.
Teach also the principle of covering fire, one section being sent
to make its way with every use of cover to a forward fire position,
while the remainder continue firing. The first section, on arrival
at the new fire position, opens fire, and the others follow in
due course, one section only being dumb while the movement is in
progress. If there is a choice of good lines of advance it is better
that sections should not follow each other on one line, as the enemy
may have noticed the move and be waiting for them.
EXERCISE VI.
THE SECTION AND PLATOON IN RETIREMENT.
For the general principles of retirements see I.T., 137. The platoon,
when working with the company, will take its turn at being the
rearmost portion of the troops, and will have the difficult task of
getting away while in touch with the enemy, but its retirement will
be covered by the fire of other portions of the company. On the other
hand, if a platoon or section finds itself beyond support from other
troops, as might happen often enough, it will have to act itself as a
rearguard and retire by alternate parts.
In both cases great advantage is gained if the position held can be
vacated so stealthily that the enemy shall not be aware of its having
been vacated till the defenders are well on their way to the rear.
For this reason it will be worth while to accustom the men to employ,
when practicable, a procedure used in mountain warfare, withdrawing
the bulk of men first and leaving only a few quick-footed men to keep
up appearances and fire as long as possible and then retiring them
at speed. Also all men must be taught to grovel backwards on their
stomachs from the crest of their fire position till sufficiently
under cover, if there is cover, to stand up without being seen, after
which they rise and make off.
Send out the skeleton enemy with instructions to follow up the
retirement slowly, and not to close in on the sections, as it is easy
and tempting to do this when there are no bullets in the rifles.
(_a_) _As a Section or Platoon Acting with the Company._
Do the practice first by sections and then in platoon. Draw up the
unit on a fire position about eight hundred yards from the enemy, the
men in extended order, lying down, and open fire on the enemy. Tell
the commander to choose his next halting place and retire his unit
on it, which he should do on the lines before indicated. The halting
places should be chosen as far apart as two to four hundred yards;
short retirements merely prolong the time exposure to fire and should
not be used unless the enemy are very close or the fire very heavy.
Once the men are clear of the position, they should move as fast as
they can, trusting to escape casualties, by speed, the alteration
of range, and the fire of the few men left on the position. As a
rule, carry out all retirements at the double, so that the men shall
not be confused by the hasty movement. As soon as the first party
has reached the new position, the fringe of men left on the old one
should creep back and go as hard as they can to rejoin their section
or platoon, and they should be taught to judge the time of going for
themselves, so as not to “let in” the section or themselves, by going
too early or staying too late. Repeat the movement to one or two
further positions. It is a strenuous practice and makes demands on
the men’s limbs, wind, and willingness, but the rearguard is the post
of honour and danger. Order casualties of leaders from time to time,
and let the men be called to move in quick time sometimes, which they
would have to do if there were signs of unsteadiness.
(_b_) _As a Section or Platoon Acting Alone._
Act on the same lines as before, but let the commander run the
show, which he should be able to do, after having done it under
supervision. One party (a file or two in the case of a section,
or one or two sections in that of a platoon) gets back to a fire
position and opens fire to cover the retirement of the other. In
general, it is better that both parties should not fall back on one
and the same fire position; on the contrary, if they act on a wide
front in ordinary country—say, three hundred yards apart—their fire
is equally effective, but the enemy is broken up, and the danger of
their being outflanked or surrounded is less. For the same reason it
is good practice, if the platoon is strong, to send out groups of
four or five men still further on the flanks, and a group to precede
the whole on the line of retirement by six hundred yards or so, in
order to occupy positions and deny them to the enemy, and after one
or two turns of this exercise tell the skeleton enemy to follow on
harder and try to work round the flanks. In this part also continue
to order casualties of leaders.
EXERCISE VII.
THE SECTION AND PLATOON IN INDEPENDENT ATTACK.
It is very important to secure the intelligent co-operation of
section and platoon commanders in the operations in which their
company or battalion is taking part. I have read that in the
Russo-Japanese War the result of one of the battles—I think at
Penlin, 31st July—turned on the action of an infantry section who
gained a footing on the extreme flank of the Russian line, and
drove off the defenders in the immediate vicinity, opened a way for
the advance of the greater numbers, and led to the outflanking and
retreat of the whole Russian force. If you give your unit commanders
some chances of carrying out attacks, acting as if unsupported by
other troops, they will find themselves faced with the same problems
which confront commanders of larger bodies in the attack, and they
will be more likely, when acting in combination, to look beyond just
the limits of their own commands; they will be led to comprehend
the object of operations and the difficulties in the way, and
will become quick to seize any opportunity to further the general
plan without waiting for orders. It is true that so small a body
as a section would seldom be formally told to attack an objective
single-handed, but there are often occasions on service when a
platoon might have to carry out an attack on a small scale, as when a
few of the enemy’s riflemen are making themselves unpleasant, while
not in sufficient force to do more than “snipe,” or to require the
diversion against them of a whole company. Though a section as now
constituted is a very small unit to work with, I think no excuse is
needed for performing the attack with the smallest unit, having in
view the excellent training it forms for non-commissioned officers
and men. However, for this practice, it is advisable to form sections
somewhat above the usual strength, by joining two together, so as
to give at least eighteen rifles in the whole. After having put the
sections through the exercise, you will, of course, let the platoon
commanders carry out the attack with their platoons.
Put out a skeleton enemy of three or four men for each platoon or
section, or one only for all to attack in turn, and post this enemy
in some commanding place, with a good field of view and fire so
that if possible the unit shall have twelve to eight hundred yards
to manœuvre over before coming to close quarters. As an example,
give out the supposition that this enemy are a cavalry patrol of the
enemy, who have dismounted and are using their rifles on the company
as it is on the move from somewhere to somewhere else. The section or
platoon is ordered to drive them off, neutralise their fire, or hold
them in check, in case they should be the forerunners of a greater
number. The enemy should begin to fire on a signal from you (with
your flag), which you should give as you tell off the commander for
the duty. If the other units are to attack the same enemy in turn,
you should halt them under cover or turn them to the rear, so as not
to see too much of the method the first lot choose to carry out their
job.
The method of the attack will depend on the nature of the ground—what
suits one case may not suit another, and there may be two or three
courses open in attacking any one position. The commander should
accordingly look well at the ground before deciding how he will carry
out the attack, but there are certain principles common to attacks,
great or small, which he should put into practice. He should secure
himself from interruption on his flanks and rear, and he should
provide a supporting fire to distract the enemy and cover the advance
of his main force. He cannot make large detachments or indulge in
wide patrolling, nor would such small bodies as platoons be sent
off to attack if such were advisable; but, at least he can post a
file or two on some high ground, or, failing that, on one flank out
of decisive range of the enemy, i.e., about eight hundred yards
from him, with orders to keep up a steady fire until his advance
masks their fire. This will prevent, or at least give warning of,
an attempt to cut in on the rear. He may also send a file perhaps
two or three hundred yards to either flank, to move parallel with
his advance and prevent his being enfiladed at short range, if the
enemy should be tactless enough to avail himself of a chance of
meeting the advance by a counter-attack. Until he sees pretty well
what he has in front of him, he should divide his party into two,
sending one to engage the enemy and keeping the other as a reserve to
support the first by fire if they get into difficulties, and to be
available to carry on the attack after the other has got the enemy
well busy, either by reinforcing it directly, or, better still, by
continuing the advance along a fresh line leading to some position
from which the enemy can be finally turned out, either by fire or
by a charge, the first half joining in and advancing as soon as the
enemy has turned his attention to the new attack. Both parties should
keep scouts or a patrol of some sort out in front of them until the
foreground is proved not to contain any hidden body of the enemy,
or until the opening of fire by their own side makes it necessary
for the scouts to merge into the firing line. I have seen on service
a half-company go off to take post as a piquet on a long ridge; it
neglected the above precautions, beyond having some scouts in front.
There were four or five of the enemy on the ridge, and they waited
till the scouts were close, shot some down and drove the others to
cover, and then turned their fire on to the half-company, who were
also driven to ground, and, as there was little cover, they were
tied up till set free by some more infantry, who had to be specially
sent off to move along the ridge. Had the half-company moved in two
portions, the first would have contained this weak enemy, and the
rear party could easily have circled round and got on to the ridge
farther along, which would at once have caused the enemy to clear
out. See F.S.R., I., I, as to the results of the violation of the
principles of leading troops, and as therein directed, impress the
principles taught on the minds of your non-commissioned officers, who
are commanders, albeit only of platoons and sections.
EXERCISE VIII.
THE PLATOON AS AN ADVANCED GUARD AND AS A FLANK GUARD.
(_a_) When the company is on the march, it should always be preceded
by an advanced guard—either a party of scouts, or, more usually, by
one of the platoons. After the advanced guard comes in contact with
the enemy its further action becomes either an attack to drive off
the enemy, or a defence to delay his advancing, according to his
strength and tactics; so I propose here merely to indicate suitable
formations of march in ordinary, i.e., non-mountainous country, so
that the platoons may be practised in taking them up without delay on
being told off for the duty. The exercise takes little time, and can
be done on the same parade as the flank guard exercise.
An advanced guard may come under Are at any moment, and to provide
against surprise (F.S.R., 64), its leading portions may move in
extended order. The duties are given in F.S.R., 68, and apply quite
completely to so small a body as a platoon. The platoon should be
divided into a vanguard and a main guard. For the vanguard, a common
plan is simply to extend a section on either side of the road, but I
prefer to divide the section into three patrols, or more if strength
permits, who work along in a general line—one to search the road
and its immediate vicinity, and one on each side. The nature of the
country regulates the breadth of ground the centre patrol can search
from the road, and the distance to which the others are sent out on
each side. The other sections follow as main guard, not so close as
to be at once mixed up with the vanguard if fire is opened on the
latter, nor so far as to be unable to support it quickly with fire.
The advanced guard is responsible for keeping touch with the main
body (the company) (F.S.R., 64 (4)), but the company commander should
satisfy himself that this is being done. If view is restricted, the
main guard must drop a connecting file to keep connection. This file
must march with their beards on their shoulders, to see what the
company is doing, and let the commander know, and also to signal
to the company, if the platoon has had to halt. If the country is
open, the commander should still tell off a file for this duty, who
will march with the platoon, but be continually on the look-out to
the rear. The platoon commander ought, of course, to keep a watch
himself, but may have other things to attend to, and it is well to
take precautions against the platoon either getting too far in front
or letting the company get too close to it, by marching on while the
platoon is investigating some suspicious locality.
(_b_) _The Platoon as a Flank Guard._
A platoon may sometimes be used as a flank guard, as when a small
convoy is on the march with only a company or two as escort. Flank
guards are dismissed in a few words in F.S.R., 70. It is worth while
to practise them once or twice to avoid delay in taking up the
formation when the march is being started, or in improvising a method
of fighting off the enemy if he attacks.
Represent the convoy or whatever it is by a man with a red flag to
move along the road; the platoon is then to move along parallel to
the road, and far enough off to afford protection from effective
rifle fire, i.e., at least eight hundred yards in open country. The
skeleton enemy should be instructed to keep about the same distance
again on the flank beyond the platoon, and to move along parallel
with it without closing in, opening fire on an agreed signal.
The march formation should be on the same principles as those for the
advanced guard. The platoon should move in two bodies, and patrols
or scouts should precede it, both in the direction of the march and
towards the flank which is being guarded. It is important to keep
touch with the main body by connecting files at all times, otherwise
if the road changes direction out of view of the flank guard it may
separate them too far or bring them too close to the company.
The method of fighting merely to hold off the enemy resembles that
used by a rear guard for the same purpose, i.e., fire and movement
by alternate portions. When the enemy opens fire on your signal, the
patrol on the flank either falls back, or the platoon reinforces it.
The patrol in the line of advance should still continue to precede
the movements of the platoon in that direction, and should be told to
conform to its movement. The platoon replies to the enemy’s fire as
soon as possible and begins the lateral fight—one half is sent, if
possible under cover, to take up a fire position farther along the
direction of the line of march, preceded by the patrol, which, to
some extent, secures it from surprise from that direction. As soon
as the leading party has found a fire position and opens its fire,
the other follows it, and either halts alongside it, so allowing it
to go off to a new position, or continues its movement beyond it
and takes up a third position to cover the further movements. The
latter method is the quicker, as it saves the time of replacing men
of the first party in their fire position by those of the second. The
exercise need not be prolonged, as a few of these lateral movements
are quite sufficient illustration to enable the men in future to take
up their duty quickly.
EXERCISE IX.
PRELIMINARY FOR THE ATTACK BY THE COMPANY IN BATTALION.
A company attacking as part of the battalion is sure to find the
men of different platoons mixed up in the course of the attack with
those of other platoons, both of that company and of others. Before
practising the attack, accompanied with this mixture of platoons,
it is advisable to train them and their non-commissioned officers
for their duties without allowing any mixing up. This may be done by
bringing all the platoons of the company up into one line, and then
extending each on its own ground. The result is that each platoon
may be taken to represent the leading platoon of four companies told
off to furnish the firing line and supports (I.T., 122). The four
platoons form thus the firing line, the other three supposititious
platoons of each company being in support. This formation would be
taken up when the enemy’s rifle fire began to be effective, i.e.,
at or under fourteen hundred yards. Within this distance the firing
line has to press on through the zones in which it uses collective
and individual fire up to assaulting distance, being reinforced as
needed, firstly by the supports, and finally at the time of the
assault by all or part of the local reserve, which, in this case,
would be composed of the four companies of the battalion not detailed
to furnish the firing line and supports.
Put out a skeleton enemy with orders to remain in one position, and
fire slowly, but continuously. Draw up the four platoons, or as many
as are present of the company at fourteen hundred yards or so from
the enemy, in one line and at sufficient intervals to allow of their
extending to five paces, _plus_ some space between flanks of sections
after extension, to allow plenty of choice of lines of advance.
Indicate to each platoon a part of the enemy’s position which it is
to regard as its final objective of assault (I.T., 121 (3)). Have the
men extended to five paces, and carry out the attack right through on
the lines of Exercise V., and finish with an assault and rally after
it. Each company would have an officer with its platoon in the firing
line to direct the fire. If fire is opened between fourteen hundred
and one thousand yards, it will not be effective against ordinary
targets unless the whole four platoons direct their fire on the same
target. Under one thousand yards fire should be controlled by section
commanders and directed by platoon commanders.
Practise concentration of the fire of the four platoons on one part
of the enemy’s line and lateral distribution of fire _within the
limits of that part_. Give each platoon a fraction of this fraction
of the enemy’s frontage to deal with, and let the platoon commander
again tell off his sections to fire at various marks inside _his_
limits. Again switch the fire of all four platoons on to some other
particular bit of the enemy’s position, as done in previous exercises.
To do this you must introduce and work with thoroughness a system of
inter-communication (I.T., 119), but it should be one approved and
adopted by your battalion commander, otherwise each company of the
battalion may be found using a different one. It is to be understood
that orders as to the direction of fire in no way interfere with the
gaining of ground to the front, a platoon firing at one object ceases
fire in order to advance, but resumes its fire on the same object
when it again halts.
As soon as section fire is opened, encourage mutual support, some
part of the line firing while others advance, and make section
commanders continue to observe this principle.
At some one parade for this exercise halt the whole line during the
attack and practise entrenching under fire, the men working lying
down (I.T., 121 (13)). Thereafter resume the advance.
Move about yourself and let your section commanders do so also, and
check any slovenly work on the part of the men in using, quitting,
or getting into cover, and in the use of their rifles and judging
distance if, as should often be done, it is left to them to estimate
how far they are from the target of the moment.
EXERCISE X.
THE COMPANY IN ATTACK WITH THE BATTALION UNDER ARTILLERY FIRE.
When the battalion is moving forward to attack, and before the
enemy’s rifle fire is more than a distant and future danger, that of
his artillery becomes an imminent and formidable menace as soon as
the limits of its range are crossed, because of the suddenness with
which it is capable of dealing destruction. Whether his artillery
actually opens on the battalion is another matter. If the battalion
shows up as a tempting target in column of route or mass, he most
certainly will fire on it, but if it is skilfully led it may possibly
escape his notice altogether; at the same time, it is hardly likely
that it can move from five thousand to fourteen hundred yards from
the enemy’s infantry without giving some indications of its movement,
and the probability is, that at some part of the advance it will
find itself the recipient of the enemy’s attention. To escape the
effect of this fire, the battalion and the company will have to
break up into small shallow columns such as platoons or sections at
least 50 yards from each other laterally (I.T., 118) and two hundred
yards from front to rear; in fact, a lot of little groups of men
sufficiently apart to prevent the burst of one shell covering more
than one group. The advance in this order constitutes the first phase
of the infantry attack. The company must be practised in getting into
this formation, and moving in it so as to avoid confusion in action,
and also to let non-commissioned officers and men understand that
this formation does not free them from the control of their commander.
At manœuvres and exercises the adoption of this formation is
sometimes burked on various pretexts, of which the most heinous is to
say that the results of artillery fire are overrated, and the risk
run in keeping in closed formation is more than compensated for by
the comfort of the men, maintenance of control and saving of time.
This theory I fancy had its origin in the South African War, where
the Boer artillery was skilful but exiguous, if judged by European
standards. I have not been under shell fire myself, but I have seen
the results of it on a column of about two hundred men who came along
a watercourse two thousand yards or so from the guns, in something
resembling a march formation. The guns had the range, and the enemy
left about fifty dead in that watercourse in a few minutes, so
personally I am going to open out my company and trust to my peace
training of it to keep it in hand and get it along fast enough to be
on the spot when wanted.
I need hardly give details how to practise this. The point is, to get
the company opened out quickly and without confusion, and this is to
be done by telling your platoon commanders what you want and where
they are to go, and not by any drill. Platoons may further split up
into columns of sections. Leave it to your platoon commanders to have
the sections moved apart to intervals of fifty yards. If the enemy’s
artillery is straight in front, a diamond formation seems suitable—a
platoon at each angle—the length of the diagonal front to rear being
over two hundred yards and side to side over one hundred; or the
platoons may simply follow each other at two hundred yards distance,
though this is not a very handy arrangement. But, subject to keeping
the distances large enough, it is not the formation that matters, but
the way it is taken up, and I will leave it at that.
At the end of this phase of endurance of the enemy’s artillery fire
the company comes under rifle fire and has to take to extended
order, and on service it would perhaps have to do this and plunge
into the attack without the platoons closing in from the scattered
formation in which they have so far moved. But for the first few
times you should close up at fourteen hundred yards and start from
there, so as to tell the men what is next to be done when they come
under rifle fire, and in any case the size of your exercise ground
would probably necessitate your doing the two phases over more or
less the same bit of ground.
EXERCISE XI.
THE COMPANY IN ATTACK WITH THE BATTALION, UNDER RIFLE FIRE.
The immediate objects of the fire fight within effective rifle range
are to produce a fire sufficiently heavy to overcome the fire of
the defence, and to reach a position from which the assault can be
delivered (I.T., 121 (5 and 6)). In theory, then, the desideratum
is to get so many men up to about two hundred yards from the enemy
that they form a line practically shoulder to shoulder, in order
that their fire may be at least as heavy as that of the enemy,
if the latter are also in one continuous line, and in default of
circumstances admitting of effective covering fire being maintained
from positions in rear or on a flank. On this supposition it is
frequently argued that a battalion and its companies, when advancing
to the attack, should do so on a front not greater than that which
the battalion would occupy if it were in single rank, but this does
not really follow. The nature of the ground may be such that to
attempt to build up a shoulder-to-shoulder firing line all along
the enemy’s position within charging distance, may be merely to send
men to useless destruction by exposing them on fire-swept spaces,
where they are sure to be knocked over before they can do any good.
On the other hand, there may be other points where men may be massed
so as to give not only a firing line of maximum density, but also
a supporting force both to replace casualties and to carry out the
assault. These are the points which it is of importance to gain and
hold in strength sufficient to carry out the object of the attack—the
assault. It is the duty of the battalion commander to give each of
his firing line companies some such point as their objective, and to
define the frontage and direction of their attack. It is similarly
the duty of the commander of a firing line company to give each of
his sections an objective within the limits assigned to his company
(I.T., 122 (4) and 123 (3-)). The problem for solution is, how to
get to those points, and so it does not appear to matter much what
frontage the battalion and its companies occupy when they start off
for the attack at the fourteen hundred yards limit of effective
rifle fire, provided of course, they do not encroach on the frontage
of other units. Indeed, an attack which starts on a wide base and
concentrates only in its later stages seems much more likely than one
which starts from base equal to a single rank frontage to keep the
enemy uncertain of its objective, and to be able to bring oblique
or enfilade fire to bear on portions of his line. Therefore, when
practising the company in attack, do not be bound by cast iron rules
as to the breadth of the zone of ground within which you are to
bring your company from fourteen hundred yards up to the charging
position. Four platoons following one straight behind the other, at
two hundred yards distance, make a very unwieldy procession, and,
in general, I would advise you to use something in the nature of a
diamond formation at first, the three platoons in rear making their
own way forward till they reinforce the leading portion which finally
consists of the whole company.
Put out the skeleton enemy on a front of, roughly, what your company
will occupy in single rank, and let the position, if possible, have
within it two, or at most, three points, which you can assign as
objectives to the platoon commanders. You must consider this position
as having been assigned to you as objective by your battalion
commander, the ground on the right and left of it being the prey
of other companies, and not the object of your assault, though it
should, nevertheless, frequently be the object of your _fire_ during
the advance.
Draw up the company at about fourteen hundred yards from the enemy.
Tell the platoon commanders the relative positions the platoons are
to take up when the advance begins, roughly the distances between
them (I.T., 123 (7)), the direction of the attack, if the enemy’s
position is not quite clearly to be seen, the frontage on which the
company is free to manœuvre, and the points which the sections are to
regard as their objectives; the details contained in I.T., 123 and
124, may also be enumerated if the commanders are not experienced.
As regards these details, I recommend that scouts be formed not in a
line of men extended at wide intervals, but as a line of patrols of
four or six men each, and you or a subaltern should halt them early
in the attack and tell them to send back word that they are held up
by fire, or that they have defined the enemy’s position; on this the
nearest platoon reinforces them, and the process of building up the
firing line begins from that point. As regards inter-communication,
use connecting files and semaphore signalling to join up the various
parts and make real use of them, but avoid sham messages.
As soon as the object and manner of the attack have been detailed to
all, tell the platoon commanders to move off their platoons to their
positions and extend them ready to advance, and the scouts to get off
in front. Five paces is the least extension to ensure that a bullet
aimed at one man may miss him with a fair chance of not hitting his
neighbour. Do not let the scouts go too far away, because at this
time of getting to grips with the enemy, their usefulness, when
acting with their companies is mainly limited to guarding against
ambush at close range, and as ground scouts to prevent the company
coming against some unseen obstacle, barbed wire, donga, canal, or
what not.
As soon as all are in position, the company may be considered as
being in the formation in which it would have arrived at the point
where, in addition to the enemy’s artillery fire, it comes under
heavy and fairly accurate rifle fire. Give the signal to advance,
and let the platoon commanders begin to work their platoons forward,
using what covered ways they can find. After a little of this, have
the scouts halted and reinforce them by one platoon, order fire to be
opened, bearing in mind that one platoon’s fire is probably useless
at over one thousand yards from the enemy, but if your company is in
the diamond formation the platoons on each flank will probably be
able to fire, and with favourable ground, e.g., a knoll, or bluff
somewhere on the line of advance, the rear platoon also will be able
to fire over the heads of the firing line. There is no danger in this
if the men hold their rifles straight, and it would assuredly be done
in war. I have myself seen it, and the chances of an accident are
minimised by practice in peace. During this early opening of fire
use every effort to keep the fire from being merely a make-believe,
i.e., send word round by your connecting files or semaphore to fire
at certain targets, and see that section commanders direct their
fire accordingly. In battle the information as to which part of the
enemy’s position seemed most to demand attention would, of course,
reach you from those of your side who were suffering fire coming from
that part of the position, and the result of your passing the word
to fire at it as above would be that a shower of bullets would come
dropping all round it, to the upsetting of the aim of the hostile
marksmen. Under cover of this fire your firing line may be allowed to
gain a little ground, platoons moving alternately so as to avoid a
cessation of fire. Thereafter continue to gain ground, and gradually
reinforce the firing line till all your supports are absorbed and
the whole company is in the firing line. When this has taken place
the line will consist of a mixture of men of different sections
and platoons. Avoid unreal movements in attempting to keep the men
of each unit together in reinforcing and recognise that admixture
is unavoidable. (I.T., 93 (11) and 123 (9)). The organising of the
resultant disorder is one of the essential objects of training for
the attack. Make your section commanders call on the men to right and
left of them, if they are nearer them than any other unit commander,
to act under their orders. Thus: “Private A to Private J under my
orders.” Have this done constantly till it becomes a matter of
course. The men of files can always hang together, but prove that
this is being done by asking men where their file mates are. Get this
system started as soon as reinforcement is begun, and keep it in full
swing throughout. Once it is started, these extemporized fire units
must apply the principles learnt by the intact sections and squads
in Exercise IX., i.e., supporting fire by part to cover movement of
the others, control and distribution of fire, etc., and so work on
up to assaulting distance and deliver an assault. After this, let
section and platoon commanders reform their men and units as quickly
as possible, and then reform the company under your own orders. At
subsequent parades introduce casualties among the section and platoon
commanders, and let the senior privates in each of the mixed up fire
units step into their places and carry on the attack without halt or
confusion.
EXERCISE XII.
THE COMPANY IN ATTACK ACTING ALONE.
On service a company may often have to attack some post of the
enemy without having the support of either artillery or infantry,
and exercises framed to illustrate these conditions are very useful
in developing the initiative of all ranks. In paragraph V. of the
preamble I gave an example, and I think, if you will peruse it again,
you will see what sort of thing you should arrange for the exercise.
At inspections one sometimes sees a company sent off by itself to
carry out such an attack, and the method often adopted is to tell
off the company into the firing line and supports, and, perhaps, a
reserve. The whole then go straight for the object and perform a
sort of travesty of what the company does when acting as part of a
battalion. By this time I trust you will be quick to perceive that
this is just what it ought not to do. As an isolated force it has
to do much more than simply to form a firing line and bring off an
assault. It must secure its flanks, have a real reserve, employ a
flank as well as a frontal attack, provide for its own withdrawal
if worsted, be prepared to deal with a counter-attack, and observe
all the principles laid down in I.T., 121. _Mutatis mutandis_, your
reserve may consist of only a platoon, your flank guards a file or
two of men, your flank attacks a section or platoon with a subaltern
accompanying it, and so on, but the precautions must be taken and
the principles put into practice, or your attack would run risk
of failure. You would do it all on service; therefore, do it all
in peace. Carry out such exercises, carefully planned, and with
observance of service conditions, and I am quite sure you will see
what a great deal there is to be done in this direction before you
feel yourself and your company quite competent to undertake a similar
task in the field. That first exercise against a skeleton enemy will
be the forerunner of many others. Your criticism of the action of
your non-commissioned officers must be carefully considered, as there
are usually several justifiable ways of doing a thing, and it should
always be constructive and not merely destructive (T. & M.R., 2 (2)).
EXERCISE XIII.
THE COMPANY IN RETIREMENT.
The men have been practised in retirement in pairs in Exercise
II., and the sections and platoons have also learned their part in
Exercise VI. It remains to train the company for this duty, which
it might have to do either as acting as rearguard to the battalion,
whether the latter was, or was not, in conjunction with other troops,
or as if effecting its withdrawal when isolated. In both cases the
procedure and distribution are pretty much alike. In the former case,
the company, if it gets into difficulties, _may_ be able to get help
from the rest of the force, but in the latter it will not be able
to do so, and the commander should be especially careful to have
in hand some portion of his company which he can use to extricate
any detachment which gets “tied up.” On the other hand, it is very
desirable that the main body should not be called on to reinforce
the rearguard when the company is not acting alone. So that in both
cases you should be prepared to meet eventualities from your own
resources. Again, a rearguard is bound to have the majority of
its force in action in order to hold back the enemy and present an
appearance of force, so that it is not always possible to set apart
a portion of so small a body as a company to act solely as reserve,
and to remain continuously outside the actual combat. The solution
of the difficulty seems to lie in an intelligent application of the
principles of rearguard fighting given in F.S.R., 71 to 73, and the
early but timeous withdrawal from the fighting line of a portion
of the company who move back to a position in rear from which they
can cover the withdrawal of the remainder, but are still available
to be thrown into the fight, if it is necessary to inaugurate some
sort of a counter attack to give portions heavily engaged a chance
to break away from close grips. It is important in this exercise
to teach non-commissioned officers and men to be ready to adopt
quickly any method of withdrawal that may be ordered, because the
nature of the ground must determine the way in which a withdrawal can
best be effected, and the nature of the ground may vary every few
hundred yards. Therefore I merely suggest some ways of practising
retirements, and during the course of the exercise you should change
from one to another, and also encourage commanders to act on their
own initiative, when, as will probably happen, your system of
inter-communication fails to act with sufficient speed and accuracy.
I.T., 137, gives general rules as to the action of platoons and
sections, and the standard set up in Exercises II. and VI. should be
adhered to. Send out the skeleton enemy with orders to follow up the
retirement, but not to close in under six hundred yards.
(_a_) Get the whole company deployed into one line of platoons,
with intervals between them, occupying a wide front, four to eight
hundred yards, the men at five or more paces extension. This may
seem too wide a front, but, after all, the intervals between the
platoons are only two hundred and forty yards, and an enemy trying
to break straight through the line would be under fire at one
hundred and twenty yards or less, while a wide front is the best
precaution against having your flanks turned and your retreat
intercepted.
Send back a platoon from one of the flanks to take up quickly a
position in rear clear away from the firing line; three hundred to
six hundred yards is not too much; let it open fire, and let the
remainder of the firing line work back by retirement of alternate
sections, each running back thirty or forty yards, beginning this
movement from the flank from which the first platoon went, the
platoon on the other flank holding on and only giving ground when the
two centre platoons have got well on their way to the line on which
the first platoon is halted. This is a slow retirement, but gives a
maximum of continuous fire and the flanks are strong.
(_b_) With the whole company extended in one line, and no intervals
between platoons. Retire by short rushes of alternate sections;
the rushes must be quite short, twenty yards at most, so that the
sections that have retired can fire through the intervals of the
rear portion of the line the instant that it begins to retire. This
is meant for use after an unsuccessful assault, and only on flat
ground.
(_c_) With the company extended in one line, but with intervals
between the platoons. Order the flank platoons to retire and take
post to cover the withdrawal of the two centre platoons, who remain
in position till the flank platoons are ready to open fire. Watch
how the platoon commanders handle their platoons; they should do so
artfully, as taught in Exercise VI.
(_d_) Retire by half-companies, two platoons together, using your
subalterns as half-company commanders, and putting the onus of
finding suitable covering positions on them, merely telling them
to cover each other’s retirement.
(_e_) With the company all holding one position, leave the scouts
or picked men to cover the retirement by rapid fire, and withdraw
the remainder at full speed, then cover the retirement of the
scouts by the fire of the whole from a position in rear. Watch
that the scouts creep back from their cover without letting the
enemy know they are going; and of this screen of scouts the flank
men ought usually to be the last to go in order to make the enemy
believe that the position is still occupied.
EXERCISE XIV.
OUTPOSTS.
I.
The general rules for outposts and the part played by an outpost
company are to be found in I.T., 147 to 157, and it is necessary
accordingly to train for those duties in peace. Let us begin from
the beginning, and see what infantry outposts are and what they have
to do. A line of infantry outposts will very often have to be taken
up after a day’s fighting, or in close proximity to the enemy before
a battle. The commander of an outpost battalion will be told by the
staff to take up with his battalion a certain length of the front,
say, from Farm A to Hill B, inclusive—perhaps a mile or even two in
extent. He cannot possibly have time to ride all along the front and
fix places for piquets and sentries. Instead of this, he looks at
the ground and comes to the conclusion that it will require, say,
all his four companies in the outpost line. He divides up his front
into four parts, and gives each of his companies one part. It is
his duty to see that the eight companies form along the line that
combines the best facilities for defence and reconnaissance to the
front. Accordingly, he tells the captain of A Company to take from
Farm A to, say, the wood X, inclusive, the captain of B Company
from the wood X, exclusive, to, say, the stream ML, inclusive, and
so along. The captains of companies then have to go off and take up
their frontages. As beforesaid, infantry outposts must expect to take
up their line close to the enemy, and often when dusk is falling.
This gives you your clue as to how it should be done. You must march
your company in fighting formation, so as not to be ambushed—a screen
of scouts or other covering troops in front and on the flanks, a
party, section, or platoon ready to succour the covering party, and
hold up the enemy, and a reserve ready to act under your orders,
either for attack or defence. Your movement and the taking up of
your line should be unseen by the enemy; therefore, move carefully
under cover both from distant and close positions, from which you
may be seen. The line must be taken up quickly. The main thing is
to get it occupied; therefore, it is a mistake to halt the company
while you plod round the whole of the front and plan just where each
piquet and sentry will be. Instead, take a good look at the line as
you march and decide what are the essential points to be held for
defence and as observation points. As soon as your scouts have made
good the ground a little in front of those points, send off what you
think are necessary, sections or platoons, to seize these points,
and act as piquets till you go round and adjust details. Thus your
company will occupy the line in rough-and-ready fashion as quickly
as they can advance. When the company breaks up to go to the piquet
posts, go with any one of the piquets which is to be on one flank and
settle the exact position of the piquet with reference to the line
you intend to hold as your line of resistance, and any other details
which you think the piquet commander should attend to, such as what
localities should be patrolled, and estimate the number of men
required. Any surplus sections should accompany you from this piquet,
and you and they then go along the line to the other piquets which
you arrange similarly, using the surplus to reinforce those piquets
that need them, and if at the end you have still a surplus of men you
may either form them as a support in rear or dismiss them to remain
with their own platoons. For purposes of messing on service the
latter is convenient, but, tactically, a support is often needed, in
which case the men’s comfort must take second place.
You must make a clear distinction between day and night outposts,
though you practise the latter by daylight. Infantry outposts by day
and until the enemy advances, are firstly patrols and look-out men,
whose business is to look for any movement on the part of the enemy,
and to prevent his seeing their own side’s doings, and to report
what they see of the enemy’s, and, secondly, a line of piquets who
occupy the line decided on as the line of resistance, and who may
fall out and rest while things are quiet, with supports and sometimes
a reserve behind them. The patrols are active agents in getting
information in front of the outpost line, and they will mostly
consist of mounted troops except in close country or thick weather.
The look-out sentries are passive obstacles to the enemy’s patrols
or scouts penetrating the line; the piquets are the reserve of force
ready to be called into action when needed. But a line suitable for
observation and resistance by day is seldom suitable by night also.
Fighting by day is done by shooting, and rough ground affording cover
is likely to be chosen for the advance of the attackers. By night,
however, the attack will be made with the bayonet, and the attacker
will avoid broken country, which will confuse and delay his advance.
Choose your outpost line accordingly. By day seek for a good field
of fire, mutually supporting positions, and good facilities for
observation, and strengthen the position you mean to fight on. By
night close the likely ways by which an enemy may advance by putting
piquets on them in strengthened positions with obstacles prepared
in front, and patrols lying out on intervening ground to intercept
scouts. Thus, in an undulating hedge-covered country with many roads,
by day your piquets would be behind the crests of the undulations,
sentries only on the look-out, and patrols scouting in front. By
night your piquets would be on the roads, which they would block with
barbed wire or abattis of cut hedge stuff, and your patrols in the
fields between and lying out along the road in front at some place
where they could watch anything passing, and get back to the piquet
line without running risks of being shot by their own side. We will
see below what training is required for non-commissioned officers
and men in their duties on piquet, patrol and sentry. When you have
trained them in these duties, take up an outpost line as a tactical
exercise with your company, acting as an outpost company by day,
and then as by night, and if you have scouts send them out to act
as an enemy’s patrol in front to see how much of the operation of
taking up the line is visible to them; then, after a certain hour,
let them try to make their way through the line unseen. They must
not work round the flanks as _ex hypothesi_; these are held by other
outpost companies; finally, let them start sniping the outposts as
if ushering in an attack, and let your piquets take up the line of
resistance, your patrols falling back on the firing beginning.
II.
_The Training of Men and Platoons in Outpost Duties._
An outpost company will more often consist of two or more small
piquets of one or more platoons with a support, than simply of one
large piquet with its support, so that when you come to train the
whole company, as above, in taking up a part of an outpost line, the
performance of the work will depend largely on the ability of your
platoon and section commanders to direct the men in their duties.
Unless they are capable of doing this, time will be wasted as you
will be occupied with one portion of the line while the rest are
doing nothing and awaiting your arrival, for in this class of work
the instructor must remain for some time with each piquet while the
men are being put through the various duties, and cannot supervise
concurrently at all points. Therefore, it is best, before taking
the men out for instruction, to give a day or two solely to the
instruction of subalterns and non-commissioned officers. When they
have got a knowledge of what is required, have the men out, divide
them into piquets under subalterns and section commanders, who will
put them through the duties, and the work will go on on proper lines,
and you will be free to go round and supervise each in turn.
You will have four subalterns, sixteen section commanders, and other
non-commissioned officers, a total of twenty rifles or so, but if you
are short of non-commissioned officers, have out enough privates to
give you sixteen or twenty rifles. Form them up as a piquet and make
the supposition that it has just received its orders to break off
from the company and go to a certain point in the outpost line and
take up its duties there.
_Day Piquets._
Indicate some such point as a day piquet position at a reasonable
distance from where the piquet is when you give it its orders,
and let the senior non-commissioned officer march it there, as on
service, the point chosen being, if possible, such a one as would be
occupied on service.
(_a_) This advance to the piquet is the first duty. In spite of the
company covering troops being supposed to be somewhere in advance,
the piquet on its march should be protected by a small patrol
(F.S.R., 64 (1)). In taking up the position, it must not let the
enemy see it; that is, neither the men nor their commander should
show themselves. Very often the men are kept under cover, but the
commander wanders about fixing places for sentries in full view of
everyone. He should lie down and peep over the crest or whatever it
is while making his plans.
Having arrived at the piquet position, indicate a position on the
right and on the left where other piquets are supposed to be and
proceed with:—
(_b_) Duties of outpost sentries.—These are given in I.T., 152. Post
as many groups as will use up the whole strength in places which
would need watching on service; if there are not enough such places
near by, then merely for the purpose of this semi-drill, post two or
more groups close together. A group consists of one or two men on
duty, and their reliefs, who lie down near them. These groups are
relieved every eight or twelve hours. Let it be understood that the
position of their own piquet is occupied by the reliefs of these
groups and of patrols, and it is a good plan to show the position
by a flag. The sentries must see without being seen, know where
other groups are, where their own and other piquets are, be told to
challenge and halt anyone approaching as in I.T., 152 (3), and what
to do if attacked. Let them do this to you personally, as if you were
someone not belonging to the troops, and impress on them that they
must be careful to teach it to their men so that _no stranger may
ever be allowed to get close_ to a group, and to shoot if he does
not halt. Neglect of this simple rule has led to many mishaps in all
armies. Concealment is not easy, but must be got somehow—by artifice,
if the ground is unfavourable. After putting all through “sentry go”
close to the groups and teach them:—
(_c_) Patrolling, for which see I.T., 111 and 156. Patrols are not
meant for fighting, but to get information or watch dangerous places.
But they may have to fight to avoid capture, and they do no good
by walking blindly into an ambush. To bring back information or
news that the enemy are coming on, it is evidently essential that
whatever happens to the rest of the party, one man at least should
always be able to escape, and to avoid ambush the patrol should move
in a formation which will prevent a surprise overwhelming the whole
party. In short, one portion must scout, and the other be prepared
to cover their movement and help them to get away, if possible, but
in any case to get away itself and carry news of the enemy. But
patrols must be limited in strength, or they will not be able to
escape notice, and must make up for their weakness by cunning and
stealthiness of movement.
For patrolling by day, tell off the whole strength into patrols of
four or six men, one of whom will command in each patrol. Let each
take up the formation it would usually adopt; that is, one or two
files in advance, followed by the rest at a distance sufficient to
prevent the surprise of the whole by one and the same opening of
fire. Teach the method advocated for movement across country, i.e.,
a careful but rapid advance from one cover to another, also how to
approach suspicious localities. The leading file halts and looks
for any signs of the enemy; meanwhile the rear file comes nearly
up to it; the leading file then moves forward while the rear file
lies down with rifles loaded and sighted, ready to fire at once to
cover the others if the enemy shows himself. If the locality to be
searched can be outflanked, the leading files should move round one
or both flanks before closing in on it. If it is one that cannot be
outflanked, as, for instance, a straight edge of a large wood, they
should approach it under cover, creeping up a hedgerow perhaps, and
so get inside. If there is no cover they may try some ruse to draw
the enemy’s fire before getting too close, halting as if they had
seen something, shading the eyes with the hand, pointing and then
starting to run back as if alarmed, which might lead the enemy to
open fire to prevent their escape. But it is rather hard to get
men to do this play-acting unless there is a real force of “Blue”
or “Red” enemy against them. The commander of the patrol, when
approaching any place, should tell his men what they are to do if it
is seen to be held by the enemy, i.e., to lie still and watch, or
retire. If the latter, he should fix some place in rear where the
patrol could rally after getting out of harm’s way.
Show them how to look over a ridge, wall, or hedge, without
attracting notice, taking off their headdress and raising the head
slowly, keeping the rest of the body carefully under cover, and
also to move unseen, keeping in the shadow of hedges or roadside
trees, and covering up any polished metal work of their uniform; to
lie up on any place that commands a good view, and look long and
carefully all over the country to catch sight of anything. Finally to
report what they see, and to do this at once, if there is need, by
sending one, or better, if the patrol can spare them, two men back
to the piquet with a _written_ report, the rest still remaining in
observation. Without having an actual force opposing you, you can
only do this exercise with some appearance of reality by giving out
verbal situations to the patrol. Thus: “Go and reconnoitre that wood
which an enemy may be holding.” On this the patrol would get into
formation and move forward. Then, when approaching the wood, “You
have seen small parties of the enemy beyond the wood both on its
right and left, and they are perhaps in the wood also; try and get
into it unseen,” if there is any cover, or, if not, “show what you
would do to draw their fire before getting close.” Then “the wood is
held by the enemy, withdraw your patrol if you can.” As the patrol
attempts to retire “a heavy fire is opened on you as you retire,
showing that there is at least a company in the wood, your first
duty is to send news of this to your piquet—how and whom would you
send, and how would you frame your message?”
(_d_) Duties on piquet.—Close the platoon and take it to the place
where the piquet is to be. A piquet on arrival at its position has
at once to strengthen the position against attack, and this without
waiting for orders (I.T., 151 (4)). But as we are here only training
the non-commissioned officers in their duties we will not ask them
actually to dig trenches or make loop-holes and entanglements;
indeed, this, as one may term it, executive work, has its proper
place in “Defence.” Bearing in mind, then, that we are dealing with a
day outpost, ask or show the platoon how to strengthen the position.
Bring out a few picks and let them spitlock on the ground the lines
of any trenches that might be needed, paying great attention to the
siting of the trench so that fire could be brought over all the
ground in front. Let them indicate with exactness where and how they
would improve and adapt existing cover. Great regard need not be had
to the number of men in the piquet, as outposts, if attacked, should
make as much show of force as possible, and it does good and not harm
if there are alternative loop-holes facing in different directions;
also accommodation must be provided for the support. The commander
should look for ground outside the outpost line from which enfilade
rifle or artillery fire might be brought to bear on him, and mark how
he would protect his men from it by traverses, breaking the line of
loop-holes into short lengths, keeping under lee of existing cover
and so on. The strengthening of the piquet must be done with the aid
of common-sense. It will seldom be enough to propose to dig one bit
of trench all in one piece and hope the enemy will be good enough to
come and knock his head against it. Cover may be made or adapted in
several separate groups, if this is needed, so as to make it possible
to bring fire to bear on any part of the ground in front. The piquet
must be prepared to make as brave a show as possible, therefore the
commander, while strengthening the point near which his piquet is to
rest, must decide what he will do if attacked. Probably there will be
within the limits of his piquet’s frontage one or two other points
which might be useful for defence, and he must not expect attack
just from one direction. With regard to such alternative positions
he should settle when and how he will use them, and whether he can
afford time and men to strengthen them, and, last but not least,
whether he will be able to get men from one to the other if the enemy
does develop a strong attack. If he can do all these he will have
added immensely to his power of defence, provided he handles his men
skilfully, as he will be able to hold one position till the enemy
thinks he has defined its location, then dodge to another, while
they will go on firing at the old one, and so make his piquet appear
many times stronger than it is. Concealment of the defence is very
important, and the non-commissioned officers should be reminded that
this must be attended to. They may forget it as there is no actual
digging.
(_e_) Duties in Piquet.—The position of the piquet and alternative
defence positions having been fixed, and trenches or other defences
marked out on the position, and on the alternative positions if any,
assemble the platoon at the piquet and show the non-commissioned
officers how to tell off reliefs and other duties. Each group
furnished by the piquet consists of three to eight men, and mounts
one or two men as sentry, as the circumstances of the post require
(I.T., 152 (3)), the sentry, single or double, being relieved in turn
by the others of the group. The whole group is under command of the
senior soldier or a non-commissioned officer. The men who are to
form the reliefs of the groups stay with the piquet, which usually
is composed solely of the reliefs of groups and patrols. Extra men
who have no specific duties are not advisable unless the position is
very exposed. Suppose your group sentries are single, and the groups
of three men each, and relieved every eight hours, then for every
group posted and in position there will be six men in the piquet
resting and waiting their turn, each group thus needing a total of
nine men—three out, six in. Patrols start from the piquet or support,
as the commander of the company directs, and the piquet commander may
send them out on his own initiative, if he thinks it needful. As they
are practically all on duty as long as they are out, a turn of four
hours is enough for them, or, rather, a third of the daylight time.
Take your patrols from this piquet to be four strong, there will be
for each patrol eight men in the piquet and four out on patrol, a
total of twelve needed to furnish each patrol.
In telling off a piquet on the above conditions of relief, and before
dismissing the men to rest, the commander must pay attention to two
main points. Firstly, he must tell off the reliefs, and give each
relief a place to rest in. Men on outpost are usually tired and need
all the rest they can get, especially if they are up all night.
Therefore reliefs should be kept together and rest in one place, so
that the commander can find them at once without stirring up the
others to see who’s who. Secondly, the men must be told off to alarm
posts, which they are to occupy in case of attack—each relief and
each man of it should be given a position on the entrenchment which
he is to hold. To ensure that they will do this at once and without
confusion they should be made to go to these places and occupy them
before being dismissed. There will then be no needless running about
with consequent casualties if fire, either of artillery or infantry,
suddenly opens.
Say you have sixteen rifles (non-commissioned officers and others) in
your instructional piquet give out that it is to furnish—
1 Sentry over the piquet.
2 Groups of three men each, Nos. 1 and 2.
2 Patrols of four men each, Nos. 1 and 2.
The sentry over the piquet alone being actually posted, the two
groups and two patrols being supposed to be out in front, as this
part of the lesson is only concerned with the inside work of the
piquet, and you have already shown them this work on sentry and
patrol. As your strength is not sufficient you must make a further
supposition, and make believe that for the reliefs of the groups one
of your rifles represents three, and for those of the patrols one
rifle represents two. Appoint one of the non-commissioned officers in
turn as commander, and let him tell off accordingly.
3 Rifles for piquet sentry, one of whom he actually mounts.
1 Rifle (representing three) as second relief, No. 1 group.
1 Rifle (representing three) as third relief, No. 1 group.
2 Rifles (representing two each) for second relief, No. 1 patrol.
2 Rifles (representing two each) for third relief, No. 1 patrol.
And a similar number for No. 2 patrol and No. 2 group.
Having told off these reliefs the commander should then tell them
where they are to have their resting places and where their posts are
in case of alarm. At this time also he would give out any special
orders which concern the piquet. Then without dismissing the men
he should order them to go to their resting places, and as soon as
they are there order them to occupy their alarm posts, which should
be done in double time, the men lying down on the places that have
been marked out for entrenchment or improvement of existing cover.
Make this falling in on alarm posts a standing order in the company.
After this has been done, and each man knows exactly what he has to
do on the alarm, the men should be dismissed to their resting places,
which, as before said, should be separate for each relief and apart
from each other. After being dismissed, the men would on service be
allowed to make themselves as comfortable as possible. Other duties
of the piquet commander are:—
(1) The opening of communication with piquets in right and left and
the support.
(2) The fixing of places for purposes of nature.
(3) The arrangements for getting up food to his men if they have
not their rations with them.
(4) Keeping his piquet in a state of readiness; besides keeping
accoutrements on, the men should have their rifles at their
sides when resting, and take them with them wherever they go.
There should be no such thing as piling arms on outpost.
_Night Piquets._
In the dark the bullet is a fool unless fired at close quarters.
No practicable amount of shooting, even at only a hundred yards
distance, will dislodge determined men posted under cover, and a
serious attack must be made with the bayonet or by shooting within
the distance at which a man may be distinguished—ten yards or so.
F.S.R., 138 (2), lays down for the British Army that the bayonet only
is to be used in night attacks, and we may assume that any civilized
army we may have to meet will pursue similar tactics. Aerial
reconnaissance may nowadays allow an enemy to locate the position
held by the main body of his opponent, in spite of its being covered
by outposts, but such reconnaissance does not admit of any hope of
a successful night attack being made on that main body by eluding
or passing through the outposts, because the surface of the ground
cannot be sufficiently searched from above to discover the small
obstacles which must be avoided or known if the advance of a large
body of men is to be carried out at night. So we may take it that
now, as formerly, any large attack will fall first on the outposts,
supposing, as we must, that these are placed so as to hold or watch
all possible lines of advance. In addition to this, outposts must
expect isolated attacks made against one or two points held by them
which the enemy desires to gain possession of. The duties of outposts
by night are, then, to hold and defend the outpost line in sufficient
strength to prevent any large body of the enemy breaking through,
or getting a footing in some tactically important position on the
line, and also to prevent the enemy’s scouts from getting through and
making observations, and, lastly, but of most importance, to get news
of the enemy both as a means of forestalling any attack, and for the
use of the force commander in framing his plans. Bringing the matter
down to the level of a piquet of an outpost company, it seems to
resolve itself into night patrolling and night defence of a position.
As before pointed out, enclosed country allows of piquets closing
the lines of advance by which large bodies can only hope to move
undiscovered, while intervening ground can be searched by patrols. On
the other hand, open country leaves the front vulnerable everywhere,
and calls for a greater number of piquets and closer patrolling than
are needed by day.
Of course, elementary instruction in these duties must be carried out
by daylight to allow of supervision; so now assemble your platoon
of non-commissioned officers and give out that you are going to
practise night work. Choose some place for your night piquet,
realistic as may be, a bridge, a cutting, or anything else that
constitutes a defile or otherwise blocks a likely line of advance
from the enemy’s direction. Also choose, and point out to the
platoon, positions where the adjoining piquets on the right and left
would be. Give out the following instructions to the non-commissioned
officers:—
(1) Piquets must take up their night positions when it is getting
dusk, the strengthening of the piquet and construction of
obstacles being done in advance, secretly if possible, and
towards evening the working party should withdraw and leave
the intended night position empty till it is time to move
into it, further work being completed by twilight.
(2) The provision of obstacles is more necessary than entrenchment,
as securing the piquet from being rushed while completing the
latter.
(3) Men must rest on their alarm posts, and bayonets may have to be
kept fixed by all, if there is a possibility of a sudden
attack (I.T., 151 (7)), to ensure instant readiness.
(4) All piquets must stand to arms one hour before light and remain
ready for action till the patrols have found that there is no
sign of an immediate attack. When relief takes place in the
morning, night outposts will not return to camp till the
patrols report all clear.
After this, let the non-commissioned officer in command withdraw the
piquet from its day position and march it to the night position. On
arrival ask the non-commissioned officers in turn where they would
place the piquet exactly and where they would put their obstacles.
Obstacles for a night piquet should be under close fire, i.e., ten or
twenty paces, but, in addition, booby traps and alarms may be placed
further in front. Barbed wire is the best of all obstacles. The
actual defensive measures to be taken do not differ from those taken
for the defence of any position not on outpost.
The position of the piquet and obstacles being decided on, let the
non-commissioned officers mark on the ground the actual work they
would undertake, having regard to the time available, which you
should tell them, and, on the same lines as for the day piquet, let
them as commanders in turn divide the men into reliefs of sentries
and patrols, tell them off to their alarm posts, and order them to
occupy them once as if on alarm.
A piquet by night, no matter how well entrenched, has a very limited
field of action. Even with most carefully arranged night rests for
the men’s rifles its fire effect is small except at close ranges,
and to resist attack by relatively larger bodies it must in general
keep behind its defences. Hence a well organised scheme of patrols is
necessary to supplement the passive opposition which the piquet can
offer. The patrols are charged with the duty of bringing news of any
advance of the enemy to attack, and, if he is close enough, of spying
out his movements on and within his outpost line, of preventing
his patrols or scouts penetrating their own line, of watching any
localities which are of particular importance and unoccupied by
piquets, such, for example, as villages beyond the outpost line which
the enemy might try to occupy by night, and, lastly, of keeping
up communication between the various bodies of the outposts. The
strength of patrols is limited by the necessity of their being able
to do this work without making a noise, and a strength of three to
eight men is advised. A patrol performs its duty of observation
either by going from point to point, or by watching one particular
place, when it is called a “standing patrol.” If a piquet posts any
group sentries by night, away from the piquet, such groups have just
the same work as standing patrols, except that they may be ordered to
maintain their position in case of attack as they are near support,
whereas patrols would fall back as soon as they had made sure the
enemy was advancing, and possibly, if in accordance with their
instructions, after treating him to a short burst of rapid fire. An
ordinary patrol will also have to halt and listen perhaps for long
periods, and so becomes for the nonce a standing patrol.
Form up the platoon at the piquet position, and let the commander
tell it off into three patrols to practise this duty, disregarding
reliefs, all three to be sent out at the same time in different
directions, one man in each to be commander. Before they start off,
tell them the following, which piquet commanders must see to:—
(1) If there is no countersign published for the force, piquet
commanders must arrange either a word or a sign by which men
may know their own side in the dark.
(2) Patrols going out are to tell the nearest sentry which way they
are going (I.T., 156 (5)).
(3) For patrols a code of signals should be arranged, e.g., a hiss
or half-whistle, to call attention, answered by the same to
show that the man called has heard it, followed by the
signal, whatever it is:—a double hiss for “come up to me,” a
click of the tongue for “retire,” but anything will do
provided it cannot be clearly heard much further off than the
listeners for whom it is intended, and is neither a very
common nor a very uncommon sound.
(4) The piquet commander must tell patrols how long they are to
stay out and any places he thinks must be visited, in
addition to what they themselves may find advisable, on
closer acquaintance with the ground.
A suitable formation for a night patrol of six men would be four in
the advanced party, followed at ten to fifty paces by the rear party
or two. The reason for the stronger party being ahead is, firstly,
that fighting at night begins with suddenness and ends rapidly, while
reinforcement of one party by another is slow and uncertain, and,
secondly, to ensure that some part of the patrol may have a good
chance of getting away with news, whatever happens to the rest:
Bayonets should be fixed and rifles sloped on the right shoulder, the
right hand holding the small of the butt so as to come to the charge
at once, and not to have any chance of a rifle falling on the ground.
Tell patrol commanders to get their patrols into formation and
practise movement in silence along a road and on ordinary road. If
along a road, let them move on each side of it, off the metal on the
roadside grass or dust, and under trees or close to the hedge or
wall. On ordinary country the ball of the foot should be put down
first as if to feel the surface, before putting the full weight
of the body on the advanced foot. A stick or broom-handle, _à la_
“boy scout,” is invaluable in moving over unexplored ground, as by
it the real nature of objects dimly seen at one’s feet can be made
out, and awkward spills thereby avoided. The movement of patrols
under these conditions will be very slow over any but quite level
ground. As the patrols move let them practise the code of signals,
halting, advancing, coming up into one line, etc., also the keeping
up of communication by one file moving back and forward between the
two parts of the patrol. They should practise also breaking up and
scattering as if attacked by overwhelming numbers, each individual
getting away as quickly and quietly as possible, and the whole
rallying again at some place in rear. The patrol commander as he goes
out must fix these rallying places, usually one is enough over the
whole of a patrol’s beat, and they should be _outside_ the outpost
line. Have the patrols moved so that on their beats they may meet
each other once or twice, and use the sign to reply when challenge
is made. As a second practice, direct one of the meeting patrols to
consider itself hostile, and let the commander of the other patrol
excogitate how he would deal with men who did not stand fast on being
told to halt and could not give the countersign.
Next tell the patrols to get into position to watch various
localities, a farm steading, a ravine, or such like, as they would
have to do for limited periods as patrols reconnoitring on their
beats, or for the whole night as standing patrols. One of the best
ways in which patrols can fulfil their office is by halting and
listening with ears near the ground for sounds of human movement.
There is no rule for thus lying up except that they must not get
caught themselves. A couple of men should be left quite clear of the
patrol to get away if the others strike trouble, and the commander
of the patrol should have word passed to these two from time to time
that all is well with the rest, or they may wait in their place
while the others have been quietly downed.
Lastly, let patrols return to the piquet, and learn how to approach
without getting themselves fired on, or causing useless alarm. A
good way is for two of the patrol to advance a few steps at a time
when near the piquet, halting and quietly code-signalling the piquet
sentry till they get His attention and warn him that the patrol wants
to come in.
It has taken longer to write about outposts than it may take you
to put your men through them, and I have purposely been discursive
because a knowledge of what is needed from outposts is more important
than any set exercise, and also because this duty is the one which
newly raised troops are most likely to perform negligently, and at
the same time the one which, if neglected, allows the enemy to bring
raw troops to quick demoralisation. I have also purposely written as
if unlimited ground were available, and, speaking generally, I think
it is. You can, and should, practise your piqueting and patrolling on
the ordinary countryside, with its main and bye-roads, paths, fields,
and hedges. The practice of outposts when piquets are not entrenched,
causes no damage, so that leave to move over the fields should not
be hard to get, but even if it cannot be got, the principal and most
important work of patrolling and watching all roads and paths, will
be done on the ground on which they would be done on service. If
fighting ever takes place in Britain, which Heaven forefend, outpost
lines will be along the ordinary country and not on Salisbury Plain,
so do not go into wild and desolate places for your outposts, but
take the ordinary country round where you are.
EXERCISE XV.
DEFENCE.
The subject of defence is treated of in F.S.R., 107-110, I.T.,
125-135, and in Chapter VII., M.F.E., 1911. The duties required of
the company commander and his subordinates are briefly defined by
I.T., 132, to be similar to those they carry out in the attack. The
whole spirit of the regulations is that the active Defence is merely
a means to an end, viz., the ultimate assumption of the offensive,
which may be carried out either by the same troops which have acted
on the defensive or by fresh troops detailed for the purpose. In both
cases the troops that have acted on the defensive must be ready to
become the aggressors. Therefore, in training your men, you should
keep this constantly in view and conserve a spirit of aggressive
mobility. Men must not be allowed to think that once a position
has been taken up and entrenched it is to be their location till
fighting ceases; on the contrary, they should be encouraged to look
for opportunities while still on the defensive, to occupy alternative
positions which will make the task of the attacking enemy more
difficult. Quickness in seizing and strengthening a position must be
combined with mobility in leaving it to take up and strengthen a new
one. Of course, the time available regulates the work that can be
undertaken (M.F.E., VII. (2)); deep trenches and concealed head cover
cannot be made with an enemy pressing in to assault, but the first
requirement is the ability to choose positions that give a good field
of fire and to strengthen them as thoroughly as the time available
and the proximity of the enemy admit.
In dealing with a company, the onus of choosing what localities it is
tactically necessary to occupy and strengthen rests with the company
commander, subject to the orders of his battalion commander. In the
same way as on outpost, you will be given a bit of ground to defend,
either acting with the battalion or as an isolated company, and the
rest will be on your head. I do not propose to deliver a treatise
on the tactical occupation of ground, but instead I will ask you to
procure and read two books. The first is “The Defence of Duffer’s
Drift,” by Backsight Forethought (W. Clowes and Sons), the second
is “A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book,” by Sir Ian Hamilton (Edward
Arnold). They are both most readable books, and are quite free of
soporific effects. The first is small, and deals with the efforts
of a half-company, under Lieutenant B. F., to defend a drift over a
South African river. In the second the author takes you along with
him through the Russo-Japanese War, of which he was a privileged
spectator, and in your journeyings you look on at victories and
defeats in the making, while the causes that led to them, great and
small, are set forth, along with many shrewd comments on human nature
and how it translates itself in the day of battle. Every fight bears
its own lesson of what to do and what not to do in defence, and this
told in no pedantic strain, but with the saving grace of humour, to
mitigate the darker side of human carnage. Read them both, get to
yourself the wisdom and understanding with which they are filled, and
you will know how to take up a position for defence.
Having educated yourself to choose the points of a defensive position
that must be occupied if the position is to be effectively held,
you have still to train your men to the work of defending them, and
they must learn to be able to do without the help of a supervising
officer, as will often be the case on service.
Daylight defence is almost entirely a matter of fire, the immediate
object being to make it impossible for the enemy to come to close
quarters. Platoon and section commanders then must be able to dispose
their men with this in view to the best advantage within the limits
of the ground allotted to their units, and the men must be able to
site their trenches or whatever form of cover has to be constructed
so as to use their rifles to the best effect. It is no good to teach
men to dig trenches and make loop-holes unless they know the proper
places for them. (M.F.E., 18 (7)).
At the same time, practice in digging and the use of tools is very
necessary for men who are not accustomed to such work. The hands of
the untrained man blister and his muscles tire under the unusual
effort, while he expends much energy with results small in comparison
with what he can accomplish once he has learnt to use his strength
well. Moreover, a certain amount of technical skill is required in
making any but the most simple cover.
To practise the execution of work, you _must_ have ground which you
are at liberty to turn up, as well as some materials for loop-holes
and obstacles. These may not be obtainable at any and every parade,
but you can give practice in the selection and siting of trenches
on any bit of country without causing damage, the men merely
spitlocking or marking with stones or anything else the position of
the trenches on the surface of the ground, and describing what they
propose doing.
I would, therefore, advise that you make your training consist of
two parts, firstly the siting of trenches and the planning by unit
commanders and men of defensive work, the choice and occupation of
alternative positions, and the assumption of the offensive from the
defensive, all this without actually breaking ground, and, secondly,
ground and tools being then available, the performance of a course of
making real cover and obstacles.
But the first part cannot be carried out unless the men have a
knowledge of what trenches, loop-holes and so on are like, and the
objects with which they are made. In a company of raw recruits taken
from the populace at large, there will be plenty who have no ideas
on the subject at all. You must then precede your exercises either
by a short lecture, materials for which you will find in plenty in
the “Defence of Duffer’s Drift,” and the manuals of training, or,
better than a lecture, by showing them specimens of entrenchments
made by regular troops. The main points to insist on are the securing
of a field of fire, the necessity of concealment of the defences,
the importance of head cover as a help to the delivery of an
accurate fire by letting men keep the enemy in view without showing
up themselves, the avoidance of enfilade fire by making traverses,
or by taking advantage of intervening high ground, the provision
of cover from downward shell fire by making the trenches deep and
steep enough to let men stand close up to the edges, and, in the
case of isolated posts and points held as pivots of a position, the
necessity of preparing an all-round defence so that these pivots will
be able to continue fighting whatever happens on the intervening
ground. The course of work actually performed for the second part
should include digging all kinds of trenches, by which the men will
learn to use their tools to the best advantage, and their hands and
muscles will become hardened, the use of the excavated earth to form
parapets and parados (cover from fire from the rear of the trench;
forty inches of earth are needed to keep out a bullet), the drainage
of trenches, the making of traverses against enfilade fire, the
making of loop-holes and head-cover with the aid of all sorts of
materials, sand bags, brushwood and heather, straw and twigs, stones
and bricks (which must be covered with earth to deaden the effects of
splinters), packing boards, and so on, the concealment of trenches
and loop-holes so as to be invisible to the enemy (this is of great
importance), the masking of loop-holes when not in use to prevent
light showing through, the making of dummy trenches and loop-holes to
draw the enemy’s fire away, the improvement of existing cover, such
as loop-holing walls and the use of hedges with or without ditches,
making sangars, if stones are available, the making of obstacles of
barbed and plain wire, and measuring and marking of ranges round
a position, which should be done by some means not obvious to the
enemy, and clearing the field of fire. It will seldom be practicable
to obtain subjects for practical demonstration of some of the latter
in peace time; people will object to their walls being experimented
on or their shrubberies laid low, and so even here a description of
the method will have to be substituted for actual performance. For
night defence the construction of night rests for rifles is needed.
The best I know is a packing case, filled with earth, with the front
and rear edges notched to hold the rifle stock. The magazine is laid
hard up against the outside of the rear edge and the notches, front
or rear, slowly deepened with a penknife till the sights bear on the
target; afterwards earth is banked up outside the box and head-cover
made above. The foregoing may seem a formidable list, but they are
things that will undoubtedly be required as soon as you get on
shooting terms with an enemy; while if you exhaust this list and feel
the want of further occupation, the Engineering Manual will supply
you with further subjects for your activities.
Pending your getting facilities of ground, tools, and materials
to execute work, you can proceed with the first part of training
outlined above. If your non-commissioned officers have not had
experience, take them out as an instructional section in the same way
as when teaching outpost work, and put them through the exercises
which follow. But if they are already fairly competent, take the men
on parade, forming them, if possible, into not less than two sections.
_Instruction in Siting Trenches._
Choose any position on undulating ground, form the men in extended
order in one line in rear of it, and order them to move up, and
mark where each would place his trench in order to fire on an enemy
advancing from the front. In doing this it should be an invariable
rule that men must lie down, bring the rifle into the firing
position, look along the sights, and move forward or back till they
see that they have got the best position to sweep the ground in their
immediate front (see M.F.E., 31 (3)). Dead ground close to the trench
gives the enemy a place in which to collect and organise an assault.
Take the men in the same way on to other positions and repeat the
lesson till they all understand that the _first thing to be done is
this aiming with the rifle to secure a good field of fire_. At first
halt them close to what you see is the best line, and afterwards halt
them thirty or forty yards from it, and then give the order to choose
sites. For instance, halt them on the top of a convex slope and let
them find out that the best place to bring fire on to flat ground at
its base is somewhere on the enemy’s side of the convexity, for if
the trench were made on the top of the slope the ground immediately
in front would be hidden by the convexity. The section commanders
must help the men in choosing sites.
After the men have fixed and marked the proposed sites, let them lay
down their rifles three paces in rear and kneel or lie down at the
rear edge of the site as if waiting to commence work while you and
section and platoon commanders go round and examine the line. Ask
details from the men—how high they would make the parapet, how thick
it should be, how they would make head-cover, how they would conceal
the work, and so on.
_Traverses and broken lines of Trenches._
Repeat the exercise as above, but this time have the men in sections
or small groups, and the trenches made not in one line, but in
short lengths, separated by traverses. You will have to explain
the construction and use of these to prevent enfilade fire (if not
from long range), and to localise shell bursts. Again, have lines
of trenches mapped out in short lengths on an irregular front, some
a little forward, some a little back, with the earth at each end,
banked up on the flanks with the same object (M.F.E., 33).
_Short Trenches for Two Men._
Bring the men extended to six or eight paces on to a position, and
let the men of each file close to two paces from each other. Each
file is then to choose and mark a site for a short trench to hold
both of them, or, as it would formerly have been called, a rifle pit,
marking where they would make loop-holes to fire both to the front,
and obliquely towards the right and left, so as to rake the ground
in front of the line of the other men’s pits. This arrangement is
not officially recognised, and it does not give the closest possible
firing line, but it is an excellent way of making men think for
themselves.
When the men have got their bearings in the matter of taking up a
line for entrenchment, make them get into the way of changing from
defence into attack. Take up a position as before, and as soon as
the trenches are marked out, indicate a position at some distance as
an objective for attack and start an advance against it, as done in
the attack practices, forming a firing line rapidly of some named
platoons and the support of the others. A skeleton enemy kept hidden
till needed adds much to the realism.
_Defence of Pivots (M.F.E., 50 (3), and I.T., 129)._
Find a position in which there are some points separated from each
other which command the ground between, and also form such pivots
for defence of the position as are described in the paras. above.
According to the nature of the ground, such pivots might be, for
platoons, as much as four hundred yards apart, i.e., attackers coming
between them would be under fire at not more than two hundred yards.
Send a platoon under a commander to each pivot, and let him plan and
mark out his defensive measures, which must include:—
1. An arrangement for all-round defence, so that the pivot may be
self-contained and capable of continuing the fight, although
others may have been captured.
2. The siting accordingly of trenches and loop-holes to fire all
round and especially to sweep the front and rear of adjoining
pivots.
3. The adaptation of existing cover to save labour.
4. The provision of protection against enfilade and reverse fire,
and the _recognition of distant localities_ from which such
fire, whether of artillery or rifle, might be brought to bear
on the post.
5. The marking of ranges in each direction.
6. The provision of obstacles.
7. Any feasible scheme for alternative positions which his men
could reach and occupy under fire.
8. The concealment of the defences, provision of dummy trenches,
and loop-holes and any other shifts.
9. The telling off and posting of look-out men and fixing and
occupying of alarm posts when work has been completed.
10. Drainage and sanitation.
The concealment of defences from aerial reconnaissance will, perhaps,
soon claim more attention than it gets at present.
Practise an attack after defence, starting off one platoon under your
own orders to “go for” an indicated enemy, and sending word either
by messenger or by semaphore to the others, either to join you and
form a firing line, or to move out in support, but, if the latter,
do not fail to finally call them up to reinforce the firing line;
counter-attacks must usually be made with a relatively strong firing
line and small support.
_The Company in Defence Acting Alone._
When you have put non-commissioned officers and men through the
preceding course, plan some scheme on the lines of the defence of
Duffer’s Drift, to deal with a company isolated and beyond reach of
immediate reinforcement. Any bridge over a railway line, a group of
buildings supposed to contain stores, or a ford or bridge over a
river, will provide you with an object to defend. Choose a line of
defence round it and determine what are the essential pivots to be
held. To do this, so as to furnish an instructive lesson, it will
usually be necessary for you to pay a visit to the place by yourself
and formulate your proposed defence before bringing the company on
to the ground. Pay great attention to crossing and supporting fire
from the pivots, and look at the surrounding country with a view to
meeting attack from any direction, for in this case the company, as
well as the pivots in its line of defence, must be self-contained.
Also have regard to the certainty that you will have artillery
fire against you, to which you will not be able to reply, and in
consequence your proposed defences must include deep trenches or
recesses to shelter the men from shell. Your defences will take the
form of a chain of isolated groups about the point to be defended
and separated from each other by possibly several hundred yards. It
is no use simply to go and sit inside a group of buildings which
the guns would knock about your ears and against which the enemy
can concentrate. The better plan is to break up his attack and hide
your weakness by occupying well-strengthened pivots, behind whose
protection you may have some freedom of movement, and so be able,
if the weakness or rashness of the enemy gives opportunity, to
inaugurate local counter-attacks. These, if successful in inflicting
a sharp and sudden loss, will make him hesitate to deliver a decisive
attack till he has found out all about you. With one company you
cannot expect to achieve decisive results against any considerable
body of the enemy, but must be content with keeping him in play for
as long a time as possible, and an attitude of active bluff is the
best means of doing so.
When you have got your plans completed, take out the company
as strong as possible and complete in its proper platoons and
sections—if there are too few men let one man count for two or three.
Send off platoons to occupy and plan the defence of the pivots as
done when practising it before. Do the same scheme on two separate
occasions. The first time do not send out a skeleton enemy, so that
the men may have time to look round, but for the second time send out
some scouts under a subaltern, and let the platoons fall out on their
positions with patrols out in front. Fix a certain hour by which you
expect the arrangements to be all ready, and arrange for the enemy to
advance at that time, and open fire on the patrols if they are met.
When the patrols have fallen back the enemy closes in and starts
sniping at the position. Then bring off a counter-attack, withdrawing
some men for the purpose from pivots that are not threatened, and
coming in on the flank of the attackers. In theory, of course, you
should have a support or reserve available for this, but it does no
harm to move men out of their trenches with the object of assuming
the offensive, while the men learn the essential part of their work
by all being employed on the perimeter.
Have out the company yet a third time on the same or a similar
scheme, pivots and skeleton enemy as before. On this occasion, if the
scheme is the same, change round the platoons to different pivots
from what they occupied before, and when the arrangements for defence
have been settled, leave only sentries and their groups on the pivots
as look-outs, but have patrols in front. Form the remainder of the
men into a support in some central position, and tell them off to
occupy as alarm posts the pivots from which they were withdrawn. When
the skeleton enemy attacks, reinforce the threatened part of the line
by the men of the units told off for its defence, and with part, or
even the whole of the rest, make a counter-attack.
It is very desirable, though unfortunately not often possible, to
perform these last three practices on ground where you are at
liberty to dig, and with an enemy of three or four companies instead
of a few snipers.
_Night Defence._
A night attack may be delivered as a sequence to fighting by
daylight, in the course of which the enemy has established himself
sufficiently close to the defences held by his opponent to see
clearly the way to reach the point against which he intends to lead
his force. Or he may deliver an attack without previous fighting,
hoping to get the better of the defenders by surprise, and basing
his plans solely on the results of reconnaissance. In the latter
case the attack must be preceded by a night advance, long or
short, according as the defenders’ outposts and their patrols have
succeeded in keeping the hostile troops at a distance or not, unless,
indeed, the troops or their scouts or spies have not been in touch
at all during the day in which case an attack would not be a wise
proceeding, because the needful information about the ground and
your forces is lacking. Such attacks as require a night advance as a
preliminary are likely to be made either over open ground or along
roads, for the difficulties and delays occasioned by moving troops
over broken ground which is not thoroughly known are very great.
But in the first case, when fighting has been going on by day, and
the two forces are in close contact at nightfall, separated perhaps
by only a few hundred yards, the presence of broken ground in front
of the defences is no guarantee that the enemy may not consider an
attack by night to have a reasonable chance of succeeding against
any of the points which he has been trying to carry by daylight. It
follows then that in preparing a position for defence the pivots must
be ready to withstand attack by night as well as by day, and also
that roads or paths leading into the position from the surrounding
country should be held and defended by night, in spite of their being
innocuous by daylight owing to being swept effectively by fire from
the adjacent pivots. It will be admitted, I think, that fire by night
is ineffectual unless at very short ranges, or when delivered by men
of extraordinary skill such as the up-country Boer and the American
backwoods-men were pictured to be. A European enemy will seek to
bring off his attack with the bayonet. The defenders will try to foil
this attack, firstly, by the use of fire at the close range, which
allows it to be effective, and, secondly, by the use of the bayonet.
This plainly translates itself into obstacles to keep the enemy under
fire, obstacles to hamper him when at bayonet distance, and night
rests to help the accuracy of the fire in certain desired directions.
I have told you one good form of night rest, and there are several
others, but all require some material if they are to be even
approximately accurate. Failing material of any sort, tie white rags
round the muzzles of the men’s rifles if you can get them. After a
week in the field your men will have nothing that is not very dirty,
but in a civilised country some member of the population may perhaps
be found ready to oblige a soldier.
Working still on your daylight scheme show your non-commissioned
officers and men how to make night obstacles in addition to those
meant for daylight defence, which latter may be any distance up to
one hundred yards in front of the trenches. The night obstacles, on
the other hand, should be quite close, the fire obstacles as close
as ten yards, the bayonet obstacles, say a narrow ditch and a wire,
close under the trenches so as to make a man stumble when trying to
reach the defender with his bayonet. Make or plan these arrangements
round the pivots, and then practise blocking and defending paths or
roads by the same methods as for pivots, but with this variation,
that a parapet which can only be used for defence at night may
be as high as you consider needful without paying regard to its
invisibility, while those to be used by day are kept as low as
possible. In a practical exercise the men to hold these night posts
would have to be furnished either from your support or by thinning
some of the pivots.
Yet the most carefully arranged trenches and obstacles will be of
no value unless the men occupy them in time to avail themselves of
their advantages. Time sufficient to allow of this, must be got by
patrolling in front as for outposts, by making automatic alarms in
front of the obstacles (M.F.E., 55 (12)), by having alert sentries
on the defence line, and by having a good and well understood
arrangement of alarm posts by which each man shall be ready to occupy
at once, in silence, and without confusion, the place which has been
assigned to him. Patrolling has been dealt with under “Outposts,”
the alertness of your sentries will depend largely on the state
of discipline to which you have brought your company, and on the
commonsenseness, to coin a word, of their training. Alarm posts
are practised in the same way as on outpost. In many corps it is a
standing order that when in camp or bivouac, on manœuvre as well as
on service, men are to fall in on their alarm posts once a day, the
usual times being at retreat or on arrival in camp (F.S.R., 48 (2)),
and this is done whether in Brigade (F.S.R., 47 (2)) or not. If such
is the order in your battalion, adhere to it within your company when
detached, if not, do it off your own bat. It does not fatigue the men
and ensures attention being paid on all occasions to this important
duty.
EXERCISE XVI.
HASTY EXPEDIENTS.
I.T., 93 (iii.), directs the training of the section to include
rough and ready expedients so as to form a fighting front in any
direction. This training is of great value, both from a disciplinary
point of view, as it makes men quick to move on an order, and also
from the point of view of _moral_, as men accustomed to get sudden
and unexpected orders given under imaginary circumstances will be
more likely to keep cool, when such orders are necessitated by the
stress of actual battle, than men who have always been trained in a
deliberate fashion.
Such sudden orders must in general mean one of two things, either
that the enemy has got you, or you have got him, “on the hop,” if I
may introduce an expression from the cricket field, and that there
is every chance of the bowler, whoever he is, being badly scored
off, unless he treats the batsman to something more difficult than
the expensive half-volley. If you are fortunately able to find the
enemy at a disadvantage, you will act against him by rifle fire
alone; but, on the other hand, you may find yourself caught in a bad
situation, by either artillery or rifle fire, or possibly by cavalry,
who mean to use the steel. It follows then, in practising expedients,
based, as they should be, on some possible situation, that you should
make the central idea either offensive, as if attempting to bring
your men into a position to get the best results from their fire, or
defensive, as if to escape, or mitigate shell fire or rifle fire, to
which you are subjected under adverse conditions.
Against artillery fire from ranges or in positions at which you
cannot reply effectively with rifle fire, your action at first, at
all events, must be purely defensive, i.e., all you can do, will be
to escape being overwhelmed by the shell fire, and even at effective
rifle range, the shields of modern field guns, enable them to engage
infantry on very equal terms, so long as the infantry is in front, or
not far on a flank, of the line of guns.
In the days of muzzle-loaders, it was the cavalry who possessed the
power of suddenly annihilating infantry, when caught unprepared to
withstand their charge. The magazine rifle has reduced this danger,
but the quick-firing cannon has now equal, if not greater, powers of
dealing out swift destruction to any infantry that it finds exposed
in close formation, if only the range be known. At least once in the
Russo-Japanese War, and again in the Turko-Bulgarian war, if we may
believe the somewhat ill-authenticated reports yet to hand, have
artillery wiped out of existence in a few moments several hundred
unfortunate infantrymen, who were caught in the _rafâle_ fired at a
range either ascertained previously, or got at the moment by good
luck or good judgment. The contingency of being thus caught by
artillery is evidently one that should be prepared for by infantry,
as was the forming of squares in the old days, when a cavalry charge
was an ever present peril. In this case of artillery fire, the
conditions and the object desired are practically always the same—the
infantry is in close order of some sort, and wishes to break up into
a congeries of small groups, so as to isolate the effect of the burst
of each shrapnel. The matter of rifle fire is different, as there
are any number of ways in which you may seek either to escape the
results of the enemy’s fire or attempt to use your own, and this is
the proper field in which to practise expedients.
Whenever you intend to carry out some such movement to meet a
supposed situation, you must let the men know exactly what you are
picturing, so that they also may understand what is needed. The
essence of these practices is that they should be performed without
time for deliberate thought—the men must learn to think and act
quickly. The most satisfactory way is to be yourself mounted, as you
can then get the whole company to hear you at once, whereas, if on
foot, the men who are farthest from you often lose the first part
of what you say; you then have to repeat it, and the thing loses
its character of surprise for the rest, who have already heard it
once. Give out the situation in a loud voice, and in as few words as
possible, then try and give the very order you think you would give,
if the situation was a real one on service; use your own imagination,
in figuring what you would say, and how you would say it. To call
attention, it seems legitimate to use your whistle, as on service
the men would have some warning that things were about to happen,
either by the arrival of shell or bullets, the sight of the enemy, or
by the signal of their own scouts. In giving the situation, if you
are receiving fire, give out what kind of fire it is, the enemy’s
position, if it is allowable to suppose it known, or if you are
going to be on the offensive, give out where the enemy is, and what
he is doing, and how you learn this, i.e., by your scouts, or by
first-hand observation. For example, while the company is marching
in fours along a road, you see, in imagination, two shells burst
simultaneously near by, and about two hundred yards from each other,
and you wisely deduce that the enemy is ranging on your company. Blow
your whistle and give out “Artillery fire is opening on the company,
from such and such a direction—open out to columns of sections.” If
you have taught your men what to do to escape artillery fire, they
will open out at the double into columns of platoons, at not less
than fifty yards interval, measuring roughly at right angles to the
direction of the supposed fire (I.T., 118 (3)).
In practising this opening out under artillery fire, which, as I have
said, is the one specific hasty manœuvre performed under conditions
nearly always similar, it is inexpedient to lay down any fixed rules
for the positions to be taken up by the platoons. It sounds simple to
say that the platoons of the leading half-company go to the right,
and those of the rear half to the left, but when men are marching at
ease, and shells begin bursting round them unexpectedly, I do not
think there will be time for anyone to see which half-company is
leading. The main thing is to get the platoons instantly away from
the road on which the enemy has laid his guns, and from each other.
Direct platoon commanders to lead their men at the double in any
direction away from the platoon in front, except, of course, towards
the rear. In theory, of course, this might result in all four making
out towards one flank, but, even so, this is better than having any
deliberative halts on the road, and in practice the platoons in rear
can see which way those in front are heading, and wheel to go to
the other flank. There is no advantage to be had from getting the
men in the ranks into extended order, as the shrapnel scatter the
whole width of their bursting zone in an impartial manner, nor is it
any use to seek such slight cover as gives only a screen from view,
unless with a view to getting away from the shell-swept locality
without attracting notice. Platoon commanders should, of course, make
for any cover that is sufficiently steep on the rear side to shelter
them from the downward dropping shrapnel bullets. If there is no
cover, the best thing after getting out into the line of platoons
separated by fully fifty yards intervals, is to move rapidly forward.
If cover exists with open ground round it, the men may be got away by
“dribbling” man by man, in the hope that the enemy may not spot the
movement, and continue or resume his shell practice, to defeat it.
As regards expedients against rifle fire, I will only suggest a few,
and leave you to invent others suited to the nature of the ground you
have got to exercise on.
1. The company in close order is surprised by a heavy rifle fire;
there is cover near by sufficient to hold the whole company
crowded together. Order the men to get into the cover helter
skelter, and then advance or retire, by the successive
movement of platoons or sections, who take extended order at
their best speed as they emerge from shelter. If facilities
exist, tell one or two platoons to reply to the fire, from the
cover, till their own turn comes to move, by which time the
first lots that went out should have got into position to open
fire.
2. The company in close order is again surprised by rifle fire, but
there is no cover near to act as a base. Get the company
quickly into extended order, and let men reply to the fire as
soon as they have extended, using studiously slow fire.
3. The company or platoons in extended order have to change front
to meet an attack from a flank. As in the book, call on them
to line a hedge or ditch, facing so as to fire in the new
direction.
4. Coming through a gap in a hedge or wall, either in advance or
retreat, scattering off right and left, so as to get out of
the way of fire concentrated on the gap.
5. The scouts from a position some distance from the company report
a body of the enemy unaware of their presence and exposed to
fire. Bring the company quickly up to the scouts’ position,
halt, load, and adjust sights under cover and just short of
the firing position, and on your whistle the men advance at
once to the edge of the fire position and surprise the enemy
by a simultaneous fire from all the rifles.
6. Taking up quickly an all-round defensive position; the platoons
or sections go off and find the best positions in different
directions which you merely indicate roughly.
7. Hastily organised attacks, to dislodge an enemy unexpectedly
found in occupation of a position, also taking up action as
flank and rearguards under fire.
EXERCISE XVII.
NIGHT OPERATION TRAINING.
I.T., 113, gives some instructions as to how men are to be taught to
march and to use their ears and eyes at night, while F.S.R., chapter
ix., goes into the subject at length. These operations are divided
into night marches, night advances, and night attacks. The men of
a company will not be fit to take a useful part in night tactical
exercises either in company or in battalion, unless they have had
some elementary training as laid down in “Infantry Training,”
and have also been practised in the two indispensable duties of
maintaining connection (F.S.R., 129 (4)) and in reconnaissance
(F.S.R., 130 (1)). Night patrolling and the duties of night sentries
have been dealt with under outposts, and I will not say anything
more about them here. The rest of the elementary training contained
in “Infantry Training” requires no explanation, and you can practise
your men in it in small parties. There remains the maintenance of
connection, and I have found that training for this is best done at
first by daylight. It is very simple, and after one or two daylight
lessons the men will work quite well by night, but to begin straight
off under darkness will only lead to waste of time, as mistakes
cannot easily be corrected, nor the working of a system made plain.
The company should parade as strong as possible in this exercise,
as, with only a few files on parade, the necessity of maintaining
connection, and the difficulty of doing so, are not so obvious as
when a fairly large body of men has to be handled without making a
noise. Connection has to be maintained within the company itself,
and also with the other companies in front or rear, if in column of
route, or on the right and left, if deployed. In order to practise
this connection with other companies, represent the front and rear,
or flank section commanders of the supposed adjacent companies by a
man for each company, who should move where those section commanders
would be, i.e., in fours, at the head or tail of the directing flank,
in line, on the flanks of the front rank. Use these dummies as the
recipients of all orders and signals passed along, so that your
company may get the habit of keeping touch with the others before it
works with the battalion.
_I. Connecting Files._
The only sure way of keeping connection between bodies of troops
moving in separate parties is by connecting files, who keep within
sight of each other and so can seldom be at more than twenty yards
distance apart. These files must be taught to pass commands with
exactitude, and never to open their mouths otherwise, i.e., they
must never speculate between themselves “Are they advancing?” or so
forth, or talk at all, because the next file may hear some word of
their talk and mistake it for an order. When connecting files are
needed they must take up their places without its being necessary to
tell them off loudly, and when no longer needed they must close into
company in silence and in good order.
Form the company into fours, turned to a flank as in column of route:
tell the dummy section commander of the preceding company to march
off; string the company out after him, the men marching off in files
at about ten paces between each file without further command after
the first one has gone, each as it moves off touching the next to
follow, to give it notice. When they are all strung out, let the rear
dummy section commander follow. Then pass orders up the line; use
only the form given in I.T., 96 (3). To make sure that such verbal
orders have reached the intended recipient, the only way, though a
slow one, is to require him to send back a report that he has taken
the action required. Thus, a message from the rear to the leading
portion to halt would be answered from the leading portion by a
report passed down the line to the commander “The leading portion,
or, etc., has halted.” Let your first order be to halt, passed from
the dummy company in rear up to that in front “From Colonel A. to all
companies—halt.” On receiving the order one man of each file halts
on his ground and turns to the rear, the other goes forward to the
next file as quickly as he can without noise, delivers the order, and
returns to his former place, when he halts and faces the other way
from his comrade. Thus, on the completion of the order to halt, one
man of each file will be facing each way. Bayonets will usually be
fixed in night operations, and it is important, especially in Rifle
Battalions, to accustom men to carry the rifle on the right shoulder,
with the hand round the small of the butt and never at the trail,
otherwise there is much danger of someone getting a stab as well as
an order.
After the halt, get on the move again by passing up the word to
advance, and practise any other likely orders:—“Go fast in front,”
“Go slow in front,” “The rear cannot keep up,” and so on. Follow the
orders up the line and see that men do not tamper with the form of
the order en route, and that they speak in a whisper when giving it
over. Section and platoon commanders must be told all orders as they
pass, see that their units conform, and look after the maintenance of
the distance between files.
Next practise lateral communication, the four platoons in one line
in close order, with company intervals between each, representing
the leading platoons of four companies drawn up in line of columns
of platoons at deploying intervals and ready for a night advance.
Lateral connecting files need to be closer than when following
each other, so put out connecting files to the flanks in a similar
way to what was done before, but at six, or eight yards interval.
Then move, halt, and deploy the supposed column by means of these
files, dressing and interval being kept up by the files moving up or
stepping short, and closing on or inclining from any named company of
direction without specific orders.
_II. Marching and Formations._
Form up the company and get it into fours as if in column of route,
dummy company section commanders as before. Practise marching off
from the halt, and halting, passing the word from the front or rear
company along the men on the flanks of the fours. As the order comes
along, the flank men of the fours nudge or shove the other men in
their respective fours, and whisper to the flank men in the four in
front or behind. There is seldom any need to speak, as a push or
pull is enough. The platoon commanders get the word from the flank
men of the sections of fours, and from one another as well, as they
are to follow the order along their own platoons, and go forward or
back to the commander of the next platoon to whom they must repeat
it, and then resume their proper places. The platoon commander of
the leading, or rear, platoon is responsible for passing the word
to the nearest platoon commander of the next company. The company
officers must arrange also to hear all orders, and should have fixed
positions, known to all, which they will only quit temporarily.
In marching off from the halt, the rear portion of the company
should step out well, as soon as the order reaches them, so as to
avoid straggling, while the leading fours preserve a uniform pace.
In halting in battalion, the leading fours should close up on the
company in front, and continue to do so, till it is seen that it
has finished closing up; there is always bound to be a good deal
of straggling at first owing to the method of giving orders. When
this system is in good working order, move and halt the company on
your own audibly whispered word of command, the platoon commanders
repeating it, the system of communication being kept up as before,
but the men moving at once on the word; this will give a fairly
simultaneous action throughout the company while ensuring against
loss of touch.
On the same lines, practise forming line from column of platoons,
mass, and column of platoons from column of fours, and marching in
line, paying attention throughout to dressing and the covering of
files in line.
_III. Night Assault._
Choose a position as objective, and form the company, in line or in
column of platoons, about three hundred yards from it, with scouts
about eighty yards in front of the company (F.S.R., 137 (4)). This
is the formation which would usually be adopted at the position of
deployment. When the scouts have got about one hundred yards from the
position, or up to a line which they would recognise in the dark as
being in close proximity to it, they should halt, and wait for the
arrival of the company. The whole then move silently forward towards
the position till you give the word or signal for assault, when all
charge. Practise this stealthy advance right on to the position,
as if the enemy were not alert, and also make the charge from
some distance, as would be done if the enemy opened fire, which is
recognised to be what will most often happen. After the assault the
men should be rallied by the non-commissioned officers taking all men
within their reach, and forming them into extemporised sections ready
to be reformed into platoons and to begin entrenching.
If by chance you get material, you may introduce refinements, in the
way of wire-cutting men with each section, sand bags with each man,
and bags stuffed with straw carried ready to throw on to abatis or to
fill up trenches, to be carried in a fixed place in the company.
_IV. Night Entrenching._
Practise marching with arms and tools, and taking up a position to
be entrenched, with especial regard to avoidance of noise. When
entrenching by night, the trenches cannot be chosen to give a
field of fire unless it has been possible to obtain access to the
locality by day, and mark them in advance; failing this the company
commander, as soon as the position is reached, must send patrols,
and go himself, to ascertain that no commanding ground, at least
in the immediate vicinity, has been left unoccupied, and, at the
first light, all other such points within effective range as it is
possible to hold, should be secured and entrenched, without orders
from higher commanders. A full illustration of this, however, can
only be done by parading at night.
_V. Search Work._
Practise the company in going off, as if detached from the column to
get touch with other troops, or to find a gate or bridge by which
some obstacle, wall, canal, etc., met with, can be passed. The
company moves off dropping connecting files to keep touch with the
halted column, the files halt at their distances, and pass word if
the company has achieved its mission, and close on the company when
the column comes up, but not before, else the column will be left out
of touch; or, if the need has passed and the company is recalled to
the column, the connecting files again remain at their posts till the
company is gathered back on them.
_VI. Surprises._
When only a few men are on parade, advanced education, combined with
some amusement, may be got by experimenting in the best ways of
laying out obnoxious persons, such as hostile patrols, who have to
be rushed in silence (F.S.R., 138 (5)). Before beginning a stalk,
the quarry should be kept under observation to see which way he looks
when halted, and any other idiosyncrasies. The assailant should creep
up to him either on his flank, or from behind, moving one foot at a
time, and bending down, though not on all fours. If the sentry looks
his way, he must stay absolutely motionless, till he again looks
away. My informant on this matter was a friend of a successful rifle
thief in Upper India.
After putting the company through the above daylight course, you
should, of course, put theory into practice and do some real night
work whenever you get the chance, putting out a skeleton enemy or
some observers to tell you how much noise you make, and follow out
the full instructions as to orders, watchwords, etc., given in
F.S.R., 138 and 139. Test your men as to their ability to see in the
dark; some men can see much more than others; spot these men and tell
them off as “Night Scouts.” Even if they are not otherwise qualified
as scouts, they are most useful in guiding the company over rough
ground.
A SCHEME OF A COMPANY TRAINING.
I give below, as an example of the application of the foregoing
exercises, a scheme of company training which I actually carried out.
This was in the days before platoons, so I have altered the scheme to
show what I should have done had the company organisation been what
it now is. I was given from Monday in one week to Saturday the next
week to march out into camp, about 10 miles, and get back, i.e., two
days of march, and ten halted working days. I had thirty-five rounds
per man of ball cartridge available for field practice musketry, and
a sufficiency of blank for the requirements of skeleton enemy and
for use with the men in one or two of the exercises. My men were
Regulars, and during the previous furlough season I had grounded them
piecemeal in field work.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
DAY. | | FORENOON WORK. | AFTERNOON WORK.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
1 |Monday | March out to camp. March |
| | discipline and work of |
| | connecting files. Advanced |
| | guard. Sanitation. Water |
| | piquet and sanitary patrols. |
| | Pitched a perimeter camp as |
| | for savage warfare. Trenched |
| | tents against rain, and |
| | made a shelter trench round |
| | camp. Alarm posts. |
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
2 |Tuesday | Individual advance in | Improved and
| | | deepened camp
| | extended order. Retirement | entrenchments, made
| | by pairs. | loop-holes, night
| | | rests, and obstacles.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
3 |Wednesday | Platoon and Section in | Field practice
| | attack as part of Company. | Musketry:—Individual
| | | advance in extended
| | | order. 7 rounds ball
| | | per man.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
4 |Thursday | Platoon in independent | Field practice
| | attack. | Musketry:—Section
| | | in independent
| | | attack, 7 rounds
| | | ball per man.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
5 |Friday | Platoon in retirement. | Preliminary
| | | training for Company
| | | attack. Fire
| | | discipline and
| | | control.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
6 |Saturday | Company in attack with the | Prepared target
| | battalion. | positions and markers
| | | butts for
| | | snapshooting.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
7 |Monday | Company in attack with | Snapshooting, 7
| | Battalion. | rounds per man.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
8 |Tuesday | Company in attack acting | Snapshooting, 7
| | alone. | rounds per man.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
9 |Wednesday | Outposts. | Company in attack,
| | | 7 rounds ball.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
10 |Thursday | Defence. | Company in
| | | retirement.
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
11 |Friday | Night attack. Parade at | Hasty expedients.
| | 2.30 a.m. |
-----+----------+------------------------------+----------------------
12 |Saturday | March back to quarters. |
=====+==========+==============================+======================
Transcriber’s Notes
Catalog page Changed Miscellaneous Tactica to: Tactical
pg 62 Changed close and re-form to: reform
pg 63 Changed expect either a counterattack to: counter-attack
pg 67 Changed this exercise, though to: through
pg 76 Added period after: left on the position
pg 124 Changed trenches or make loopholes to: loop-holes
pg 125 Changed the line of loopholes to: loop-holes
pg 136 Changed: (I.T, 156 (5)) to: (I.T., 156 (5))
pg 182 Added comma after: entrenchments, made loop-holes
pg 183 Added period after: 7 rounds ball per man
pg 184 Added period after: Friday Night attack
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The training of an infantry company" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.