The method by which the French conscript is trained at riding school is of such a nature that it trains horse and man at the same time. At the beginning of training with saddles the ride is formed of about sixteen men who walk, trot, and canter their mounts along sides of a square in single file. The man is made to ride his horse well into the corners of the square and to make three turns sharply, and, when men have acquired full control of their horses so as to be able to perform this simple movement properly, they are taken on to more complex matters. While strung out along one side of the square, at the word of command each man turns his horse at a direct right angle, proceeds across the square, and, turning again at a right angle on the far side, the ride forms single file again and proceeds. A diagonal movement of the same nature is then taught; men are taught to halt their horses suddenly and rein them back a length or two; they are taught when at the canter to cause their horses to passage sideways across the square, and, in fact, are instructed to make every movement of which a horse is capable. At first, as may be assumed, the tuition is carried out with trained horses, but, as men become advanced in the art and practice of riding, they are put on to younger horses, and it will be easily understood that, in learning himself to make the horse execute the movements, the cavalryman trains the horse to its work as well as increasing his own knowledge.
In the matter of foot drill there is not so much to learn in the cavalry as in the infantry. Cavalry foot drill, as a matter of fact, is practically a replica of the drill to which troops and squadrons of men are subjected when mounted. The principle governing cavalry foot drill in practically all armies consists in assuming that a man shall not be called on to execute a movement which he cannot execute on horseback, as, otherwise, confusion might arise in the course of mounted drill. It would be interesting, for instance, if cavalry were taught infantry drill, to see what would happen if a squadron of mounted men were ordered to form fours in the infantry style.
Actual foot movements do not by any means comprise the total of drill that the cavalry conscript must learn on foot before applying it to mounted work. The use of the sword and also that of the lance are first thoroughly taught to squads of dismounted men, and a recruit must be fully conversant with sword and lance exercise before he ventures to perform either offensive or defensive movements with either of these weapons on horseback. The unskilled man waving a sword about when mounted would probably do more damage to his horse's eyes and ears than to anything else, and the man with the lance, if unskilled, would probably find himself dismounting involuntarily if he tried to use the lance on a spirited horse. Thus men are taken out, dismounted, in squads; each man assumes the position which he would occupy on horseback with feet well apart, knees bent and toes turned to the front—an exhausting posture to maintain for any length of time. In this attitude the recruit is taught such movements as are requisite to full control of sword and lance. For final training in the use of these weapons men are given fencing outfits and set in pairs to oppose each other. When they have attained to proficiency, the whole business is repeated on horseback, and by that time their training for actual field work in the ranks is practically complete.
The part of his work that the cavalry conscript likes least is the grooming and sweeping up and cleaning of saddlery in the stables. There is a morning stable hour with which the day begins; there are about two hours before midday which must be devoted to grooming, cleaning saddlery, sweeping up, etc., and there is another hour or so to be spent at stables in the afternoon, when the "orders of the day" are read out to the men by the sergeant-major of the squadron or his representative.
As is the case in the infantry, each conscript, on arriving at the regiment in which he is to serve, is allotted to the charge of a corporal, who instructs him in all things pertaining to his work, and takes charge of him oncorvées, the equivalent to the "fatigues" of the British Army.Corvéesinclude the carrying of forage from the stores to stable, fetching coal for the cooks, white-washing where and when necessary, building riding-school jumps, and, in fact, all and every class of work which men are unable to perform individually for themselves. Much of this work is undergone by the men sentenced tosalle de police, which is the equivalent of the British Army's punishment known as "days to barracks," with the addition that the offenders sleep in the guard room at night instead of in the barrack room. This of course involves entire confinement to barracks, which no offender is allowed to quit unless he is on duty; it also involves no possibility of attendance at the canteen at any time of the day, and, further, the man sentenced tosalle de policedevotes practically all the spare time that is his under normal circumstances to some form ofcorvée. On the whole, however, the punishment is not so severe as it appears, for, with the exception of sleeping in the guard room at night, and rising exceptionally early in the morning, a man undergoingsalle de policeis not debarred from the society of his comrades, and there is usually some good-natured chum willing to fetch canteen produce, and thus make up for at least one of the deficiencies involved.
This last, however, must be done when the corporal is not looking, or else both men are likely to get into trouble. Strict discipline is the rule and the conscript is expected to take his punishment—when he incurs it—as part of his training. It must be added as a mark of the quality of the material of which the French Army is composed that punishments and rewards alike are usually accepted in equally good part.
The corporal, who is the superior officer with whom the conscript is brought most frequently in contact, sleeps in the same room as his squad; he is thus able to give men hints with regard to riding school work; he trains his squad at elementary drill, both mounted and dismounted; he instructs men in the way in which clothing should be folded for placing on the shelf, and the way in which to clean kit and equipment. In the matter of troop drill the conscript is taught his work by the sergeant of thepelotonor troop, and the sergeant in turn is responsible to the lieutenant or sub-lieutenant over him. He is also responsible to the sergeant-major of the squadron, and through him to the senior captain of the squadron. To follow the matter through, the senior captain is responsible to theChef d'Escadrons, who again is responsible to the commanding officer of the regiment. Decentralisation of command has been an important factor in French military training for many years, and although the responsibilities of the corporal and sergeant pass through so many grades before they reach the ultimate head of affairs, both these lower ranks are extremely important items in the discipline and training of the French cavalry regiments.
There is one system pursued both in the cavalry and in the artillery of the French Army which leads to pleasant expeditions for a certain number of men in each of these branches of the service. The system referred to is that of boarding out a certain number of horses away from regimental control for that portion of the year which the regiment spends in barracks. When the time approaches for the regiment to go on manœuvres, a party usually made up of a sergeant, possibly a corporal, and two or three troopers, goes round to the farms where these horses are at grass, and inspects them with a view to reporting on their condition and fitness for use. As may be imagined, the men selected for these expeditions are envied their appointments, for it is a pleasant matter to get away from the discipline and strict routine of service with the regiment for a time, and, if the sergeant in charge is a companionable man, the whole affair becomes a perfect picnic for the men concerned. On expeditions of this kind men are perfectly certain of receiving full hospitality at such places as they may visit, and altogether the trip is as good as the furlough which the conscript, unlike his Britishconfrère, does not get, save in exceptional circumstances. The two years in which a man must become fully conversant with his work is too short a period, in view of the number of duties he has to learn, to admit of holidays.
Altogether, the life of the cavalry conscript in barracks is not by any means an unpleasant business. A comparatively large number of men, when given the choice of the arm of the service in which to serve, request to be sent to the cavalry. The majority of those joining cavalry regiments are used to horses in some way—and by this is implied very many ways indeed, and very many kinds of horse. French cavalry as a whole is built up out of good material; the spirit of the men is good; the reputation of the French cavalry for horse-mastership is as wide as it is deserved, and, bearing in mind the period of active service for which men are required to serve, it may safely be said that there is no better body of cavalry troops in the world than the French. This remark, however, cannot be reckoned as a wise one if the speaker is addressing a British cavalryman, who always regards himself as a member of the premier squadron in the best regiment of the very finest cavalry force existent. But then, the French cavalryman will tell the same story.
CHAPTER VII
ARTILLERY
In the matter of armament and the quality thereof, French artillery is second to none; but in the matter of numbers the Field Artillery might have been stronger when considered relatively with the total strength of the French Army. If the conscript electing to join either infantry or cavalry considers himself in for a hard time, then it would be difficult to say what are the anticipations of the conscript who goes to service with the guns, for his work is practically twice as hard as that of the average infantryman. Still, he makes up for increase of work by a relaxation of discipline, and, after all, the conscript's two years comes to about the same thing in the end, no matter what branch of the service he may choose. For, just as there is a limit to a man's endurance or efficiency, so there is a limit to the amount of knowledge that a man can absorb in a given period. The infantry conscript absorbs all the knowledge possible in the allotted time: the artillery conscript can do no more.
It may be said, in fact, that the artillery conscript has a better time of it than his fellows in either infantry or cavalry, for his work is rendered more interesting than theirs by reason of its being more varied. The artillery driver, certainly, is in much the same position as the cavalryman, for his life is made up of horses and stables, riding, driving, grooming, and care for the fitness and cleanliness of harness and saddlery. He has a very busy life, this artillery driver, and his remarks, on coming in on a wet day after two or three hours' parade with the guns, might cause a little consternation in what is known as polite society, for two muddy horses with their saddlery and fittings, all to be dried and cleaned for the battery officer's inspection within a given time, are not conducive to elegance of expression or to restraint.
But compensation comes in the relaxation of the rigid discipline which the infantryman, and to a certain extent the cavalryman, have to undergo. This will appear more clearly when one understands that infantrymen and cavalrymen alike need supervision throughout the whole of their day's work. Their tasks are mainly of drill and routine: made work, a good bit of it, in order to render them thoroughly efficient soldiers. The made work of the artillery driver consists in rendering him efficient in the art of controlling two of the horses which draw the gun, under all possible and many impossible conditions. By the time his training is completed, he has learned to harness up and turn out quickly, and is capable of obeying without hesitation any word of command the battery officer may give with regard to the evolutions of the battery as a whole. He is trained in the matter of casualties; that is to say, he is taught to regard one of his horses as suddenly injured or dead, and knows exactly what to do to make the best of the loss, in case such a casualty may occur. "Unlimber" and "limber up," as words of command, find him equally unmoved and equally alert; he is, at his best, a confident, self-reliant man, a far different being from the raw youth who, on a certain first of October, came to be initiated into the mysteries of artillery driving.
These things comprise very nearly all of what may be termed the made work of the artillery driver, the work that is arranged with a special view to making him an efficient soldier in time of war. The rest of his work is absolutely necessary to the well-being of himself and the two horses under his charge. As a matter of course, he must keep himself and his kit smart and clean—as smartness is known in the French Army. He must groom his horses, and keep their equipment in good order; he must keep the stables clean; he must assist the gunners in thecorvéesnecessary to the maintenance of health, good order, and efficiency in the battery. Bearing in mind the fact that this one man is responsible not only for himself, in the way that an infantryman is, but is also responsible for his two horses and all their outfit, it will be seen that there is not much time for the discipline which, in the case of the infantryman, is practically indispensable to the thorough control of the man and the full efficiency of the regiment. The artillery driver is a busy man, who considers himself, by reason of the amount of work that he gets through, a far more capable man than either an infantryman or a cavalryman; in the driver's estimation, the only class of man who comes anywhere near him as regards efficiency and soldierly qualities is the gunner, and, the driver will say, the gunner is not quite so good a man as the driver. This spirit, common to each branch of the French Army, augurs well for the efficiency and fighting value of all arms of the service.
Gunners in the French Army, as far as Field Artillery is concerned, differ from English gunners in that they only ride on the limber and on the gun when there is actual need that they should accompany the gun. English gunners always ride, but in the French Army it is considered better to save the horses by reducing the weight that they have to draw to the lowest possible amount. On long marches the gunners turn out two or three hours earlier than the drivers, and march like infantry to the appointed destination for the day. Although turning out later with horses and guns, the drivers usually reach camp at the end of the day quite as soon as the gunners, for the trot is maintained where possible, and, with a light load to draw, artillery horses are able to get over ground quickly. This system has much to commend it; it hardens the gunners, and is far better for their general health than sitting on a gun or limber which jolts, springless, along a country road; at the same time, it increases the mobility of the artillery, and renders horses more fresh and fit for their work in case of several days in succession, devoted to marching to a distant destination. The only drawback to the practice consists in its being useless in time of war, when the gunners must at all times accompany the guns and be ready for instant action.
The work of the gunners is quite as hard as that of the drivers of Field Artillery, and quite as varied. Coming to the battery with absolutely no knowledge of the ways of using a gun, the raw conscript is taught the work of half a dozen men, for, as in the case of the drivers, each man has to be able to replace casualties in the ranks. The actual drill to which a gunner is subjected is a complicated business; there is a good deal of hopping and jumping about and aside, for each man must learn to perform his part in loading, sighting, and firing his gun, and at the same time each man must keep out of the way of the rest. A gun crew amounts to a dozen or so of men: there are the men concerned in the getting out of ammunition, others busied over the actual loading, and yet others engaged in sighting the gun and firing at the word of command; each of these men must be taught the duties of all the rest, for, when a battery is actually in action, casualties must be anticipated, and the men who are loading must be prepared to get out ammunition if required, must be able to set the time fuse of a shell for a given range, able to load, sight, and fire the gun. Thus one man has to learn the various tasks which a dozen perform, though to each is allotted a definite place, and each is specially trained for the performance of a definite part.
Naturally, this training fully occupies all the two years of the gunner conscript's service, and there is little time to spare. The fuss and fret of discipline is correspondingly reduced; when a man is thoroughly busy, and interested in his work as any man must be over a gun, if he is in the least mechanically inclined, he needs no undue pressure to keep him up to his work; the gunner, if he has any sense of the responsibility and nature of his work, gets sufficiently interested in it, and sufficiently keen over the points that he has to master, to render him independent of more than actual tuition. The pleasure that comes to the sportsman over a remarkably successful shot, or to the cricketer over a good boundary hit, is akin to the feeling experienced by the gunner as he learns part after part of his gun, and finds himself well on the way to gaining complete control over the tremendous power that the gun represents.
But this comes late in the training period, and is not attained easily. There is so much to learn; the way in which a shell is timed, for instance, is a complex piece of work that must be understood, to a certain extent, by the gunner who has to do the timing; that is to say, the mechanism of the shell, and the nature of the timing apparatus, have to be taught the man as well as the mere action of turning the ring to the required point and "setting the fuse." Traversing and sighting the gun, elevation and depression, are movements that explain themselves as they are taught; sighting to a given range seems easy, but is not so easy in practice, for the sighting of a gun has to be done swiftly and accurately—there must be no mistake in the range, for a shell costs more money than the total pay of the conscript during his two years of service, and to throw those costly projectiles to points at which they explode without effect is a silly business.
To each man his part in the whole, and absolute efficiency in the part—that is the ideal to which the training of the gunner is directed; the quality of the French field artillery in action in this, their latest real experience of war, attests how well the ideal has been realised. Outnumbered by their opponents in batteries and regiments, often confronted with guns of far heavier calibre than their own, they have given good account of themselves, and shown that the crews of the 75-millimetre gun are capable of holding their own as far as lies within the bounds of human possibility.
With regard to the custom of sending forward gunners on foot, this practice is also followed in the case of reserve drivers, or drivers who are not needed for the actual transport of the guns and limbers on the march. They are formed up in rear of the gunners, and are marched off on foot with the latter instead of adding to the weight that the horses have to pull, leaving only such officers and men as are actually necessary to travel with the guns.
The artillery officer's training course is more severe than that undergone by any other branch of the service, as, in view of the complicated and responsible nature of his duties, it needs to be. An artillery officer, gaining his commission after the fashion of a British officer who elects to join the Army by way of Sandhurst or Woolwich, goes first to the École Polytechnique, the highest engineering school of France; after completing the course here, the officer of artillery is sent on to the artillery school at Fontainebleau, where a year is spent in further training, and then the youngster is considered competent to take his place as lieutenant in an artillery battery. The percentage of artillery officers gaining their commissions from the ranks is smaller than that of other branches of the service, and it is seldom that such officers reach higher than the rank of captain, for, in order to learn all that is required of the higher ranks of commissioned officer in the artillery, an officer needs to start young, and a course at the École Polytechnique is almost an essential. By the time a man has worked his way through the various grades of non-commissioned officer and is thus eligible for such a course, he is usually too old to take kindly to school work.
Altogether, artillery service is not a light business in the French Army—it is not in any army, for that matter. Both gunners and drivers must take themselves seriously, and officers of the artillery must take themselves most seriously of all, with the possible exception of engineer officers. The modern rifle is a complicated weapon when compared with the musket of a hundred years ago; but in comparison with the rifle, the big gun of the Army of to-day has advanced in construction and power to an enormously greater extent. The character of the projectile has changed altogether from the old-fashioned round shot to a missile which is in itself a gun, carrying its own exploding charge and small projectiles within itself. The range of the modern gun is limited only by the necessity to make the gun mobile in the field, and by the range of human sight or power to judge the position of the target. The gunners of to-day, and the officers who command them, must be skilled workmen, possessed of no little mechanical ability in addition to their military qualities. They must be not only soldiers, but artificers, mechanics, engineers, mathematicians—skilled men in every way. The efficiency of the French artillery to-day is largely due to the French turn of mind, which is eminently suited to the solving of those mathematical problems with which the work of those who control the big guns abounds.
CHAPTER VIII
IN CAMP AND ON THE MARCH
Manœuvres fall at the end of the military year in the French Army, being so arranged in order that the second-year conscripts shall pass out from the Army and back to their ordinary civilian avocations as soon as they return to barracks and have time to hand in their equipment and arms. For the majority of these men, it is two years since they have had time to see their friends, save for a stray day or two of leave here and there for the man whose people live within a short distance of the training-place to which he has been drafted, or a stray visitor who brings news from home to one or other at infrequent intervals. Thus manœuvres mean a good deal to the conscript; even the first-year men catch the infection from their fellows with regard to the approaching time for going away, and there is as well the sense for these juniors that, when they return to barracks, they will no longer be first-year men, but able to advise and instruct such raw recruits as they themselves were just a year ago. Added to this, again, is the sense of freedom that comes from knowing of the days of marching, billeting, and sight of fresh places and people from day to day, and it will be seen that the change from barrack life with its perpetual round of work to the constantly varying scenes of manœuvres is one which is anticipated with pleasure by all.
About a week, or perhaps more, before the time has come for the army corps concerned—or the cavalry or other divisions concerned—to set out on its march to the manœuvre area, the cavalry and artillery send out their patrols to gather up the horses which have been boarded out at farms for the summer, and the men of these patrols are almost invariably billeted on the inhabitants of the districts round which they have to ride on their errand. It is a pleasant task, this; the year is at its best, and summer just so far advanced that the early rising, the riding through the day, and the evening tasks are alike easy. The weather is good, the life is not too hard, and the party too small to admit of strict discipline being maintained; the men know that their picnic-time is due to their having been specially chosen as reliable for such work, and consequently they do not abuse their freedom.
And the horses come in from grass to train for what a horse can never understand, though it is in the knowledge of all that a horse comes to know his place in the ranks of the cavalry or in the traces of the gun team, and would gladly go back to that place after he has been cast out from the service to drudgery between the two shafts of a cart or cab. Perhaps the horses have their own thoughts about going on manœuvres, and the change from stable life—such of them as have been kept in stables while the troops are in barracks—to the open air existence which is theirs in camp.
It is a great day for the conscript when the regiment marches out from barracks. Farewell for a time, and in the case of the second-year men farewell for good, to the barrack routine. They leave in barracks the things they will not require on field service, the materials for what the British soldier knows as "spit and polish soldiering," and the conscript starts out with his field kit and equipment, prepared to have a good time.
The infantry swing out through the barrack gates, a long column of marching men; they talk among themselves of what they will do when manœuvres are over; the second-year men talk of going away, back to their homes, and of turning their backs on military service; they have done the duty their country asked of them, and now are at liberty to think of a good time—almost a holiday, in spite of the hard work and marching involved, with which they will end their service—to last them through the coming weeks, after which they will resume civilian attire and work. It has been a hard business, this conscript period, but France asked it, andma foi, but we are men now! The stern strictness of the instructors, the unending discipline imposed by sergeants and corporals, the everlasting watchfulness of the adjutant over buttons and boots and the correct method of saluting—proper perspective, rapidly growing in the mind of the man nearing the end of his second year, assures him that these things are needs of a good army. And then, he is going out on manœuvres, among the apple orchards or the hill villages; he is going to show the country what its soldiers are like, and almost, but not quite, he regrets that the end of his period of military service is nearly in sight. The time to which he looks forward colours his view of all things; the barracks are behind, and before him is the open road—that long, straight road which, in so many districts of France, goes on and on across bare plains, to human sight a thread laid right across the fabric of the world without bend or divergence. A road of white dust which, as soon as the barracks are left behind, rises from the many footsteps of the marching men and envelops the column. The band in front goes free of the dust, and well it is that the throats of the bandsmen are not choked and dried with the insidious stuff, for one marches better, far better, with the music.
Somebody starts a song, for the regiment is marching at ease. A squad takes it up, and it spreads through the company—the company in rear has already started its own song, a different one. Interminably that song goes on, and the miles slip behind. At the end of every hour the column halts, and its men fall out for five minutes' rest—a good custom, this, for one can get rid of some of the dust, and often get a drink of water from a wayside spring—or Jean, who always gets enough money from home to satisfy the desires of his heart, has brought a bottle. It would be in the last degree injudicious to incur the accusation offaire suisseon this first day of the march, and Jean has long since learned wisdom over such points of etiquette. Jean wants to keep the bottle till the next halt, but it is pointed out to him that the morning is already warm, and to carry a bottle for another hour when one might empty it—with assistance—and be saved the labour of transporting it further, is very bad judgment. Jean needs little persuasion—but it is time to fall in and resume the march: the bottle gets emptied while the column is marching, and Jean is votedun brave garçon—as undoubtedly he is, in other things beside this.
Shrouded in dust the column goes on. The grey-headed colonel is at the head, then comes the band, and then the men of the regiment follow, at ease, singing, smoking, chatting together. They pass through a village street in which is a simple monument to the men who fell in '70, and the colonel pulls his men up to attention while they pass through the street. Quietly, and with something ominous in the manner of their march, the men pass out to the open road again, where "at ease" is the order once more. But, when they march steadily at attention, these French infantrymen seem the embodiment of military strength and efficiency. The Army has taken them and made of them what it meant to make, and, Breton lad or Paris gamin, they are stamped with the mark of the Army—they are soldiers of the Republic, marching items which, apart from their personal characteristics, mean each a rifle and a bayonet for France when the hour shall strike. Over successive horizons they go, stopping every hour for their five minutes; they grow heedless of the band at the head of the column, and scarcely know whether it is playing or no; one or two fall out, perhaps, for the first days of the march throw out from the ranks all the unfit; there is a doctor at hand to see to those who fall out, and the column swings on. Some time, after what seems to the men very many hours, the band strikes up definitely and with an indefinable new note—and the men know they are marching into camp. Food and sleep are not far ahead; the column stiffens at the call from the grey-haired colonel, and swings on to the camping-ground apparently as fresh as when the men passed out from the barrack gate. It is a part of their pride that they should come in well, should end their march like soldiers and men, not like weaklings.
The cavalry also go out from the barracks with anticipations of good times ahead. Unlike the infantry, they have to keep formation when marching at ease as when marching at attention, for you cannot get a horse to rein back into the rank behind you or come up to the rank in front of you as easily as you yourself can drop back or go up, and, moreover, you cannot regain your place in the ranks at the call of "attention" as an infantryman can. But there are compensations. The "fours" of men divide into twos, of which each takes one side of the road; there is room in between the two inner men for the clouds of dust to roll about, and, although some of the stuff comes up, especially as regards the rear of the squadron, one is not so much down in it as the soldier on foot. One sees the country, too; the infantryman, keeping his place in his company, is just one of a crowd, and, in marching along and getting very tired—so the cavalryman says—he has no chance of looking about him and seeing what the country that he is marching through is like. One's horse does all the work, in the cavalry march, and one is merely a spectator, enjoying the fine day and the new scenery. It is good to be in the cavalry, and who would be an infantryman, when manœuvres start? Patrol duty, for instance, and the isolated tasks that take patrols of three and four men to farmhouses where the milk is good and one is invited—yes, invited!—to pick fruit from the trees—what infantryman knows anything of joys like these? Assuredly it is a good thing that one chose to serve in the cavalry.
Supposing it is the first time one has gone out on manœuvres, there are all sorts of pleasant speculations in which one can indulge. Guillaumette, the surly fellow, who when in barracks always occupies the next bed and snores so atrociously—he who is not always perfectly innocent offaire suisse, though he has the luck of a pig, and never gets caught at any of his mean tricks—Guillaumette will be going away when one returns to barracks at the end of the manœuvres, and who shall say what pleasant kind of a comrade may not come from among the new recruits to take his place? Jacques, for instance, who belongs to the thirdpelotonhas a first-year man in the next bed to him, one who is the son of a deputy, and has always plenty of money. When the deputy's son was for guard and was warned for duty so late that he could not possibly get ready in time, Jacques lent him kit and helped him to turn out, with the result that Jacques had five francs—five francs, think of it!—with which to go to the canteen. And, soon after one has got back off manœuvres, the new recruits will be coming in; one will be a second-year man, then, with perhaps a deputy's son to sleep in the next bed and dispense five francs at a time to one who knows all the little ways of soldiering and can be of use. The possibilities, both of the manœuvres themselves and of what comes after, are endless, and speculation on them is a pleasant business. Surly old Sergeant Lemaire, too, is almost sure to get promotion this year, and thepelotonwill get another sergeant to take charge of it—certainly not one with a worse temper, for that would be impossible.
And the long road slips behind, while the troopers conjecture with regard to their future, talk together of horses bad and good, sergeants and corporals bad and good, comrades also bad and good; they smoke as they ride, and talk yet more of horses, for any army of the world the cavalrymen never tire of talking of horses and their own riding abilities, while in the French Army boasting of one's own horsemanship, and all the rest of one's own good qualities, is even more common than it is among English soldiers. Not that the boasting among either is carried to a nauseous extent, but the soldier is so subject to discipline, so used to doing good work with only the official recognition by way of return, that, knowing the work is good, he talks about it himself since nobody is there to do the talking for him—and this is especially true of the cavalry.
Some time ago Conan Doyle created in "Brigadier Gerard" an excellent picture of a French cavalry officer of the old type, and to some extent the picture of Gerard—the most human and realistic figure Conan Doyle has ever penned, by the way—still holds good as regards both officers and men. One may find in both officers and men of the French cavalry to-day much of the absolute disregard of risks, rather than bravery as that is understood among the English, which characterises the brigadier. There is, too, much of Gerard's vanity in modern French cavalry officers and men, much of his susceptibility to influence, and all of his absolute loyalty to a superior. The French cavalryman will tell his comrades how he dislikes his squadron officer, but he will follow that squadron officer anywhere and into any danger—his loyalty is sufficient for any test that may be imposed on him. Like Gerard, he will brag of the things he has done, will devote much time to explaining exactly how he did them and how no other man could have done them just as well, until a British cavalryman, if he were listening, would tell the speaker to pass the salt and hire a trumpeter to blow for him. But, though the French cavalryman is true to the Gerard picture in that he boasts inordinately, it will be found, when one has got to close acquaintance with him, that he does not boast without reason. He has done a good thing—why not talk about it, for if he does not nobody else will? The British attitude toward a boaster is one of contempt, since the man who boasts generally does little, and exaggerates that little out of recognition. But the French cavalryman boasts—and acts too; like the Englishman, he does his work, and, unlike the Englishman, he talks about it. But it must always be remembered that he acts as well as talks.
The picture of Gerard, however, is not a faithful portrait of the French cavalry officer of to-day, for the modern French officer takes his work far more seriously than Gerard took his, and understands it more fully. For forty years or more French officers, in common with the rest of the nation, have known that there would come a life and death struggle with Germany; they have set themselves to the task of mastering the difficulties attendant on the crushing of the invaders and the avenging of Sedan—no matter to what arm of the service the French officer may belong, he is first a soldier, and after that a man. Gerard, on the other hand, was man first and officer afterwards. The difference has been brought about by the training which the Army of the Third Republic imposes on its officers, and since that Army is a conscript force, the difference is of itself a necessity.
And it should always be borne in mind, especially by those who deplore the training of the citizens of France into so huge an army, that the step has been vital to the life of the nation. With a far smaller population than Germany, France has been compelled, as a matter of self-preservation, to keep pace with Germany in the means adopted with regard to military training, has had to train and arm man for man, produce gun for gun—and when the hour of trial came it was found that the preparation had been none too great—there was not one trained man but was needed to cope with the national enemy, with Prussian militarism and Prussian greed of conquest. The conscript Army of the Third Republic, unlike that of its eastern neighbour and unlike the huge levies that Napoleon the First raised, has been intended as a means of defence only; the worst enemy of the Republic cannot accuse it of having maintained all its effective citizens as soldiers with a view to aggression in any direction. The Army is, because it must be for the safety of the nation, not because the nation desires territory or conquest.
And all this time the squadrons are marching along the straight roads that led over far horizons and to things unguessed, unseen by the first-year men.
They stop, at intervals along their marching line, to water their horses, loosen girths, and stretch themselves; they walk about the roads and look at each other's mounts; they share packets of cigarettes—those cigarettes made of black French tobacco that wither the back of the throat when first one inhales smoke from them. The lieutenant or sub-lieutenant comes round the troop to inspect the horses and see that all are fit, and the sergeant comes round too, probably to point out to the lieutenant some loose shoe or rubbing girth that the less experienced eye of the commissioned youngster has failed to detect. Then girths are tightened, the men mount again, and go on, dividing the road between them as before.
As camp draws near, the line of men grows silent, or at least more silent than at the setting out, and the horses take their work steadily rather than eagerly, for this is their first day out, and they are not yet hardened to long marches.
Then camp. The putting down of the lines, grooming, blanketing up for the night, feeding—one casts a glance over toward where the infantry have come in and got to their own meals, for this is the time when a cavalryman may have doubts as to whether it would not have been better, after all, to have joined the infantry. Unworthy thoughts, these—is there anything in the world like a cavalryman, for real soldierly merit?
This business of believing one's own branch of the service to be infinitely superior to any other is carried into the different branches of the same arm, as well as existing between the three arms as a whole. The cavalryman knows that service in the cavalry is infinitely to be preferred to service in infantry or artillery, but further, if he is a Dragoon, he knows that neither Cuirassier nor Chasseur nor Hussar is nearly as good as himself, and the Cuirassier, the Chasseur, and the Hussar have equally strong beliefs about the unquestionable superiority of their own branches of the cavalry. Each branch, in the opinion of its members, can produce the best riders, the best shots, the best all-round soldiers, and the best officers. It is a harmless belief, maintained quite impersonally.
Evening stables finished, the night guards are warned for their duty, the men settle down to the chief meal of the day, and later they sleep, the sound, healthy sleep induced by a long day in the open air. They waken or are wakened early in the morning, and again they saddle up and go on, for often the manœuvre area is many miles from the barracks, and days may be devoted to straightforward marching before the mimic warfare begins.
One comes back to the guns, the long, murderous tubes that trail, each behind six horses, just above the dust of the roads. The drivers are there and the battery officers, but the seats on the guns are empty, for the most part, for the gunners have marched out from camp very early in the morning. The drivers are at a disadvantage, compared with the men of cavalry or infantry—and even compared with their own gunners; for if a cavalryman has to keep his place in the ranks when mounted, then the gunner is absolutely a fixture in the battery. There can be no dropping back to talk to a comrade, whatever the pretext may be, for no man could take back with him the horse he is riding and the one he is leading, when both are in the gun team. The driver rides sombrely alone; the lead driver keeps his interval from the gun ahead, the centre driver looks to it that his lead horse does its share of work on the hills, and the wheel driver takes special care of the direction of his team when an infrequent corner has to be turned, for on him depends the track the wheels will make, and where they will run with relation to the middle of the road. Were there only a lead driver, the sweep taken on corners would not be wide enough, and it takes some time to get such a ponderous engine as a 75-millimetre gun out of a ditch.
The regiment of artillery comes out from barracks in one long column, perhaps—unless one battery or a greater proportion of the whole has further to travel than the batteries which take the straightest road. For, if there are two or more parallel roads leading from the point of departure to the destination, if it is possible for any considerable part of the journey to divide up an artillery regiment into separate batteries, this is done. The civilian has no conception of the length of line on the road which an artillery regiment of ten batteries would take up, nor can one who has not experienced the dust of a military march understand what sort of cloud the last battery of ten would have to march in. The column goes out as a whole, but as soon as possible first one battery and then another turns off from the main route. If there are only two alternate routes, then each alternate battery turns off, leaving sufficient interval between the rest for the dust of one to settle before the next shall come along. If there are more than two roads, all are used, for the more a long column can be broken up into separate units for a day's march, the sooner will the units of the column reach their destination.
The fact that the larger a body of men is, the slower it moves, is one well known to military authorities, though civilians and even many military men would be prepared to dispute it. It will be seen to be incontrovertible, though, if one realises that the pace of any body of men which keeps together as one whole is the pace of the slowest unit, and, moreover, that when a long column is in progress, not all its units can keep exactly the same pace as the head of the column. Consequently there occur a series of checks in the body of the column; here and there crowding forward occurs, and then the units of the column concerned in the crowding have to halve in order to rectify this—or at least have to check their pace for the time. The check may travel from the centre of the column right down to its rear, and then there are gaps which have to be corrected, for when a check occurs it is always prolonged just a little too long a time—and then the head of the column has to check in order for the rear to catch up. And, the longer the column, the more of these irritating little checks there will be, with a net consequence that the column will take relatively longer to pass a given point or to arrive at a given spot.
Because of these checks, as well as to give more air and comfort to the men, in all arms of the service intervals are maintained on the march, and a column is divided up into as many separate units as possible. Infantry maintain intervals between companies, cavalry maintain intervals between squadrons, and artillery maintain intervals between batteries, while the two mounted arms split up their columns if parallel roads are available, for the intervals do not quite compensate for the checks described, and, the smaller the units of the force can be made by means of separate roads, the shorter will be the march between two points.
CHAPTER IX
MANŒUVRES
Manœuvres form an expensive portion of the conscript's training, and it will be understood, when it is remembered that under ordinary peace conditions France maintains twenty military stations, each forming the skeleton of an army corps, that the annual cost to the state runs into a considerable fraction of the total military expenditure, this including the cost of food for men, forage for horses, the running of transports and stores, and all the expenses incidental to the maintenance of troops in the field. One item alone, the cost of shells fired by artillery during their annual practice, represent a large expenditure, for each shell is in itself a complicated piece of machinery, which must be perfectly accurate in all its parts, and is a costly thing to produce.
Not that the soldier on manœuvres ever counts cost; the majority of the troops do not even think of such a thing. They are out roughing it, a business which gratifies the instincts of most healthy minded and bodied men, and one which is conducive to health and high spirits. Your conscript on manœuvres is a different being from the one who came to the colours in the previous October. He has acquired a self-confidence and self-reliance of which he was innocent at the beginning of his training; he came as a boy, but now there are about him the signs of a man, and the first camp more than anything else gives him a realisation of the value of military training from a man's own point of view, and quite apart from its value to the state. By the time the season of manœuvres is over he is a second-year man, and has begun to feel his feet.
If one takes a map of France and picks out the twenty stations of the various army corps scattered throughout the country, and then if one realises the numbers of men actually serving that these stations represent, one will see that it is quite impossible that all the army corps of the country should make a point of undergoing their manœuvres as one united body. The disturbance inflicted from a civilian point of view on the area chosen would be enormous, and the result of no more value as regards the training of officers and men than when two or three army corps conduct their mimic warfare together. Certainly more than one army corps should be engaged in an annual set of manœuvres. For instance, if one took Lyons as the station concerned, and assumed that the army corps stationed at Lyons conducted its manœuvres year after year independently of those army corps which have their head-quarters at other centres, it would be easily understood that the army corps with head-quarters at Lyons would, to a certain extent, get into a rule-of-thumb way of working, and would fail to keep itself abreast of the various discoveries that are constantly being made by all sorts and conditions of commanders in the art of war. It is essential that units should as far as possible be able to interchange ideas, and learn new ways from each other, for war is a business in which, given forces of equal strength, the most intelligently controlled army wins.
The manœuvre areas of France are many. There are stretches of hill country like the district of the Vosges; forest stretches like the Ardennes in which the French Army has recently conducted some of its stiffest fights; great open plains like that which lies about Châlons, or like the BretonLandes; and river basins of diversified country, giving reaches of hill, valley and woodland, and most useful of all from a military educational point of view, since they afford training in practically all branches of the soldier's work.
In average manœuvres, two forces, designated respectively as a blue and a red force, or in some way distinguished from each other by marks which enable men to tell "friend" from "enemy," are set to face each other in a certain limited area. Each force is expected to do its best to render the other ineffective as a fighting force, and the conditions are made to resemble those of real warfare as nearly as possible. It must be said, however, that up to the present, no nation in its military manœuvres has ever allowed sufficiently for casualties; as an instance may be cited the case of a regiment which, on a certain set of manœuvres in France, was surrounded and entirely put out of action early in the course of the operations. Had the business been real, the men of that particular regiment would all have been either dead or prisoners, but they were allowed to continue to count in the force to which they belonged, and the commander of the opposing force simply scored up so much credit for having achieved a brilliant military operation. Of course, from the point of view of training officers and men, for which manœuvres are specially designed, it was quite right that the officers and men of this unit should take part in the operations up to the last day, but, since men do not resurrect in this fashion after a real battle, it may be said, viewing the matter disinterestedly, that there was no further tactical value in the scheme carried out. The opposing forces were so constituted for the operation as to be of about equal strength, and the presence or absence of the regiment referred to would have been quite sufficient to turn the scale one way or the other—and yet they were allowed to take part after having been theoretically wiped out of existence! This anomalous method of procedure is not peculiar to the French Army, however, but is practically common to the armies of all nations.
The nature of the work which the conscript has to perform on manœuvres is purely a matter of luck. For instance, the force in which one is serving may be compelled, in order to carry out the scheme of its commander, to execute a wheeling or turning movement to either flank, and, supposing a wheel to the right flank is required, then the men on the right flank have very little marching to do, and very little work, since their part in the scheme is to wait for the wheeling flank to come round. An amusing old scamp whose service began when the five years' law was still in force, and who served in a French infantry battalion up to a short time ago, used to allege that he was once right-hand man of an army corps which wheeled in this fashion with the right flank for a pivot. "I stood for three weeks," he alleged, "on that flank, waiting for the outer flank to come round, and looking up the line to see that the men kept their dressing." The "dressing," it should be explained, is a term used in both the French and British Army for the keeping of line by the men.
But, speaking seriously, these wheeling movements occur frequently during a term of manœuvres; when the business is over, and the men of the various units come to compare notes, they are often puzzled at the enormous amount of work and marching imposed on one unit, while another had practically nothing to do, and stayed very nearly in the same place throughout the whole time. For, though the part that his own regiment has to play in a scheme is usually explained to the conscript, the strategical nature of the scheme as a whole is generally beyond his comprehension. This is not to be wondered at, since a strategical scheme is planned out by the best brains of the army corps—at least, the staff officers are supposed to possess the best brains, and are given their posts mainly on account of greater fitness for the planning of military operations.
Manœuvres as a whole approximate as nearly as is possible, in view of the difference in circumstances, to active service, but "nearly as possible" is not "quite," and the lessons learned on manœuvres, valuable though they are, cannot be unreservedly applied to active service. Reference has already been made to the way in which the soldier enjoys his period of manœuvres, but no man enjoys active service in a similar fashion, andmoral, one of the greatest deciding factors in war, is entirely absent from the mimic warfare in which armies engage in time of peace. At the same time the lessons learned from manœuvres are as valuable as they are varied. Commanding officers learn the amount of strain which they can impose on their men; the conditions under which transport can and must be brought up for the use of the troops can be studied with almost as much accuracy as in warfare; the cavalry commander learns the value, from a war point of view, of his men as scouts and on detached duties, while the artillery officer finds out, as he never could without manœuvre experience, the possibilities of gun transport, and the business of ranging positions with a view to rendering them untenable by shellfire. Where the manœuvre period fails as regards war lies mainly in the absence of disadvantages. As already remarked, the conditions under which transport can be brought up for the use of troops can be studied, but sometimes in war transport goes wrong, or gets captured, and an army has to do its best to keep the field until supplementary supplies can be obtained; manœuvres never impose this form of disability on the troops. The cavalry commander is unable to ascertain what his men would do when actually under fire, and though artillery officers learn to range a position, they are unable to judge what the troops occupying that position will be like after shelling has been carried out. Manœuvres teach up to a point, but from that point the art of war can be learned only from the grim business itself, and, since no two bodies of troops are ever in the same frame of mind, and no two battles are fought under identical conditions, the art of war is never learned, simple though its principles are.
The average conscript is troubled little about such matters as these. As an infantryman, his business is to entrench himself when ordered to do so; to advance by short rushes, squad alternating with squad, during the work of getting nearer the enemy; to charge if bidden, or to retreat as he advanced, in the way that would produce least damage to the force of which he is a member if that force were exposed to actual fire. Both in infantry and cavalry there exists a prejudice against firing the first blank cartridge of a manœuvre day, though, once that first cartridge has been fired, a man does not care how many more he fires, and often men have been known to beg blank cartridges from others, after firing their own. The reason for the prejudice consists in the fact that the firing of the first cartridge fouls the barrel of the rifle and renders necessary far more thorough cleaning at the end of the day than would be required if the rifle had not been fired. But, no matter how many more cartridges may be fired through the same rifle, they cannot make the fouling of the barrel any worse, and once the fouling has been incurred, there is a certain amount of fun in blazing off blank cartridges at the "enemy."
The work of the cavalry is considerably more varied than that of the infantry. Charges, which form the culminating point of cavalry training at drill, are infrequently indulged in on manœuvres, for even in actual warfare, apart from the fact that the quick fire of modern rifles has rendered the charge a rare thing, the conditions imposed by the selection of infantry and artillery posts do not often admit of a definite cavalry charge, owing to the nature of the ground to be covered. During manœuvres the chief value of cavalry lies in their ability to act as mounted infantry; that is, they are able to concentrate fire rapidly on a given point, and to get near that point more quickly than infantry, thus rendering their fire decisive. Further, small bodies of cavalry are employed in reconnaissance and detached duties of various kinds; the modern army in movement always throws out well to the front a screen of cavalry, whose object is to find and report on the presence of the enemy, to maintain contact with him, but not to engage in decisive action, which is as a rule, and practically always when the opposing forces are of equal strength, left mainly to the artillery and infantry following on behind the cavalry screen. During a period of manœuvres cavalry patrols theoretically cut telegraph wires, destroy bridges, and do all they can to impede the progress of the advancing enemy. Sometimes small parties of scouts are sent out to get on to the enemy's lines of communication, and, if possible, cut them. An army with its line of communication cut is in practice like a man with his windpipe severed, and thus it will be understood that if cavalry perform this business effectively, their value to the force to which they belong is enormous. This, however, is more true of manœuvres than of war, for in the latter communications are so well guarded that as a rule it takes a stronger force than a body of cavalry unsupported by artillery to get on to a line of communication with a view to damaging it.
Mention has already been made of the prejudice which the infantryman has against firing the first blank cartridge of the day. Since this is the case where the rifle is concerned, one may guess what the artilleryman's feelings are like when his gun has to fire the first shot, for the cleaning of a field-gun, even after firing blank ammunition, is no light matter. The bore of the gun has literally to be scrubbed out in order to remove the fouling, and the gunner's task is not an enviable one; the clothing of the first-year conscript, when the gun has been cleaned after firing, looks as if the man had been hauled up a chimney by his heels, and though men keep a special suit of fatigue clothes for use on this task, they like it none the more for that.
In addition to the ordinary manœuvre period in which cavalry and infantry participate, artillery units go every year to a practice camp which is a special area set apart for the firing of live shells, with a view to giving officers and men alike training in the realities of their work. The so-called smokeless powder—which in reality is not smokeless—used on these occasions, together with the passage of a shell through the rifling of the gun, renders the cleaning of the bore an even more messy business than that incurred in firing blank ammunition during tactical exercises. Drivers and gunners alike generally enjoy their time at practice camp, but the gunners use language over cleaning the guns, and with good cause too, when one considers the nature and difficulty of the task.
But, whether the occasion be that of practice camp for the artillery, or tactical exercise for the three arms, there is more to enjoy than to cavil at. Manœuvres come at the best period of the year, from the weather point of view; the days are warm, but not too warm, and the cool nights induce healthy sleep. There is plenty of food, generally a sufficiency of tobacco and cigarettes, and the canteen travels with the men. There is a pleasant uncertainty about the nature of the day's work and the length of time it will take; one may be out until late in the evening, or one may finish in the afternoon, and, after an inspection of arms, be at liberty to go to the canteen and discuss things in general with one's comrades, or with the men who, coming from other stations, have new stories to tell and new matters to discuss. One may, granted the necessary leave, walk over to a near-by town, where is certain to be at least a cinema hall, and restaurants outside which one may sit by a table at the pavement edge and view civilian life. Or there may be a night march to be accomplished, and, though this is a tiring business, it has a certain amount of interest as long as the weather holds good. The chief drawback to manœuvres is a rainy season, when the soldier has a particularly unenviable time of it. There are seldom sufficient fires at which to dry one's clothes; there is, perhaps, the business of pitching tents in the rain, and then the crowding of self, arms, and equipment into the canvas shelter, while outside the rain keeps on in a way which suggests that fine days are things of the past, never to be experienced again. The infantry go squelching out from camp in the morning; the cavalry pull up their wet lines and, getting mounted, splash out through mud puddles, while the artillery drivers harness up their horses with a knowledge that a hard day is in store for them, both on the road, where their horses will be overtaxed by the heavy going, and in camp, where the cleaning of wet saddlery and equipment and the grooming of muddy horses is enough to spoil temper at the end of the day's work. And the transport waggons, standing parked in the rain, look as if they were used for the carriage of materialised despair, and had been abandoned because the loads were too heavy. A wet town or village is a dreary sight, but a wet camp is the most depressing thing on earth.
Even in wet weather, however, the spirit of the conscript is usually proof against depression. There are compensations: for one thing, work is lightened as far as possible, and usually the operations of the manœuvres are modified in case of a continual spell of wet weather, for it is not only the men who suffer from adverse climatic conditions, and it is not the business of a period of manœuvres to impose too great a strain on the forces taking part therein. When the men are in their tents and the rain is driving down outside, the interminable songs of the army may be heard from the interiors of the tents. Even in a standing camp—that is to say, a camp located in one position for a period of several days—the men are made to undergo a certain number of parades in order to keep them in health, for continued idleness in camp almost certainly means disease, and, as has already been remarked, the authorities of the French Army are fully alive to the necessity for preserving the health of the men.
On the average, manœuvre days are fine days; a spell of wet weather is exceptional, for the season of the year is chosen, in some degree, with a view to imparting as much instruction to officers and men alike as is possible in the allotted period. Given fine weather, one has to work—but then, one has to work in barracks, and not in such congenial fashion as in this life of open air and comparative freedom.
As the end of the manœuvre period approaches, the second-year men get more and more excited, for your Frenchman, whether as conscript or civilian, is an excitable person, and not ashamed of showing his feelings as is the man west of the Channel. For these second-year men civilian life is getting very near. Pierre will go back to the farm, and Jacques will return to his place behind the counter, while Jean will once more polish the seat of the office stool for a stated period each day. But Jacques and Pierre and Jean will at times look back to the good days and the cheery comrades of the last manœuvres, and perhaps, although this is a conscript army, they will know a transient regret in that they will never again go out from the barrack gate as units of a column setting out on the long march.
CHAPTER X
WITH THE CAVALRY SCOUTS
The incidents related in this chapter took place a few years back during a certain manœuvre season, and for obvious reasons it is impossible to indicate the men, forces concerned, or locality more closely than that. The forces concerned were an army corps advancing from the south, and one advancing from the north, toward each other, with a view to trying conclusions under manœuvre conditions. The story concerns scouts of the blue force, advancing from the north—it was one of these scouts of the blue force who told the story. It must not be taken as a typical story of army life, for the circumstances under which these men were placed were exceptional, agreeably so; it is, however, sufficiently typical for relation, in that it embodies things actually accomplished by soldiers of the Army of the Republic. Like most things that happen both in manœuvres and in war, it could never happen again.
The blue force, with at least fifty miles to go after leaving barracks, knew that the red force would have further to travel, since the limits of the manœuvre area were clearly marked out on maps supplied to the officers taking part, and each force knew from what garrison the force opposing it was coming. Beyond this, though, neither officers nor men of the blue force knew from what direction the "reds" would attack, and the composition and strength of each arm of the "reds" was for the "blues" to find out; that is what cavalry patrols and scouting parties are for: to ascertain the strength and disposition of the enemy; and, in order to make the manœuvres as much like real war as possible, each side was kept in ignorance, as far as might be, of the movements of the other.
There were two days of steady marching, through days that were not too warm and nights that were decidedly cold. Marching in column, this business, with plenty of dust along the roads and the squadrons closed up so that one's horse's nose was not far from the tail of the horse in the next rank. In the cool weather the horses travelled well, and the cavalry got into camp fairly early in the afternoon, when the bivouacs were made and the men rested and ate, after seeing to the needs of their horses. Late in the afternoon of the second day a canvas town came into view after the troops had passed over a small river, and here the regiments went into camp. At twelve o'clock that night the manœuvre period was to start, and no action of any kind bearing on the actual manœuvres might be undertaken until midnight had passed, though commanders might make their plans and allot their units and men to the various parts they intended the latter to play in the struggle for points in the game. The troops themselves looked forward to an exciting time: in the blue army, every man knew that he was to capture a "red" if the chance came his way; he must act as in real war, except that the cartridges would be blank and the business would be one of sport with the grimness of war left out.
In a certain regiment of chasseurs which formed part of the blue army, Lieutenant Lenoir received his orders with regard to special reconnaissance duty, and, acting on these orders, he gathered together Corporal Jean and Trooper Jacques, both qualified as signallers, whose first names will serve for the purposes of this narrative. He also collected from their respective troops certain men more than usually efficient in scouting duty, known respectively as Pierre and Guillaumette—or little Billy—from onepeloton, Henri and l'Anglais (the latter from his English way of drinking beer when he could get it, a trick acquired in his native Lorraine, though his fellows gave him his nickname because of it, and from anotherpelotonmore good men to the number of four). Lenoir would have liked to take more, but he knew that for the success of the plan with which he was entrusted a small body of men would get through with less chance of being seen—the smaller the better, down to a certain point. So he took the minimum possible. They obeyed the rules of the game thoroughly, for it was not until the stroke of twelve that the men were given permission to saddle up; all they knew at that time was that they were going out on detachment duty of some kind, away from the army itself, and that was enough for them. Detachment duty is always welcome, and Lenoir had a reputation among the men of being one of the best officers in the regiment, although a very quiet man, comparatively speaking.
The men were a good crowd, too. The signallers knew their work thoroughly and were keen soldiers; the scouts chosen were men who took actual pleasure in solving problems of country, second-year and re-engaged men, who took soldiering seriously and enjoyed work like this. Altogether it was a very contented and very keen little party that set out from the camp a quarter of an hour after midnight, with Lenoir leading into the black and rainy night that came on them as they rode. They went steadily on for some time—it was three in the morning when Lenoir halted his men under shelter of a tree that branched out over their road and told them the object of their journey. He explained, by the aid of the map, what they were expected to do.
The line of country that would be chosen by the "reds" had been carefully calculated: the commander of the "blues" had estimated that, with a view to avoiding rivers and hills, and keeping to open ground, the commander of the red army would bring up his men—or, at least, most of them—by the western side of the manœuvre area, leaving a large stretch of country unoccupied to the east. It was the business of this patrol to go down by way of the eastern boundary of the manœuvre area, get on to the "reds" line of communication, and cut it, thus preventing (in theory) the sending up of stores, and (also in theory) reducing the red force to such a state as regards stores and ammunition that it would be forced (once more in theory) to surrender. The scheme bespeaks the way in which modern military plans are thought out, and how one calculates on probabilities. The "blue" commander assumed that such a course as bringing the men up the western side would be adopted by the commander of the "reds": he was not certain of it, but assumed it to such an extent that he considered it worth while to waste a cavalry patrol on it; supposing he were wrong, then he only lost half a dozen men or so and one officer from his effectives; supposing, on the other hand, that he were right, he would have accomplished a movement that would render ineffective anything his "enemy" might do.
It was their business, Lenoir explained, to get quite down to the southern limit of the manœuvre area, so as to cut the line as nearly as possible to neutral ground, for the further back they got the less likelihood there would be of encountering any strong force left for the purpose of protecting the line. They were to ride warily, avoid hills, and keep in hollows, and at the same time they were to keep an eye out for any bodies of troops that they might see. Their business was to run from everybody whom they might see during the following day, for it would not do to risk the capture or loss of a man while on the journey; every man would be needed at the journey's end.
All this was explained by the aid of the map, and, realising the importance of their mission, the men were more keen than ever over its fulfilment. They mounted again and rode on, Lenoir always leading; at times he halted them that he might consult his map with the help of an electric torch where two roads branched, or where there was any uncertainty about their direction. The rain passed off; the stars came out and paled as dawn grew; they halted in the grey of early daybreak down under the shelter of a hill. Before them was a tiny valley through which a stream flowed, and beyond an unbroken range of other hills of which the crests showed no signs of human occupation. A short distance along the way they had come was a farm-house built into a nook of the hills, while open country marked the way ahead, beyond the base of the hill under which they had camped. They gave their horses water at the stream, and, since Lenoir said they would halt there for nearly two hours to rest the horses, they got out their own food, after feeding their mounts, but did not off-saddle or remove any equipment, for the men as well as their officer knew that they were parallel now with the enemy's force.
Jacques and l'Anglais went out to collect firewood, for they thought it worth while to make coffee during their halt. These two passed well out of sight of the rest round the base of the hill, and walked suddenly and unsuspectingly on to two of the scouts of the enemy's force, who, being a little more quick than either Jacques or l'Anglais, informed them that they were prisoners and must come with them. Jacques, however, temporised; he pointed out to these scouts of the "reds" that he and his companion were, like their captors, mounted men, and they certainly could not walk and leave their horses to break loose and perhaps damage themselves. They had tied their horses up round the corner, said Jacques, and if their captors would only come with them they would get the animals and follow as prisoners without trouble. The two "reds" hesitated a bit, but finally saw reason in this, and, thinking that their two prisoners were quite alone, followed without dismounting round to where the horses were supposed to be tied. So well was Lenoir's little camp located that the two "reds" followed Jacques and l'Anglais almost into it before they perceived that they were in the vicinity of a force far stronger than their two selves. When they grasped the situation fully, they put spurs to their mounts, turned, and fled. Jacques grabbed at the bridle rein of one, but missed, and l'Anglais was so lucky as to secure the helmet of the other man, which he tied to his saddle by way of a trophy. The two "reds," who were well mounted, went off round the base of the hill and vanished; apparently they formed a patrol on the extreme flank of the red force, for no other men appeared to reinforce or replace them while the little party of "blues" remained halted.
The men of the blue patrol got their firewood and made coffee, which at that hour of the morning was more to them than food. More quickly than he had at first intended Lenoir bade them tighten girths and mount, for he feared lest the patrol which they had encountered would carry news of their presence, and bring down on them a greater force from which it might be impossible to escape.
Through the early hours of the day they rode, sometimes on roads, sometimes across country. The average of their course took them over two miniature mountain ranges, and on the second of these little hill ranges they saw, very far off, a body of cavalry advancing across country. Corporal Jean, together with Jacques, got down from their horses and set up a heliograph, with which they tried to "call up" the troops away on the plain. They could get only fragmentary answers from the other people's heliographs; Lenoir sat on his horse beside them and waited for a coherent message, but evidently the cavalry force would not trust them, nor reveal its own identity, for all Jean could get out of it, after persistent calling up, was the query, "Who are you?"
"Don't tell them," said Lenoir, "but ask them that yourself."
This Jean had already done, but he tried it again with no better result than before. By this time they could see that the cavalry signallers who had stopped to answer them were getting left far behind by their main body, and Jean, finding that he could get no satisfaction out of them, packed up his own heliograph and mounted again. They went on down the hill into a shallow valley through which flowed another little river. At the foot of the hills they halted, and Guillaumette went back on foot to the top of the hill to keep guard while the others rested. After half an hour one of the others relieved him from this duty, and both men reported that the country all round was clear of enemies, or friends. This was as Lenoir had anticipated, for he had judged by this time they would be well behind the main body of the advancing red force.
They made of this a long halt for the sake of their horses, which had already done the equivalent of a day's work. It was late in the afternoon, and the power of the sun had almost gone, when they slung their saddles on their horses again, and girthed up. The valley through which the little river flowed lay level before them for miles, and they rode down it toward where a curve of the hills on either side prevented sight of their destination. That curve seemed ever to recede as they rode, and the sun dropped over the crests of the western hills, leaving the men chilled and tired. By order of Lenoir, who set the example, they dismounted and trudged on, leading their horses—all save l'Anglais, who left his reins on his horse's neck and trusted to the animal to follow him. L'Anglais and his horse were good friends.