THE TRAINING
OF AN
INFANTRY COMPANY.
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 uselesscasualties 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 officersin esseorin possea 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 butconcrete 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 thatmatters; 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.
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 asmuch 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 somereaders 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 gripswould 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 hewill 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 tendto 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.
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 independentrush 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.
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 groundwill 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 ifyou 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 assupposedto 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), requirescompany 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.
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 ofmoral.
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 ofRegulars, 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 riflemenare 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, andto 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 canthink 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 theirrespect 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.
As regards themoralof the men, I.T., 1 (4 to 10) must be referred to. Youmustintroduce 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 soon, 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 occasionallyto 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 youwish 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 preparedto 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 smallmistakes 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.
Besides discipline, there are certain other moral influences which give strengthto 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 notalways 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 asidewhen 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 ofthe 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.
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, youwould 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 theopening 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 heis, 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 asto 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. Theless of the iron hand that is shown the better.
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.