Part 2

The ideal ground is that which gives conditions suited to each phase of the training, the principal requirements being fire positions and cover, and these should occur so as to provide illustrations of the use to be made of them in individual training, and in the collective training of sections, platoons, and the larger units. Thus, for training individual men, good ground would be that with an irregular surface, giving many places twenty to fifty yards apart, which each man could use in firing and taking cover. The usual seaside golf course of hummocks, furze bushes, and occasional watercourses, is good to teach individual men over—I say teach, for we must not imagine that an enemy will be so kind as to leave easy ground like that in his front, if he can help it. For section or platoon training, the surface should be similar, so that the individuals should still be called on to look out for their own halting places, but, in addition, there should be a certain number of small features, hillocks, banks, and so on, one to four hundred yards apart, which will serve as fire positions and cover for the whole unit, and provide the commanders with successive objectives, to which it will be their duty to bring their men in good order, and without needless exposure to the enemy’s fire. When the company is training together, the ground should be similar, but of greater extent, both broader and larger, so that sections and platoons may be practised in supporting each other, some being halted in these fire positions, and covering by their fire the movements of the others who are in process of gaining fresh vantage points. And so on for larger units and the combined action of all arms; good ground for early instruction is that whose features, from their nature and distance from each other, lend themselves to illustrate conditions under which the power of each unit and arm may be most profitably employed in conjunction with others. Troops trained over ground that gives the above advantages will acquire an eye for country. A knowledge of the uses to be made of ground will be common to all ranks, so that when they find themselves fighting on bad ground, which does not give much cover or good fire positions, they will be the more apt to search for such cover and fire positions as are obtainable, while troops trained on flat and open ground would be much slower in making the best of a bad job. We are not concerned with anything more than a company; therefore, get for your own use, if you can manage it—failing help from higher powers—a bit of ground of some sort, golf course, common, city park, or what not. It need not be very extensive. Even if it gives only three or four positions suitable for occupation by a section working in conjunction with another, say, six hundred by three hundred yards, it will give room for useful instruction; but, of course, a larger extent is preferable, as giving room for more extended and varied exercises. If your training ground is of limited extent, it should, nevertheless, if possible, have a wide field of view on all sides beyond its own confines, and leave you the right to send a few men to take positions on the adjoining country, even if not allowed to manœuvre about it, so that when carrying out your exercises you may be able to use men with blank cartridge to act as a skeleton enemy, when such is needed. But if you are not allowed to send men on to the neighbouring ground, the wide field of view will still enable you to indicate certain distant positions as _supposed_ to be held by the enemy. By this means you will be able to use the whole area of your permissible ground to represent a bit of the battlefield, and escape having to place the supposed enemy absurdly close to your manœuvring troops, e.g., at the edge of the training ground, or in some other position which makes heavy calls on the imagination. Britishers are not imaginative. Lastly, if all else fails, and you have nowhere to go except the flat parade ground, or even the drill hall, which in large towns is often very spacious, do not, I beg you, become discouraged and throw up all effort to get your men ready for field work. Do the exercises on the flat, limiting the extent of movements, if there is little room, and use flags or anything else to represent fire positions for sections and platoons, and let the men kneel or lie down between advances, if there is no cover. A great deal may be done in this way to lay a good foundation for extended order work. Your men will know the mechanism of it, and you will save much time when you do manage to have them out on a proper training ground. I.T., 107 (2), requires company commanders, in preparing their schemes of training, to have regard to the ground at their disposal; do so, therefore, even if the ground aforesaid is only a parade ground, and make the most of it; it is better than sitting still and either doing nothing, or only a weary round of company drill in close order. Of course, you must let the men know what you are driving at, or they will get bored and lose interest.

V.

Having got a company of men and ground to train them on, the first step is to organise that company for its battle training. A company is organised into four platoons, each under a subaltern, with a sergeant as his second-in-command (platoon sergeant). Each platoon has four sections, and the sixteen sections of the company are numbered one to sixteen. The men of each of the above units remain permanently in that unit. _If possible_, maintain this organisation on duties and fatigues, though this is often a counsel of perfection, but quarter the men together, and insist on the maintenance of the organisation, _without deviation_, on parades. Have lists made up of the men of each platoon and section, and let men who so wish, belong to the same unit. Once these lists are made up, see to it by means of the section commanders that these men fall in on parade together in the place in the company where their section is standing, no matter how few there are; if there are but two men of one section on parade, they should fall in as front and rear rank men of one file. Avoid disseminating the men of a platoon or section among other units in order to raise the latter to a sizeable strength. Instead of this: supposing you have three weak platoons and one strong one on parade; of the four sections of one of the weak platoons, send two to each of the other two weak platoons. This will give you three platoons of, perhaps, unequal strength, but sufficient for work—and this without taking the responsibility of section commanders off their shoulders, and the cohesion of each unit is preserved. Some further suggestions on the subject of organisation will be put forward when speaking of _moral_.

The officer who aspires to develop whatever capabilities his men possess of becoming individually and collectively formidable in battle, must pay attention to much more than mere physical considerations. Napoleon’s dictum, that the moral is to the physical as three to one is early dinned into the ears of the officer of Regulars, but may stand repetition in pages meant for the perusal of others. No officer can expect to get the most out of his men unless he directs his attention to the study of the psychical side of the training. There are two fields in which the study must be pursued. One is the officer’s own personality, the other that of his non-commissioned officers and men. T. & M.R., 8, deals with the former, and should be read and pondered over.

In battle good men have sometimes achieved victory in spite of the shortcomings of their officers, but good officers, as well as men, are necessary for consistent success in the series of battles which make a campaign. Now, good officers, given time for training, will infallibly produce good men, provided the latter are of the average physique and courage. Therefore, study thyself, and try to see what you lack, in order to become a good officer. Cultivate your skill in handling your men by reading any books you can get; there are, unfortunately, not very many that deal with the work of such small units as companies or even single battalions. Go out into the country, or, if you have not time, recall to yourself some bit of country you know, and import an enemy into the landscape. Perhaps a few riflemen are holding ground on the flank of a road along which your battalion wants to march, but cannot, without undue loss, until these riflemen are driven off; and your commanding officer tells you to do the driving. In imagination, or on the ground, decide what position you would hold, if you were the enemy, in order to make yourself as nasty as possible—though having no hope of being reinforced—to the battalion trying to come along the road. Then settle in your mind what you, as commanding your company, would do to get rid of the annoyance. Be quite clear, what would you do? Go at them bald-headed? There are times and enemies when this is the best way; you would have to be fairly close, and the enemy not shooting very straight, and rather careful of his skin; or will you march a long way round till the enemy sees you are getting behind him, and so manœuvre him out? Then your battalion will be a long time waiting. Or will you look at the ground and find, let us suppose, a spot to which you will send a section or platoon to open a fire on the enemy, while another works its way to a point you have noted from which fire can be brought to sweep crossways a little knoll, or some such supposititious feature which seems to form the enemy’s left flank, and to be occupied by ten or twelve men, and which gives command over the rest of his position? Then, while the second lot is on its way, you plan to lead the remainder a little way round, under cover, in order to get to fairly close range of the knoll, so that when the second party opens fire on it, and its defenders are hampered both by this fire and by that of those you first posted, you may surprise them by an outburst of fire from your reserve, and either drive them off their perch by cross-fire from three directions, or, if they do not shift, run in at them with the bayonet, trusting to get across the intervening space at the cost of a few casualties, when your superior numbers at that point should ensure your success even if they actually await the bayonet. Learn to consider quickly how many ways there are of doing such a job as the above, and to decide quickly and rationally which is the best.

These schemes, involving only a company or two, will not be presented for your solution by your battalion commander; you must set them yourself, and their solution, and the thinking necessary thereto are the best methods an officer can get of training himself without having his men on the ground. In your mind’s eye, put your company into every situation you can think of, and get it out again, and you will have acquired an enormous reserve of capacity for acting quickly and rightly when your men and your enemy are both on the ground. But beware of dealing in too short distances, or you may produce unreal pictures of war. Do not imagine manœuvres at four hundred yards from the enemy when every man exposed would be hit in a few minutes. The clearness and decision of thought you acquire will be reflected in the orders you give. Your men will give you their confidence when they see, as they are quick to do, that you know your job. There is nothing more disheartening for a subordinate, be he private or colonel, than to feel he is under control of a duffer, whose mistakes he will have to correct. This feeling saps discipline, and quickly destroys the fighting value of a body of men. In peace training, the men become sulky at being “bothered about,” lose interest in their work, and wish themselves done with parade. In war, their personal characters usurp the control of their actions, and they become a mob in uniform.

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But in addition to possessing the confidence of the men in your tactical ability, you should seek all other means to increase your influence over them. Gain their respect in other ways, by honesty of purpose, by example, tact, devotion to duty, and so on. Gain their goodwill by watching over their individual and collective interests, though in this you must play to the gallery sufficiently to let them identify you as the source of benefits received. Keep an even temper, and do not show anger without good cause. Personal attachment to their officer shows itself most when men’s powers are taxed by hardship, fatigue, and danger; it is then a great auxiliary in maintaining discipline among the mass.

VI.

As regards the _moral_ of the men, I.T., 1 (4 to 10) must be referred to. You _must_ introduce discipline—the habit of subordinating personal inclination to the orders of the superior promptly and without cavil. If your men are raw, you have to go slow just at first till they all know what is expected of them. Let them understand that orders are not given haphazard, but are invariably based on some good reason, which, being so, there is no need for reasons to be always stated, nor for recipients of orders to feel unhappy for want of them. If you can induce a feeling among the men that slackness on parade, slowness in obeying orders, and so on, are bad form, and tend to disgrace the company, you will do well, and this good spirit will enable you to enforce discipline without having recourse to punishment, if you are vested with the power of inflicting it.

I have already said that when in close order during tactical exercises, you should maintain discipline in the ranks. I now go further and say that you should maintain it when the men are extended or detached from the company singly or in small groups. Evidently the discipline here needed is something more than mere mechanical obedience. What it is, is to be found in T. & M.R., 39 (4), and F.S.R. 12 (13), and I.T., 116 and 117. Make the men understand that when they are extended they must obey their unit commander’s orders and signals as to fire and movement at once, and without hesitation, and must be always on the look-out for them. Allow no talking, except what relates to the business in hand, such as passing of orders or information, results of fire, and so on. Hold the men responsible that if they are out of reach of the control of their leader, it is their duty to carry out the spirit of the orders under which they set out. To bring their responsibility home to them, you must make a point of calling men occasionally to give an account of what they did when detached, and why they did it, so that they may pause for a moment if they are of the sort that take advantage of opportunity to sit behind a hedge and smoke a cigarette when they ought to be up and doing.

Here you will naturally say that this is all very well, but how is one to look after men scattered here and there over several hundred yards of rough country? Here come in the non-commissioned officers, of whom, so far, no mention has been made, and also your subaltern officers. Since success in battle will depend largely on the efficiency of fire unit commanders, and the normal fire unit is the section (I.T., 6 (4)), it is evident that the section commander is a very responsible person, and much must be expected from him.

Your subalterns and platoon sergeants you must use as your delegates in supervising and leading the platoons to which they belong, except when they are needed to act specifically as platoon commanders, keeping themselves constantly on the move among the men, looking at the details of the work, sighting of rifles, aiming, use of cover, choice of lines of movement, not lying down themselves nor participating in the operation as combatants. When you wish to give them practice in setting exercises themselves, turn the whole company over to one of them and act yourself as critic, or act as subaltern under his orders. This is one means of supervision.

The next is your non-commissioned officers. They are in direct command, and you must hold them responsible for their sections, but when their units are acting in conjunction with others, it is evident they cannot act both as commanders and instructors unless certain concessions are made, for if the non-commissioned officers as well as the men of a section were to act as they would have to do under real fire, each non-commissioned officer might be able only to supervise a man or two on his right and left, the rest being too far off. Therefore, at the beginning of an exercise, you should tell the non-commissioned officers whether, in addition to giving executive commands, they are to be at liberty to move about freely and act as instructors also. Needless to say, in instructional exercises, and until the men are quite seasoned, you should let them do this, but, on the other hand, in exercises meant to illustrate actual conflict and the limitations imposed by the presence of an enemy, they should pay attention to those limitations so that they, as well as the men, may be prepared to endure the disabilities imposed by Service conditions.

Next comes yourself. Once you have given your subordinates your orders for any exercise, leave them to carry it through, and make yourself as ubiquitous as may be in supervision. Keep criticism for the end, and interference only for the prevention of absurdities. To make yourself ubiquitous, the best way is to use your horse, and make the noble animal do the running about with you on his back. You can then get through about six times what you can on your own feet, by cantering from one section to another, and you get a better view of the whole performance, but you must remember when correcting anything the men are doing that you are mounted, while they are probably kneeling or lying, and much that you see is invisible to them. Equip yourself with a pair of field glasses, and also with a megaphone, which latter should be about fourteen inches long, and carried by a strap over the shoulder, the strap punched so as to be capable of being made long or buckled up close under the arm, according as you need to use the megaphone, or wish to get it out of your way. Use your glasses to look at what sections and individual men in them are doing. They will reveal to you small mistakes that escape notice at some distance with the unaided eye. The megaphone saves you a lot of small excursions to get to earshot of men, and also a lot of shouting at a distance, which is fatiguing, and is apt to lead to exacerbation of tempers, both of the shouter and the listener. Moreover, it enables you to hear as well as speak from a distance. This is done simply by holding it aimed at the other man with your ear instead of your mouth at the mouthpiece. Use your whistle to call attention to orders or signals, carry it in your hand, not in your pocket, and put a loop in the cord and pass the loop over your middle finger, or you will be always dropping it. Instead of a cane, carry a small semaphore flag, and give your signals with it. This saves a good deal of arm-waving, and tends to smarten up movement, as it is more easily seen than the arm. By bringing all these aids into your service, you will find that you can make your influence felt, although the sections are separated by the greatest distances which they are ever likely to be called on to take up in battle.

VII.

Besides discipline, there are certain other moral influences which give strength to an Army. These are indicated in I.T., 1 (4 and 5). The two mighty forces of religion and patriotism are not treated of here, as they have their roots not in any system of training, but in the upbringing of the youth of the nation, but there is one force which you, as a humble commander, can call into play, and that is shame—the dread of losing the respect of oneself and of one’s comrades. During peace training you may make men dread the public shame of misbehaviour by the aid of those means of supervision which I have suggested, but in war the power to supervise is greatly curtailed, and it is very desirable to find something to replace it, and, at the same time, to supplement a too absolute reliance on the stoutness of men’s hearts, for this may prove a broken reed when the troops are largely composed of unseasoned soldiers.

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To a certain extent, the organisation of the company into permanent sections provides us with the substitute we desire, as the men of sections are likely to be cognisant of how their comrades behave when out of view of the rest of the company as long as the whole of the men of the section are in view of each other; but this will not always be the case: for example, in wood fighting or in house fighting, both of which would assuredly occur if our men have to fight in Europe. In such fighting everything comes down to the pushfulness of the individual soldiers, for even sections will lose their leaders. Therefore let us carry the principle of the company organisation logically one step further, and make the men of a file as they fall in on parade in the section act in conjunction for the remainder of that parade. This arrangement is recognised in the last edition of the Musketry Regulations, and has, at various times, been adopted in former drill books of our Army, and has given excellent results, while, if the present book does not prescribe it, at least it countenances it (I.T., 123 (12)), and I strongly recommend your introducing it into your company. It is likely to produce emulation in the fire fight among men whose hearts are in the right place, and in the assault it must produce the advantages of combination, for two men coming on with the bayonet in conjunction are far more likely to do someone an injury than if they each came on independently, since in the latter case a cool and skilful antagonist might dispose of one and then the other, even as the Japanese are said to have stepped aside when charged by the Russians, who, running forward blindly and head down, fell an easy prey to their alert little enemies, and were bayoneted in succession as they arrived. The proof of this pudding is the eating thereof, and if your company ever happens to be alongside a company told off daily into haphazard sections, as is sometimes done, in spite of rules, you will then see the difference, even if it is only at manœuvres. In close order they may still look alike, but let them be extended in rough country, and you will see that yours is the blade of steel; the particles of its metal are coherent; it will bend, but not break. The other is of wrought iron, polished on the surface but of brittle material, and sure to fly to pieces in any rough usage. By this file organisation you will produce in the men in the ranks the highest degree of cohesion—the habit of regulating their own actions in accordance with the actions and needs of others in furtherance of one general aim.