II
Their schemes prepared, their Tanks in position, after an exhaustive reconnaissance, the Tank Corps waited, a process which all troops find both tedious and demoralising, unless some really profitable means can be found of employing their time.
For the Tank Corps the need of the moment was further training. Several of the Battalions had been dragged untimely from half-finished courses, several were almost fresh from Wool, and had still most of their tactical training to do. Everywhere there were units and individuals who had lost “school attendances” to make up.
The great difficulty was that Battalions and even Companies were so spread out and scattered that it was almost impossible to collect the students for instruction.
The regular curriculums were out of the question, so the directors of Tank training immediately set to work to evolve new courses that would fit the altered circumstances.
In some ways the Reconnaissance Side fared best.
Their chief instructional material—the actual country to be fought over—was there for their students to study, and even when the pupils were so scattered that a sufficient audience could not be collected for a formal lecture, many ingenious little practical schemes could be carried out and written work could always be done.
They had a fairly definite standard to aim at. Had the battalions remained in the training areas, every officer and man would have been put through a five days’ course in Reconnaissance. Under normal conditions such courses were arranged more or less as follows:
On the first day, the students heard an introductory lecture, practised chalk layering, heard a short discourse on map reading, did a practical comparison of map and country upon which they had to answer questions.
On the second day, visualising country from a map was taught, and practice indoors was gone through with a model. In the afternoon panorama sketching was practised, a short lecture heard, some visualising was done and the characterisation of landmarks was practised, the day being finished up by night guiding.
On the third morning, close observation of a certain sector, involving sketches and notes, was undertaken, and visibility practices carried out. Later, the students were taken for an “observation march,” and having described the features of the country they had traversed, they had to write a report upon the new sector which they had observed in the morning, and upon this report they were later questioned.
On the fourth day, a new sector was visited, upon which they had previously made notes from a map. These notes they had to compare with reality, and to notice whether their imagination had been faulty. A lecture on obstacles commonly found on approach marches followed, and one on aerial photographs with practical work. Night work followed, with special reference to the study of the stars.
On the fifth day, oblique and other aerial photographs were compared with the actual ground, and a lecture was delivered summing up the special points of the course.
Sometimes, however, during the “Savage Rabbit” period, lectures were possible, and for these occasions a rather new type of discourse was evolved, in which the broader aspects of Reconnaissance and of the study of country were dealt with.
Local history was recalled:—how men had lived and fought in the villages and cornfields that lay immediately about them; how that great abbey church that stood alone was erected by a group of pious merchants as a thankoffering for their town’s escape from the plague; how to this little town the Revolution had brought a Committee of Public Safety, and how it had held its red assize in the coffee-room of the Hôtel de l’Europe, or how Bonaparte had lain at this or that château on his way to the Camp at Boulogne.
Or again, the lecture might be more strictly military and concern the place of Reconnaissance amongst the arts of war, and the action and reaction of one arm of the Service upon another—the ever-present trilogy of wire, trench and machine-gun, new theories of artillery work, the latest fashions in tactics or the effects of the latest poison-gas.
Then, where some isolated Tank Company or even section lay ready day and night by its machines and lectures were impossible, an itinerant instructor would set the exiles little schemes to carry out.
The two following exercises are typical:—
“Two small parties of officers go at different times to positions from which a good view is obtainable. They pick out landmarks, etc., and their peculiarities, taking notes or making sketches. From these notes or sketches each party writes out three or four questions on landmarks, general observation, routes taken, etc. On their return the two parties exchange their questions, answers are written, and these answers returned to the writers of the questioners to correct.
“Catch questions, such as ‘How many windows had such and such a house?’ will, of course, be discountenanced, and only useful tests permitted.
“Exercise II.—The student was asked to sketch the outline of a cottage from about 800 yards distant. He then had to consider from the position of the house on the map, and the contour lines of the ground, what the appearance of that cottage would be likely to be from a different point of view. Of this hypothetical elevation he had then to make an outline sketch, and finally to walk over the ground and compare his imaginings with actuality.”
Practices for approach marches were also given by means of an exercise on tape laying and the taking of compass bearings.