I.
The general rules for outposts and the part played by an outpost company are to be found in I.T., 147 to 157, and it is necessary accordingly to train for those duties in peace. Let us begin from the beginning, and see what infantry outposts are and what they have to do. A line of infantry outposts will very often have to be taken up after a day’s fighting, or in close proximity to the enemy before a battle. The commander of an outpost battalion will be told by the staff to take up with his battalion a certain length of the front, say, from Farm A to Hill B, inclusive—perhaps a mile or even two in extent. He cannot possibly have time to ride all along the front and fix places for piquets and sentries. Instead of this, he looks at the ground and comes to the conclusion that it will require, say, all his four companies in the outpost line. He divides up his front into four parts, and gives each of his companies one part. It is his duty to see that the eight companies form along the line that combines the best facilities for defence and reconnaissance to the front. Accordingly, he tells the captain of A Company to take from Farm A to, say, the wood X, inclusive, the captain of B Company from the wood X, exclusive, to, say, the stream ML, inclusive, and so along. The captains of companies then have to go off and take up their frontages. As beforesaid, infantry outposts must expect to take up their line close to the enemy, and often when dusk is falling. This gives you your clue as to how it should be done. You must march your company in fighting formation, so as not to be ambushed—a screen of scouts or other covering troops in front and on the flanks, a party, section, or platoon ready to succour the covering party, and hold up the enemy, and a reserve ready to act under your orders, either for attack or defence. Your movement and the taking up of your line should be unseen by the enemy; therefore, move carefully under cover both from distant and close positions, from which you may be seen. The line must be taken up quickly. The main thing is to get it occupied; therefore, it is a mistake to halt the company while you plod round the whole of the front and plan just where each piquet and sentry will be. Instead, take a good look at the line as you march and decide what are the essential points to be held for defence and as observation points. As soon as your scouts have made good the ground a little in front of those points, send off what you think are necessary, sections or platoons, to seize these points, and act as piquets till you go round and adjust details. Thus your company will occupy the line in rough-and-ready fashion as quickly as they can advance. When the company breaks up to go to the piquet posts, go with any one of the piquets which is to be on one flank and settle the exact position of the piquet with reference to the line you intend to hold as your line of resistance, and any other details which you think the piquet commander should attend to, such as what localities should be patrolled, and estimate the number of men required. Any surplus sections should accompany you from this piquet, and you and they then go along the line to the other piquets which you arrange similarly, using the surplus to reinforce those piquets that need them, and if at the end you have still a surplus of men you may either form them as a support in rear or dismiss them to remain with their own platoons. For purposes of messing on service the latter is convenient, but, tactically, a support is often needed, in which case the men’s comfort must take second place.
You must make a clear distinction between day and night outposts, though you practise the latter by daylight. Infantry outposts by day and until the enemy advances, are firstly patrols and look-out men, whose business is to look for any movement on the part of the enemy, and to prevent his seeing their own side’s doings, and to report what they see of the enemy’s, and, secondly, a line of piquets who occupy the line decided on as the line of resistance, and who may fall out and rest while things are quiet, with supports and sometimes a reserve behind them. The patrols are active agents in getting information in front of the outpost line, and they will mostly consist of mounted troops except in close country or thick weather. The look-out sentries are passive obstacles to the enemy’s patrols or scouts penetrating the line; the piquets are the reserve of force ready to be called into action when needed. But a line suitable for observation and resistance by day is seldom suitable by night also. Fighting by day is done by shooting, and rough ground affording cover is likely to be chosen for the advance of the attackers. By night, however, the attack will be made with the bayonet, and the attacker will avoid broken country, which will confuse and delay his advance. Choose your outpost line accordingly. By day seek for a good field of fire, mutually supporting positions, and good facilities for observation, and strengthen the position you mean to fight on. By night close the likely ways by which an enemy may advance by putting piquets on them in strengthened positions with obstacles prepared in front, and patrols lying out on intervening ground to intercept scouts. Thus, in an undulating hedge-covered country with many roads, by day your piquets would be behind the crests of the undulations, sentries only on the look-out, and patrols scouting in front. By night your piquets would be on the roads, which they would block with barbed wire or abattis of cut hedge stuff, and your patrols in the fields between and lying out along the road in front at some place where they could watch anything passing, and get back to the piquet line without running risks of being shot by their own side. We will see below what training is required for non-commissioned officers and men in their duties on piquet, patrol and sentry. When you have trained them in these duties, take up an outpost line as a tactical exercise with your company, acting as an outpost company by day, and then as by night, and if you have scouts send them out to act as an enemy’s patrol in front to see how much of the operation of taking up the line is visible to them; then, after a certain hour, let them try to make their way through the line unseen. They must not work round the flanks as ex hypothesi; these are held by other outpost companies; finally, let them start sniping the outposts as if ushering in an attack, and let your piquets take up the line of resistance, your patrols falling back on the firing beginning.