IV.
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 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.