You should save time by handing over command of your company and yourself cantering on so as to examine the ground and carefully consider your plans before your company arrives. The line of argument you should adopt on arrival on the ridge should be: “My first object is to prevent cavalry, assisted by horse artillery, reaching the ridge, and not a single moment is to be lost in doing this.
“My second object is to consider carefully how the ground can best be prepared to resist a determined infantry attack early to-morrow morning. It is possible that the ridge may be subjected to shell fire soon after the arrival of my company, and I must make hay whilst the sun shines.”
The conclusions you would come to as a result of this reasoning would probably be: “It is improbable that I shall be able to entrench the whole of my company before the enemy opens fire, but at all events I will try to make emplacements for my four Lewis guns on the ridge between E and I. They will thus be about eighty yards apart.
“I will use intensive labour to get these emplacements completed quickly.”
By intensive labour is meant telling off three men to each tool used and ordering the man to dig with all his might and main for a couple of minutes or until he is tired, and then to hand his tool over to another man who is ready to receive it. By this means more work can be done in half an hour than is usually done in an hour. For periods of under an hour, when men are working against time to achieve some important object, intensive labour is an excellent method to adopt, but it is not suited for long tasks where its use would wear men out. It is especially applicable where the task worked at is so small that only a very limited number of men can work simultaneously.
“I will, at the same time, construct trenches connecting these Lewis gun posts. It is possible that the arrival of the enemy’s guns will oblige me to relinquish work until the night, but the fact that the trenches have been commenced in the daytime will very much assist the men in their night work. I will afterwards construct supporting points at the farm L and between M and N on the reverse slope.”
Question 2.
If you concur with these conclusions, what principle will govern your action in putting the farm into a state of defence? You will notice that the farm shows a bigger front to the east and the west than it does to the north and the south. It is constructed of strong masonry and has two stories.