P.S.—As will be seen in the following chapters, the rebel impis and their women and cattle were all found, when the troops came to attack them later on, in the exact positions assigned to them in the sketch map issued. Such “locating” would have been impossible had we tried to effect it by reconnaissances of the usual kind, that is, by parties of men. The natives would have gathered to oppose our coming, or—what is more likely—to prevent our getting away again; instead of gently stealing our honey bit by bit, we should have brought the whole swarm of bees about us, and the probability is that they would then have deserted that hive to take a new and more inaccessible one. Instead of being able to lead the troops straight to the enemy, we should merely have been able to say, “There is the spot where we fought them; they seemed to come from yonder; but it looks as if they had now gone somewhere else.” And reconnoitring parties would again have had to follow them, with similar results, probably losing men every time, and gaining nothing.
The value of solitary scouting does not seem to be sufficiently realised among us nowadays. One hears but little of its employment since the Peninsula days, when Marbot gave the English officers unqualified praise for their clever and daring enterprise in this line.
It is not only for savage warfare that I venture to think it is so important, but equally for modern civilised tactics. A reconnaissance in force in these days of long–range weapons and machine–guns can have very little chance of success, and yet for the same reasons an accurate knowledge of the enemy’s position, strength, and movements is more than ever necessary to the officer commanding a force. One well–trained, capable scout can see and report on an object just as well as fifty ordinary men of a patrol looking at the same thing. But he does so with this advantage, that he avoids attracting the attention of the enemy, and they do not alter their position or tactics on account of having been observed; and he can venture where a party would never be allowed to come, since the enemy, even if they see him, would hesitate to disturb their piquets, etc., by opening fire on a solitary individual, although they would have no such scruples were a reconnoitring party there instead.
It is difficult to find in history a battle in which the victory or defeat were not closely connected with good or deficient reconnaissance respectively. Good preliminary reconnaissance saves premature wearing out of men and horses through useless marches and counter–marches, and it simplifies the commander’s difficulties, and he knows exactly when, where, and how to dispose his force to obtain the best results.
But, as I have said above, such reconnaissance can often be carried out the most effectually by single reconnoitrers or scouts. And a peace training of such men is very important.
Without special training a man cannot have a thorough confidence in himself as a scout, and without an absolute confidence in himself, it is not of the slightest use for a man to think of going out to scout.
Development of the habits of noting details and of reasoning inductively constitute the elements of the required training. This can be carried out equally in the most civilised as in the wildest countries,—although for its complete perfecting a wild country is preferable. It is to a large extent the development of the science of woodcraft in a man—that is, the art of noticing smallest details, and of connecting their meaning, and thus gaining a knowledge of the ways and doings of your quarry; the education of your “eye–for–a–country”; and the habit of looking out on your own account. Once these have become, from continual practice, a second nature to a man, he has but to learn the more artificial details of what he is required to report, and the best method of doing so, to become a full–fledged scout.
We English have the talent of woodcraft and the spirit of adventure and independence already inborn in our blood to an extent to which no other nationality can lay claim, and therefore among our soldiers we ought to find the best material in the world for scouts. Were we to take this material and rightly train it in that art whose value has been denoted in the term “half the battle,” we ought to make up in useful men much of our deficiency in numbers.
Houdin, the conjurer, educated the prehensibility of his son’s mind by teaching him, in progressive lessons, to be able to recapitulate the contents of a shop window after a single look at it; there is the first stage of a scout’s training, viz. the habit of noticing details. The second, “inductive reasoning,” or the putting together of this and that detail so noticed, and deducing their correct meaning, is best illustrated in the Memoirs of “Sherlock Holmes.”