Battle Studies; Ancient and Modern Battle

by Charles Jean Jacques Joseph Ardant du Picq

No, for man cannot be made over, and neither can the line.

Even on the range or on the maneuver field what does this fire amount to?

In fire at command, on the range, all the men in the two ranks come to the firing position simultaneously, everybody is perfectly quiet. Men in the front rank consequently are not deranged by their neighbors. Men in the second rank are in the same situation. The first rank being set and motionless they can aim through the openings without more annoyance than those in the first rank.

Fire being executed at command, simultaneously, no weapon is deranged at the moment of firing by the movements of the men. All conditions are entirely favorable to this kind of fire. Also as the fire is ordered with skill and coolness by an officer who has perfectly aligned his men (a thing rare even on the drill ground) it gives percentage results greater than that of fire at will executed with the minutest precautions, results that are sometimes astonishing.

But fire at command, from the extreme coolness that it demands of all, of the officer certainly more than of the soldier, is impracticable before the enemy except under exceptional circumstances of picked officers, picked men, ground, distance, safety, etc. Even in maneuvers its execution is farcical. There is not an organization in which the soldiers do not hurry the command to fire in that the officers are so afraid that their men will anticipate the command that they give it as rapidly as possible, while the pieces are hardly in firing position, often while they are still in motion.

The prescription that the command to fire be not given until about three seconds after coming to the firing position may give good results in the face of range targets. But it is not wise to believe that men will wait thus for long in the face of the enemy.

It is useless to speak of the use of the sight-leaf before the enemy, in fire attempted by the same officers and men who are so utterly lacking, even on the maneuver ground. We have seen a firing instructor, an officer of coolness and assurance, who on the range had fired trial shots every day for a month, after this month of daily practice fire four trial shots at a six hundred meter range with the sight leaf at point blank.

Let us not pay too much attention to those who in military matters base everything on the weapon and unhesitating assume that the man serving it will adopt the usage provided and ordered in their regulations. The fighting man is flesh and blood. He is both body and soul; and strong as the soul may often be it cannot so dominate the body that there is no revolt of the flesh, no mental disturbance, in the face of destruction. Let us learn to distrust mathematics and material dynamics as applied to battle principles. We shall learn to beware of the illusions drawn from the range and the maneuver field.

There experience is with the calm, settled, unfatigued, attentive, obedient soldier, with an intelligent and tractable man instrument in short. And not with the nervous, easily swayed, moved, troubled, distrait, excited, restless being, not even under self-control, who is the fighting man from general to private. There are strong men, exceptions, but they are rare.

These illusions nevertheless, stubborn and persistent, always repair the next day the most damaging injuries inflicted on them by reality. Their least dangerous effect is to lead to prescribing the impracticable, as if ordering the impracticable were not really an attack on discipline, and did not result in disconcerting officers and men by the unexpected and by surprise at the contrast between battle and the theories of peace-time training.