The training of an infantry company

by E. Kirkpatrick

The authorised handbooks of training rightly confine themselves to broad principles, and do not attempt to give detailed examples of their application, the idea being that officers should study these regulations and apply the principles by the light of local conditions and their own experience. Infantry Training and the Field Service Regulations are, however, very pregnant little books, containing, as they do, a summary of the whole of Modern Tactics, as far as they concern infantry and the combined action of all arms. Time and thought are necessary, if the principles contained in them are to be translated into such intelligent action that the men trained on the lines laid down may be capable of doing their duty in real warfare, without first undergoing a bitter and costly schooling of useless casualties or, perhaps, even of defeat. But if an officer is called on to achieve this result, being himself without much previous experience in training, he will find himself faced with a task of great difficulty, and, with the best intentions, he may waste precious time, as well as his own and his men’s patience and energy, in doing parades and exercises, which are either not indispensable, or of minor importance for the main object. As an extreme example, it would be better, in a hastily raised corps, to combine the disciplinary training of obedience to the word of command, with instruction in the use of their arms, by practice in smart work in aiming and firing, than merely to study precision in “sloping” and “presenting arms,” which look well, but do not immediately affect fighting efficiency.

For these reasons, it has occurred to me that I might do some of my brother officers in esse or in posse a service by setting out certain elementary exercises in training infantry soldiers, which I have found of value in bringing them up to a standard of battle training sufficiently high to need only battalion training and a baptism of fire to turn them into steady and reliable troops. It is not contended that these few examples are anything but concrete instances of the application of the principles of the Training Manuals. They are intended, as has been stated, merely for those who are short of time and experience, and, therefore, references to the manuals are given when the exercise illustrates some particular section of those works, and it is recommended that officers who intend to use these examples should look up and read the sections referred to before going on to the parade.

Though this book is not meant for officers commanding battalions, I have one word to say to them, and it is this, that if they wish to have an efficient battalion they must let the company officers have proper opportunities of training their companies, apart from the time of company training, when the whole company is struck off duty. If there are six parades a week, let three or four of them be company parades, ordered and carried out by the company commanders; the balance will be quite enough to secure combination between the companies in battalion. On company parades, the battalion commander should supervise, but never interfere, unless things are being manifestly mismanaged. (See T. & M.R., 2 (2 and 3)). The days of the one man battalion are gone for ever. The company is the thing that matters; a good battalion can only be composed of well-trained companies. It is the work of the battalion commander to propound the general lines of training and to use the companies to the best advantage in combination, but the training of the individual soldier must be in the hands of the man who is to lead him in war.

II.

On ordinary parades, the captain of an infantry company is seldom able to get together more than a fraction of his men. The calls on the company for men for duties and odd jobs, leave and furlough, and, in the Territorial Force, the private occupations of the men, allow of only a few being assembled on any one parade. This being so, there is a temptation—sometimes yielded to by officers who have not much experience, to say to themselves: “This is rot; what can I do without any men?” Such a question is the result of confusing the individual instruction of the men with the tactical practice of the leader in handling his company as a whole. The answer too often takes the form of an hour’s close order drill or something similar, which may do some good, but not nearly as much as if the officer stoutly made up his mind to make the best of a bad job and took out those few men and did some practical training in field operations. The fewer men there are on parade, the more individual attention will the company commander be able to give them. He will be able to look at each man’s work more carefully, talk to the men and get to know their characters as soldiers, spot who are likely to make good non-commissioned officers, and coach them far more than if the whole company were on hand at once. So do not turn up your nose at a company only twenty strong, but make up a scheme of exercises to be gone through, and, since the men who are not on parade to-day will be so to-morrow, arrange to do the same exercise on two, or, if needed, three, consecutive days, so as to catch all, or, at least, most of the men, and your non-commissioned officers, who are not usually so drawn on for off-parade duties, will become well acquainted with each exercise, learn what to do and how to run things, and so become both a help to you as instructors, and themselves gain authority and power of command from the knowledge of their own competency.

It is quite likely that these exercises and the explanations given, may seem to some readers to be absurdly simple and needlessly long-winded, while there is also a good deal of repetition. To this I will make early reply that they are written for officers who are not too proud to accept other people’s advice in training a company of young soldiers of the stamp which would be forthcoming if some cause[1] or other tempted or constrained into military service that great proportion of our male population who are at present quite ignorant of a soldier’s work, and who, from apathy, or a hundred other causes, do not join the Territorial Force. Such men probably have never in their lives given a thought to soldiering. The majority of them are town born and bred, and have passed most of their lives among bricks and mortar. If they have ever looked carefully at the large or small features of a bit of country, it has been from an industrial, sporting, or, perhaps, sentimental, but never from a tactical, point of view. They have everything to learn in making use of ground for fighting. Their ideas of using modern arms are equally crude; the primitive fighting instinct will be uppermost in their minds, and would express itself in an incontinent desire to get to close quarters with their enemy, when bayonet, butt or hand grips would seem the proper way to settle the matter. A very laudable desire it is—this of wanting to close in—and one to be encouraged by every means, but however brave troops may be, they cannot in general indulge their desire to attain close quarters and the resulting facilities of fighting by the light of their natural instincts unless they have first been successful in the fire fight—the strife of the arms of artifice—which is waged by bullet and shell at distances which Nature never contemplated.

It is the artificiality of the fire fight which makes the task of turning town-bred men into skilful soldiers such a difficult and lengthy process. They must be led to look at ground in relation to its capabilities of increasing the effectiveness of their own fire and also of diminishing the result of that of the enemy, i.e., they must learn to select good fire positions and good cover. The problem of finding the latter for himself against a civilized foe begins, for the individual soldier, as soon as the enemy’s rifle fire becomes effective and compels the use by his side of extended order; this is held to be on open ground about fourteen hundred yards from the enemy’s infantry (I.T., 118 (4)). Prior to this the responsibility for cover rests with his leaders, as he will then be in some close formation. Fire positions he must choose for himself as soon as his section commander ceases to be able to indicate his wishes, or to secure combined action by the whole unit. This will probably happen at about six hundred yards from the enemy, when individual fire is expected to replace controlled fire by sections. These two aspects of fighting—the use of ground, and the use of the rifle as a far-reaching weapon of almost absolute precision, if truly sighted and aimed—are foreign to our instincts, and the average man has to be trained till he is able to override his instinct and fight an artificial war, so as to work his way to charging distance. Some men need less training than others; a stalker in a deer forest is an adept in the use of cover, and in general, country-bred men should be easier to train than town-bred, but the majority of our men being the latter, we must lay ourselves out to teach them from the beginning this business of the fire fight, since success in this is usually necessary before the assault can succeed (I.T., 121 (7)). This can only be done by training them in extended order and putting them through various exercises chosen for the purpose. Any exercise which does not in some way tend to fit men for battle is mere waste of time; aimless perambulations of an extended line fall under this category, but are quite often to be seen on parade grounds. No amount of smartness in close order drill will compensate for a deficiency of field training.

III.

The exercises which I have drawn up, simple though they are, are of the nature of “Instructional Operations,” as defined by T. & M.R., 40 (12), and it is presupposed that the men have received, or are in course of receiving, sufficient instruction in the use of the rifle (musketry in all its branches), and of the bayonet (bayonet fighting), in drill in close order, and the drill grounding of extended order work, including signals (I.T., 90-96). We are then to consider ourselves to be at the stage in which the soldier is to be taught to work over broken country as directed in the latter part of para. 90, above quoted. But do not think the lessons learned at musketry instruction are to be forgotten and left behind by the men when they begin to work in extended order across country. Demand from your men that the rifle shall be deadly, and, by unceasing supervision, breed a habit among them of aiming and firing in extended order, whether with or without blank cartridge, with the same exactitude as when firing their course of musketry on the range. Take the high standard—a hundred men’s lives in one man’s bandolier, instead of a hundred bandoliers for one man’s life. The higher standard of the two is at least possible, though not common, but why not try and work towards it, so that when bullets are flying within decisive range of the enemy, it will be your men’s fire, that is the deadly close-hitting kind, that makes afraid, and not the haphazard jet of bullets whose inefficacy lets unhurt familiarity breed tolerant contempt?

In the same way, when men are in close order at any time during a field parade, keep up the same smartness, and quick obedience to orders which are exacted in close order drills, in order that the men may become truly disciplined, and not merely so in appearance, so when they come under fire without being extended, as may happen in the early and distant stages of a fight, they will, as a matter of course, submit themselves to their commander’s wishes, and ignore their own inclinations, which, just at the first experience, even with very brave men, might be for an immediate and independent rush in some direction—perhaps forward, perhaps in another direction—they will be “in hand,” and free of the liability of raw troops to suffer from sudden panic or to become a mob, full of fight, perhaps, but still a mob, and as such, a force which cannot be controlled or used in furtherance of any general plan.