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.
V.
Having got a company of men and ground to train them on, the first step is to organise that company for its battle training. A company is organised into four platoons, each under a subaltern, with a sergeant as his second-in-command (platoon sergeant). Each platoon has four sections, and the sixteen sections of the company are numbered one to sixteen. The men of each of the above units remain permanently in that unit. If possible, maintain this organisation on duties and fatigues, though this is often a counsel of perfection, but quarter the men together, and insist on the maintenance of the organisation, without deviation, on parades. Have lists made up of the men of each platoon and section, and let men who so wish, belong to the same unit. Once these lists are made up, see to it by means of the section commanders that these men fall in on parade together in the place in the company where their section is standing, no matter how few there are; if there are but two men of one section on parade, they should fall in as front and rear rank men of one file. Avoid disseminating the men of a platoon or section among other units in order to raise the latter to a sizeable strength. Instead of this: supposing you have three weak platoons and one strong one on parade; of the four sections of one of the weak platoons, send two to each of the other two weak platoons. This will give you three platoons of, perhaps, unequal strength, but sufficient for work—and this without taking the responsibility of section commanders off their shoulders, and the cohesion of each unit is preserved. Some further suggestions on the subject of organisation will be put forward when speaking of moral.
The officer who aspires to develop whatever capabilities his men possess of becoming individually and collectively formidable in battle, must pay attention to much more than mere physical considerations. Napoleon’s dictum, that the moral is to the physical as three to one is early dinned into the ears of the officer of Regulars, but may stand repetition in pages meant for the perusal of others. No officer can expect to get the most out of his men unless he directs his attention to the study of the psychical side of the training. There are two fields in which the study must be pursued. One is the officer’s own personality, the other that of his non-commissioned officers and men. T. & M.R., 8, deals with the former, and should be read and pondered over.
In battle good men have sometimes achieved victory in spite of the shortcomings of their officers, but good officers, as well as men, are necessary for consistent success in the series of battles which make a campaign. Now, good officers, given time for training, will infallibly produce good men, provided the latter are of the average physique and courage. Therefore, study thyself, and try to see what you lack, in order to become a good officer. Cultivate your skill in handling your men by reading any books you can get; there are, unfortunately, not very many that deal with the work of such small units as companies or even single battalions. Go out into the country, or, if you have not time, recall to yourself some bit of country you know, and import an enemy into the landscape. Perhaps a few riflemen are holding ground on the flank of a road along which your battalion wants to march, but cannot, without undue loss, until these riflemen are driven off; and your commanding officer tells you to do the driving. In imagination, or on the ground, decide what position you would hold, if you were the enemy, in order to make yourself as nasty as possible—though having no hope of being reinforced—to the battalion trying to come along the road. Then settle in your mind what you, as commanding your company, would do to get rid of the annoyance. Be quite clear, what would you do? Go at them bald-headed? There are times and enemies when this is the best way; you would have to be fairly close, and the enemy not shooting very straight, and rather careful of his skin; or will you march a long way round till the enemy sees you are getting behind him, and so manœuvre him out? Then your battalion will be a long time waiting. Or will you look at the ground and find, let us suppose, a spot to which you will send a section or platoon to open a fire on the enemy, while another works its way to a point you have noted from which fire can be brought to sweep crossways a little knoll, or some such supposititious feature which seems to form the enemy’s left flank, and to be occupied by ten or twelve men, and which gives command over the rest of his position? Then, while the second lot is on its way, you plan to lead the remainder a little way round, under cover, in order to get to fairly close range of the knoll, so that when the second party opens fire on it, and its defenders are hampered both by this fire and by that of those you first posted, you may surprise them by an outburst of fire from your reserve, and either drive them off their perch by cross-fire from three directions, or, if they do not shift, run in at them with the bayonet, trusting to get across the intervening space at the cost of a few casualties, when your superior numbers at that point should ensure your success even if they actually await the bayonet. Learn to consider quickly how many ways there are of doing such a job as the above, and to decide quickly and rationally which is the best.
These schemes, involving only a company or two, will not be presented for your solution by your battalion commander; you must set them yourself, and their solution, and the thinking necessary thereto are the best methods an officer can get of training himself without having his men on the ground. In your mind’s eye, put your company into every situation you can think of, and get it out again, and you will have acquired an enormous reserve of capacity for acting quickly and rightly when your men and your enemy are both on the ground. But beware of dealing in too short distances, or you may produce unreal pictures of war. Do not imagine manœuvres at four hundred yards from the enemy when every man exposed would be hit in a few minutes. The clearness and decision of thought you acquire will be reflected in the orders you give. Your men will give you their confidence when they see, as they are quick to do, that you know your job. There is nothing more disheartening for a subordinate, be he private or colonel, than to feel he is under control of a duffer, whose mistakes he will have to correct. This feeling saps discipline, and quickly destroys the fighting value of a body of men. In peace training, the men become sulky at being “bothered about,” lose interest in their work, and wish themselves done with parade. In war, their personal characters usurp the control of their actions, and they become a mob in uniform.