4. To make every trooper self-reliant in danger or unusual circumstances, especially when alone.
5. To cultivate the offensive spirit and a determination to get at the enemy somehow.
1. Efficiency for war in men and horses. Men not worked hard in peace-time are quite useless in war, where they have the added privation of want of food and sleep. Active service is quite unlike peace service; in the latter a man often spends but an hour or two in the open and most of the rest of the day in grooming and cleaning up; these duties are, generally speaking, a pure waste of time, as far as cavalry is concerned, in war. Too much of this barrack-square soldiering is apt to unfit men and make them slack and tired after a long day’s work, of which gillies, herdsmen, and keepers would think nothing. Few officers are knowledgeable enough to be able to discern the difference between fit, hard horses and poor horses. Looking at the horse sideways on, the ribs may easily deceive one, but following a horse it is much more easily seen to which category he belongs. The poor horse is split up and hollow in the region of the muscles lying alongside the backbone. Feeling the neck is not a safe criterion—big neck muscles may merely mean that the horse has been fed on the ground; the appearance of the coat is also fallacious. A sharp canter of a mile should, however, furnish a good test, as the blowing and snorting of an untrained squadron and a soapy lather instead of a clear watery sweat at once tell their tale.
2. It is a common but most pernicious practice, instead of making the effort to train all men in the squadron up to a certain standard of knowledge and ability, to take some of the smart men and make them into “show” teams. It is obviously flat-catching to have a prize team of ten marksmen, whilst the rest of the squadron are indifferent rifle shots. A man who wins prizes year after year at tournaments and assaults-at-arms is not of value unless he teaches other men. Often he does not do this for fear they should come on, “until at last the old man was beaten by the boy.” The best, though perhaps not the most showy, squadrons are those in which there is a recognized standard of efficiency in every exercise and attainment, below which no man is allowed to fall. The story is told of an inspector-general of cavalry of past days, that, after the usual inspection, the commanding officer at luncheon said to him, “I should like you to see my regiment tent-pegging.” “Certainly,” was the reply. Arrived on the maidan, about forty men had paraded. “But,” said the I.G.C., “you asked me to come and see your regiment tent-peg, and I wish to do so.” The regiment was forthwith paraded, and the first squadron’s exhibition was quite sufficient to expose the fallacy of “samples.”
3. See under heading “[the personal weapon]” in chapter on [Training of the Man].
4. Self-reliance may be gained by giving the individual various tasks to carry out by himself and on his own initiative. The return for this form of “casting the bread on the waters” is not immediate, but directly the regiment goes on manœuvres or on service, the result between a squadron trained on this system and one where this is not done is most marked.
The squadron in which every man can read a map and orient himself (and this is now not exceptional) moves with perfect confidence on the line marked out for it, and if “held up” in front at once proceeds to find a way round or through. Squadrons trained to this degree may be confidently expected to give great results when employed with independent cavalry or as contact squadrons.
From this it will be seen that the education of the modern working classes has been exploited and improved upon to a very high degree in the cavalry squadron and regimental school. Cavalry work, which would have been a severe test of map-reading[88] and troop-leading to a subaltern officer of cavalry thirty-five years ago, is now within the powers of every sergeant and corporal, and most of the men. To attain this has meant hard work for the regimental officer, and it is doubtful, if the work had not been largely delegated to the section leader, and thereby a proper chain of responsibility established, whether such progress would have been made.
Competitions between sections and troops, the former for choice, work great things in a squadron. If the minds of sixteen section leaders are all at work to find out the best way to train a recruit in various exercises, to feed a horse to the best advantage with the forage available, to get the best shooting average, and so on, it is obvious that the squadron leader has a good chance of disseminating his knowledge, when found out, through his squadron, whilst an interest is given to the work which is perfectly invaluable. Certainly men, who have to go through four or five months’ hot weather in the plains of India with the thermometer occasionally at 115° in the verandah, want these mental exercises and interests just as they want games of hockey, cricket, and football in the evening to keep them sound in wind, limb, and mind.
In every respect competition is a healthy lever in training; only quite recently a squadron which, mirabile dictu, stopped all smoking for some weeks before shooting, were successful in winning an army rifle competition. Above all things, it acts in putting a stop to the waste of time which is so frequent an occurrence, where there is no spur to prevent it. It is distressing to see a troop of men and horses standing in line, whilst one individual goes through some exercise, or jumps some fences; a clever squadron leader will never permit this, he will point out to the troop or section leader that the remainder would be much better occupied in “suppling” their horses, or making cuts and points, till their turn arrived:[89] and that there is no reason why they should not light a pipe meanwhile. These amenities make things go easier.