So the Japanese held our trenches unpunished, and repaired them, making communication trenches and cover from our bullets.
Colonel Irman gave me the companies that had come up at the finish for strengthening the defences on Namako Yama, and they were badly needed by me.
What an enormous influence one man, whether officer or private, can have on the issue of a battle!
In many battles I have noticed and studied the psychological effect produced on an ordinary man who is brought face to face with death.
The desire to escape from the danger threatening him is so great, that he is scarcely able to exhibit the strength of will of even the average individual.
Overcome by this feeling, a man loses his power of weighing circumstances, and he either acts from force of habit, or else follows the example of his commander or his neighbour. (This is a well-known phenomenon, but it is brought home only to the man who has been among soldiers during a fight.) Now, supposing this neighbour loses his head and runs, there are very few who will not follow his example; the average man will take to his heels too, his neighbour follows him, and so on, until the whole detachment is retreating in disorder.
A disorderly retreat is always started by one man, and in most cases this man is physically weak and sometimes, though rarely, an obvious funk. Therefore it is essential to recruit soldiers from men who are physically strong, for almost every weak man will be a cause of retreat and, consequently, of defeat. A hundred picked men are preferable to two or three hundred weak ones, even though the latter are equally well trained.
I would add that men must learn how to husband their strength. On a long march fatigued soldiers are worse than useless. So I say that we must discard most of what our soldiers now carry in their knapsacks, and retain only the following articles: 1 shirt, 1 pair of trousers, 1 pair of putties, 1 pair of socks, a ball of lint, a butter-tin, some needles and thread, and sugar for two days. All the other things are absolutely superfluous. Have your supply columns perfect; but the soldier must go as light as possible, and must, moreover, look smart, so that an enemy will not dare to call him a “ragged beggar.”[70] Make a soldier so smart that even a sloven will become a rather fine-looking fellow. A smart outward appearance raises the spirits of the troops.
It is also indispensable to teach the infantry soldier field fortification thoroughly, so that he becomes the equal of a sapper and needs no supervision in war time. In the 5th Regiment, not only the non-commissioned officers, but the men also, could point out where trenches should be constructed, and of what depth and length they should be.
Our men blamed the sappers for making trenches with elbow rests, as they knew by experience what the loss of that width of earth meant along the firing line. They said that the sappers did it because they had not themselves been under shrapnel fire, and did not know how to take aim from behind cover.