They are particularly useful at night with the outposts, and can be trained by day on roads, defiles, or bridges, and thus can be used in the dark to sweep the approaches with accurate fire.
The Golden Rule for Machine Gun Tactics may be thus expressed:
“Conceal your guns, utilise cover, and operate by surprise—for surprise is the essence of tactical success.”
CHAPTER III
EMPLOYMENT IN THE FIELD WITH THE INDEPENDENT CAVALRY
The Germans have resolutely adopted the plan of attaching machine guns to cavalry, and they seem thus to understand the modern combination of fire and shock tactics. To the machine gun the fire action, to the horseman the morale action—so much the more easy and productive of results, as the machine gun is the more powerful.—Chief of 2nd Bureau, French General Staff.
Since this was written it has been generally recognised by the leading military authorities of the world that the machine gun is essentially a cavalry weapon; and Colonel Zaleski in a recent article on the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War goes so far as to say, “Even their addition to squadrons cannot be carried out too rapidly, and this weapon would now appear to be indispensable to cavalry.”
The truth of this statement is obvious to the student of modern tactics who is also acquainted with the machine gun as organised and equipped on the Continent and in the United States, where it is as mobile as the cavalryman himself and as quick in coming into action.[7] When its true rôle is understood and its tremendous fire power made full use of, it will go far to render cavalry independent of the rifle, and to restore to them that dash and independence of action which made them the terror of the battlefields of the past.
The following extract from an article in The Times newspaper of August 23rd, 1905, by their special correspondent with the Japanese Army in Manchuria, shows the necessity for machine guns by emphasising the danger of training cavalry to fight as infantry.
“The prime value of cavalry lies in its mobility. As an actual fighting unit in battle a body of cavalry is much inferior to an equal body of infantry. The discrepancy is less marked if the cavalryman carries a rifle, but there is always the encumbrance of the horses, which require the attention of one man in every four when the rifle is employed. It being postulated that tactics evolve themselves into the effort to obtain a superiority of rifle fire, it is evident that the necessity of dispensing with one quarter of a body of mounted riflemen before their weapons can be brought to bear greatly lessens the value of that body. On the other hand, the mobility of the mounted rifleman compensates for his comparative ineffectiveness to such a degree, it is believed in the British Army, that elaborate arrangements have been made for the provision and training of what is known as mounted infantry. Granted the value of mounted and mobile men as an auxiliary to infantry, the question arises, What is the weapon with which they shall be armed, and what the nature of the training to which they shall be subjected? These things depend upon whether the mobility of a mounted man is regarded as secondary to his function as a rifleman, or whether his weapon be merely adapted to his mobility. In other words, are mounted men wanted for their riding or their shooting? The arming of our cavalry with rifles, and certain modifications in its training, together with the formation of corps of mounted infantry, show that those who held the ear of the Secretary of State for War a few years ago pinned their faith to the superior value of shooting, and regarded mobility in a mounted man only as a means to an end. If we turn to the conflict now proceeding in Manchuria, it is found that in one respect it differs considerably from other great wars, particularly those which have been fought on level ground. Cavalry has been conspicuous not by its absence, but by its utter and astonishing ineffectiveness. From Liao-yang northwards both armies have occupied part of the level plain traversed by the Liao River. The right of the Russian Army and the left of the Japanese have faced each other for nearly twelve months, in country as flat as a billiard-table and as suitable for cavalry evolutions as any of the low countries in which the famous leaders of last century made their reputations. Here have been conditions ideal for the employment of shock tactics; a veritable jousting-ground where the vaunted Russian cavalry might have run a-tilt at the sword-worshipping Japanese. Yet no single instance has been recorded of combat between mounted men, and to the best of my belief none has occurred.