The form of camp, and the nature of the protection adopted, depend, as usual, on the topography, and on the character of the enemy.
A common method is to place transport, etc., within a perimeter occupied by the fighting troops, but this arrangement is by no means invariable, and it may be convenient to form two or more camps, or to separate transport from fighting troops.
The camp will, as a rule, be located in proximity to water, that is to say in a valley, and in such circumstances, if it can be sited well under one of the enclosing ranges of hills, protection from sniping will be afforded from this direction, though the overhanging heights must be securely held.
Sometimes a small basin is available for the bivouac, and in this case, the troops can, to a great extent, be secured from this favourite tribal device of firing into camp after nightfall.
As is the case in all war, the measures taken for the security of a camp include a system of picquets, and in frontier expeditions these are placed all round camp, either on the level, or on any commanding heights, within, at any rate, effective rifle range.
Picquets may be pushed even further forward, but when so situated, must be numerically strong, as they are liable to be rushed, though more for the sake of capturing their arms, than with the object of inflicting loss. No picquet should be of less strength than one section, all should be intrenched against attack from any direction. Their bearing from camp should also be taken, and they should be in signalling communication with the main body, so that assistance may be requested and despatched when necessary, or warning given of the approach of the enemy in force.
Bombs should be useful adjuncts to picquet defence, in case the enemy should succeed in forming a lodgment near the sangar.
Though a sedentary system of picquets may discover the presence of a large hostile body near camp, and may, in some degree, check sniping, the latter evil cannot, by this means, be completely prevented. Tribesmen, especially since they are aware that the British rarely risk troops, other than picquets, outside the perimeter, will often creep in and snipe from the area between the picquets and camp.
There seems, however, no valid reason why sniping should be passively tolerated, when it can probably be effectively combated by placing, in certain localities between the camp and picquets, small patrols of picked men, provided with grass shoes, whose duty will be to stalk and bayonet venturesome marauders.
Against this proposal it has been argued that the British, and especially the European soldiers, are unfit to cope, by night, with tribesmen, inured from childhood to move silently in darkness over rough ground. The contention is considered to be inadmissible, for though there is, and must be, risk in stalking snipers, picked British soldiers are surely now, as formerly, more than a match for Pathans, in all circumstances when the numbers are fairly even.