First lessons in war

FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

" I have read Professor Spenser Wilkinson's little
book, it is quite the best thing of its kind I have ever
seen, and I should be glad to see it in the hands of
every Territorial soldier ; I shall do my best to get
it there." — Lord Esher.

" ' First Lessons in War ' I have read with interest
and pleasure. In my opinion, it describes the soldier's
business, his weapons, and his marching and fighting
formations in singularly terse, lucid, and appropriate
language, and the book should be of much value to
the officers and men who have come forward, and
who are coming forward, for service during the present
war." — Field Marshal Lord Nicholson, late Chief of
ihe Imperial General Staff.

** We sincerely hope that this little book will find
its way into the hands of the majority of officers and
privates in the new Army and the Territorials. . . .
Indeed, we wish Mr. Spenser Wilkinson a couple of
million readers in the men of the British Army already
in line, and an extra million in the new million which
we must raise to make ourselves safe. We sincerely
hope that the book will also be read by that large
body of middle-aged men, men past the age of military
service, who are now forming voluntary organizations
lor home defence." — Spectator,

FIRST LESSONS
IN WAR

SPENSER WILKINSON

CHICHELE PROFESSOR OF MILITARY HISTORY

FELLOW OF ALL SOULS' COLLEGE, OXFORD

PRESIDENT OF THE MANCHESTER TACTICAL SOCIETY

',i"HI^'ElMTION

METHUEN & CO. LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET W. C.

LONDON

Eirst Published .. .. November rgth /g/4
Second Edition .. .. December i8th 1Q14.

TO
THOSE OF MY COUNTRYMEN

WHO HAVE
VOLUNTEERED FOR THE WAR

397708

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

EVERY war brings in its course changes in
tactics, of which the precise nature cannot
be foreseen. This book was written in October
1914, before the accounts from the theatre of war
had thrown much Hght on those changes of method
of which we are now beginning to hear in some
detail. The most important of them is the
influence of artillery in compelling the infantry
to be content with a much shorter field of fire
in front of its trenches than is desirable for obtain-
ing the full effect of the modern bullet. I think
however that it is premature at present to
modify the statements in my text as to the value
of a clear field of fire, of which I suspect that the
importance will reassert itself in the later stages
of the war.

S. W.
December 8th, 1914

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I

THE BULLET

T»AGB

Discipline or Learning and Training — The
Soldier's Chief Business to Use His
Weapons, of which the Most Deadly is
the Bullet — Description of the Modern
Bullet — The Forces which Act upon it —
The Explosion — Gravity — The Air — The
Purpose of Rifling — What it is — ^The
Course of the Bullet — The Purpose of
the Sights — Necessity of Judging the
Distance Correctly — Successive Stages of
Learning to Shoot — Disappearing and
Moving Targets — Field Firing to Enable
the Section to Fire as Directed by its
Leader — Organisation of the Platoon,
the Company and the Battahon — Bullet-
Power of the Battalion — A Platoon in
Action — ^The Meaning and Importance
of Fire Discipline — ^The Machine Gun —
The Infantry Brigade - - - - il

CHAPTER II

THE SHELL

\ Cannon a Great Rifle — The Shell a Large
Hollow Bullet — The High Explosive

Til

viii FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

PAGB

Shell— The Shrapnel— The Time Fuse—
The Percussion Fuse — Burst of the
Shrapnel — The Howitzer — Effect of
Shrapnel — Method of Finding the Range
— Indirect Firing — ^The Field Gun — ^The
Battery— The Brigade — Horse Artillery
— Formations and Paces . - - 49

CHAPTER ni

THE BAYONET, THE GROUND AND THE
TRENCH

'Battle a Shooting Match— The Hand-to-
Hand Encounter — Importance of Skill in
Using Steel Weapons — ^Their Influence on
Men's Spirits — ^The Bayonet Charge the
Sign of Superiority in the Fire Fight —
Importance of Ground for Cover and
Protection and, therefore, of the Choice
of a Position — ^l^he Value of the Trench
as Shelter from Rifle and Shrapnel
Bullets — Time required for its Construc-
tion— The Choice of a Site - - - 6i

CHAPTER IV

DRILL AND FORMATIONS

Effect of Drill on Character — Fighting Form-
ation the Extended Line — Importance
of Keeping the Direction — ^The Advance
by Rushes — Effect of Unaimed Fire —
Formation of Supports — Difficulty of

CONTENTS ix

PA.GB

Moving them to their Right Place — ^The
Order of March is the Column of Fours —
The Reason why Distances must be
Preserved — Pace of Infantry - - - 73

CHAPTER V

CAVALRY

The Services that Cavalry renders to an
Army — Need for Thorough Training —
The Eyes of an Army — Cavalry Charges
Rare — Cavalry in Pursuit — Raids — ^The
Cavalry Charge — Against Cavalry —
Against Infantry — ^The Cavalry Brigade
and Division — Paces — Dismounted Ac-
tion of Cavalry — Mounted Infantry - 84

CHAPTER VI

THE DIVISION ON THE MARCH

Composition of the Division — Arrangement of
Bivouacs — Area Required — Billets —
Principle on which Troops at Rest or
on the March are Protected — A Division
Marching along a Single Road — Space
which it Covers and Time Occupied - 94

CHAPTER VII

THE DIVISION MEETING THE ENEMY

The Experience of a Private in the Advance-
Guard — First Report of the Enemy —

FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

The Advance-Guard is to Hold its
Ground — The Story of the Platoon—
The First Shot — ^The Platoon Entrenches
— The Enemy's First Skirmishers — ^The
First Shrapnel — Necessity of every Man
knowing His Place and of the Officers
having Mastered the Principles explained
in the Regulations — Need for Keeping in
Good Condition — Prospects of the New
Army 105

FIRST LESSONS
IN WAR

CHAPTER I

THE BULLET

Discipline or Learning and Training — The Soldier's
Chief Business to Use His Weapons of which
the Most Deadly is the Bullet — Description of
the Modern Bullet — The Forces which Act
upon it — ^The Explosion — Gravity — The Air —
The Purpose of Rifling — What it is — ^The
Course of the Bullet — The Purpose of the
Sights — Necessity of Judging the Distance
Correctly — Successive Stages of Learning to
Shoot — Disappearing and Moving Targets —
Field Firing to Enable the Section to Fire as
Directed by its Leader — Organisation of the
Platoon, the Company and the Battalion —
Bullet- Power of the Battalion — A Platoon in
Action — The Meaning and Importance of Fire
Discipline — The Machine Gun — The Infantry
Brigade.

TF you ask any old soldier or officer

who has seen service what is the

mark of a good army he will answer you

12 FIRST WESSONS IN WAR

without a moment's hesitation with a
single word, " discipline." Discipline is
the Latin name for the process of learn-
ing, and when we say that an army is
disciplined, we simply mean that the
officers and men have learned their
tusiness. War is the hardest business
known. A soldier spends most of his
time tramping along the road carrying
a rifle, 120 cartridges, a bayonet, a knap-
sack, a haversack, a water-bottle, and a
great-coat. He must march, whether
it is wet or fine, whether he is fresh or
tired, hungry or not. When he comes
to the battlefield, which may be after
he has already marched 20 miles on the
same day, he will probably have to
lie down and shoot. The enemy's bullets
will be singing about his ears and com-
rades struck dead or maimed in his sight,
yet he must go on shooting and shoot
straight. These things he will not be
able to do without an apprenticeship.
A hard training is needed to get him into

THE BULLET 13

condition to march all day with his load,
and to learn to bear hunger and thirst.
Practice is needed to make him alert to
comprehend orders and quick to execute
them. Assiduous practice is needed to
enable him to shoot coolly and well
amid a hail-storm of bullets. Discipline
is the process of learning these things
until they become habits, a second
nature.

The most important thing the soldier
has to learn is to use his weapons, of
which by far the most deadly is the
bullet. The rifle is a machine for pro-
pelling bullets, just as the gun is a
machine for propelling shells. The rifle
itself becomes a weapon only when the
bayonet is fixed on it so that it makes
a pike. Probably 95 per cent, of the
men killed and wounded in all the wars
of the last hundred and fifty years have
been struck by bullets, about 4 per cent,
by shells, and the remaining i per cent, by
the bayonet, the sword or the lajice.

14 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

In the present war, the shell appears to
be increasing its share.

By far the most of you have joined
the infantry, and your wish is to emulate
the good shooting of the British regular
troops of which you have read at the
battles of Mons, of the Marne, and of the
Aisne. That will be a matter of careful
instruction and of practice. But no man
can learn to shoot or can begin the prac-
tice with benefit unless he understands
both the rifle and the bullet. The rifle
will be explained to you by your instruc-
tors, and you cannot get to know much
about it from a book.

A bullet is a little lead dart an inch
and a quarter long and three-tenths of
an inch thick, rounded off to a point at
the front and weighing rather less than
half an ounce. It has a hard skin made
of an alloy of copper and nickel and the
pointed front is hardened with alumi-
nium.

This is quite a different thing from

THE BULLET 15

the old-fashioned bullet of Wellington's
time. That was a round ball of lead
weighing an ounce or more. It was
shot out from a smooth barrel by a
charge of black powder which made a
great smoke. It could do very little
harm beyond 300 yards, and the musket
was so inaccurate that no man could be
sure of hitting a small haystack 200
yards away from him. Shooting in
those days was only an improved form
of stone throwing. The musketeer was
not as good a shot as David with his
sling or as the Roman slingers with
their lead bullets. The bullet of to-day
is more like the arrow of the old English
long bowmen. In skilful hands it will
do terrible execution, but an untrained
man will not hit the mark except by
accident.

The back end of the bullet is fixed
into the front end of the cartridge, a
brass case, which, behind the bullet,
becomes much wider than the bullet

i6 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
itself and contains about the twelfth of
an ounce of cordite, a strong explosive
made up into small cords or tubes.
At the back of the cartridge-case is a
cap containing an explosive mixture,
which takes fire when struck. When
the rifle is loaded the bullet lies in the
back or breach end of the barrel, and
the wide part of the cartridge-case in
an enlargement of the barrel called the
powder chamber. When you pull the
trigger a needle strikes the cap at the
back of the cartridge-case, pierces it,
and so lights the explosive which fires
the cordite. The explosion of the cordite
drives the bullet along the barrel with
tremendous force, so that the bullet
leaves the barrel with a pace of over
2,400 feet a second.

When a stone is thrown, an arrow
shot, or a bullet fired, three forces act
upon it.

The impetus it has received from the
hand, the bow, or the powder, sends it

THE BULLET 17

forward in a straight line in the direction
in which it started. If there were no
other force it would go on in that straight
line, at the same rate, for ever. But it is
pulled towards the centre of the earth
by the earth's mass, which would make
it fall 16 feet in the first second, 64 by
the end of the second, 144 by the end
of the third, and so on.

If there were no other forces but these
two we could easily draw the path of
the bullet. Suppose it to start at the
rate of 2,400 feet a second. We should
rule a straight line representing the
prolongation of the barrel of the rifle,
and on that straight line should make
a mark at the end of each 2,400 feet.
Then from each of these marks we
should drop a perpendicular, which would
be at the first mark 16 feet long, at
the second 64 feet long, and at the
third 144 feet long. The curve starting
from the muzzle of the barrel and
passing through the lower ends of these

i8 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

perpendicular lines would represent the
path of the bullet.

But there is a third force which
upsets this simple calculation. It is the
resistance of the air, which acts as a
constant brake, stopping the bullet.
You know by experience something
about the resistance of the air, because
you know what a wind there is if you
put your head or your hand out of the
window of an express train. If the
train is going 60 miles an hour the wind
is pretty strong, but 60 miles an hour
is only 88 feet a second. A modern
bullet when it leaves the rifle is going
2,400 feet a second. You can imagine
what a terrific wind it meets— a wind
of 1,600 miles an hour. As long a^
the bullet moves forward it meets a
wind of its own pace. This wind makes
it go slower every instant, and in a
few seconds tires it out and stops it
altogether. For a bullet once fired can
receive no new impulse. It is not like

THE BULLET 19

the torpedo, which has its own engines
and a screw, and can, therefore, keep
up a constant rate of movement through
the water.

To evade the resistance of the air
the diameter of the bullet is made
very small, only three-tenths of an
inch. The wind can only act on
the amount of surface exposed to it.
It will drive a big sail faster than a
small one, and it can resist the forward
motion of the bullet only by the strength
with w^hich it can blow on an area equal
to the bullet's section, which is a circle
three-tenths of an inch across. The
driving power of the bullet depends upon
the w^eight behind that area. The front
of our bullet has behind it the weight
of more than four spherical bullets of
its own diameter. But it must be kept
point foremost, and it has been found
that tne only way to insure that, is to
make it spin like a top. That is the
purpose of the rifling.

20 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

The rifle maker cuts five parallel
grooves in the inside of the barrel. He
has a cutting tool which will cut a groove
in a steel surface and is held firm at the
end of a rod. He passes the barrel along
this rod which is kept in a fixed position
inside it so that the tool cuts its groove
as the barrel moves along. As the barrel
moves forwards it is turned round at
exactly the rate at which the bullet is to
spin. Thus the groove cut, instead of
being a straight line inside the barrel, will
be a spiral gradually going round it on
the inside. By repeating the process
five parallel grooves are made to wind
round the inside of the barrel. If, then,
you take a bullet of soft lead which fits
the barrel tightly so that it will not quite
go in, and if you strike it with a hammer
you will drive it into the barrel and some
of the lead will be squeezed into the
grooves, making five tiny little wings
fitting into them. If you then push the
bullet with a stick through the barrel

THE BULLET 21

these little wings will follow the grooves
and the bullet will turn round as it goes
along the barrel. This is exactly what
happens when the rifle is fired. The
bullet is put in at the breech, into a
chamber just a trifle wider than the
barrel. The explosion of the powder
behind it does the work of the hammer ;
it forces the bullet into the barrel so that
some of the lead fits into the grooves.
It also does the work of the stick and
drives the bullet through the barrel.
When the bullet leaves the muzzle it
is spinning at precisely the rate at which
it turned while it was going through the
barrel.

As soon as the bullet leaves the rifle
the earth begins to pull it towards the
ground, and it falls, at first slowly, but
faster and faster as it goes along. The
air gives the bullet some support
against its fall, which is slower than
it would be if there were no air, but
becomes quicker every second. If,

22 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

therefore, you want the bullet to
strike an object level with your eye you
must point the rifle a little upwards
according to the distance of the object.
A very slight tilt will send the bullet up
so that it will drop to its original level
at 600 yards ; a little greater tilt will
drop it a mile away.

The bullet will always follow with
amazing accuracy a course determined by
the direction in which the rifle is pointed,
and will strike the ground at a distance
from the rifle precisely corresponding to
the tilt or elevation given to the barrel.
Suppose you fixed the rifle on a table
with an elevation of ten degrees and
with a level plain in front of you. If you
then looked through the barrel you
would be looking up into the air. The
straight line of the barrel would be
pointing to a spot in the air which
at a distance of a mile and a half
would be 2,000 feet high. If a balloon
were at that spot at the moment

THE BULLET 23

you would see it through the barrel.
But if without altering the position of
the rifle you were to load it and pull the
trigger the bullet would not reach the
balloon. As soon as it had started the
pull of the earth would begin to drag it
down from the straight line along which
you looked. After going a mile it would
be nearly 600 feet below that straight
line though it would be 700 feet above
the ground. That would be the highest
point which it would reach. At a
mile and a half, when passing under
the balloon, it would be about 270
feet high, and would drop to the
ground in another 160 yards, just 2,800
yards from the muzzle of the rifle.
With five degrees of elevation to the
rifle the bullet will drop just over 2,000
yards away, with two degrees about
1,450, with one degree 1,000 yards. The
elevation for 600 yards is very small
indeed, less than half a degree, and if the
rifle is fired with that elevation by a

24 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

man lying down the bullet will never
rise more than 5 feet from the ground.

In order to enable the soldier to fire
his rifle in the right direction and with
the elevation corresponding to the dis-
tance of the target the rifle is provided
with sights. About an inch from the
muzzle of the rifle there is fixed outside
the barrel a small piece of steel which
stands up exactly over the centre of its
circumference. If you look along the
barrel, from behind, this projection looks
like a sharp pyramid the shape of the
letter A. Farther back along the barrel
near the breech is the back sight, a kind
of tiny ladder which stands upright on
the barrel with one rung which moves
up and down the ladder and can be
fixed at any height. In the middle of
the top edge of this rung there is a notch
like the letter V.

Suppose the rung to be at the bottom
of the ladder and its top edge then to
be exactly the same height above the

THE BULLET 25

centre of the barrel as the point of the
A of the foresight. If you then hold
the rifle in the position for firing and
look along it towards the target so
that you see the point of the A in
the middle of the V and just level
with the top of the rung you will be
looking along a straight line exactly
parallel to the axis of the barrel, and if
behind the point of the A you see the
centre of the bull's-eye on the target,
you may be sure that the barrel is pointed
straight at that centre. If you fired
with the rifle in that position, the bullet
would start in a straight line towards the
target. But it would not hit the bull's-
eye, because on its way it would have
begun to fall, and the farther the target
was away the farther it would have fallen
below the straight line from your eye to
the centre of the target. You would
be firing the rifle with the barrel hori-
zontal, without tilt or elevation. Accord-
ingly before you fire you must lift the

26 FIRST LESSONS IN. WAR

rung a little way up the ladder. When
you then take aim, so as to see the two
sights and the centre of the target all in
a straight Jine, the barrel will not be in
that straight line but will be pointing
above it. The two lines will be like a
bow and its string. The string is the
straight line from your eye to the target,
and the barrel is one end of the bow.
When you press the trigger the bullet
will follow the curve of the bow. Accord-
ingly to the height of the back sight
above the barrel will be the length and
height of the bow.

The bullet always takes a course
represented by a bow, and will hit
the target only if the length of the
bow-string is the same as the distance
of the target. There are as many
bows as there are distances, and each
line on the back sight has marked
upon it the length of bow-string corre-
sponding to the length of the bow when
the back sight stands in that line. If

THE BULLET 27

you make your bullet describe a bow of
which the string is 1,500 yards long,
and if the enemy you are aiming at is
only a thousand yards from you, your
bullet will pass 70 feet over his head and
500 yards behind him. If you assume
him to be 1,000 yards away when his
real distance is 1,500 your bullet will
fall 500 yards short.

If I have made myself clear you will
now understand the tremendous power
of the modern bullet, provided it is fired
by skilful hands. Once you have
thoroughly learned how to take aim and
how to pull the trigger the bullet will
infallibly go to the point at which you
have directed it. If you have directed
it right it will hit the mark, if not, it will
miss. The old-fashioned bullet of 100
years ago could not be trusted in this
way, and there was therefore no use in
training soldiers to shoot carefully. Most
of the hits were flukes. The modern
bullet makes no flukes, and therefore

28 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

requires to be handled by a master hand.
There are two elements in this mastery.
The first is the power of handling the
rifle properly, that is of taking aim
accurately and pulling the trigger rightly.
The second is the power of judging the
distance correctly, which is acquired only
by practice.

Accordingly, before you can be a good
shot for purposes of war you have to
learn how to hold the rifle, how to take
aim, how to fix the sights and how to
pull the trigger. You cannot be too
attentive to the lessons given you in
these matters. But however well you
learn these lessons and however diligently
you practice them they will be of little
avail unless you have the distance right,
so that the most useful thing you can do
during all the period of your training is
to practice judging distances. When-
ever you go a walk give some of your
time and attention to finding the distance
of the objects within your range of

THE BULLET 29

vision, and make it your business to be
able to estimate correctly in yards the
distance of anything you see. Your
instructors will give you lessons in judg-
ing distances, but only your own constant
effort will make you proficient in this
difficult art.

When you go to the range notice
carefully every shot that you fire so as
to be able to correct your mistakes.
Bear in mind that your value aS' a soldier
to your country depends very largely
upon the degree of thoroughness with
which you learn to shoot.

After you have acquired the power
of hitting the target with deliberate aim,
taking your time, you must practise
taking aim quickly so as to be able to
shoot with some effect against objects
which appear and disappear. You will
have to learn also to shoot at objects
moving towards you or away from you
or moving from right to left or from left
to right at some distance away.

30 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

You will perhaps at first find shooting
harder than you expected, but you must
persevere and then in time you will have
your reward. When you can hit the
targets at which you practise, targets
representing a man lying down or imita-
ting other objects at which you will have
to fire in battle, you will begin to have a
new confidence ; you will feel that you
can use your weapon with effect and you
will know that you are a better man
than you were. You will have acquired
a power the possession of which will give
you coolness and courage in presence
of the enemy.

Your control of your bullets is only the
first half of what you have to leam.
When you get to the front you will be
one of a section, ten or twelve men
whose fire is directed by a section leader,
usually a sergeant.

The next stage of your miUtary educa-
tion, therefore, consists in field firing.
Your section will be taken to the rangi

THE BULLET 31

by its sergeant, and there you will be
given ten rounds apiece for the attack
upon an enemy represented by targets
so arranged that each of them, when
hit, will fall down and disappear. The
object of the field firing practices is to
enable the section leader to plant the
bullets of the section upon the targets in
such a way as would do the enemy most
harm, if the targets were the enemy.
When you are in battle, groups of the
enemy will appear at various points in
the landscape before you. If each man
of your section shoots at the group which
first happens to catch his eye the section's
bullets might soon be squandered to very
little purpose, and many of them would
be thrown away, because many of you
will be mistaken about the distance of the
enemy. The section leader's business is
to choose that group of the enemy which
is most dangerous or which you are most
likely to be able to hit, to judge its
distance properly and thus to do what a

32 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
leader can do to direct all your bullets
to the place where they will be most

useful.

No doubt, there will be times when
if you are a good shot and are a
good judge of distance you may think
that you could have chosen the targets
better and estimated the range more
accurately than your sergeant. But a
very little experience will convince you
that it is a good thing for the men of the
section to work together ; that for that
purpose they must have a leader and
that, in the long run, to obey and back
up even an imperfect leader is very much
better than to be unled. The quicker you
grasp this, the sooner you will be qualified
to become a leader yourself.

Four sections make a platoon which
is commanded by a lieutenant, who
handles his four sections by giving
direction to the four section leaders,
very much as though the sections were
the guns of a battery.

THE BULLET 33

Four platoons make a company, com-
manded by a major or a captain. A
company at full strength has about
two hundred men, in which case a platoon
would have fifty and a section about a
dozen. But in the field the numbers
are quickly thinned by wounds, fatigue
and sickness, so that a section of a dozen
may be regarded as a maximum.

Four companies make up a battalion
which is the household or family to
which an infantry soldier belongs. It
has its commanding officer, a lieutenant-
colonel, who is assisted by a major, an
adjutant and a quartermaster, together
with a number of sergeants, orderHes
and clerks, and an office or orderly room.
The commanding officer is the head of
the household. Under his authority the
whole battalion is managed. He is re-
sponsible for everything, for the care
of the arms and ammunition and of the
battalion's money, and for the men
being properly clothed and equipped.

34 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
properly housed and fed. He must see
that the battaHon is at the right place
at the right time. All orders sent to the
battaHon by higher authorities are
addressed to the commanding officer,
and all orders given to the battaUon are
given by him. To him the four captains
are responsible for their companies. He
directs the battaHon at all times and
he is its leader on the march and in battle.

Every infantry soldier carries 120
cartridges, and there is a regimental
reserve of cartridges of another hundred
rounds per man carried in small-arm
ammunition carts. In other words the
battalion is entrusted by the nation with
176,000 bullets, with which it is the
colonel's duty to do as much harm to
the enemy as possible. A bullet that
does not hit an enemy is usually, though
not always, a bullet gone wrong. If
it had no chance of hitting an enemy
it has been simply wasted.

With the magazine rifle a man can easily

THE BULLET 35

fire 12 shots in a minute, 720 shots an hour,
so that if the battahon did not keep cool
it could very easily in an hour fire away
all the bullets carried by the men, and
all those carried in the ammunition carts.
If every bullet hit its man your battalion
would put out of action 176,000 enemies.
If one bullet in ten were to hit, the
battalion would still account for 17,600
of the enemy. If in a battle the battalion
wounded 1,760 enemies, about double
its own number, that would account
for only one bullet in every hundred which
the commanding officer has at his dis-
posal, and if every man of the 800 were
to hit one enemy once, that would
only mean that one of the 120 bullets
which he carries had gone home.

To hit an enemy in battle is not so

I easy as it might seem, and when men are
themselves being fired at it is found in
practice difficult to wait before shooting
until you see an enemy to aim at, to
judge his distance correctly, to adjust

36 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
the sight properly to that distance and
then to take a careful aim and not to pull
the trigger before the aim is true. If
every man were so trained that he could
do all these things quietly and coolly
when under fire, your battalion would
not need to be afraid of a hundred
thousand Germans attacking it from the
front in the dayhght.

You may be quite sure that you will
not shoot as well in battle as you will
on the range. If you cannot hit the
targets on the range, you will not be
likely to hit the enemy. But if you are
a dead shot on the range you will have
as good a chance as possible on the
battlefield.

Let me try to give you an idea of what
it may be like when you go into battle.
Your battalion has spent the night in
billets in a little French town beside a
clear stream like the Wey in which,
as you crossed the bridge last night
before sunset, you caught a glimpse of

THE BULLET 37

a trout with its head up stream looking
out for a possible fly. At six in the
morning you have assembled in the
main roadway and then marched on
into a side valley through a village to
a second village in which you halt.
For the last hour you have heard the
roar of firing away to the left, some-
where behind the low rolling ridge which
bounds the little valley on that side.
You have heard that the brigade is
attacking and yours is the right battalion,
of which you belong to the leading
company.

At one o'clock a staff officer rides
up to the colonel, who calls for the
captains and explains to them the
direction of the advance, pointing out a
lane marked on the map. Then your
company is moved off. Your platoon
■extends at three paces interval, its left
following the lane, which is without
hedges. After going forward a mile you
ascend a gentle slope for another half

38 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
mile and then pass through a belt of
trees beyond which you see in front of
you a mound about 150 yards long
parallel to your front. A couple of
men are out in front as scouts. They
go up the mound and lie down. After
a minute one of them holds his rifle
above his head ; the lieutenant joins
them ; the platoon is halted behind
the little ridge or mound and you hear
bullets whizzing through the air. What
the scouts have seen is this : the little
ridge on which they are lying gives
them a view of a plateau extending
for about a mile in every direction in
front and to both sides, with here and
there little patches of wood. About
half a mile in their front is a little ridge
parallel to their own on which they see
a party of the enemy which has begun
to fire at them. At one end of the
enemy's ridge there is a little sand heap.
The lieutenant calls for three good shots
from your section, of whom you are

THE BULLET 39

one. You go up and lie down on the
mound and your section commander
tells you that you are to fire at the
sand hill to get the range, which he
thinks is 800 yards. You fire at 800
yards and see no result, the next man
fires at 750, no result. The third man
fires at 700 and the sergeant with a
field-glass sees a splash of dust on
the sand hill. That settles the range.
Then the sergeant doubles up his
section on to the mound and orders
five rounds of independent firing at 700
yards at the enemy, whose heads can
just be seen.

The enemy's bullets are whistling
in the air and you hear a groan,
as a man near you is hit. Then
the enemy's bullets stop. A swarm of
men are seen running down the face of
the hillock at which your section was
firing, and then for a few seconds there
is nothing to be seen but the landscape,
nothing to be heard except the distant

40 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

roar of firing, which seems nearer than
it did, and the voice of the lieutenant
as he calls up the other sections on to
the mound right and left of yours, and
divides up the plain into four strips, to
one of which each section leader is to
attend. They are all told the range
of the hillock in order that they may
the better be able to judge the distances
of any other points which they may
pick out. Your section has ceased firing
because no enemy could be seen. Then
you see a thin line of men running
from a point on the right of the enemy's
hillock, but you see them only for fifteen
seconds before they disappear.

All over the plain in your front and
near to the enemy's hillock the same thing
repeats itself. A line of men running,
visible for a few seconds and then dis-
appearing, and the whole time the whirl
of bullets coming from invisible enemies
somewhere in the plain. The enemy
is advancing by rushes and taking

THE BULLET 41

cover as he halts after each rush.
Every time one of these groups is
seen the section leader in whose strip
of ground it appears calls a range and
his section fires as long as the enemy
remains visible. Yet the enemy keep
coming on. Occasionally one of them
falls, but that seems to make no difference.
Your own section leader keeps you all
firing at the opposite hillock because
apparently the enemy has men there
who know the range and who now and
then hit someone in the platoon.

This is a little bit of a possible battle.
The reality would be much more dis-
agreeable, because I have left out the
enemy's shells and his machine guns.
The numerous enemy will not reach the
ground where the platoon lies, for, as he
comes nearer, the men will fire with fixed
sights ; the enemy will not be able
to stir without being seen and every
well aimed shot will tell. Besides, there
are other platoons to the right and to

42 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

the left and other companies beyond
them.

The object of the description is to
show you where the platoon com-
mander and the section leaders come
in. They have to do the thinking. It
was probable that the enemy on his
hillock knew the exact range of your
hillock. To bring up the section or
the platoon before the range had been
estimated would have been to ex-
pose the men at a disadvantage So
the platoon leader, noticing a sand
heap on which the splash of a bullet
could be seen, took a good means of
finding the range before bringing up a
section, and this enabled the section at
once to fire at a known range. Then
when the visible enemy was under fire
from one section he could bring up the
others without much danger, and while
they were lying down they could be
scanning the ground over which they
would have to shoot. The fire would

THE BULLET 43

be directed by the section leaders, each
of whom would concentrate his attention
on a special area, so that when a target
cropped up he would send a dozen
bullets at it. This would give the best
chance that no party of the enemy
would escape the attention of one of
the sections.

It is evident tliat if in battle the
bullets are to be directed with any kind
of system there must be a control of the
sort which I have described^ and that
any such control is impossible unless
it has been prepared for by three kinds
of training. First, that which enables
each man to send his bullet in the true
direction, secondly, that which accus-
toms him to fire at the target indicated
by his section leader, and thirdly, that
which qualifies the section leader to
direct the firing of his dozen men and
the platoon commander to distribute
the work among his four section leaders.
When these three kinds of training have

44 FIRST LESSONS IN Wx\R

been all thoroughly carried out the
platoon is said to have fire discipline.
It has acquired the fine art of making
good use of the 6,000 bullets carried
by its men.

Besides the four companies a battahon
has a machine gun section consisting
of an officer, a sergeant and sixteen men,
with two machine guns.

A machine gun is a rifle barrel fixed
into a machine for firing it automatically
and placed inside a large tube filled
with water to prevent it getting too hot.
It has a tripod stand on which it is so
fixed that it can be turned round in any
direction. The gun, which weighs about
60 pounds, is carried on the battlefield
by one man and the tripod by another,
and these two men work the gun. On
the mavch both gun and tripod are
carried in a waggon. The ammunition
is carried in boxes and each gun is
accompanied by 3,500 rounds with 8,000
more in the regimental reserve.

THE BULLET 45

The gun is fired by pressing a button.
The recoil of the first shot empties and
reloads the rifle and fires the second
shot, and this process is continuous so
long as the button is pressed. The
normal rate of fire is 300 shots a minute,
and the machine gun has greater facilities
for accuracy of aim than a rifle fired
from the shoulder as well as for obser-
vation of the correctness of the estimated
range. The machine is, however, liable
to various accidents which may interrupt
its working, and therefore requires great
care in manipulation and should be
handled only by men thoroughly
familiar with it. The tripod holds the
gun from one and a half to two and a
half feet above the ground. The man
firing it sits or lies on the ground and
the ammunition box from which the
gun helps itself to cartridges is placed
on the ground beside it. A low bank
and a bush will conceal the gun and the
men from the enemy's sight, and a small

46 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

circular trench will protect them against
bullets while allowing the gun to be
fired in any direction. The bullet and
its path are exactly the same as those
of the ordinary rifle.

The machine gun is used for short
bursts of rapid fire and, if the range is
known and the gun has not been seen by
the enemy so that the shower of bullets
is unexpected, the effect at the point
aimed at should be decisive. A hidden
machine gun would for example entirely
destroy troops passing along the cutting
of a road or across a bridge. As the gun
can be turned round horizontally while
firing it can be used to mow down a line
of men close together ; but it is not very
effective against a line of men in skir-
mishing order, that is with short intervals
between them.

A machine gun section has two 2-horse
waggons, one carrying two guns and their
tripods with part of the ammunition and
the other the rest of the ammunition.

THE BULLET 47

The battalion takes with it altogether
twenty waggons or carts. Besides the
two belonging to the machine gun section
there are five for cartridges, two for
water and one for medical equipment.
Then there are two for tools, one travel-
ling kitchen for each company, and four
waggons belonging to the head-quarters
for baggage, stores and supplies.

The four companies of an infantry
battalion, having 200 men each, would
make the battalion 800 strong, but if
to these are added the men of the machine
gun section, the men attached to the
battalion head-quarters, the drummers
and buglers, the sergeants and the officers,
the total strength of the battalion reaches
1,000 all told. Four battalions together
make an infantry brigade, which is
commanded by a brigadier-general with
the assistance of a brigade major and a
staff captain. The infantry brigade is
the largest body or " unit " composed of
men of one and the same arm. For it has

48 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

altogether 4,000 men while a cavalry
brigade has only 1,700 and a field artillery
brigade rather less than 800.

Infantry, however, even in brigades,
does not act by itself. It is always
associated wdth the other arms, cavalry,
artillery and engineers, to form large
composite units called divisions. What
a division is, I will tell you after giving
you some account of artillery and cavalry.

CHAPTER II

THE SHELL

A Cannon a Great Rifle — The Shell a Large Hollow
BuUet — The High Explosive Shell — ^The Shrap-
nel— The Time Fuse — The Percussior Fuse —
Burst of the Shrapnel — The Howitzer — Effect
of Shrapnel — Method of Finding the Range —
Indirect Firing — The Field Gun — ^Tbe Battery
— The Brigade — Horse Artillery — Formations
and Paces.

A CANNON of any kind is simply a
^^ big rifle. The barrel is shorter
in proportion to its diameter because
if it were as long in proportion it would be
too heavy to drag and too clumsy to
handle. The great guns of a battleship
are much longer in proportion than field
guns because they can be easily handled
in the revolving turrets which hold
them. The projectiles fired by cannon
are called shell. They pje just the same
shape as bullets, but made of steel, and
hollow. As the steel cannot be squeezed

50 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

into the grooves of the barrel like the
soft lead of a bullet, a shell is surrounded
by rings of soft copper, some of which is
forced into the grooves. The flight of
the shell is governed by the same prin-
ciples as that of the bullet.

Every shell is meant to explode at or
near its destination. There are two sorts,
used for two different purposes. If the
gunner wants to smash some solid object,
a wall, a house or an earthwork, he uses a
hollow steel shell filled with a high
explosive — ^picric acid, gun-cotton-pow-
der, nitro-glycerine or ammonal — which
will detonate or explode completely in
one flash when the shell strikes the object.
To cause this instantaneous explosion
the front of the shell contains a small
quantity of some substance sure to
explode and to fire the whole mass on
striking.

Against troops gunners always use a
shrapnel shell, so called after the
English Colonel Shrapnel, who invented

THE SHELL 51

it in 1803. This is a thin steel case,
the shape of a big bullet, divided into
two compartments. The front compart-
ment contains hundreds of round bullets,
while the back one is filled with powder.
The shrapnel also contains a fuse, or tube
of a slow burning composition which
takes fire from the explosion in the gun
and gradually burns while the shell is in
the air. After a certain number of
seconds the fire in the fuse reaches a
point where it communicates with the
gunpowder in the back chamber, and
then the gunpowder explodes. There-
upon the bullets are blown out of the
shell forwards as though the shrapnel
itself were a gun.

The number of seconds which will
elapse before the fuse sets fire to the
gunpowder is determined by *' setting"
the fuse before the gun is loaded,
and this number of seconds depends
upon the range. Suppose you are firing
with a shell at infantry two miles away.

52 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

It will take about ten seconds to travel
that distance. You want it to burst
about 50 yards before reaching the men,
when it will perhaps be 30 feet high in the
air. In that case the fuse must be
timed to explode the gunpowder about
nine and a half seconds after leaving the
gun.

Besides this time fuse, most shrap-
nel are also provided with a percussion
fuse so that if the shell should, for any
reason, fail to burst in the air it will in
any case burst on striking the ground.
When the shell bursts in the air it will
probably be moving about 600 feet per
second and the bullets fired out of it will
continue to have at least that pace. But
the explosion makes them spread. An
i8-pounder shrapnel contains 375 bullets.
If the shell bursts in the conditions just
described most of the bullets will strike
the ground in an oval area about five
yards wide and fifty yards long, beginning
about 50 yards beyond the point where

THE SHELL 53

the shell exploded, and the path by which
they will reach the ground will form an
angle of about 20 degrees with the sur-
face. The path of a shell is exactly like
that of a bullet, but it travels much
farther, and the shrapnel can be used up
to a range of 6,000 yards.

Neither the shell nor the rifle bullet
will hit a man lying close behind a bank
or standing in a deep narrow trench.
To hit the man in the trench the only
plan is to fire the shell high up into the
air so that when it drops down again,
its course may be nearly perpendicular.
But a field gun is not made to be pointed
up in the air. For that purpose there is
a different gun called a howitzer, so
made that its barrel can be given a great
tilt. It has a wider bore than the field
gun and its shell is not so long. A field
howitzer shell weighs 30 or 40 pounds
(that of an English field gun weighs only
18) and it will contain 700 or 800 bullets.

The gun can be fired with greater

54 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

accurancy than the rifle, because, while
the rifle is held by the man, the gun is
fixed on its carriage and is perfectly
steady. If the gun is given the elevation
for 4,000 yards and the fuse is fixed for
the right time its 375 bullets will infallibly
drop in the oval area 5 yards wide and
50 yards long, of which the centre will
be 4,000 yards in a straight line from the
gun's muzzle. I have stood by a row
of targets representing men standing up
and watched them peppered by the
shrapnel of 36 guns firing at them from
a point perhaps a mile and a half away
They were thoroughly riddled with bullets
and the impression given to the spectator
was that nothing could live under that
tremendous hail. But it is not very easy
for the gunners to find the range of a
distant object, and if their estimate of it is
mistaken the shells will go to the place
where they suppose the enemy to be
without doing any harm at the spot where
he really is.

THE SHELL 55

The gunners have a system of finding
the range by trial shots. Having made
a guess at it they fire a shot aimed
at a point 100 yards less than the
supposed distance and watch for the puff
of smoke which the shell will make as it
bursts on striking the ground. When
they see the smoke in front of the target
they know that the shell has fallen short.
Then they fire another shell to drop 100
yards further than the estimated range,
and when they see the smoke of the
explosion behind the target they know
that it has fallen behind it. After that a
shot is fired with a range mid-way
between the short shot and the long one.
If they have seen clearly, the bullets of
this third shell are pretty sure to strike
the target.

This method depends upon the power
of seeing the puffs of smoke made by
the bursting shells, and it is usual to
have an observer stationed at some
distance away to the right or left of

56 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

the gun to watch the bursts and to signal
whether they are short, long or true.
As a rule he is provided with a portable
ladder which he mounts in order to see
better. The correct observation of the
shots for the range and the correct timing
of the fuses are always difficult, much
more difficult in battle than on the practice
ground, so that artillery does not often
produce in the field effects comparable
to those obtained in peace trials. In the
present war it is the practice for aviators
to communicate to the gunners the
positions of the enemy so far as they
can observe them.

The modern gunner has no difficulty
in shooting from a concealed position at
an enemy who cannot be seen from the
guns. In the French manoeuvres I
watched a line of guns on the hither slope
of a hill, shooting over a wood which
covered the top of the hill against infantry
coming up the other side. Of course,
they were only making believe, as in

THE SHELL 57

manoeuvres you cannot fire shells but
only blank cartridges, which merely make
a noise to show that you are there. But
shells can be fired in this way with full
effect. For the gunners have an officer
posted at a point where he can see the
enemy. They have only to know the
enemy's direction and to point their
guns accordingly with the proper eleva-
tion for the distance. The result -will
be just as good as if they saw the enemy.
But the difference is this : the guns
which I saw were between half a mile and
three-quarters of a mile away from the
enemy's infantry. If the infantry could
have seen them they would have fired
at them and at that range would in a
few minutes have shot down the gunners,
except a few who might have been
sheltered by the steel shields with which
modern guns are usually provided.

A field gun rests on a carriage which
is the equivalent of a tripod, the three
feet being the two wheels of the carriage

58 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

and the trail or steel beam which forms
part of it, and rests on the ground behind
the gun. On the march the end of the
trail is lifted up and hooked on to the
back of a two-wheeled carriage called
the limber, so that gun and limber
together make a four-wheeled carriage
which is drawn by six horses and driven
by the riders of three of them. Each
gun is accompanied by two ammunition
waggons each drawn in the same way
by six horses.

Until a few years ago a field gun used
to fire about one shot a minute or less.
It could be loaded in a few seconds, but
when it was fired the recoil made the
whole carriage jump back, and before
the next shot it had to be dragged back
to its original position and the aim again
carefully adjusted. But the modern gun
has a hydraulic buffer which receives and
checks the recoil while the carriage is
held in its place by a spade at the end
of the trail, so that the time which

THE SHELL 59

used to be wasted in dragging the gun
back into its position is now saved.

Guns are used in batteries or groups
usually of six guns each. Three batteries
make a brigade. The brigade on a war
footing has therefore 18 guns and 36
ammunition waggons, which with a water
cart and two baggage waggons for each
battery makes 57 vehicles, which together
take up about 1,200 yards of road.
On the march, guns and waggons follow
one another and never go two abreast.
The brigade includes an ammunition
column which has 34 waggons and
takes 520 yards of road.

The main difference between horse
and field artillery is that all the men
of the horse artillery are mounted, while
in the field artillery a certain number of
them usually march on foot and when the
pace is quickened ride on the limbers
and waggons.

The fighting formation of artillery is
a line of guns side by side with 19 yards

6o FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

interval between gun and gun, so that a
battery occupies a frontage of about a
hundred yards. The six horses by which
a gun is drawn are a very large target,
and so long as the battery is on the march
or in movement it is very vulnerable,
because the horses are easily shot. When
the guns are in line ready for firing each
gun can be worked by three men who are
partly protected by the steel shield.
The great object of artillery officers is
so to post their guns that as much as
possible of the country in front of them
may be exposed to their shells while
the guns themselves are concealed from
an enemy's view. In battle, of course,
the horses and drivers are kept under
cover some distance in rear of the guns.

The paces of artillery are four miles an
hour at a walk, eight miles an hour at a
trot, five miles an hour when, on the
march, the walk alternates with the trot,
and twelve miles an hour at a gallop.
The usual pace of manoeuvre is the trot.

CHAPTER III

THE BAYONET, THE GROUND AND THE
TRENCH

A Battle a Shooting Match — ^The Hand-to-Hand
Encounter — Importance of Skill in Using
Steel Weapons — ^Their Influence on Men's
Spirits — The Bayonet Charge the Sign of
Superiority in the Fire Fight — Importance
of Ground for Cover and Protection, and,
therefore, of the Choice of a Position — The
Value of the Trench as Shelter from Rifle and
Shrapnel Bullets — Time required for its Con-
struction— The Choice of a Site.

A FEW years ago I spent a day on a
^^ Scotch moor with a party of friends
who were grouse shooting. We came to
a place on the brow of a long gentle slope
w^here a series of butts had been made
about thirty yards from one another in
a long line. Each of them was a mound,
shoulder high, forming three-quarters of
a circle with an entrance a yard or two
wide at the back. In one of these I
stood with one of my friends and the

6t

62 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

gamekeeper, whose business was to load
the guns. After a time a number of
birds came flying towards us up the hill,
and when they came near enough my
friend began to shoot at them and they
dropped quickly one after another, as
they were hit. This rush of birds towards
us was repeated every few minutes, and
every time a number of them were shot
and fell. It was exactly like a battle,
except that it was one-sided. To complete
the resemblance there ought to have
been showers of bullets whizzing past
the butt, so that whenever we put our
heads up we should have had a chance
of being struck, high explosive shells
dropping all about us, ploughing deep
holes in the ground and scattering their
fragments in every direction, and shrap-
nels bursting in the air in front of us and
raining bullets all over the ground and
into our little enclosure.

A modern battle is a shooting match
in which each side not only shoots but

THE BAYONET 63

IS shot at. While this is going on the
men of one army see very Uttle of those
of the other. They are never near enough
to recognise one another. There is no
conflict of individuals. It is more like
resisting thunder and lightning than like
fighting with men.

But there are times in a battle when
the men meet one another, and then there
may be a fight man to man. This is
something quite different from the shoot-
ing match, for here every man depends on
his own spirit, strength, skill and quick-
ness. In these cases the foot soldier's
weapon is the bayonet, a sharp pointed
knife, 18 inches long. Fixed on the
rifle it makes a pike or lance just over
five feet long, and weighing between nine
and ten pounds.

In an actual encounter with the
bayonet the advantage is with the more
skilful, as it is in every kind of fence,
for fencing is a very fine art, so little
cultivated nowadays that few people

64 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
appreciate it. In my Oxford days, I
used to practice every day with the foils,
and after a year or two had skill enough
to know what it means. A beginner
or half -taught man has no chance against
a good fencer. He will never touch his
opponent, who can play with him and
touch him whenever and wherever he
pleases. With any pointed weapon a
touch means a serious, probably a deadly
wound. What is true of the foil holds
good also of the bayonet, which in skilled
hands is, like Fitz James's sword, both
sword and shield. The infantry soldier
therefore who has learned to fence with
the bayonet will have a great advantage
in a hand-to-hand encounter. But this
kind of fight is very rare. Infantry that
can shoot well and that have plenty of
ammunition will never let an enemy's
infantry come near enough to them to
cross bayonets ; they will shoot them
down first.
The inference has sometimes been

THE BAYONET 65

drawn that the bayonet is superfluous,
and it would be so if infantry always
had plenty of ammunition, could
always keep themselves in good order,
could always remain cool and could
never be taken by surprise. But in the
firing contest there comes a time when
one side gets the upper hand. If the
men have discovered that they are the
better shots, the enemy has made the
same discovery, and the spirits of the
one side are raised as much as those of
the other are depressed. The feeling
of despair must come over men who
find themselves firing hour after hour,
without effect and feel more and more
as their losses increase that the enemy's
bullets are doing terrible execution. If
then the enemy, already near at hand,,
overwhelms the position with a whirl-
wind of bullets and is suddenly seen
rushing on with the bayonet the troops
that already feel themselves beaten will
never wait to meet that rush.

t

66 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

The bayonet charge is the sign of
superiority in the fire fight ; it is the
claim to have won, and it is a claim which
in modern war has rarely been made in
vain. The bayonet has no chance against
the bullet, and no sane man contemplates
the employment of the bayonet until
the bullet has done its work.

A most important matter for soldiers
to think about is how to make the best
use of the ground, whatever it may be.
It has two uses, to keep you out of sight
of the enemy until you are ready to shoot
at him and to protect you from his bullets
when he shoots at you. But the two
uses are distinct, because you may
be out of sight of the enemy, and yet
exposed to his bullets, which may hit
you without being aimed at you. Most
people have no idea how easy it is to
hide themselves on the ground. The
best way to find out is to make a few
experiments. Cut three sods i8 inches
long and a foot wide and put them one

THE GROUND 67

over the other at one end of a cricket
pitch where the wickets would be, then
he down behind them so that your body
is in the prolongation of the hne joining
the two wickets. Get a friend to stand
at the other wicket. The three sods
will completely hide you, he will see
them but not you. Go with a friend into
any field and try the experiment of
lying down fiat on the ground in turn
50 yards away from each other. You
will be surprised to find how easy it is to
hide yourself behind the most trivial
undulation. When you once get into
the habit of noticing the folds and waves
of the ground you will begin to discover
that in most kinds of country a skilful
leader could march a company or a
platoon across the landscape so that an
observer sitting still on some point half
a mile away from his route would never
catch a glimpse of any of the men. An
enemy as a rule, does not fire at troops
that he does not see. There may be

68 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

•cases when, if an officer suspected that a
body of troops were hidden in a given
fold of ground, he would fire a few
hundred bullets into that fold on the
chance of disturbing him. But as a
rule this would be a waste of ammunition.
Accordingly a wise officer will now and
then practice so marching his men across
a piece of country as to keep them out of
sight of an observer stationed at a given
point. It is always judicious when near
the enemy to keep your troops, if they
are not firing, out of his sight ; and it is
very useful, when you are holding a
position, to have studied the country in
front of you so as to have a good idea
where the places are in which the enemy
may be moving or keeping troops that
you cannot see. The weak point of any
position on the top of a hill is that,
as a rule, the slope of the hill is
convex and that therefore there is a great
space at its lower end into which you
cannot see. Such places are full of

THE TRENCH 69

danger to you, because in them the enemy
can collect his troops without your
knowing, and can move them to your
right or left without your being able to
watch what he is doing. Always try to
find a position from which you will have
a clear view of the country in front of
you.

If a battalion has to act on the defensive,.
that is, if it has to hold its ground for
some time against a heavy attack, its
commanding officer will be wise to pre-
pare his position, which of course he
will choose as well as conditions allow.
The best position is that which the
enemy cannot approach without being
clearly seen, so that he must be exposed
without protection to the bullets of the
defenders. It is a further advantage to
the defenders if they can be sheltered as
much as possible from the enemy's
bullets.

The best shelter is a deep trench
in which the men can stand up and

70 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

lean on the front edge to fire. When
the trench is dug the earth taken out
forms a mound in front which adds to
the shelter and forms a rest for the
rifles. It would be still better if a great
beam of wood could be fixed a few inches
over the mound so that the men could
fire through the gap between the mound
and the beam while the beam would
protect their heads, and also if there could
be here and there a cross mound to stop
any bullets that might be fired by
the enemy along the trench from the
flank.

A trench three feet deep and two feet
wide and with a mound in front of it
six or seven feet thick and a foot and a
half high will give its defenders an
immense advantage provided the ground
in front of it is all clearly exposed to
their view for half a mile in front. To
make such a trench lOO yards long in
€asy soil would take 40 men 3 hours,
provided of course that they had the

THE TRENCH 71

tools, say 30 picks and 35 shovels.
Thus then your platoon between six
and nine in the morning working with a
will could make itself a very respectable
trench. But, unless time is to be wasted,
the platoon commander must know
how to design the trench and to set the
men to work.

The great thing is to put trenches in
the right place, in determining which the
first consideration is a clear field of fire
without shelter for the enemy and a
situation which the enemy cannot enfilade
or shoot along from either end.

From this it will be clear how important
it is that officers should constantly study
the ground in order to be able quickly
to determine what are the most favour-
able positions for defence in any sort of
country and what kind of sites are
favourable and unfavourable for the loca-
tion of trenches. The officers need to
be skilful in planning a trench and laying
out the work and the men to have enough

72 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

j.ractice to make them familiar with the
different tools so that a platoon may
be able in a few minutes to turn itself
into a gang of navvies.

CHAPTER IV

DRILL AND FORMATIONS

Effect of Drill on Character — Fighting Formation
the Extended Line — Importance of Keeping
the Direction — The Advance by Rushes —
Effect of Unaimed Fire — Formation of Sup-
ports— Difficulty of Moving them to their
Right Place — ^The Order of March is the
Column of Fours — The Reason why Distances
must be Preserved — Pace of Infantry.

y^RILL serves two purposes. The
^^ first is spiritual. It gets you into
habits of alert attention and precision
which constitute a special condition both
of body and mind. For the purpose
of accustoming you to respond instinc-
tively to the words of command the
drill must be repeated for many weeks.
Then the caution, the slow word first
given, finds you ready, and the executive
word — the short, sharp shout, which
means nothing except to the soldier's
ear — ^makes you move on the instant.

74 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

without thinking at all, in unison with
the other men beside you.

You may have thought during those
weary weeks that you were being made
into a machine, and no doubt your body
has become accustomed to words of com-
mand and to the movements, but if you
examine yourself you will find that some-
thing has happened to your mind too.
You hold yourself better, you think better
of yourself, of your comrades, of the
sergeants and of the officers. A good deal
of conceit has gone out of you. You are
becoming part, not of a machine, but
of an organism. Your battalion is more
than a machine, it is a living creature
made up of a thousand members, each
of whom has his own work to do and
his own place. And you are aware that
the life of that great organism is in you
as well as your own personal life. Thus
the first use of drill is to make a new
man of you.

Its second object is to put you in

DRILL AND FORMATIONS 75

your right place on the march and in the
battle. For infantry there is only one
fighting formation, a line of men with
intervals between them. The weapon
being the bullet, each man must have
room to handle his rifle, and to lie down
in any position convenient for shooting.
The line must never be so crowded that
the men are cramped for shooting, and
no man should be in it except those who
are shooting, because it is no use exposing
to hostile fire men who are not con-
tributing to damage the enemy. The
officers and section leaders, though they
do not themselves fire, contribute to
that end by giving the fragments of the
firing line an intelligent direction and
control. Except when it is necessary
to keep up the heaviest possible fire,
there should be plenty of room between
the men, because if there are a number
of paces between them the enemy can
aim only at individuals, whom he has
a very good chance of missing.

76 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

The vital matter in the advance of a
firing line is to keep the true direction
without crowding. For this purpose a
directing file or man is named by the
section or platoon leader, and the other
men of the section or platoon have
merely to keep roughly level with him
at their proper intervals. A little prac-
tice makes this quite easy in open
ground, but in close countrj^ and es-
pecially in woods, practice is needed
both by leaders and by men, for with-
out practice, it is, in such conditions,
difficult to keep the true direction, and
men are very easily parted from their
section or platoon, in which case they
are apt to be lost till after the battle
is over.

In moving forward to attack the
advance is made in a series of rushes,
by platoons, from cover to cover, and
the men have to learn to spring up
quickly, to run forward to the new
place which has been pointed out to

DRILL AND FORMATIONS 77

them and there to throw themselves
fiat on the ground as quickly as possible.
In this way the enemy is given only
brief opportunities of aimed fire at the
men and during those short moments
such target as they present is quickly
moving.

Troops on the battle field behind the
firing line will always be exposed to
the bullets that have been aimed at the
firing line but have passed over its heads,
and the space behind that line for
several hundred yards will always have
such bullets dropping upon it. The
effect of these bullets is not much in-
fiuenced by the formation in which the
men are moving, but if the enemy sees
groups or masses of men behind the
firing line, he is most likely to aim at
them if they are within range, that is
within 2,000 yards of his position, and
his artillery will fire at any distinctly
visible groups up to much longer dis-
tances.

78 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

All .bodies behind the firing line, whe-
ther called supports or reserves, are
merely reservoirs of men from which
to replenish or increase that line. They
are moved in such formations as will
conceal them as far as possible from the
enemy's view, so that he cannot aim
at them, and will offer the least vulnerable
targets to his aimed fire. It is the
business of company and platoon leaders
to choose these formations according to
the nature of the ground and the enemy's
position. That is why they should be
familiar with the normal effects of fire,
aimed and unaimed, on different kinds
of ground and at various distances behind
the firing line.

If you are the officer in command of
a platoon or of a company and it be-
comes your duty to follow at some dis-
tance a portion of a firing line in order
at the right moment to reinforce it, you
will find it much harder than you ever
suspected to bring up the men whom

DRILL AND FORMATIONS 79

you command into the right place. No-
thing is easier than to lose your way
and to find yourself reaching the firing
line at a point far to the right or left of
your intended destination. If you are
400 yards behind a line of skirmishers
it is not easy to distinguish between the
companies or even the battalions in
front of you. Accordingly the golden
rule is to keep your eyes and your
attention directed to the front, and as
soon as possible to pick out prominent
objects in the landscape before you, so
as to be able to fix and maintain the
true direction of your advance. An
officer in the firing line must never take
his eyes off the front. He must con-
tinually try to estimate the numbers and
distribution of the enemy in front of
him, adding up from time to time the
parties of the enemy of which he has had
glimpses.

We have seen that the line of men
extended, or as it used to be called.

8o FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

the line of skirmishers, is the only .
formation in which infantry fight. When
there is a bayonet charge the men run
forward just as they are. The only
evolution which such a line ever re-
quires to make is a wheel or change
of front, which may be required when
the direction of the advance has to be
modified or in case of attack from a
flank. All other evolutions and move-
ments are merely modes of moving
supports and reserves across the battle-
field or of passing from the order of ,
march into the fighting order.

The order of march for infantry is the
column of fours, an endless procession of
men four abreast. You can tell a well-
trained battalion at a glance if you see the
men marching at ease in fours, because
in a well-trained body of men each one is
always in his exact place, each set of
four men being precisely in line with one
another and each single man precisely
behind the man in front of him.

DRILL AND FORMATIONS 8i.

The distance at which one man stands
behind another after the words " Form-
Fours, Right " is 54 inches measured from
heel to heel. Men must be accustomed
to keep this precise distance and never
to increase it. This is the all-important
point in marching, because the smallest
increase of this 54 inches means a very
great increase of the length of the column.
A company of 200 men in line is 75
yards long, and when formed into fours
fills just the same length on the road.
On the march six yards distance are
allowed in rear of each company, so that
a four company battalion with three
intervals would occupy 318 yards. If
the distance from man to man were
increased from 54 to 60 inches, that is
if each man were to allow his normal
distance from the man in front of him
to increase by only six inches, the length
of the battalion on the road would be
increased by 43 yards.

An infantry division has twelve

82 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
battalions, and if it were marching on
one road the increase of the distance
between the fours by six inches would
make the column 516 yards longer
than it should be. In practice men
very often allow the distance to in-
crease by as much as 18 inches, which
makes the infantry of a division occupy
a mile of road more than they would
do if the regulation distances were strictly
maintained. The result is apt to be a
waste of time in closing up at every
halt, needless extra fatigue for the rear
men of each battalion and for the rear
battalions of every column.

The best practical tests of the success
with which a battalion has been drilled
for war is the precision with which the
men keep their correct places and dis-
tances when marching at ease in fours and
the facility with which the companies
can move in extended order across an
enclosed country. If I were an inspect-
ing officer I should judge the war

DRILL AND FORMATIONS 83

value of a battalion by these two points
and by its field firing.

The normal pace of infantry is that of
marching in quick time, which is at
the rate of 120 paces of 30 inches in
a minute, equal to 100 yards a minute,
and to three miles 720 yards in an
hour. This rate may be maintained
for an hour or two, but is not a safe
guide to the distance which infantry
will cover in a given number of hours,
partly because long columns are very
liable to checks from time to time, but
mainly because it is usual for infantry
to halt every hour for a given number
of minutes, preferably for ten minutes.
Accordingly in calculating the time oc-
cupied by infantry in marches it is best
to assume an average progress of two
and a half miles an hour.

CHAPTER V

CAVALRY

The Services that Cavalry renders to an Army-
Need for Thorough Training — ^The Eyes of
an Army — Cavalry Charges Rare — Cavalry
in Pursuit — Raids — ^The Cavalry Charge —
Against Cavalry — Against Infantry — The
Cavalry Brigade and Division — Paces — Dis-
mounted Action of Cavalry — Mounted In-
fantry.

A MODERN army requires its regi-
^^^ ments of horse, although the bullet
and the shell set limits to what they can
do in battle, and although the cycle and
the motor surpass them in speed and the
aeroplane in range of vision. Cavalry
is indispensable for scouting and for
the pursuit of a beaten army. If it
can fall by surprise upon artillery in
movement or upon infantry in disorder,
its charge will capture the guns or dis-
perse the infantry. It can also do good

service by moving fast and far to hold
84

CAVALRY 85

positions in which it can embarrass and
delay an enemy.

For all these purposes cavalry requires
training. The men must be good riders,
at home in the saddle. They must
be accustomed to take care of their
horses, for horses easily get out of con-
dition and are then unfit either for the
march or the battlefield. They must
be masters of their weapon, the lance or
the sword, and ought also to be good shots
with the rifle. The business of scouting
cannot be well carried on without a good
knowledge of all the operations of field
warfare. The cavalry officer, therefore,
must be famihar with the way in which
infantry and artillery are handled, so
that when he catches sight of them he
can quickly divine what they are about.
He must be able to find his way in any
country with the aid of a map. If he
knows the language spoken in the theatre
of war it will be of the greatest use to
him, for if he cannot talk to the inhabi-

86 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
tants or understand what they say, he
might as well be deaf and dumb. To
be of any use on the battlefield men and
horses must have been thoroughly drilled,
so that a squadron can ride in line at any
pace and can wheel or change formation
with regularity, precision and certainty.
sy If these conditions are fulfilled a general
can use his cavalry as the eyes of his
army by sending small parties of them
far ahead of the army on every road and
track, so that their messengers may let
him know which areas contain hostile
troops and which are free from them.
The charging action of cavalry in battle
is necessarily rare. The cavalry leader's
function is to watch the battle so that if
an opportunity offers he may be ready
to take advantage of it. Such oppor-
tunities are few and fleeting, but when
they present themselves the intervention
of the cavalry may be at that time and
place decisive. When an army has been
beaten and is retreating the cavalry will

CAVALRY 87

move along its flanks or between the
roads by which it is retiring and will lose
no opportunity of threatening or of strik-
ing the demoralised troops from the direc-
tion in which attack is least expected. A
beaten army, pressed by the victors and
therefore hurried, when it is thus harassed
from the flanks and rear, very soon
becomes a helpless mob.

Another use of cavalry is to make raids
to points far behind the enemy's army for
the purpose of blowing up great railway
bridges, so that he cannot make use of
the main lines of railway, or for the des-
truction of stores of food and ammuni-
tion or the capture of railway stock or of
trains of waggons or of motor cars.

Part of the superiority of cavalry over
cyclists consists in their power of moving
across country. They are not in the
same way confined to roads as are most
wheeled vehicles.

In a cavalry charge against cavalry,
the horses should be thought of as

88 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
projectiles. The horsemen of the front
line are side by side so that their knees
almost touch ; when they ride at full
speed the line seems like a rushing wall
or wave of horses which must shatter
anything against which it dashes. If
the opponents have the slightest misgiving
they will avoid the collision. But the
actual crash of horse against horse never
takes place, because if both sides continue
their career the horses of each side
always make for the intervals between
the horses of the other side and the two
lines ride through each other, the men
using their weapons according to their
skill as they meet and pass. Then the
two sets of men mixed up fight hand-to-
hand. If a fresh body of cavalry rides
into the mass the whole body is driven
along in the direction thus given. After
a short time the two sets extricate them-
selves, one set collecting in the direction
from which they came, and the other set
in the direction of their original advance.

CAVALRY 89

The second set usually claims the
victory.

In a charge against infantry the horse-
men ride at the infantry with intervals
between the horses and one line is fol-
lowed by another and another, each being
forty or fifty yards behind the one in
front of it. The object is to ride through
the infantry and to kill or wound them
with the sword or the lance in passing.
In such a charge skilled lancers usually
succeed in killing a great number of in-
fantry. But if the infantry are cool and
collected, have plenty of ammunition
and see the cavalry two or three minutes
before their arrival, the probability is
that the saddles will be emptied and the
horses maimed or killed before the in-
fantry can be reached. The chance for
the cavalry is to come upon the infantry
suddenly from a flank in such a manner
that they cannot themselves be taken in
flank by the fire of other infantry or of
machine guns.

90 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

Cavalry is formed in squadrons of
a hundred to a hundred and fifty men
(or horses) each, and the squadron is
always formed in line, the horses side by
side, with a second rank behind the first.
A regiment has three squadrons, which
in all evolutions except the charge are
kept one behind the other. The charge
is always delivered in line in two ranks,
and any squadrons not in the front line
are used to attack the enemy in flank
or to give a fresh impetus to the first
charge.

In the British service each regiment has
a machine gun section. Three regiments
form a cavalry brigade, and a number of
cavalry brigades, in the British service
four, are grouped together, with one or
two horse artillery brigades, to form a
cavalry division, which is therefore a
great body of thirty-six squadrons \vith
forty-eight guns and eighteen machine
guns.

Cavalry on the march are either four

CAVALRY 91

horses or two horses abreast, and there-
fore take up a great deal of space on the
road. An EngUsh cavalry division at
full strength has nearly 10,000 horses
and over 400 waggons. On the march
four abreast it would form a column six
miles long without a break, and would
be followed by five miles of waggons.

Cavalry on the march moves sometimes
at a walk, at the rate of four miles an
hour, sometimes at a trot at the rate of
eight miles an hour. If these paces are
alternated the average rate of progress
will be about five miles an hour. The
pace of the gallop is fifteen miles an
hour.

What is called the dismounted action
of cavalry is their action with the bullet,
which is identical with that of infantry.
But as cavalry are comparatively few,
costly to maintain and require a long time
to train, it is bad economy to use them
for any work that infantry can perform
equally well. They may be sent to a

92 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

distance, far beyond the powers of in-
fantry to reach, to accompHsh any task
within their capacity. For instance, a
regiment of cavalry could employ two
hundred men in a fire fight. That is
only the strength of a company ; it
would not be enough to make a strong
resistance to a battalion of the enemy.
But it could delay the battalion for some
time because the enemy could not at
first tell whether the bullets came from
cavalry or infantry, and, if the dismounted
men were well posted, would take a good
while to discover the real strength by
which he was opposed. But the moment
that discovery was made it would be
time for the cavalry to rejoin their horses
and ride away.

The particular service just described
can be equally well performed by mounted
infantry, who differ from cavalry only in
not being armed with the lance or the
sword but merely with the rifle and
bayonet, and therefore are not trained

CAVALRY 93

to the charge or in the evolutions
preparatory to the charge, which require
precise and thorough drill both of men
and horses. The name of mounted
infantry is no longer used in the British
Army. The service which they used to
render can also be performed by infantry
carried in horse or motor vehicles,
especially in motor omnibuses.

CHAPTER VI

THE DIVISION ON THE MARCH

Composition of the Division — Arrangement of
Bivouacs — Area Required — Billets — Principle
on which Troops at Rest or on the March
are Protected — A Division Marching along a
Single Road — Space which it Covers and
Time OccujHed.

A N infantry division is so called to
^^^ distinguish it from a cavalry divi-
sion, which is a large unit made up of
mounted troops only. The infantry
division is more properly called simply
a division, because it contains all the arms
and not infantry alone. It is a small
army complete in itself. The best way
to explain it to you will be to give you
a table showing its composition and the
number of men, horses, guns, waggons
and carts of which it is composed.

Suppose the whole division to bivouac,
that is to encamp without tents, in the

94

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96 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
open, as may be done for a day or two.
A battalion would be drawn up in quarter
column of half companies, each half
company six yards behind the one in
front with three yards interval between
the two platoons. Each two men make
themselves a shelter of two waterproof
sheets hung across a rope between two
poles, the ends of the shelters being
towards the front, so that each rank of
each platoon would sleep in a row of
shelters side by side with the roof strings
pointing from front to rear of the camp.
The rear rank shelters would be two
yards behind those of the front rank.
The subalterns' shelters are on the right
of half companies, the captain's in front
of the leading half company.

Behind the rear half company a space as
broad as a half company and about fifty
yards deep is reserved. Its front part con-
tains the battalion kitchen and the officer's
mess with its kitchen. In the rear part
are arranged on one side the lines for

THE BIVOUAC 97

the horses and on the other side the
latrines. Arranged on this plan each
battalion occupies a rectangle measuring
75 yards in breadth and 150 in depth.
A battery bivouacked on similar prin-
ciples covers about the same space.

The whole of the infantry and the
artillery of the division, arranged in
bivouacs of this kind, would occupy a
rectangle three-quarters of a mile long
and a quarter of a mile deep. The
waggons, carts and pack horses would fill
about the same space behind them.
The division could perhaps just be fitted
into Hyde Park. But it is a rule that
troops should never bivouac if they can
be given better accommodation and under
no circumstances for more than one or
two nights. The principle is that the
worst housing is better than the best
bivouac.

During a campaign troops are usually
billeted, that is put into houses. For
that purpose they must be distributed

98 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

among the houses of the inhabitants,
and it is considered that for a short time,
a few days, a village or town can house
about twice as many troops as it has
inhabitants in addition to the inhabitants
themselves. But this proportion is often
exceeded. Only troops that maintain
the strictest order, temperance and self-
control can be billeted without causing
the inhabitants much distress. There is
no better test of the discipline of an army
than the impression which it leaves
among the inhabitants of a district in
which it has been billeted.

In the neighbourhood of the enemy
every body of troops not spread out in
fighting order, whether it is marching or
at rest, requires protection. The troops
charged with this protection must delay
the enemy long enough to give the
general time to study the situation, to
make his plans and to arrange his troops
in readiness for battle. The method
adopted for the protection of the troops

PROTECTION 99

consists in placing between them and
the enemy a number of bodies which are
smaller and smaller in proportion to
their distance from the body to be pro-
tected.

A column of troops on the march
always has at some distance in front of it
a smaller body called the advance-guard,
of which a small portion, called the van-
guard, is still further in front and will,
if possible, be mainly composed of cavalry.
Unless there are other troops of the same
army marching on parallel roads to the
right and left of the column it should
also have flank guards on those roads.

Let us suppose that a British division
has been bivouacking for a day or two
in Hyde Park, and that it is ordered to
start at 6 a.m. along the road through
Redhill to attack an enemy advanc-
ing from Brighton. The Lieutenant-
General commanding the division, as he
intends to attack, will wish to form a
strong advance-guard, and in order

100 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

not to break up his units will form it of
his squadron, a brigade of infantry and
a brigade of field artillery, with a com-
pany of engineers, a signal section and
an ambulance section. The squadron
will move off quickly to clear the road
and get about two miles in front of the
infantry van guard, pushing a troop of
scouts a mile to its front with a second
troop to support it midway between the
scouts and the remaining half -squadron.
The infantry van guard will be formed
by the leading battalion preceded
half a mile in front by a group of
scouts and a quarter of a mile by its
first company.

Half a mile behind it will come the
main body of the advance guard in the
following order : a battalion, a field
artillery brigade, two battalions, a field
company of engineers, a signal section
and an ambulance section. The distance
from the leading company of the van-
guard to the rear of the advance-guard

DIVISION ON-tte^Mbft 101

will be about four miles. Accordingly
the advance guard will not all have
passed through the gate at Hyde Park
Corner until 7.36.

It will be desirable that there should
be a space of say two miles between the
advance-guard and the main body of the
division. So the head of the main body
will not start from Hyde Park Corner
until 8.24. It will move in the following
order : the first infantry brigade accom-
panied by a field company of engineers
and three signal sections, two field
artillery brigades, and the howitzer
brigade, three battalions of the third
brigade of infantry and the heavy battery,
the last battalion of the third brigade,
the remainder of the first and the whole
of the second ambulance.

This main body, with the carts and
waggons that accompany the troops, will
occupy eight miles of road. It will not have-
cleared the Park gates until 11.36. At
11.48 it will be followed by the ammuni-

102 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
tion columns a mile and a half long, which
will clear the Park at 12.24, ^^^ ^* 12.48
the trains carrying the baggage and food
supplies of the division will move through
the gates, which the last cart will clear
at 1. 12.

At 1. 1 2, as the last cart of the division
is just leaving Hyde Park Comer, the
cavalry scouts will be entering Redhill
and Reigate, followed by the rest of the
squadron between Redhill and Woodlands.
The point of the infantry advance-guard
will be on the road three-quarters of a mile
north of Merstham. The head of the main
body of the advance-guard will be on
the road level with St. Margaret's Church,
Chipstead, and the advance-guard troops
will fill the road for rather more than
three miles to a point about level with
Reedham Asylum. The head of the
main body of the division will be at
Purley Oaks Station, and the main body
will fill the road through Croydon, Nor-
bury, Streatham and Streatham Hill as

DIVISION ON THE MARCH 103

far as the railway bridge crossing the
Brixton Road at the foot of Brixton Hill.
The middle of the ammunition column
will be at Kennington Oval, and the
head of the trains will be passing Victoria
Station.

Supposing that a halt is now ordered,
the advance-guard to bivouac for the
night between Chipstead and Coulsdon,
and the main body to be billeted in the
southern part of Croydon. The last
troops of the main body will not reach
their destination before 4.15 p.m. and
the supply train for the advance-guard
will not reach the troops which it
has to serve before 6 p.m., unless it
is composed of motors, in which case
it can arrive almost immediately after
the troops. The battalion of the van-
guard and the one immediately following
it will between 1.30 and 2.30 spread
themselves as outposts on the heights
between Reigate Hill and Caterham for
a distance of a couple of miles on each

104 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

side of the road, so as to be in touch
with the outposts of other columns on
the main roads to right and left of that
followed by the division.

CHAPTER VII

THE DIVISION MEETING THE ENEMY

The Experience of a Private in the Advance
Guard — First Report of the Enemy — The
Advance-Guard is to Hold its Ground — ^The
Story of the Platoon — ^The First Shot — ^The
Platoon Entrenches — The Enemy's First
Skirmishers — ^The First Shrapnel — Necessity
of every Man knowing His Place and of the
Officers having Mastered the Principles ex-
plained in the Regulations — Need for Keeping
in Good Condition — Prospects of the New
Army.

IT is nearly ten o'clock on an autumn
* morning. You are one of the
leading four of the vanguard battalion
and there are in front of you the first
company forming the point half a mile
ahead, and the second company forming
its support a quarter of a mile ahead.
You have been marching since six o'clock
and have just halted for one of the
hourly ten minute rests. The road has

io6 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

led all the morning through a hilly,
wooded country, but soon after nine
o'clock you came into a fairly open valley,
and crossed a brook. You have since
then marched up a long slope so that you
are now on the top of an irregular East
and West ridge. But as you are in a small
village you have no view.

The Brigadier-General has been riding
just in front of you and is sitting
down by the roadside with the map
in his hand when the Lieutenant-
General rides up, dismounts and speaks
to him. " Any reports of the enemy ? "
he says. '' No, Sir," replies the Brigadier-
General, and at that moment a staff
officer gallops up from the front and,
seeing the General, dismounts, while the
two officers stand up to receive him.
*' The advance-guard squadron. Sir,'' he
says, '' has met a larger force ot cavalry,
probably a regiment, about two miles
to the front and is holding it in a fire
fight. An officer's patrol has just re-

MEETING THE ENEMY 107

ported a column of all arms on the road
about six miles ahead/' The Lieutenant-
General says to the Brigadier, '^ I think
you had better hold this ridge for the
present with your brigade ; it gives you
a good artillery position and we can
collect troops on the northern slope. By
what time will your whole advance-guard
be up ? " '' In an hour and a half/'
replies the Brigadier, " by 11.30." '' The
head of my main body," says the General,
" cannot be up until 12.15, and the rear
not till 3.30. You could have the field
artillery in an hour if necessary, and the
enemy can hardly begin to attack before
noon. The divisions on our right and
left are about level with us, so that we
need not be concerned about the flanks.
Make your arrangements for holding this
part of the ridge and I will look around
and see where to bring up the other
brigades."

The place where you are is at a fork
of the road. The main road along

io8 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

which the staff officer came leads to th^
south-west down the slope of the ridge.
A branch road follows the ridge to the
south-east. The Brigadier orders the
colonel commanding your battalion to pre-
pare to defend the village and to post a
party a little way out along the ridge
towards the south-east to guard that
flank. Your company is ordered in that
direction, while the advance companies
are extended a little way down the slope
to right and left of the main road.

Your platoon is extended on both sides
of the branch road towards the south-east,
and you move forward about a quarter of a
mile, when suddenly there is a whizz of
bullets followed by the crack of rifles
from some point in the direction in which
you are moving. The lieutenant halts
the platoon behind the hedge of a lane
which crosses the road, and lying down
behind the bank you peer through the
hedge. A quarter of a mile in front,
where the ridge is narrower, there are a

MEETING THE ENEMY 109

few houses ; probably the shots came
from there. " Dismounted cavalry, I
suppose," says the lieutenant. No men
are to be seen, the firing stops ; no
one has been hit and you look around.
You are the flank man and can see down
the ridge over the plain to your right.
The ground slopes down for three-quarters
of a mile, with here and there a small
wood and many scattered trees, so that
you feel that it will not be very easy
to see an enemy approaching.

The captain comes up and tells
your lieutenant that the colonel would
be glad to have the houses cleared,
and that the best plan would be to
send a section on the south side of
the slopes, where they cannot be seen
from the houses, so that they can fire
on to the road in rear of them, and
then to send a patrol to find out
what is there. You are sent off with
this section. A few yards down the hill
the houses are invisible, and in five

no FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

minutes you are on the slope a hundred
yards from them, and the section moves
cautiously until it catches sight ot a
number of cavalry horses held in groups
behind the houses. They are not two
hundred yards away. " Fix bayonets/'
says the sergeant in a low voice, and
sends the four left hand men to creep up
the slope towards the houses. The
sergeant then orders the rest of the
section to fire three rounds at the horses,
with fixed sights, and explains that,
immediately after, the section is to rush
the houses. You take aim. It is the
first time you have fired a shot in war.
You are determined to aim carefully and
to fire slowly. Crack, crack, crack. Two
of the horse holders are down and the
horses rushing wildly away to the right.
With a shout you run to the houses,
and half way the sergeant shouts, " Halt !
magazine fire." A group of the enemy's
cavalry are running towards their horses,
two or three of them fall, the remainder

MEETING THE ENEMY iii

hold up their hands and surrender.
At the moment of the first shots
one of the men nearest to the houses
was lucky enough to shoot a look-
out man, evidently posted to give warn-
ing.

A few minutes later the lieutenant
comes up with the rest of the platoon
and posts it facing south on the slope
from which you made the rush, so as
to prevent an enemy's party from
approaching the position through the
dead ground along which your advance
was made. There is still no sign of
any other enemy. The platoon has its
back to the houses which you have
just taken. You begin to scan the
country. About a mile and a half away
you see the main road along which the
enemy is expected. It is perhaps a
hundred feet lower than where you are.
From that road the ground slopes down
towards you for about three quarters of
a mile, after which it rises up towards

112 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

you for another three quarters of a
mile.

The Ueutenant is studying the ground
with his field-glass, and after a minute
or two says, "Suppose we mark a few
distances." Half a dozen men are told
to cut sticks from the nearest trees and
to tie red rags on to each of them.
Then they are to pace 600 yards in a
straight line to the front down the slope,
stepping yards as well as they can, and
there to plant their sticks so that the
line of red sticks may mark the 600
yards line from where you are lying
down.

A tool cart comes up on the
road behind you, and your lieutenant
orders a shelter trench to be dug just
on the line on which you are extended.
It is many feet below the sky line, which
is formed by the ridge a hundred yards
behind you, and there is a clear view to
the front except where a couple of gulUes
run down the hillside, both of them lined

MEETING THE ENEMY 113

with trees. The trench is to be two feet
wide and eighteen inches deep, and you
are all to be very careful in cutting the
sods and piling them up behind you.
You are placed five feet apart, and in
half an hour each of you has dug his
five feet of trench. Then you are told
each of you to deepen the trench another
eighteen inches for a length of two feet
just where you stand, so as to have a
standing hole three feet deep. This takes
you about twenty minutes, after which
you carefully cover up with the sods the
bank of earth in front of the trench so
as to hide it from observers coming from
the south. A shelter pit has been made
for the lieutenant a few yards behind the
centre of the platoon. Then word is
passed that each man is to eat the bread
and cheese which he has in his haver-
sack from the previous evening. Each
man has his pack beside him in the
trench.

The platoon seems lonely enough.

114 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR
There is no one to its left, and, though the
next platoon belonging to No. 2 company
prolongs the line to the right, everything
beyond that is hidden by a spur of the
hill where the ridge takes a turn towards
the right. The other platoons of your
No. 3 company and No. 4 company
are in support just behind the ridge, so
that you cannot see them, though they
have a sentry on the ridge to watch
your platoon. You are looking towards
the main road across the valley, down
which you can see for a mile or two,
catching a glimpse here and there af
the sunlit surface of the brook. In the
copse half way down the hill a numbei
of birds are singing and you try to
distinguish their different notes.

Suddenly there is a whizz in the air.
There is no mistaking the peculiar whistle
of a bullet . Where did it come from ? You
hear no report, you see no flash ; you look
to the left where, half a mile away, you
can see by a row of trees and a hedge

MEETING THE ENEMY 115
that a lane runs down from the ridge
towards a farm in the valley bottom.
You stand in your hole looking over the
little bank with your eyes riveted on
that row of trees. More whizzes. Some-
thing moves under one of the trees ; the
next moment you see a brief flash at
that spot, and after two seconds another
bullet whistles. Your sergeant calls
out, " Enemy in the lane to the left,
Sir."

Another sergeant calls out, '* Enemy
on the road in front, Sir." You look
at the road and you see above the
wall a tiny grey line, it is probably a
company of infantry marching along a
road. You take out your watch and
see that it is just twelve. Again you look
at the lane to your left, nothing is to
be seen, not a sound. The place where
the shot came from is on the slope about
fifty feet below you. The continuation
of the ridge is in your left rear, and
a few hundred yards away the slope ia

ii6 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

crowned by a wood which is six hundred
yards from the point in the row of trees
where you saw the shot fired and the
row of trees itself ends just to the left
of that point.

You look back at the main road
across the valley where there is now
a longer grey Une, and you see a
group of men with intervals walking
down from the road towards a wood
between it and the brook. '' No firing
till I give the word," says the Heutenant.
'* We can't hit those fellows at a mile,
and should only give away where we
are."

A group of men emerges from the row
of trees on the left, coming not towards
you but towards the wood on your left
rear. There is a crackle like the noise
made by blazing thorns, one of the group
of men falls and the rest lie down fiat.
You can see them, as they are on lower
ground, about twenty in a row with their
sides towards you. While you are still

MEETING THE ENEMY 117

puzzled the lieutenant calls out, " Left
section, can you all see those skirmishers
lying down to the left ? " You all sing
out, '' Yes, Sir." Then he says, " Try
two rounds at 700 yards." You fire
your two shots. The men lying down
get up and run back to the row of trees,
while the lieutenant says, '' Go on firing."
Some of them are still lying where they
were, and two of those running drop ;
the rest disappear behind the trees.

What has happened is this : A party of
the advance-guard of the next division had
just lined the wood in the left rear when
the enemy's skirmishers went forward
and the cracking noise was the fire of
that party. The enemy had caught sight
of them and was moving towards them,
but ran back when they found themselves
enfiladed. They had probably not seen
your section at all, and the bullets you
first heard were fired at a staff officer
riding along the road behind you.

" Cease fire," says the lieutenant, and

ii8 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

again all is quiet. There is a pause,
during which you keep watching the land-
scape. By degrees you make out parties
of skirmishers moving down the slope of
the valley towards the brook and coming
out from the row of trees across an open
field which separates it from a guUey
between it and you. You feel that in a
short time there may be quite a number
of men collected in the bottom of that
guUey into which you cannot see. It is
on the left front of your section, while
down the hill right in front of the platoon
about eight hundred yards off is the edge
of a wood. It seems a long time before
an enemy emerge from that guUey or that
wood. You look at the row of red
rags and see that they are well this side
both of guUey and of wood.

The lieutenant says, '' Section leaders
open fire as soon as any enemy comes
within the 600 yards line and look
out for my word in case I see a
formed body in support. At that I

MEETING THE ENEMY 119

would fire up to a thousand yards,
which would be in the open this side of
the brook." There is another pause
and then a few groups of skirmishers
are seen moving out from the guUey
and the copse. The lieutenant tells
off the ground in front of him into
four strips for the four sections. Your
section has to look after the left hand
half of the copse and the ground up
to there.

The group of the enemy, walking
steadily with arms at the trail, is just
approaching the row of sticks. " Let
them come a little nearer," says the
sergeant, and when they are well past
the sticks says, " Commence firing."
There is a crack and a noise like a motor-
bicycle, several of the enemy drop, the
rest disappear. " Wait till they come
on again," says the sergeant, " remember,
fixed sights and aim low." Then the
enemy are up again running, more go
down. But you can't tell whether they

120 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

are all hit or have simply dropped flat,
except that one man turns round and runs
away from you and is hit as he runs.
There is another rush and this time all
the men fall.

It is evident that this first advance
was not meant for an attack, and that
the enemy did not know that the
platoon was here ready for them. They
were surprised by the first firing and
followed their first impulse to be brave
and come on.

Now you see larger numbers coming
down the opposite slope and a whole
company emerging into the open on your
side of the brook. The lieutenant sings
out, " At the company, a thousand
yards, three rounds, the whole platoon."
The enemy's company moves forward
extending as it moves, but leaving a
number of grey specks on the ground
where it was.

There is a loud crack and a puff
of smoke just above your head followed

MEETING THE ENEMY 121
by the thud of many bullets. A shrapnel
has burst just over the trench. The
bullets have hit the ground and houses
just behmd i no one hurt. It is followed
by another which bursts a little further
behind you, and as you are looking
up you see an aeroplane high up
in the air over the valley bottom, and
you hear the whirr of its engines. It is
going towards the enemy, so you suppose
it to be British. Then shell after shell
in quick succession bursts over your head
and you can't help crouching. The
enemy has not yet found your trench and
is shelling the houses and the road behind
you.

By this time the noise of musketry
on your right and left is continuous, and
the air seems full of the whizz of bullets.
You feel ashamed of your crouching and
peer over the parapet to look for the guns.
You catch sight of a flash somewhere on
the top of the opposite slope which seems
a long way off, perhaps a couple of miles.

122 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

Then suddenly you hear a gun from
behind, though you can see none, and
you know that your own artillery is on
or behind the ridge replying to the
enemy's.

I have tried to give you a picture of
the beginning of a battle in which all
the circumstances are favourable to your
side. The space at my disposal does
not admit of its completion, and the
method I have adopted of a picture of
a man's actual experience cannot be
applied to the later stages of a battle
without becoming painful, as you will
easily gather from parts of the sketch I
have given.

Your little trench, an hour or two later,
could be enfiladed from the right by the
enemy's corps artillery and, if it
happened to attract his attention, many
of your comrades would be killed, because
there has been no time to make cross
mounds or traverses. Your line would
be prolonged to the left, so that there

I*

MEETING THE ENEMY 123
would be no danger from the left flank,
and not the slightest chance of the trench
being carried as long as half of you
remained fit to shoot straight and sup-
plied with cartridges. The battle might
very well go on till dusk, about 6.30.

My chief purpose has been to give
you some idea of the great whole in which
each individual soldier — officer, non-com-
missioned officer or private — ^is but an
atom. A single division is but a frag-
ment of an army. Sir John French at
this moment commands eight or nine
divisions and three or four cavalry divi-
sions. General J off re probably has more
than forty divisions in his first line alone.

You can see then that for the working
of an army perfect order is indispensable.
Unless every man in the platoon knows
his work and his place, and is alert and
keen to follow the directions given him
by his section leader, the lieutenant could
not handle his platoon properly, for he
would have to watch his own men instead

124 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

of keeping his eye on the enemy. If the
captain has to keep putting his platoon
leaders right he cannot be thinking about
the next directions which he must give
them. All the way up from the captain
to the Lieutenant-General, every officer
has functions of his own to perform and
must be free to attend to them instead
of having to do the work of some negli-
gent subordinate. Napoleon once said
that an army would be perfect in which
every officer knew exactly what to do
according to his rank in any situation in
which he might find himself in war.
Napoleon knew very well that soldiers
always gladly obey and support through
thick and thin an officer whom they know
to be keen and intelligent. Soldiers
always know the real characters of their
officers.

The various official books, the Field
Service Regulations, the Musketry Regu-
lations and Infantry Training have been
written to explain to officers what they

HOW TO READ 125

have to do in the various situations of
war. You can get to know it from those
books if you read them properly. When
you have read a chapter you should take
time to ask yourself what principles of
action you have learned from it. And
you must not consider that you have
mastered the chapter until you are able
to explain to someone else without the
book all the main points which it em-
bodies. After you have mastered the
chapters in these books which treat of
the March, the Camp, the Fight, of Out-
posts and of Reconnaissance, you will
find that you quite understand what your
company or battalion is doing while it is
out for field training. But you will also
find that it is not always easy, when you
are out with your men on the ground, to
remember and apply the principles which
you have learned. It takes some time
after you have seized the principles to
get into the habit of applying them in
practice. But it will take you very much

126 FIRST LESSONS IN WAR

longer to learn to do this if you have
neglected beforehand to master the prin-
ciples.

From what I have told you of the march
and the battle, you will also gather that
you will hardly be able to serve the
country in this war unless you keep your-
self in first-rate condition. You may be
called upon within a day or two of going
to the front to do all or more than all
that I have been describing. If your
battalion starts marching at six o'clock
you will have been roused at five, and will
probably have had breakfast before start-
ing. You may quite well have to march
four hours and dig one hour, and will be
well off if you have the chance of eating
your bread and cheese before fighting
for the rest of the day and lucky then if
you afterwards get a good supper. Great
exertions with little to eat and short
sleep make up the occasional experience
of every soldier. You must not shrink
from these things, for tliose who have

A GOOD LIFE 127

lived the life are agreed that it is a good
life and makes fine men. The British
army now in the field not only knows its
business, but is temperate as British
armies have not always been. It seems
to fulfil Napoleon's ideal. The new army,
which it is my desire in writing these
pages to serve, has but a short time in
which to learn its work. Its ofiicers and
men will shorten that time and will very
soon be the rivals of their comrades now
in the field. They are out for Duty, and
they all know that it is for England.

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