Chapter VII: Part I: Operations, 1909 (4)

(_e_) Duties in Piquet.—The position of the piquet and alternative defence positions having been fixed, and trenches or other defences marked out on the position, and on the alternative positions if any, assemble the platoon at the piquet and show the non-commissioned officers how to tell off reliefs and other duties. Each group furnished by the piquet consists of three to eight men, and mounts one or two men as sentry, as the circumstances of the post require (I.T., 152 (3)), the sentry, single or double, being relieved in turn by the others of the group. The whole group is under command of the senior soldier or a non-commissioned officer. The men who are to form the reliefs of the groups stay with the piquet, which usually is composed solely of the reliefs of groups and patrols. Extra men who have no specific duties are not advisable unless the position is very exposed. Suppose your group sentries are single, and the groups of three men each, and relieved every eight hours, then for every group posted and in position there will be six men in the piquet resting and waiting their turn, each group thus needing a total of nine men—three out, six in. Patrols start from the piquet or support, as the commander of the company directs, and the piquet commander may send them out on his own initiative, if he thinks it needful. As they are practically all on duty as long as they are out, a turn of four hours is enough for them, or, rather, a third of the daylight time. Take your patrols from this piquet to be four strong, there will be for each patrol eight men in the piquet and four out on patrol, a total of twelve needed to furnish each patrol.

In telling off a piquet on the above conditions of relief, and before dismissing the men to rest, the commander must pay attention to two main points. Firstly, he must tell off the reliefs, and give each relief a place to rest in. Men on outpost are usually tired and need all the rest they can get, especially if they are up all night. Therefore reliefs should be kept together and rest in one place, so that the commander can find them at once without stirring up the others to see who’s who. Secondly, the men must be told off to alarm posts, which they are to occupy in case of attack—each relief and each man of it should be given a position on the entrenchment which he is to hold. To ensure that they will do this at once and without confusion they should be made to go to these places and occupy them before being dismissed. There will then be no needless running about with consequent casualties if fire, either of artillery or infantry, suddenly opens.

Say you have sixteen rifles (non-commissioned officers and others) in your instructional piquet give out that it is to furnish—

1 Sentry over the piquet.

2 Groups of three men each, Nos. 1 and 2.

2 Patrols of four men each, Nos. 1 and 2.

The sentry over the piquet alone being actually posted, the two groups and two patrols being supposed to be out in front, as this part of the lesson is only concerned with the inside work of the piquet, and you have already shown them this work on sentry and patrol. As your strength is not sufficient you must make a further supposition, and make believe that for the reliefs of the groups one of your rifles represents three, and for those of the patrols one rifle represents two. Appoint one of the non-commissioned officers in turn as commander, and let him tell off accordingly.

3 Rifles for piquet sentry, one of whom he actually mounts.

1 Rifle (representing three) as second relief, No. 1 group.

1 Rifle (representing three) as third relief, No. 1 group.

2 Rifles (representing two each) for second relief, No. 1 patrol.

2 Rifles (representing two each) for third relief, No. 1 patrol.

And a similar number for No. 2 patrol and No. 2 group.

Having told off these reliefs the commander should then tell them where they are to have their resting places and where their posts are in case of alarm. At this time also he would give out any special orders which concern the piquet. Then without dismissing the men he should order them to go to their resting places, and as soon as they are there order them to occupy their alarm posts, which should be done in double time, the men lying down on the places that have been marked out for entrenchment or improvement of existing cover. Make this falling in on alarm posts a standing order in the company. After this has been done, and each man knows exactly what he has to do on the alarm, the men should be dismissed to their resting places, which, as before said, should be separate for each relief and apart from each other. After being dismissed, the men would on service be allowed to make themselves as comfortable as possible. Other duties of the piquet commander are:—

(1) The opening of communication with piquets in right and left and
the support.

(2) The fixing of places for purposes of nature.

(3) The arrangements for getting up food to his men if they have
not their rations with them.

(4) Keeping his piquet in a state of readiness; besides keeping
accoutrements on, the men should have their rifles at their
sides when resting, and take them with them wherever they go.
There should be no such thing as piling arms on outpost.

_Night Piquets._

In the dark the bullet is a fool unless fired at close quarters. No practicable amount of shooting, even at only a hundred yards distance, will dislodge determined men posted under cover, and a serious attack must be made with the bayonet or by shooting within the distance at which a man may be distinguished—ten yards or so. F.S.R., 138 (2), lays down for the British Army that the bayonet only is to be used in night attacks, and we may assume that any civilized army we may have to meet will pursue similar tactics. Aerial reconnaissance may nowadays allow an enemy to locate the position held by the main body of his opponent, in spite of its being covered by outposts, but such reconnaissance does not admit of any hope of a successful night attack being made on that main body by eluding or passing through the outposts, because the surface of the ground cannot be sufficiently searched from above to discover the small obstacles which must be avoided or known if the advance of a large body of men is to be carried out at night. So we may take it that now, as formerly, any large attack will fall first on the outposts, supposing, as we must, that these are placed so as to hold or watch all possible lines of advance. In addition to this, outposts must expect isolated attacks made against one or two points held by them which the enemy desires to gain possession of. The duties of outposts by night are, then, to hold and defend the outpost line in sufficient strength to prevent any large body of the enemy breaking through, or getting a footing in some tactically important position on the line, and also to prevent the enemy’s scouts from getting through and making observations, and, lastly, but of most importance, to get news of the enemy both as a means of forestalling any attack, and for the use of the force commander in framing his plans. Bringing the matter down to the level of a piquet of an outpost company, it seems to resolve itself into night patrolling and night defence of a position. As before pointed out, enclosed country allows of piquets closing the lines of advance by which large bodies can only hope to move undiscovered, while intervening ground can be searched by patrols. On the other hand, open country leaves the front vulnerable everywhere, and calls for a greater number of piquets and closer patrolling than are needed by day.

Of course, elementary instruction in these duties must be carried out by daylight to allow of supervision; so now assemble your platoon of non-commissioned officers and give out that you are going to practise night work. Choose some place for your night piquet, realistic as may be, a bridge, a cutting, or anything else that constitutes a defile or otherwise blocks a likely line of advance from the enemy’s direction. Also choose, and point out to the platoon, positions where the adjoining piquets on the right and left would be. Give out the following instructions to the non-commissioned officers:—

(1) Piquets must take up their night positions when it is getting
dusk, the strengthening of the piquet and construction of
obstacles being done in advance, secretly if possible, and
towards evening the working party should withdraw and leave
the intended night position empty till it is time to move
into it, further work being completed by twilight.

(2) The provision of obstacles is more necessary than entrenchment,
as securing the piquet from being rushed while completing the
latter.

(3) Men must rest on their alarm posts, and bayonets may have to be
kept fixed by all, if there is a possibility of a sudden
attack (I.T., 151 (7)), to ensure instant readiness.

(4) All piquets must stand to arms one hour before light and remain
ready for action till the patrols have found that there is no
sign of an immediate attack. When relief takes place in the
morning, night outposts will not return to camp till the
patrols report all clear.

After this, let the non-commissioned officer in command withdraw the piquet from its day position and march it to the night position. On arrival ask the non-commissioned officers in turn where they would place the piquet exactly and where they would put their obstacles. Obstacles for a night piquet should be under close fire, i.e., ten or twenty paces, but, in addition, booby traps and alarms may be placed further in front. Barbed wire is the best of all obstacles. The actual defensive measures to be taken do not differ from those taken for the defence of any position not on outpost.

The position of the piquet and obstacles being decided on, let the non-commissioned officers mark on the ground the actual work they would undertake, having regard to the time available, which you should tell them, and, on the same lines as for the day piquet, let them as commanders in turn divide the men into reliefs of sentries and patrols, tell them off to their alarm posts, and order them to occupy them once as if on alarm.

A piquet by night, no matter how well entrenched, has a very limited field of action. Even with most carefully arranged night rests for the men’s rifles its fire effect is small except at close ranges, and to resist attack by relatively larger bodies it must in general keep behind its defences. Hence a well organised scheme of patrols is necessary to supplement the passive opposition which the piquet can offer. The patrols are charged with the duty of bringing news of any advance of the enemy to attack, and, if he is close enough, of spying out his movements on and within his outpost line, of preventing his patrols or scouts penetrating their own line, of watching any localities which are of particular importance and unoccupied by piquets, such, for example, as villages beyond the outpost line which the enemy might try to occupy by night, and, lastly, of keeping up communication between the various bodies of the outposts. The strength of patrols is limited by the necessity of their being able to do this work without making a noise, and a strength of three to eight men is advised. A patrol performs its duty of observation either by going from point to point, or by watching one particular place, when it is called a “standing patrol.” If a piquet posts any group sentries by night, away from the piquet, such groups have just the same work as standing patrols, except that they may be ordered to maintain their position in case of attack as they are near support, whereas patrols would fall back as soon as they had made sure the enemy was advancing, and possibly, if in accordance with their instructions, after treating him to a short burst of rapid fire. An ordinary patrol will also have to halt and listen perhaps for long periods, and so becomes for the nonce a standing patrol.

Form up the platoon at the piquet position, and let the commander tell it off into three patrols to practise this duty, disregarding reliefs, all three to be sent out at the same time in different directions, one man in each to be commander. Before they start off, tell them the following, which piquet commanders must see to:—

(1) If there is no countersign published for the force, piquet
commanders must arrange either a word or a sign by which men
may know their own side in the dark.

(2) Patrols going out are to tell the nearest sentry which way they
are going (I.T., 156 (5)).

(3) For patrols a code of signals should be arranged, e.g., a hiss
or half-whistle, to call attention, answered by the same to
show that the man called has heard it, followed by the
signal, whatever it is:—a double hiss for “come up to me,” a
click of the tongue for “retire,” but anything will do
provided it cannot be clearly heard much further off than the
listeners for whom it is intended, and is neither a very
common nor a very uncommon sound.

(4) The piquet commander must tell patrols how long they are to
stay out and any places he thinks must be visited, in
addition to what they themselves may find advisable, on
closer acquaintance with the ground.

A suitable formation for a night patrol of six men would be four in the advanced party, followed at ten to fifty paces by the rear party or two. The reason for the stronger party being ahead is, firstly, that fighting at night begins with suddenness and ends rapidly, while reinforcement of one party by another is slow and uncertain, and, secondly, to ensure that some part of the patrol may have a good chance of getting away with news, whatever happens to the rest: Bayonets should be fixed and rifles sloped on the right shoulder, the right hand holding the small of the butt so as to come to the charge at once, and not to have any chance of a rifle falling on the ground.

Tell patrol commanders to get their patrols into formation and practise movement in silence along a road and on ordinary road. If along a road, let them move on each side of it, off the metal on the roadside grass or dust, and under trees or close to the hedge or wall. On ordinary country the ball of the foot should be put down first as if to feel the surface, before putting the full weight of the body on the advanced foot. A stick or broom-handle, _à la_ “boy scout,” is invaluable in moving over unexplored ground, as by it the real nature of objects dimly seen at one’s feet can be made out, and awkward spills thereby avoided. The movement of patrols under these conditions will be very slow over any but quite level ground. As the patrols move let them practise the code of signals, halting, advancing, coming up into one line, etc., also the keeping up of communication by one file moving back and forward between the two parts of the patrol. They should practise also breaking up and scattering as if attacked by overwhelming numbers, each individual getting away as quickly and quietly as possible, and the whole rallying again at some place in rear. The patrol commander as he goes out must fix these rallying places, usually one is enough over the whole of a patrol’s beat, and they should be _outside_ the outpost line. Have the patrols moved so that on their beats they may meet each other once or twice, and use the sign to reply when challenge is made. As a second practice, direct one of the meeting patrols to consider itself hostile, and let the commander of the other patrol excogitate how he would deal with men who did not stand fast on being told to halt and could not give the countersign.

Next tell the patrols to get into position to watch various localities, a farm steading, a ravine, or such like, as they would have to do for limited periods as patrols reconnoitring on their beats, or for the whole night as standing patrols. One of the best ways in which patrols can fulfil their office is by halting and listening with ears near the ground for sounds of human movement. There is no rule for thus lying up except that they must not get caught themselves. A couple of men should be left quite clear of the patrol to get away if the others strike trouble, and the commander of the patrol should have word passed to these two from time to time that all is well with the rest, or they may wait in their place while the others have been quietly downed.

Lastly, let patrols return to the piquet, and learn how to approach without getting themselves fired on, or causing useless alarm. A good way is for two of the patrol to advance a few steps at a time when near the piquet, halting and quietly code-signalling the piquet sentry till they get His attention and warn him that the patrol wants to come in.

It has taken longer to write about outposts than it may take you to put your men through them, and I have purposely been discursive because a knowledge of what is needed from outposts is more important than any set exercise, and also because this duty is the one which newly raised troops are most likely to perform negligently, and at the same time the one which, if neglected, allows the enemy to bring raw troops to quick demoralisation. I have also purposely written as if unlimited ground were available, and, speaking generally, I think it is. You can, and should, practise your piqueting and patrolling on the ordinary countryside, with its main and bye-roads, paths, fields, and hedges. The practice of outposts when piquets are not entrenched, causes no damage, so that leave to move over the fields should not be hard to get, but even if it cannot be got, the principal and most important work of patrolling and watching all roads and paths, will be done on the ground on which they would be done on service. If fighting ever takes place in Britain, which Heaven forefend, outpost lines will be along the ordinary country and not on Salisbury Plain, so do not go into wild and desolate places for your outposts, but take the ordinary country round where you are.

EXERCISE XV.

DEFENCE.

The subject of defence is treated of in F.S.R., 107-110, I.T., 125-135, and in Chapter VII., M.F.E., 1911. The duties required of the company commander and his subordinates are briefly defined by I.T., 132, to be similar to those they carry out in the attack. The whole spirit of the regulations is that the active Defence is merely a means to an end, viz., the ultimate assumption of the offensive, which may be carried out either by the same troops which have acted on the defensive or by fresh troops detailed for the purpose. In both cases the troops that have acted on the defensive must be ready to become the aggressors. Therefore, in training your men, you should keep this constantly in view and conserve a spirit of aggressive mobility. Men must not be allowed to think that once a position has been taken up and entrenched it is to be their location till fighting ceases; on the contrary, they should be encouraged to look for opportunities while still on the defensive, to occupy alternative positions which will make the task of the attacking enemy more difficult. Quickness in seizing and strengthening a position must be combined with mobility in leaving it to take up and strengthen a new one. Of course, the time available regulates the work that can be undertaken (M.F.E., VII. (2)); deep trenches and concealed head cover cannot be made with an enemy pressing in to assault, but the first requirement is the ability to choose positions that give a good field of fire and to strengthen them as thoroughly as the time available and the proximity of the enemy admit.

In dealing with a company, the onus of choosing what localities it is tactically necessary to occupy and strengthen rests with the company commander, subject to the orders of his battalion commander. In the same way as on outpost, you will be given a bit of ground to defend, either acting with the battalion or as an isolated company, and the rest will be on your head. I do not propose to deliver a treatise on the tactical occupation of ground, but instead I will ask you to procure and read two books. The first is “The Defence of Duffer’s Drift,” by Backsight Forethought (W. Clowes and Sons), the second is “A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book,” by Sir Ian Hamilton (Edward Arnold). They are both most readable books, and are quite free of soporific effects. The first is small, and deals with the efforts of a half-company, under Lieutenant B. F., to defend a drift over a South African river. In the second the author takes you along with him through the Russo-Japanese War, of which he was a privileged spectator, and in your journeyings you look on at victories and defeats in the making, while the causes that led to them, great and small, are set forth, along with many shrewd comments on human nature and how it translates itself in the day of battle. Every fight bears its own lesson of what to do and what not to do in defence, and this told in no pedantic strain, but with the saving grace of humour, to mitigate the darker side of human carnage. Read them both, get to yourself the wisdom and understanding with which they are filled, and you will know how to take up a position for defence.

Having educated yourself to choose the points of a defensive position that must be occupied if the position is to be effectively held, you have still to train your men to the work of defending them, and they must learn to be able to do without the help of a supervising officer, as will often be the case on service.

Daylight defence is almost entirely a matter of fire, the immediate object being to make it impossible for the enemy to come to close quarters. Platoon and section commanders then must be able to dispose their men with this in view to the best advantage within the limits of the ground allotted to their units, and the men must be able to site their trenches or whatever form of cover has to be constructed so as to use their rifles to the best effect. It is no good to teach men to dig trenches and make loop-holes unless they know the proper places for them. (M.F.E., 18 (7)).

At the same time, practice in digging and the use of tools is very necessary for men who are not accustomed to such work. The hands of the untrained man blister and his muscles tire under the unusual effort, while he expends much energy with results small in comparison with what he can accomplish once he has learnt to use his strength well. Moreover, a certain amount of technical skill is required in making any but the most simple cover.

To practise the execution of work, you _must_ have ground which you are at liberty to turn up, as well as some materials for loop-holes and obstacles. These may not be obtainable at any and every parade, but you can give practice in the selection and siting of trenches on any bit of country without causing damage, the men merely spitlocking or marking with stones or anything else the position of the trenches on the surface of the ground, and describing what they propose doing.

I would, therefore, advise that you make your training consist of two parts, firstly the siting of trenches and the planning by unit commanders and men of defensive work, the choice and occupation of alternative positions, and the assumption of the offensive from the defensive, all this without actually breaking ground, and, secondly, ground and tools being then available, the performance of a course of making real cover and obstacles.

But the first part cannot be carried out unless the men have a knowledge of what trenches, loop-holes and so on are like, and the objects with which they are made. In a company of raw recruits taken from the populace at large, there will be plenty who have no ideas on the subject at all. You must then precede your exercises either by a short lecture, materials for which you will find in plenty in the “Defence of Duffer’s Drift,” and the manuals of training, or, better than a lecture, by showing them specimens of entrenchments made by regular troops. The main points to insist on are the securing of a field of fire, the necessity of concealment of the defences, the importance of head cover as a help to the delivery of an accurate fire by letting men keep the enemy in view without showing up themselves, the avoidance of enfilade fire by making traverses, or by taking advantage of intervening high ground, the provision of cover from downward shell fire by making the trenches deep and steep enough to let men stand close up to the edges, and, in the case of isolated posts and points held as pivots of a position, the necessity of preparing an all-round defence so that these pivots will be able to continue fighting whatever happens on the intervening ground. The course of work actually performed for the second part should include digging all kinds of trenches, by which the men will learn to use their tools to the best advantage, and their hands and muscles will become hardened, the use of the excavated earth to form parapets and parados (cover from fire from the rear of the trench; forty inches of earth are needed to keep out a bullet), the drainage of trenches, the making of traverses against enfilade fire, the making of loop-holes and head-cover with the aid of all sorts of materials, sand bags, brushwood and heather, straw and twigs, stones and bricks (which must be covered with earth to deaden the effects of splinters), packing boards, and so on, the concealment of trenches and loop-holes so as to be invisible to the enemy (this is of great importance), the masking of loop-holes when not in use to prevent light showing through, the making of dummy trenches and loop-holes to draw the enemy’s fire away, the improvement of existing cover, such as loop-holing walls and the use of hedges with or without ditches, making sangars, if stones are available, the making of obstacles of barbed and plain wire, and measuring and marking of ranges round a position, which should be done by some means not obvious to the enemy, and clearing the field of fire. It will seldom be practicable to obtain subjects for practical demonstration of some of the latter in peace time; people will object to their walls being experimented on or their shrubberies laid low, and so even here a description of the method will have to be substituted for actual performance. For night defence the construction of night rests for rifles is needed. The best I know is a packing case, filled with earth, with the front and rear edges notched to hold the rifle stock. The magazine is laid hard up against the outside of the rear edge and the notches, front or rear, slowly deepened with a penknife till the sights bear on the target; afterwards earth is banked up outside the box and head-cover made above. The foregoing may seem a formidable list, but they are things that will undoubtedly be required as soon as you get on shooting terms with an enemy; while if you exhaust this list and feel the want of further occupation, the Engineering Manual will supply you with further subjects for your activities.

Pending your getting facilities of ground, tools, and materials to execute work, you can proceed with the first part of training outlined above. If your non-commissioned officers have not had experience, take them out as an instructional section in the same way as when teaching outpost work, and put them through the exercises which follow. But if they are already fairly competent, take the men on parade, forming them, if possible, into not less than two sections.

_Instruction in Siting Trenches._

Choose any position on undulating ground, form the men in extended order in one line in rear of it, and order them to move up, and mark where each would place his trench in order to fire on an enemy advancing from the front. In doing this it should be an invariable rule that men must lie down, bring the rifle into the firing position, look along the sights, and move forward or back till they see that they have got the best position to sweep the ground in their immediate front (see M.F.E., 31 (3)). Dead ground close to the trench gives the enemy a place in which to collect and organise an assault. Take the men in the same way on to other positions and repeat the lesson till they all understand that the _first thing to be done is this aiming with the rifle to secure a good field of fire_. At first halt them close to what you see is the best line, and afterwards halt them thirty or forty yards from it, and then give the order to choose sites. For instance, halt them on the top of a convex slope and let them find out that the best place to bring fire on to flat ground at its base is somewhere on the enemy’s side of the convexity, for if the trench were made on the top of the slope the ground immediately in front would be hidden by the convexity. The section commanders must help the men in choosing sites.

After the men have fixed and marked the proposed sites, let them lay down their rifles three paces in rear and kneel or lie down at the rear edge of the site as if waiting to commence work while you and section and platoon commanders go round and examine the line. Ask details from the men—how high they would make the parapet, how thick it should be, how they would make head-cover, how they would conceal the work, and so on.

_Traverses and broken lines of Trenches._

Repeat the exercise as above, but this time have the men in sections or small groups, and the trenches made not in one line, but in short lengths, separated by traverses. You will have to explain the construction and use of these to prevent enfilade fire (if not from long range), and to localise shell bursts. Again, have lines of trenches mapped out in short lengths on an irregular front, some a little forward, some a little back, with the earth at each end, banked up on the flanks with the same object (M.F.E., 33).

_Short Trenches for Two Men._

Bring the men extended to six or eight paces on to a position, and let the men of each file close to two paces from each other. Each file is then to choose and mark a site for a short trench to hold both of them, or, as it would formerly have been called, a rifle pit, marking where they would make loop-holes to fire both to the front, and obliquely towards the right and left, so as to rake the ground in front of the line of the other men’s pits. This arrangement is not officially recognised, and it does not give the closest possible firing line, but it is an excellent way of making men think for themselves.

When the men have got their bearings in the matter of taking up a line for entrenchment, make them get into the way of changing from defence into attack. Take up a position as before, and as soon as the trenches are marked out, indicate a position at some distance as an objective for attack and start an advance against it, as done in the attack practices, forming a firing line rapidly of some named platoons and the support of the others. A skeleton enemy kept hidden till needed adds much to the realism.

_Defence of Pivots (M.F.E., 50 (3), and I.T., 129)._

Find a position in which there are some points separated from each other which command the ground between, and also form such pivots for defence of the position as are described in the paras. above. According to the nature of the ground, such pivots might be, for platoons, as much as four hundred yards apart, i.e., attackers coming between them would be under fire at not more than two hundred yards. Send a platoon under a commander to each pivot, and let him plan and mark out his defensive measures, which must include:—

1. An arrangement for all-round defence, so that the pivot may be
self-contained and capable of continuing the fight, although
others may have been captured.

2. The siting accordingly of trenches and loop-holes to fire all
round and especially to sweep the front and rear of adjoining
pivots.

3. The adaptation of existing cover to save labour.

4. The provision of protection against enfilade and reverse fire,
and the _recognition of distant localities_ from which such
fire, whether of artillery or rifle, might be brought to bear
on the post.

5. The marking of ranges in each direction.

6. The provision of obstacles.

7. Any feasible scheme for alternative positions which his men
could reach and occupy under fire.

8. The concealment of the defences, provision of dummy trenches,
and loop-holes and any other shifts.

9. The telling off and posting of look-out men and fixing and
occupying of alarm posts when work has been completed.

10. Drainage and sanitation.

The concealment of defences from aerial reconnaissance will, perhaps, soon claim more attention than it gets at present.

Practise an attack after defence, starting off one platoon under your own orders to “go for” an indicated enemy, and sending word either by messenger or by semaphore to the others, either to join you and form a firing line, or to move out in support, but, if the latter, do not fail to finally call them up to reinforce the firing line; counter-attacks must usually be made with a relatively strong firing line and small support.

_The Company in Defence Acting Alone._

When you have put non-commissioned officers and men through the preceding course, plan some scheme on the lines of the defence of Duffer’s Drift, to deal with a company isolated and beyond reach of immediate reinforcement. Any bridge over a railway line, a group of buildings supposed to contain stores, or a ford or bridge over a river, will provide you with an object to defend. Choose a line of defence round it and determine what are the essential pivots to be held. To do this, so as to furnish an instructive lesson, it will usually be necessary for you to pay a visit to the place by yourself and formulate your proposed defence before bringing the company on to the ground. Pay great attention to crossing and supporting fire from the pivots, and look at the surrounding country with a view to meeting attack from any direction, for in this case the company, as well as the pivots in its line of defence, must be self-contained. Also have regard to the certainty that you will have artillery fire against you, to which you will not be able to reply, and in consequence your proposed defences must include deep trenches or recesses to shelter the men from shell. Your defences will take the form of a chain of isolated groups about the point to be defended and separated from each other by possibly several hundred yards. It is no use simply to go and sit inside a group of buildings which the guns would knock about your ears and against which the enemy can concentrate. The better plan is to break up his attack and hide your weakness by occupying well-strengthened pivots, behind whose protection you may have some freedom of movement, and so be able, if the weakness or rashness of the enemy gives opportunity, to inaugurate local counter-attacks. These, if successful in inflicting a sharp and sudden loss, will make him hesitate to deliver a decisive attack till he has found out all about you. With one company you cannot expect to achieve decisive results against any considerable body of the enemy, but must be content with keeping him in play for as long a time as possible, and an attitude of active bluff is the best means of doing so.

When you have got your plans completed, take out the company as strong as possible and complete in its proper platoons and sections—if there are too few men let one man count for two or three. Send off platoons to occupy and plan the defence of the pivots as done when practising it before. Do the same scheme on two separate occasions. The first time do not send out a skeleton enemy, so that the men may have time to look round, but for the second time send out some scouts under a subaltern, and let the platoons fall out on their positions with patrols out in front. Fix a certain hour by which you expect the arrangements to be all ready, and arrange for the enemy to advance at that time, and open fire on the patrols if they are met. When the patrols have fallen back the enemy closes in and starts sniping at the position. Then bring off a counter-attack, withdrawing some men for the purpose from pivots that are not threatened, and coming in on the flank of the attackers. In theory, of course, you should have a support or reserve available for this, but it does no harm to move men out of their trenches with the object of assuming the offensive, while the men learn the essential part of their work by all being employed on the perimeter.

Have out the company yet a third time on the same or a similar scheme, pivots and skeleton enemy as before. On this occasion, if the scheme is the same, change round the platoons to different pivots from what they occupied before, and when the arrangements for defence have been settled, leave only sentries and their groups on the pivots as look-outs, but have patrols in front. Form the remainder of the men into a support in some central position, and tell them off to occupy as alarm posts the pivots from which they were withdrawn. When the skeleton enemy attacks, reinforce the threatened part of the line by the men of the units told off for its defence, and with part, or even the whole of the rest, make a counter-attack.

It is very desirable, though unfortunately not often possible, to perform these last three practices on ground where you are at liberty to dig, and with an enemy of three or four companies instead of a few snipers.

_Night Defence._

A night attack may be delivered as a sequence to fighting by daylight, in the course of which the enemy has established himself sufficiently close to the defences held by his opponent to see clearly the way to reach the point against which he intends to lead his force. Or he may deliver an attack without previous fighting, hoping to get the better of the defenders by surprise, and basing his plans solely on the results of reconnaissance. In the latter case the attack must be preceded by a night advance, long or short, according as the defenders’ outposts and their patrols have succeeded in keeping the hostile troops at a distance or not, unless, indeed, the troops or their scouts or spies have not been in touch at all during the day in which case an attack would not be a wise proceeding, because the needful information about the ground and your forces is lacking. Such attacks as require a night advance as a preliminary are likely to be made either over open ground or along roads, for the difficulties and delays occasioned by moving troops over broken ground which is not thoroughly known are very great. But in the first case, when fighting has been going on by day, and the two forces are in close contact at nightfall, separated perhaps by only a few hundred yards, the presence of broken ground in front of the defences is no guarantee that the enemy may not consider an attack by night to have a reasonable chance of succeeding against any of the points which he has been trying to carry by daylight. It follows then that in preparing a position for defence the pivots must be ready to withstand attack by night as well as by day, and also that roads or paths leading into the position from the surrounding country should be held and defended by night, in spite of their being innocuous by daylight owing to being swept effectively by fire from the adjacent pivots. It will be admitted, I think, that fire by night is ineffectual unless at very short ranges, or when delivered by men of extraordinary skill such as the up-country Boer and the American backwoods-men were pictured to be. A European enemy will seek to bring off his attack with the bayonet. The defenders will try to foil this attack, firstly, by the use of fire at the close range, which allows it to be effective, and, secondly, by the use of the bayonet. This plainly translates itself into obstacles to keep the enemy under fire, obstacles to hamper him when at bayonet distance, and night rests to help the accuracy of the fire in certain desired directions. I have told you one good form of night rest, and there are several others, but all require some material if they are to be even approximately accurate. Failing material of any sort, tie white rags round the muzzles of the men’s rifles if you can get them. After a week in the field your men will have nothing that is not very dirty, but in a civilised country some member of the population may perhaps be found ready to oblige a soldier.

Working still on your daylight scheme show your non-commissioned officers and men how to make night obstacles in addition to those meant for daylight defence, which latter may be any distance up to one hundred yards in front of the trenches. The night obstacles, on the other hand, should be quite close, the fire obstacles as close as ten yards, the bayonet obstacles, say a narrow ditch and a wire, close under the trenches so as to make a man stumble when trying to reach the defender with his bayonet. Make or plan these arrangements round the pivots, and then practise blocking and defending paths or roads by the same methods as for pivots, but with this variation, that a parapet which can only be used for defence at night may be as high as you consider needful without paying regard to its invisibility, while those to be used by day are kept as low as possible. In a practical exercise the men to hold these night posts would have to be furnished either from your support or by thinning some of the pivots.

Yet the most carefully arranged trenches and obstacles will be of no value unless the men occupy them in time to avail themselves of their advantages. Time sufficient to allow of this, must be got by patrolling in front as for outposts, by making automatic alarms in front of the obstacles (M.F.E., 55 (12)), by having alert sentries on the defence line, and by having a good and well understood arrangement of alarm posts by which each man shall be ready to occupy at once, in silence, and without confusion, the place which has been assigned to him. Patrolling has been dealt with under “Outposts,” the alertness of your sentries will depend largely on the state of discipline to which you have brought your company, and on the commonsenseness, to coin a word, of their training. Alarm posts are practised in the same way as on outpost. In many corps it is a standing order that when in camp or bivouac, on manœuvre as well as on service, men are to fall in on their alarm posts once a day, the usual times being at retreat or on arrival in camp (F.S.R., 48 (2)), and this is done whether in Brigade (F.S.R., 47 (2)) or not. If such is the order in your battalion, adhere to it within your company when detached, if not, do it off your own bat. It does not fatigue the men and ensures attention being paid on all occasions to this important duty.

EXERCISE XVI.

HASTY EXPEDIENTS.

I.T., 93 (iii.), directs the training of the section to include rough and ready expedients so as to form a fighting front in any direction. This training is of great value, both from a disciplinary point of view, as it makes men quick to move on an order, and also from the point of view of _moral_, as men accustomed to get sudden and unexpected orders given under imaginary circumstances will be more likely to keep cool, when such orders are necessitated by the stress of actual battle, than men who have always been trained in a deliberate fashion.

Such sudden orders must in general mean one of two things, either that the enemy has got you, or you have got him, “on the hop,” if I may introduce an expression from the cricket field, and that there is every chance of the bowler, whoever he is, being badly scored off, unless he treats the batsman to something more difficult than the expensive half-volley. If you are fortunately able to find the enemy at a disadvantage, you will act against him by rifle fire alone; but, on the other hand, you may find yourself caught in a bad situation, by either artillery or rifle fire, or possibly by cavalry, who mean to use the steel. It follows then, in practising expedients, based, as they should be, on some possible situation, that you should make the central idea either offensive, as if attempting to bring your men into a position to get the best results from their fire, or defensive, as if to escape, or mitigate shell fire or rifle fire, to which you are subjected under adverse conditions.

Against artillery fire from ranges or in positions at which you cannot reply effectively with rifle fire, your action at first, at all events, must be purely defensive, i.e., all you can do, will be to escape being overwhelmed by the shell fire, and even at effective rifle range, the shields of modern field guns, enable them to engage infantry on very equal terms, so long as the infantry is in front, or not far on a flank, of the line of guns.

In the days of muzzle-loaders, it was the cavalry who possessed the power of suddenly annihilating infantry, when caught unprepared to withstand their charge. The magazine rifle has reduced this danger, but the quick-firing cannon has now equal, if not greater, powers of dealing out swift destruction to any infantry that it finds exposed in close formation, if only the range be known. At least once in the Russo-Japanese War, and again in the Turko-Bulgarian war, if we may believe the somewhat ill-authenticated reports yet to hand, have artillery wiped out of existence in a few moments several hundred unfortunate infantrymen, who were caught in the _rafâle_ fired at a range either ascertained previously, or got at the moment by good luck or good judgment. The contingency of being thus caught by artillery is evidently one that should be prepared for by infantry, as was the forming of squares in the old days, when a cavalry charge was an ever present peril. In this case of artillery fire, the conditions and the object desired are practically always the same—the infantry is in close order of some sort, and wishes to break up into a congeries of small groups, so as to isolate the effect of the burst of each shrapnel. The matter of rifle fire is different, as there are any number of ways in which you may seek either to escape the results of the enemy’s fire or attempt to use your own, and this is the proper field in which to practise expedients.

Whenever you intend to carry out some such movement to meet a supposed situation, you must let the men know exactly what you are picturing, so that they also may understand what is needed. The essence of these practices is that they should be performed without time for deliberate thought—the men must learn to think and act quickly. The most satisfactory way is to be yourself mounted, as you can then get the whole company to hear you at once, whereas, if on foot, the men who are farthest from you often lose the first part of what you say; you then have to repeat it, and the thing loses its character of surprise for the rest, who have already heard it once. Give out the situation in a loud voice, and in as few words as possible, then try and give the very order you think you would give, if the situation was a real one on service; use your own imagination, in figuring what you would say, and how you would say it. To call attention, it seems legitimate to use your whistle, as on service the men would have some warning that things were about to happen, either by the arrival of shell or bullets, the sight of the enemy, or by the signal of their own scouts. In giving the situation, if you are receiving fire, give out what kind of fire it is, the enemy’s position, if it is allowable to suppose it known, or if you are going to be on the offensive, give out where the enemy is, and what he is doing, and how you learn this, i.e., by your scouts, or by first-hand observation. For example, while the company is marching in fours along a road, you see, in imagination, two shells burst simultaneously near by, and about two hundred yards from each other, and you wisely deduce that the enemy is ranging on your company. Blow your whistle and give out “Artillery fire is opening on the company, from such and such a direction—open out to columns of sections.” If you have taught your men what to do to escape artillery fire, they will open out at the double into columns of platoons, at not less than fifty yards interval, measuring roughly at right angles to the direction of the supposed fire (I.T., 118 (3)).