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 
 
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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. 
 
 Wyman & Scms Ltd., Priniers, London and ReoiUng 
 
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