Army of occupation

“ The Corps of Engineers, the Supply and Transport Corps, and the Ordnance and the Army Medical Service, are recruited from those classes who exercise in civil life the functions which they are required to discharge in war. ”

“ Cadre Force, consisting of the General and Instructional Staff, a regiment of Artillery, small detachments of Engineers, Army Service Corps, Ordnance Corps, and of Army Medical Corps, for partially garrisoning the naval strategical bases, for technical duties, for maintenance of valuable stores and equipment, and, above all, for the instruction of the Militia and Volunteer forces during peace and for stiffening them in times of war. ”

“ To-day, generals commanding armies rather search for honour in the field of duty—duty accomplished, orders obeyed. These simple formulæ have always been the watchwords of the soldier-unit, whether that unit be a man, a platoon, a company or a regiment. Now, with the limitless increase in the size of armaments, a unit may well be an Army Corps, or even a combination of Army Corps, and the highest aim of the general officer commanding such a unit must be—as of old—fulfilment of duty, obedience to orders. ”

“ Hence arose the need of forming an army of laborers, tens of thousands in number, acting with a definite purpose and under uniform direction,—an army which demanded many provisions, much means, and great auxiliary forces. ”

“ The duties of the staff in all its various branches belong to the movements of troops, and the efficiency of an army in the field would materially depend upon the ability with which those duties are discharged. ”

“ The other, and equally important, is to secure for the file-leaders and captains of the force, and the great officers of the nation, men of proven abilities, who are pledged by their own careers to hold their followers up to their highest standard of performance and permit no lagging. With a view to these two ends the industrial army is organized. First comes the unclassified grade of common laborers, men of all work, to which all recruits during their first three years belong. ”

“ To these must be added the Royal Engineers, the Army Service Corps, the Royal Ordnance Department, the R.A.M.C., the Army Pay Corps, and other non-combatant units necessary to the domestic and general internal working of an army. To-day these various forces are increased to such an extent that no man outside the War Office can tell the strength of infantry, cavalry, and artillery ”

“ Thus, the men who remain to till the soil and man the factories are no less a part of the army that is France than the men beneath the battle flags. It must be so with us. It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is a nation. ”

“ This change in the army, itself in part the fruit of social growth, reacted on society. Regular hired troops required trained commanders; and there thus grew up a class of professional soldiers, whose existence dealt a heavy blow to the hitherto unquestioned superiority of the feudal leaders. ”

“ I have seen the three divisions of my army corps set out; the men of active service first, young men of twenty marching with firm and rapid steps without a cry, without a gesture, like the youths of old calmly going to sacrifice. ”

“ But if every private soldier of the Union could have been advanced according to his deserts, we should have had an army composed almost entirely of major generals. There were thousands upon thousands of men in the ranks, as brave, as true, as skillful, and as devoted, as many who commanded divisions and corps; and if these could not all be promoted it was only because, as I once heard a schoolboy captain demonstrate to his discontented company, “All cannot be corporals.” ”

“ The Army may be regarded, in consequence of the small number of the rank and file in each company and regiment, as little more than a nucleus around which to rally the military force of the country in case of war, and yet its services in preserving the peace of the frontiers are of a most important nature. ”

“ That which at present has not come under the supervision of the head of this army will, sooner or later, have to come under that supervision until the humblest member of the whole of the industrial force shares in the advancement of its veterans, and the beneficent result of the conquests which can never be reversed. ”

“ You can, therefore, appreciate the importance, the necessity, of every officer and noncommissioned officer doing everything that he possibly can during times of peace to qualify himself for his duties and responsibilities during times of war.
If we are going to have a good army we must have good regiments; to have good regiments we must have good battalions; to have good battalions we must have good companies—but to have good companies we must have efficient company officers and noncommissioned officers.
As stated before, everything in the life of the soldier leads to the field of battle. ”

“ But is not a corps of one hundred thousand dependents upon government, actuated by one spirit, obeying one will, and aiming at one end, more dangerous and formidable than a standing army? The standing army is separated from the mass of society, stationed in barracks or military quarters, and operates by physical force. The official corps is distributed and ramified throughout the whole country, dwelling in every city, village, and hamlet, having daily intercourse with society, and operates on public opinion. ”

“ In this way the whole movement is kept in touch, and its power can be focused upon any object. You have a similar type of organisation in the army, where the soldiers are grouped in companies of 100 with their immediate officers through whom they are kept in proper relation with the other companies in the regiment. ”

“ As they receive no pay, and as the officers are their fellow-citizens, it cannot be imagined that these troops will perform the manual exercise and military evolutions, with the exactness of soldiers who have no other occupation, and who are under all the rigour of military discipline. ”

“ There must also be an administrative officer at home, whose function will be to procure and convey to the army in the field all that it requires—food, ammunition, clothing and pay, fresh men and fresh horses to replace casualties. ”

“ Under the former category fall such matters as “routine” administration, finance, justice, recruiting, promotion of officers (though not always) , barracks and buildings generally, armament, equipment and clothing, &c., in fact all matters not directly relevant to the training of the troops for and the employment of the troops in war. In war, some of the functions of a war office are suspended, but on the other hand the work necessary for the provision of men and material to augment the army and to make good its losses is vastly increased. ”

“ For, when you come to analyze, you will find the divisions of labor and of authority quite corresponding to similar divisions in the army. Officer, "non-com" and private—each contributes his more or less important part; each is a necessary factor in the success of the enterprise. ”

“ By method and discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure. ”

“ The law specifies that the total armed force shall include the regular army, volunteer army, officers' reserve corps, enlisted reserve corps, and the National Guard of the various States, subject to call for duty within the borders of the United States. ”

“ As soon as a regiment or brigade gained a position within easy distance for a sally, it would set to work with a will, and would construct such a parapet in a single night; but I endeavored to spare the soldiers this hard labor by authorizing each division commander to organize out of the freedmen who escaped to us a pioneer corps of two hundred men, who were fed out of the regular army supplies, and I promised them ten dollars a month, under an existing act of Congress. ”

“ Je suis bien heureux de pouvoir faire rapport à Votre Majesté que le système de l’occupation militaire d’une partie de la France remplit les attentes de ceux qui l’ont adopté plus que l’on pouvait l’espérer. Les officiers et les troupes de toutes les nations se comportent envers les habitants du pays de manière à les concilier ”

“ A bulky staff implies a division of responsibility, slowness of action, and indecision, whereas a small staff implies activity and concentration of purpose. The smallness of General Grant's staff throughout the civil war forms the best model for future imitation. So of tents, officers furniture, etc., etc. In real war these should all be discarded, and an army is efficient for action and motion exactly in the inverse ratio of its impedimenta. Tents should be omitted altogether, save one to a regiment for an office, and a few for the division hospital. ”

“ Every part of the kingdom, and every man and every woman in every part of it, is called upon to make his or her contribution and to do his or her share, and our primary business is to fill the ranks. [Cheers.] There is, I find, in some quarters an apprehension that the recruiting for the new army, and the functions to be assigned to that army when it is formed and trained, may interfere with or may in some way belittle or disparage the Territorial Force. Gentlemen, believe me, no delusion can be more mischievous or more complete. ”

“ It thus appears that the institution of a general staff as one of the organs of the management of an army is based upon a true analysis applying equally to all civilized armies, and to all ordered warfare. ”

“ It will surprise those who know nothing of war, and even many military men, when I mention how many soldiers are lost, I may say, to the service, taken out of the ranks of corps to be employed as non-combatant clerks, servants or bat-men, horse-keepers or grooms, &c. The head-quarters and staff sweep off numbers in this way beyond belief. The general officers and staff of divisions and brigades, including engineer officers, staff surgeons, commissariat, &c. ”

“ We met officers in every branch of the service,—infantry, cavalry, artillery, flying corps, ordnance, army service, medical, engineers, construction, water transport, etc., and thereby obtained a splendid idea of what was going on, and how the various branches of the service worked together and viewed any given problem.
Some of these views were quite at variance with one another. For instance the artillery man looked upon the infantryman as the man who protected his guns and kept off the enemy while he killed them. ”

“ But ask any man of consideration, what time it requires to organize an army, or a corps of new recruits—if, owing to the want of a knowledge of the officers to forms of returns, accounts, etc., it will not be some time before a new corps can be as well equipt, or appear as much like soldiers, as an old one? ”

“ Soldiers behind the firing line The industrial forces of the country, men and women alike, will be a great national, a great international, service army—a notable and honored host engaged in the service of the nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of free men everywhere. ”

“ Henceforth we shall be represented in the field by an Army Corps, a noble contribution to the necessity of the Empire. When we contemplate, quite apart from their moral value, the immense material contributions which the Dominions have made to this campaign, we may reflect with irony upon the strange errors of which many brilliant men are capable. ”

“ The Army as organized must be the nucleus around which in every time of need the strength of your military power, the sure bulwark of your defense—a national militia—may be readily formed into a well-disciplined and efficient organization. ”

“ I would then style them, and cause them to act as chiefs of engineers or artillery, and which rank they should hold for the same number of years as lieut.-colonels commanding regiments, when, like them, they should become major-generals; and enabling them also to take advantage of the retirement from the country, and of the system to be proposed for the military fund, these accomplished officers, if they thought fit to remain upon the effective list, could become available for staff or any other appointments the same as other generals, and at the same period of life. ”

“ The soldiers we could chiefly depend upon, were those who originally belonged to the corps, or had come to us from many of the militia regiments, and particularly those who had been brought up to early habits of labour in our agricultural districts. I am aware that many of the men we got as volunteers from the militia, had been called out from our manufacturing population, but their habits and health had been much improved by being obliged to relinquish debilitating practices, by good feeding, and regular military exercises for a length of time before we got them. ”

“ For fighting, you require, besides the field officers, at least two Englishmen, or better still, three per company. It is, I own, possible to increase the normal complement by free borrowing from the staff corps, and from the rest of the army, but every soldier will tell you that this is a mere shift; the officers must know their men, and the men their officers. ”

“ There is no standing army, no military class, no terrible burdens of taxation. There is a general staff, a few officers to look after the details of recruiting and a number of instructors—less than two thousand men in all who are connected permanently with the army. ”