Fieldfare

“ WORK WITH THE FIGHTING TROOPS
Pioneer Work on the march—i.e. making roads and removing obstacles; water supply; bridging of every sort; collecting, making, and using boats and rafts for ferrying.
Field Work on the battlefield—i.e. clearing the communications and field of fire; marking ranges; demolitions; obstacles; special earth-work (ordinary trench-work and gun-pits being made by the troops who use them) .
Searchlights in the field.
Inter-communication Work—i.e. use of telegraphs, telephones, wireless, visual signalling, kites, captive balloons. ”

“ The Base feeds the Army, binds up its wounds, and repairs its wastage. If you would get a glimpse of the feverish activities of the Base and understand what it means to the Army, you should take up your position on the bridge by the sluices that break the fall of the river into the harbour, close to the quay, where the trawlers are nudging each other at their moorings and the fishermen are shouting in the patois of the littoral amid the creaking of blocks, the screaming of winches, and the shrill challenge of the gulls. ”

“ Beyond, every hectare of the great semicircle was occupied by dense masses of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, regiment upon regiment, division upon division, corps upon corps, an innumerable multitude, motionless, as if carved out of many-colored marbles! ”

“ The better you know your trade, in war, the better chances you have to come out of the war alive. This field duty, which [Pg 36] so many of you dislike, is for the training of every officer and man in the very things he does in war time. The better every officer and man understands them the better is each fellow's chance of keeping alive in war time. Those of you who grumble ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Look around you at some of the older soldiers who've seen service, and you'll find they never kick."
"B Company fall in!" rang the order, this time from Captain Cortland. ”

“ One sees a great basin hollowed among the hills, and in the ten thousand acre plain one sees horse-men galloping, soldiers running, great trucks and tanks lumbering over the field; men digging, men throwing hand-grenades, men clambering over trench walls, stumbling over crater holes, men doing all the innumerable things that are learned by those who carry on the handicraft of war. ”

“ Thus, by training, selection, rigid test, more intensive training, the hardest of hard work, and still more training under men who had proved their worth in battle and had brought back dearly won knowledge of present day methods of warfare, the need for more, and more, and ever more officers for the rapidly expanding army was met. And in the camps and cantonments the daily drill, drill, drill, and again drill, drill, drill, of a million and a half of soldiers was constantly carried on. ”

“ It is like a brain: it gathers useful information of all kinds, studying the latest weapons and methods of warfare, the plans and equipment of the enemy, the country in which fighting is to be done. It regulates the various branches of the army so that the artillery and the infantry shall not be working at cross purposes, but shall help each other. ”

“ They preserve their ranks for at least two miles from the wood; and then gradually first one and then another company falls out, and wheeling round, descends upon some favourite field, till by degrees, spreading out like a fan, the army melts away. ”

“ The British Field Service Regulations state that ordinary agricultural districts of Western Europe, not previously traversed by troops, will support a force of twice the strength of the population for a week at a maximum. ”

“ The huge sheds of Army Ordnance are filled with everything that a soldier does not eat, all metal stores, whatever, and the men who work in them are housed in one of the longest sheds in tiers of bunks from floor to ceiling, and then there are the repairing sheds and workshops, established near by, and that is the most wonderful thing of the whole to my mind—never done before in connection with an army in the field. ”

“ Field-Engineering includes the making of military reconnaissances, temporary fortifications, and military roads; the planning and construction of military bridges; the attack and defence of military works;—in fine, all the various duties of engineer troops, either in the operations of a campaign, or in the dispositions on the battle-field. ”

“ The army’s front is like the front of a dam, vast and impregnable; but behind, that front is bolstered and strengthened and buttressed by many little lines of communication and supply, just as a dam may be buttressed on the lower side. A division may shatter itself in vain against the army’s front; a hundred men may cut one of those little lines behind. ”

“ It is convenient to add to these Establishments a statement of the Transport of each Unit or Formation, showing the guns, wagons, and carts, of all descriptions, with the drivers and animals required.
The Strength given in Establishments represents63 the total numbers of men and animals drawing rations daily in the field, and may be termed the Ration Strength. It is often summed up as so many “officers” and “other ranks” (or so many of “all ranks”) and horses. ”

“ War Reserves.—In war, the reserves increase the field armies to 400,000 men, the whole or part of the second line is called up and formed into auxiliary regiments, brigades and divisions, and in case of necessity the third line is also called upon, though usually this is only in the last resort and for home defence only. The proportion of reservists to men with the colours varies of course with the length of service. Thus in France or Germany, with two years’ service in force, half of the rank and file of a unit in war would be men recalled from civil life. ”

“ The construction work of the Forest Service should be done by a Construction Corps enlisted in that Service. Every forester should be a reservist. A regularly enlisted force of fire-fighters and tree-planters should be organized—tens of thousands of them—to fight forest fires and to fight deserts and floods by planting forests. ”

“ It matters not of what elements the body is composed—be it naval, military or civilian—be there present, commodores, generals or governors—all yield the pas to some old hunter or scout, who follows the trail like a sleuth hound, and whose word is supreme law for the nonce. ”

“ Within our circle of forts we have, in material, the whole resources of the nation in artillery, military stores, small-arms, and ammunition; and as regards the personal, we include the head-quarters of the artillery, our picked troops, the Guards, the Engineers, the largest companies of Volunteer corps in the country, and, finally, a population of 8,000,000 from which to recruit: and with such a position to defend, every man might be a soldier. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The reserves of an army are of two kinds,—those on the battle-field, and those which are intended to recruit and support the army: the latter, while organizing, may occupy important points of the theater of war, and serve even as strategic reserves; their positions will depend not only on their magnitude, but also on the nature of the frontiers and the distance from the base to the front of operations. ”

“ There are instances in which one might imagine that the birds had followed the migration of a particular light-keeper, if he has been a more careful observer than his predecessor at that station.
We trust the efforts made to enable the birds to be identified will succeed in time; the various kinds of Gulls are much confused, and the Puffin, Razorbill, and Guillemot are constantly doing duty for each other. Redwings, Thrushes, and Fieldfares are not always distinguished; while Larks, Linnets, and Finches are perhaps too closely associated in the minds of some light-keepers. ”

“ A good tactician will try to avoid a thick forest as a battlefield but with long lines of battle parts of the line will inevitably extend through forests. Hence the officers must study the principles governing woods fighting and seek to train the men so that they can play their part. ”

“ We have now completed the consideration of the expression which directly affects troops in the field. We have written the field message which brings information to commanders and which helps them to make an estimate of a situation. We have framed the field order which grows out of that estimate and which transforms the decision into action. We have viewed the operation order which is no more than a field order made to fit trench warfare. We have seen orders which are issued in connection with combat so as to govern the movement of trains. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A narrative of the experiences of a small unit in the Great War most properly should include only those facts and aspects of the struggle, which the unit learnt in the field from its own observation and adventures. ”

“ IN CIVILIZED WARFARE.—The military history of Europe and America abounds with accounts of fierce fighting in close country. In all ages woods and villages play an important part in war. They form natural magnets for troops operating in their neighbourhood. The fact of their being easily visible, and named on maps, causes them to be adopted as objectives in the Attack or as boundaries in the Defence, and in all operations troops are instinctively drawn towards them in search of cover, or to obtain water, supplies, and shelter. ”

“ It is not a continuous line of men, but there are wide spaces, perhaps miles wide, between the corps, divisions, and brigades. Hills, ravines, streams, swamps, houses, villages, bushes, a fence, rocks, wheat-fields, sunlight and shade, all must be taken into account. ”

“ Considering each male inhabitant both as a soldier and a planter, to be provided with arms and ammunition for defence as well as with utensils for cultivation, they adopted the pernicious resolution of introducing such tenures for holding lands as were most favourable to a military establishment. ”

“ A division of an army may be maneuvering in a field as divisions, brigades, regiments, battalions, companies, and platoons, and yet remain in the same field enclosed by a wall; without walking the individual men with any greater speed you may march them to another twenty miles away, and they will lie down to rest at night with no less fatigue than if they had been maneuvering in the enclosed field.
In the same manner the molecules of the wooden ball are in motion within the theater of the ball, so that they do not pass beyond its boundaries ”

“ And we are stuck with twenty million men under arms in the field—rifles and hand-grenades, lumbering tanks and a few other ridiculous toys. An organization so tremendous that it trips itself and falls flat on its face at every attempted move. ”

“ The school for officers should first cover thoroughly the above course but take more of Field Service Regulations and include the Manual of Courts Martial. Map reading should be thoroughly learned by all and the remaining time put on tactics. Beginning with minor tactics study some good problems with their solutions, then solve others to be criticised by some competent person. I have found it satisfactory to use problems in this way in connection with the drill regulations. ”

“ Moreover, the territorial army and its reserves are composed of men who are as a rule in good marching condition, for they are in the majority of cases engaged in normal times in agriculture or other industries, and physically equal to any tasks they may be called on to undertake. ”

“ The developments of science applied to war, such as railways, telegraphs, and balloons, the importance of mobility for modern armies, which entails much road-making and bridging work, and the increased demand for field works in the attack, as well as on the defensive, have greatly increased the demand for Engineers with Forces in the field. ”

“ Village greens and city squares were occupied every day by platoons of men, most of them not yet uniformed, marching and wheeling and countermarching, and being drilled in the manual of arms by officers that knew just a little more than they did, by virtue of having bought a handbook of tactics the day before, and sat up all night to study it. ”

“ All engagements in the field ought, if possible, to be avoided, except by corps raised from people [Pg 71] who in their habits resemble those in arms, or else by irregular corps raised for the purpose, apart from the routine and red-tape inseparable from regular armies. The regular forces will act as the back-bone of the expedition, but the rock and cover fighting will be done better by levies of such specially raised irregulars. ”

“ It could not but have been most useful to our officers to have been enabled to take fair measure of the system and capability of an American army, North or South; to have formed an estimate of their generals and of the value of their [129] several arms—cavalry, artillery, and infantry, each of which presented conspicuous examples of what to avoid, more especially the first, whilst the second had peculiar features worthy of study, and the third was a very wonderful illustration of the volunteer principle. ”