Military operations

“ Train teams on the order of battle--enemy warfighting doctrine and the integration of outside military influences on enemy doctrine, philosophies, and ideology. Additionally, key vehicles and equipment placement in organizations and formations. ”

“ Commanders and staffs are naturally more concerned in finding out and reporting the exact situation and condition of their troops and of the enemy, in sending up reinforcements, ammunition and supplies, and recording experience for future use than in the collection of historical matter. ”

“ All other operations, such as relate to convoys, foraging-parties, skirmishes of advanced or rear guards, the attack of small posts, and any thing accomplished by a detachment or single division, may be regarded as details of war, and not included in the great operations. ”

“ The fundamental plans, the strength and composition of the forces, the training of officers and men, the collection of the necessary material of all kinds, the arrangements for supplies and munitions of all sorts—the very principles on which war strategy conducts its operations—are the fruit of the tedious work of preparation strategy. ”

“ There is perhaps no operation of war more difficult than that which this country has to undertake in the embarkation of its army for a continental campaign. It is not merely as regards its personnel; but large reserves of ammunition and stores, and the armaments and equipments of the artillery, engineers, [Pg 11] medical, commissariat, clothing, and other departments have to be embarked, and all so arranged as to be prepared for rapid landing after a long voyage, and possibly in the face of an enemy. ”

“ Supply trains and artillery are creaking through the place night and day, and we are awakened nearly every morning either by the crunching of the heavy siege pieces or the singing of large bodies of troops as they march through the streets. Every day we realise more and more the enormous scale on which the operations are being conducted. ”

“ The Armed Forces and the unified commands have achieved a remarkable degree of integration in organization and operations and remain the best-trained, best-equipped, and best-prepared fighting force in the world. ”

“ The preparation for a complicated operation against the formidable defenses in front of us included the assembling of divisions and of corps and army artillery, transport, aircraft, tanks, ambulances, the location of hospitals, and the molding together of all of the elements of a great modern army with its own railheads, supplied directly by our own Service of Supply. ”

“ Any officer who has been present at great operations of this nature will understand what it is for an army to land in narrow and widely separated creeks all its munitions of war—its shells, its cannon-shot, its heavy guns, mortars, its powder, its gun-carriages, its platforms, its fascines, gabions, sandbags, its trenching tools, and all the various matériel requisite for the siege of extensive and formidable lines of fortifications and batteries. ”

“ The objective being determined upon, the army will move toward it by one or two lines of operations, care being taken to conform to the fundamental principle laid down, and to avoid double lines, unless the character of the theater of war makes it necessary to use them, or the enemy is very inferior either in the number or the quality of his troops. ”

“ A base of operations is the portion of country from which the army obtains its reinforcements and resources, from which it starts when it takes the offensive, to which it retreats when necessary, and by which it is supported when it takes position to cover the country defensively. ”

“ It means the organizing of an army, bringing troops from distant garrisons, artillery from concentration points, arranging food depots from which provision trains can be run regularly, munition depots to feed the guns, preparation and equipment of hospitals in the field and at the bases, wounded transportation and ambulance systems, stables, forage depots and veterinary stations for the cavalry and artillery horses, repair shops for military machinery, supply depots for uniforms and equipment, and a thousand other things besides. ”

“ If two geographical lines are used, it is essential to move the great mass of the forces along the most important of them, and to occupy the secondary line by detachments having a concentric direction, if possible, with the main body.
The army, being on its way toward the objective, before arriving in presence of the enemy and giving battle, occupies daily or temporary strategic positions: the front it embraces, or that upon which the enemy may attack, is its front of operations. ”

“ Large numbers of untrained men, without organization to embody them in, add little to actual military strength.
Armies of First Line
The Army which will take the field at the outbreak of war is the Regular Army, which is organized, kept up, and trained, year by year, in peace. The War Army will be this Peace Army mobilized, or brought up to war strength and completed in every essential, by calling up reserve officers and men to fill its ranks. ”

“ Then, again, on entering on a foreign expedition, we have at once to undertake a most difficult operation in the rapid embarkation [Pg 250] of men, horses, guns, munitions, engineer, medical and commissariat stores; so that from every point of view a strong administration is required, and one in which the unrivalled experience of our officers should be fully utilised and trusted. ”

“ I. When an army awaits the attack, it takes its position and forms its line of battle according to the nature of the ground and the supposed character and strength of the enemy's forces. Such is usually the case when an army wishes to cover a siege, protect a capital, guard dépôts of provisions and military stores, or some important strategic point. The general relations of positions with strategy and engineering have already been considered ”

“ Every consideration of patriotism and duty imperiously demands the presence of every officer and soldier belonging to this command. The season of active operations is at hand. The enemy in our front is actively employed in accumulating supplies and transportation and in massing, drilling, and disciplining his troops. ”

“ It is superfluous to add that one of the great ends of strategy is to be able to assure real advantages to the army by preparing the theater of war most favorable for its operations, if they take place in its own country, by the location of fortified places, of intrenched camps, and of têtes de ponts, and by the opening of communications in the great decisive directions: these constitute not the least interesting part of the science. ”

“ In some nations the method has been to trust for defence and security to what is called a Standing Army; a number of men paid by the public, to devote themselves wholly to the military profession; while the body of the people followed their peaceable employments, without paying any attention to the art of war. ”

“ He must also inform himself exactly of the state of the military forces both on land and sea, of the number and strength of fortified places, whether they are always kept in a high state of efficiency and well supplied with ammunition, of the condition of the sea-ports, of his vessels of war, and of his arsenals, of the number of troops which he can put into the field at once, both of cavalry and of infantry, without stripping his fortresses bare of their garrisons. ”

“ But the war called for money, provisions, and supplies on a vast scale, and even more it demanded endurance, energy, and military experience on the part of the troops. In the almost entire absence of all these, you personally provided and organised everything, drilled those who had reached the age for military service, got together a force of cavalry to match the enemy's, and issued orders for the infantry to persevere in their training. ”

“ All the business of preparing for the military registration of 10,000,000 men, of providing quarters and instructors for nearly 50,000 prospective officers, for finding arms and equipment for millions of troops yet to be organized, of expanding the regular army to full war strength, of preparing and recruiting the National Guard for war was at hand. ”

“ Mail, military, aerial and railway services are assigned. The commissary lines are laid and transportation provided for. With marvelous efficiency the full fighting strength, in front and rear, is made ready and co-ordinated.
The psychological effect of mobilization is tremendous. In every household home-ties are broken. The fields are stripped of men. Industry stops. Artillery rolls through the streets, bands play. An atmosphere of apprehension settles down on the country. ”

“ This being done, he can understandingly proceed to prepare his base of operations, then to choose the most suitable zone of operations for his main efforts, and, in doing so, keep constantly before his mind the principles of the art of war relative to lines and fronts of operations. The offensive army should particularly endeavor to cut up the opposing army by skillfully selecting objective points of maneuver ”

“ We have endeavoured to present, without entering into the technical details which are being taught by the officers composing the various Allied missions, a general sketch of the conditions and principal factors of modern warfare that will be sufficient to give an idea of a modern army and its operation in the field. ”

“ They will facilitate the operations of war; the movements of troops; the transportation of cannon, of provisions and every warlike store, much to our advantage, and the disadvantage of the enemy in time of war. ”

“ That the objective of all offensive operations must be to envelop the enemy—i.e., hold him in front and attack him in flank.
2. That the fullest use must at all times be made of mechanical weapons—i.e., guns, machine-guns, trench-mortars, &c. The minimum use of infantry; to rely for success on the weight of infantry, either in attack or defence, was to ensure unnecessary casualties.
3. That troops must always be in depth; they must neither attack nor defend in one or two dense lines of men, but in a succession of well-extended lines. ”

“ The great improvements made in the art of war in modern times, in weapons, drill, discipline, etc., has made warfare more of a science and less of a trial of brute force than formerly, and hence the necessity for a body of trained officers capable of moving, directing, and bringing into effective operation all the appliances of war with which modern armies are furnished. ”

“ When the masses of an army are posted in a zone of operations, they generally occupy strategic positions. The extent of the front occupied toward the enemy is called the strategic front. The portion of the theater of war from which an enemy can probably reach this front in two or three marches is called the front of operations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We are also maintaining a small military force to consist ultimately of not more than 17,000 men, including the army, the air force, and the naval patrol, which will serve as the nucleus and rallying center of our citizen army which will gradually be built up to a strength capable of denying our shores to an invader. ”

“ And amid all the flow of troops and guns, the pitching of camps, the laying of field telegraphs, shifting of hospitals and hangars, bringing up of munitions and supplies, there is an air of calm over the whole scene that would astonish those who see the offensive only as it is concentrated in a newspaper sheet. ”

“ In estimating our strength every enlisted man and every commissioned officer present is included, no matter how employed; in bands, sick in field hospitals, hospital attendants, company cooks and all. Operating in an enemy's country, and being supplied always from a distant base, large detachments had at all times to be sent from the front, not only to guard the base of supplies and the roads to it, but all the roads leading to our flanks and rear. ”

“ To meet situations of less than general nuclear war, we continue to maintain our carrier forces, our many service units abroad, our always ready Army strategic forces and Marine Corps divisions, and the civilian components. ”

“ Of course we are all aware that new tasks of stupendous proportions are being undertaken by the country as measures for national defense, and that while a large army is being recruited and trained, a still larger army is being drawn into industrial production to equip and support the army and navy directly on the lines of defense. ”

“ Within the military organization itself, we may note the increasing assimilation of the volunteer forces to the regular army, now going to the extent of a movement for making them available abroad, so that, instead of defensive action for which they were created, they can be used for offensive action ”

“ Inspired by the intrepidity and vigilance, the fearlessness and the activity of the General,—who was constantly on the move, visiting the advanced works, pressing his reconnoissances even within the enemy’s lines, and making every available disposition of men and munitions which could conduce to the common safety,—soldiers and citizens kept brave hearts, labored incessantly and cheerfully, observed a sleepless watch upon the sea and its inlets, and stood prepared to offer stout resistance to the Spaniard. ”

“ The chief thing you could send to help the present operations would be more ammunition. For supplies already sent everyone is most grateful. It is also important that units should be kept up to strength. ”

“ In our immediate front the road and adjacent fields were filled with sections of artillery, caissons, ammunition-trains, ambulances, battery-wagons, squads of mounted men, led horses, wounded soldiers, broken wagons, stragglers, and stretcher-bearers—in fact, all that appertains to and is part of the rear of an army in action. ”