Night attack

“ Had the army been in a condition to sustain the fatigue of a night-march of ten or twelve miles, the plan of a night attack was unquestionably the best that could have been devised under existing circumstances. If surprised in the dark, even supposing the duke to have been on his guard, a night attack appeared to afford the only chance of getting the better of his superiority in numbers and discipline, and of rendering his cavalry and cannon, in which his chief strength lay, utterly useless. ”

“ A night attack would be much more difficult to meet. Covered by the darkness, the enemy might approach to within a few yards of the walls without being detected, if they moved quietly; without suffering much loss, if they were heard. At the walls their numbers would tell far more effectually than in daylight. With such odds in their favour, it would seem impossible to keep them out. And if once they got in, the garrison must inevitably be overwhelmed.
But the Englishmen had little fear of a night attack. It was more likely that the Tubus would move in the twilight of early morning. ”

“ A night attack may be delivered as a sequence to fighting by daylight, in the course of which the enemy has established himself sufficiently close to the defences held by his opponent to see clearly the way to reach the point against which he intends to lead his force. Or he may deliver an attack without previous fighting, hoping to get the better of the defenders by surprise, and basing his plans solely on the results of reconnaissance. ”

“ Formerly it was recommended to make assaults at early dawn, in order to have the increasing daylight for securing the results of victory; more recently night attacks have been more strongly advocated in order to diminish the losses from the fire of the defence while making the attack, and the still greater ones which follow 5 a repulse when, the fire of the supports and reserves of the attack being suspended for fear of injuring the retreating troops, the defence pours upon the latter the full close and deadly fire of all its arms. ”

“ The difficulties of a night attack are always great, but in this case they were almost entirely eliminated by the obvious care with which the officers and N.C.O.'s had made their preparations and explained the scheme of attack to their men. ”

“ A night attack is always dreaded by soldiers, and nothing is more trying to the nerves of veterans than the expectation of a conflict with an unseen foe. But our boys do not flinch; they feel the responsibility imposed upon them and resolve to do their duty. Minutes go by, and still no advance, although the weird line of sentinels has been succeeded by a line of battle. Momentarily we expect to see a sheet of flame burst from that compact mass, the components of which are indistinguishable in the fog and darkness, although hardly six rods distant. ”

“ What measures shall be taken in case of an attack in force must, of course, depend entirely upon circumstances. A night attack, intended merely as an annoyance, or 'feeler', or at most to stampede some of the cattle, or to gather information as to strength, resources, etc., is quite a different affair from one planned for the purpose of complete victory, either the destruction, dispersal or capture of the command. ”

“ Alexander saw that this time he had a formidable enemy to deal with. He had an entrenched camp constructed, as possibly useful in case of a reverse, and he consulted his generals—a course which he seldom followed—as to how an attack might be most advantageously delivered. But when one of his most experienced officers suggested an assault by night, he emphatically rejected the idea. It was, he declared, an unworthy stratagem; victory so won would be worse than defeat. A more powerful reason was probably the danger [Pg 147] of such an attempt. A night attack is always a desperate device. ”

“ Thus ended, in well-deserved failure, Victor’s night attack, of which it may suffice to say that even its initial success was only due to the gross carelessness of Low’s brigade in failing to cover their front with a proper screen of outlying pickets. To attack in the dark across rugged and difficult ground was to court disaster. ”

“ After long marches from the rear, after spending the whole night in effecting a most difficult relief under continuous fire, after a [528] day full of annoyances in organizing an uncertain line swept by shell-bursts, they were to march back, through the night in the gamut of the enemy artillery, which became increasingly active in evident knowledge of their exposure. Units had as much reason for becoming confused as they would have in a night attack. ”

“ The officers do not seem to have appreciated a night attack. It should have been made with great vigor and promptness, and completed before the enemy could have time to know our purposes. . . . The reports of Generals Jenkins and Law conflict, each apparently claiming that the other was at fault. ”

“ From the commencement of the training the instructor will not fail to continually impress upon the men that it is absolutely criminal to fire during a night attack, and that the bayonet is the only weapon the assailants can use with advantage to themselves and safety to their comrades. ”

“ If the ground is well known a night attack may be advisable. While criticising it, we have to think of the feelings of a half-defeated army about to bivouac being attacked by unknown forces in the dark. ”

“ Rifle Fire in Night Attacks.
It cannot be too strongly impressed upon all ranks that to fire during a night attack is not only useless, but to use the words of General Dragomirov, is absolutely criminal. The Regulations lay down that rifles are not to be loaded, but the magazines are to be charged and the cut-offs closed, and this order must be rigidly adhered to. Personally, I am against having the magazines charged; the proper weapon for the infantry soldier to use at night is the bayonet, and he should be taught to rely on that alone. ”

“ And universally all their company say plainly the Devil was that night among them six times.' In that gaunt and bleak Border country the traveller overtaken by night may feel a disquieting awe even in these days when the rising moon is no longer a lamp to guide enemies to the attack. Four hundred years ago, when it lay blood-stained and scarred with a thousand fights, bearing no crops to be fired, no homesteads to be sacked, we need not wonder if teams of demons swept down in the darkness and drove through and through the trembling ranks. ”

“ In the meantime, they have noticed whether we can fly by night or not. Naturally, it is not possible to aim so well at night and I wanted to attack military objects only, to attack at the front only, to fight against soldiers, not against women and children. That is why we refrained from night attacks. We did not use this method in France. We carried out no night attacks from the air. When we attacked Paris, only the munitions factories were our objectives. ”

“ The success of all operations in the dark, up to the moment of collision with the enemy at any rate, depends on the care and thoroughness with which the preparatory arrangements have been18 made, and these arrangements are just as necessary in the case of a night march, carried out at some distance from the enemy, as in that of a night attack. ”

“ Everything was on a watch-spring foundation. A loud word might be paid for by a night-attack which would involve five hundred men who needed their earned sleep, not to speak of some of them who would need their lives. ”

“ There was a dreadful stillness between the blasts, which the pitch darkness made peculiarly awful to an unfortified mind. It is for this reason that I would ever discourage night-attacks, unless you can rely on your men. ”

“ Care must also be taken in consolidating the position that the entrenchments have a general alignment towards the enemy and that they are so sited as to protect from enfilade fire.
Night Assaults.—Night Assaults are delivered by troops already deployed into attack formation. It is an established tactical principle that "when the conditions of the fire-fight are likely to be favourable, it is probably better to accept the inevitable casualties that must result from a struggle for fire supremacy, rather than adopt the undoubted hazards of a night assault." ”

“ The natural eagerness to excel had been damped, and there had insidiously crept into the minds of all the suspicion that they were badly led.
Brigadier-General Mossop had evolved what was then an entirely new and original conception of the art of war. The present command gave him an opportunity of putting into practice his pet scheme of communicating orders, in the event of night attack, by coloured fires and rockets. He had lectured his officers upon the impossibility of conveying commands accurately by word of mouth in the darkness and confusion of a night attack. ”

“ In the dark the natural tendency is to fire high, and the men must be trained to overcome it. Firing from the hip has been suggested49 as being likely to bring down the line of fire, but I have never seen it tried at night, and experiments conducted in daylight have not proved it to have any effect in that direction.
If adjoining bodies of the outposts are able to deliver an attack simultaneously against both the front and flanks of the enemy, it will probably be successful, as troops are quite as sensitive to flank attacks at night as in the day. ”

“ The Russians were 79the first to practise night attacks as a means of obviating the dreadful losses certain to result from magazine-rifle fire during the day, but they will long have cause to remember their first serious application of the nocturnal principle of modern warfare. ”

“ Every sound was transformed by over-heated imagination into a signal of attack; every shadow into the form of some stealthy Iroquois; every breath of the night breeze into the echo of an enemy's approaching step. The vast, silent solitudes surrounding the town in every direction, the wild aspect of the unreclaimed land, the gloomy appearance of the thickly wooded forest seemingly formed expressly to conceal a foe, all combined to impress the mind with that painful suspicion of unseen danger, which to many is more torturing than actual peril. ”

“ The first brunt of a night attack necessarily falls on the outposts, and unless they receive timely warning they will undoubtedly be overwhelmed; it is, therefore, a42 matter of supreme importance that the training in outpost duty should be thoroughly carried out. ”

“ But in the first case, when fighting has been going on by day, and the two forces are in close contact at nightfall, separated perhaps by only a few hundred yards, the presence of broken ground in front of the defences is no guarantee that the enemy may not consider an attack by night to have a reasonable chance of succeeding against any of the points which he has been trying to carry by daylight. ”

“ Attack followed attack, and seldom a night passed without an alarm. It was evidently the object of the enemy to wear out the defenders with constant watching. On one occasion they almost rushed the defences, and were repulsed only at the point of the bayonet. Blaisby grew grave as he saw the casualties increase. The suspense and frequent alarms began to tell their tale. The men were worn out, and although they slept whenever opportunity offered during the day, it was always with the possibility of being awakened to repel an attack. ”

“ These ancient weapons, having been improved, are likely to be largely used in future, and would be specially suitable to issue to scouts. A well-trained scout would have no difficulty in getting close up to hostile piquets, and the sudden explosion of a hand grenade could not fail to have considerable moral effect even if it did little material damage. Against columns advancing to make a night attack they would also be very useful weapons. ”

“ At night the fire is directed against the larger targets, such as communications and covers, rather than upon the guns; but the fire against the interior of the place (especially a city) is kept at about the same rate day and night. ”

“ This power of traversing the lines at will affords great opportunities not only of obtaining information, but also of harassing the enemy’s outposts. Two or three small parties of well-trained men can keep a whole section of an outpost line in such a state of nervous tension that sleep will be impossible, and the resulting fatigue will greatly diminish the efficiency52 of the troops composing it during the next day.
In night attacks selected men should be employed to surprise and disable the sentry groups on the line of advance. ”

“ In England, considerable attention has been paid to night marching and night attacks, as being the only method under favourable circumstances of crossing, unseen, the fire-swept zone now so much more extended than formerly. ”

“ I am aware that there are many prominent soldiers who will have nothing to say to night attacks and condemn them lock, stock and barrel, but they can never be eliminated from the already long list of the contingencies of warfare. Until something is mooted which will render night attacks absolutely impossible, so long will the bayonet be retained. ”

“ The stir spread, circle by circle, during the night, and before daybreak the orders had borne their fruit, and Flights—Artillery-Observing, reconnoitring and fighting-scout—were lined up on their grounds waiting the moment to go; the Night Bombers were circling in from their second and third trips of destruction on lines of communication, railways and roads, junctions and bridges, enemy troops and transport in rest or on the march, ammunition dumps and stores; in the front lines the infantry were "standing to" with everything ready and prepared to meet an attack ”