However, the military education which we have received, the spirit of the times, clouds with doubt our mind regarding this method of fighting by skirmishers. We accept it regretfully. Our personal experience being incomplete, insufficient, we content ourselves with the supposition that gives us satisfaction. The war of skirmishers, no matter how thoroughly it has been proven out, is accepted by constraint, because we are forced by circ.u.mstance to engage our troops by degrees, in spite of ourselves, often unconsciously. But, be it understood, to-day a successive engagement is necessary in war.
However, let us not have illusions as to the efficacy of the fire of skirmishers. In spite of the use of accurate and long range weapons, in spite of all training that can be given the soldier, this fire never has more than a relative effect, which should not be exaggerated.
The fire of skirmishers is generally against skirmishers. A body of troops indeed does not let itself be fired on by skirmishers without returning a similar fire. And it is absurd to expect skirmishers to direct their fire on a body protected by skirmishers. To demand of troops firing individually, almost abandoned to themselves, that they do not answer the shots directed at them, by near skirmishers, but aim at a distant body, which is not harming them, is to ask an impossible unselfishness.
As skirmishers men are very scattered. To watch the adjustment of ranges is difficult. Men are practically left alone. Those who remain cool may try to adjust their range, but it is first necessary to see where your shots fall, then, if the terrain permits this and it will rarely do so, to distinguish them from shots fired at the same time by your neighbors. Also these men will be more disturbed, will fire faster and less accurately, as the fight is more bitter, the enemy stauncher; and perturbation is more contagious than coolness.
The target is a line of skirmishers, a target offering so little breadth and above all depth, that outside of point blank fire, an exact knowledge of the range is necessary to secure effect. This is impossible, for the range varies at each instant with the movements of the skirmishers. [49]
Thus, with skirmishers against skirmishers, there are scattered shots at scattered targets. Our fire of skirmishers, marching, on the target range, proves this, although each man knows exactly the range and has time and the coolness to set his sights. It is impossible for skirmishers in movement to set sights beyond four hundred meters, and this is pretty extreme, even though the weapon is actually accurate beyond this.
Also, a shot is born. There are men, above all in officer instructors at firing schools, who from poor shots become excellent shots after years of practice. But it is impossible to give all the soldiers such an education without an enormous consumption of ammunition and without abandoning all other work. And then there would be no results with half of them.
To sum up, we find that fire is effective only at point blank. Even in our last wars there have been very few circ.u.mstances in which men who were favored with coolness and under able leadership have furnished exceptions. With these exceptions noted, we can say that accurate and long range weapons have not given any real effect at a range greater than point blank.
There has been put forward, as proof of the efficacy of accurate weapons the terrible and decisive results obtained by the British in India, with the Enfield rifle. But these results have been obtained because the British faced comparatively poorly armed enemies. They had then the security, the confidence, the ensuing coolness necessary for the use of accurate weapons. These conditions are completely changed when one faces an enemy equally well armed, who consequently, gives as good as he gets.
9. Absolute Impossibility of Fire at Command
Let us return to fire at command, which there is a tendency to-day to have troops execute in line.
Can regular and efficient fire be hoped for from troops in line? Ought it to be hoped for?
No, for man cannot be made over, and neither can the line.
Even on the range or on the maneuver field what does this fire amount to?
In fire at command, on the range, all the men in the two ranks come to the firing position simultaneously, everybody is perfectly quiet. Men in the front rank consequently are not deranged by their neighbors.
Men in the second rank are in the same situation. The first rank being set and motionless they can aim through the openings without more annoyance than those in the first rank.
Fire being executed at command, simultaneously, no weapon is deranged at the moment of firing by the movements of the men. All conditions are entirely favorable to this kind of fire. Also as the fire is ordered with skill and coolness by an officer who has perfectly aligned his men (a thing rare even on the drill ground) it gives percentage results greater than that of fire at will executed with the minutest precautions, results that are sometimes astonishing.
But fire at command, from the extreme coolness that it demands of all, of the officer certainly more than of the soldier, is impracticable before the enemy except under exceptional circ.u.mstances of picked officers, picked men, ground, distance, safety, etc. Even in maneuvers its execution is farcical. There is not an organization in which the soldiers do not hurry the command to fire in that the officers are so afraid that their men will antic.i.p.ate the command that they give it as rapidly as possible, while the pieces are hardly in firing position, often while they are still in motion.
The prescription that the command to fire be not given until about three seconds after coming to the firing position may give good results in the face of range targets. But it is not wise to believe that men will wait thus for long in the face of the enemy.
It is useless to speak of the use of the sight-leaf before the enemy, in fire attempted by the same officers and men who are so utterly lacking, even on the maneuver ground. We have seen a firing instructor, an officer of coolness and a.s.surance, who on the range had fired trial shots every day for a month, after this month of daily practice fire four trial shots at a six hundred meter range with the sight leaf at point blank.
Let us not pay too much attention to those who in military matters base everything on the weapon and unhesitating a.s.sume that the man serving it will adopt the usage provided and ordered in their regulations. The fighting man is flesh and blood. He is both body and soul; and strong as the soul may often be it cannot so dominate the body that there is no revolt of the flesh, no mental disturbance, in the face of destruction. Let us learn to distrust mathematics and material dynamics as applied to battle principles. We shall learn to beware of the illusions drawn from the range and the maneuver field.
There experience is with the calm, settled, unfatigued, attentive, obedient soldier, with an intelligent and tractable man instrument in short. And not with the nervous, easily swayed, moved, troubled, distrait, excited, restless being, not even under self-control, who is the fighting man from general to private. There are strong men, exceptions, but they are rare.
These illusions nevertheless, stubborn and persistent, always repair the next day the most damaging injuries inflicted on them by reality.
Their least dangerous effect is to lead to prescribing the impracticable, as if ordering the impracticable were not really an attack on discipline, and did not result in disconcerting officers and men by the unexpected and by surprise at the contrast between battle and the theories of peace-time training.
Battle of course always furnishes surprises. But it furnishes less in proportion as good sense and the recognition of the truth have had their effect on the training of the fighting man.
Man in the ma.s.s, in a disciplined body organized for combat, is invincible before an undisciplined body. But against a similarly disciplined body he reverts to the primitive man who flees before a force that is proved stronger, or that he feels stronger. The heart of the soldier is always the human heart. Discipline holds enemies face to face a little longer, but the instinct of self-preservation maintains its empire and with it the sense of fear.
Fear!
There are chiefs, there are soldiers who know no fear, but they are of rare temper. The ma.s.s trembles, for the flesh cannot be suppressed.
And this trembling must be taken into account in all organization, discipline, formation, maneuver, movement, methods of action. For in all of these the soldier tends to be upset, to be deceived, to under-rate himself and to exaggerate the offensive spirit of the enemy.
On the field of battle death is in the air, blind and invisible, making his presence known by fearful whistlings that make heads duck.
During this strain the recruit hunches up, closes in, seeking aid by an instinctive unformulated reasoning. He figures that the more there are to face a danger the greater each one"s chances of escaping. But he soon sees that flesh attracts lead. Then, possessed by terror, inevitably he retreats before the fire, or "he escapes by advancing,"
in the picturesque and profound words of General Burbaki.
The soldier escapes from his officer, we say. Yes, he escapes! But is it not evident that he escapes because up to this moment n.o.body has bothered about his character, his temperament, the impressionable and exciteable nature of man? In prescribed methods of fighting he has always been held to impossibilities. The same thing is done to-day.
To-morrow, as yesterday, he will escape.
There is of course a time when all the soldiers escape, either forward, or to the rear. But the organization, the combat methods should have no other object than to delay as long as possible this crisis. Yet they hasten it.
All our officers fear, quite justifiably from their experience, that the soldier will too rapidly use his cartridges in the face of the enemy. This serious matter is certainly worthy of attention. How to stop this useless and dangerous waste of ammunition is the question.
Our soldiers show little coolness. Once in danger they fire, fire to calm themselves, to pa.s.s the time; they cannot be stopped.
There are some people you cannot embarra.s.s. With the best faith in the world they say, "What is this? You are troubled about stopping the fire of your soldiers? That is not difficult. You find that they show little coolness, and shoot despite their officers, in spite even of themselves? All right, require of them and their officers methods of fire that demand extremes of coolness, calm and a.s.surance, even in maneuver. They cannot give a little? Ask a lot and you will get it.
There you have a combat method n.o.body has ever heard of, simple, beautiful, and terrible."
This is indeed a fine theory. It would make the wily Frederick who surely did not believe in these maneuvers, laugh until he cried. [50]
This is to escape from a difficulty by a means always recognized as impossible, and more impossible than ever to-day.
Fearing that the soldier will escape from command, can not better means be found to hold him than to require of him and his officer, impracticable fire? This, ordered and not executed by the soldiers, and even by the officers, is an attack on the discipline of the unit.
"Never order the impossible," says discipline, "for the impossible becomes then a disobedience."
How many requisites there are to make fire at command possible, conditions among the soldiers, among their officers. Perfect these conditions, they say. All right, perfect their training, their discipline, etc.; but to obtain fire at command it is necessary to perfect their nerves, their physical force, their moral force, to make bronze images of them, to do away with excitement, with the trembling of the flesh. Can any one do this?
Frederick"s soldiers were brought, by blows of the baton, to a terrible state of discipline. Yet their fire was fire at will.
Discipline had reached its limits.
Man in battle, let us repeat again, is a being to whom the instinct of self-preservation at times dominates everything else. Discipline, whose purpose is to dominate this instinct by a feeling of greater terror, can not wholly achieve it. Discipline goes so far and no farther.
We cannot deny the existence of extraordinary instances when discipline and devotion have raised man above himself. But these examples are extraordinary, rare. They are admired as exceptions, and the exception proves the rule.
As to perfection, consider the Spartans. If man was ever perfected for war it was he; and yet he has been beaten, and fled.
In spite of training, moral and physical force has limits. The Spartans, who should have stayed to the last man on the battle field, fled.
The British with their phlegmatic coolness and their terrible rolling fire, the Russians, with that inertia that is called their tenacity, have given way before attack. The German has given way, he who on account of his subordination and stability has been called excellent war material.
Again an objection is raised. Perhaps with recruits the method may be impracticable. But with veterans--But with whom is war commenced?
Methods are devised precisely for young and inexperienced troops.
They ask, also, if the Prussians used this method of fire successfully in the last war, why should not we do as well? Supposing that the Prussians actually did use it, and this is far from being proved, it does not follow that it is practicable for us. This mania for borrowing German tactics is not new, although it has always been properly protested against. Marshal Luchner said, "No matter how much they torment their men, fortunately they will never make them Prussians." Later de Gouvion-Saint-Cyr said, "The men are drilled in various exercises believed necessary to fit them for war, but there is no question of adopting exercises to suit the French military genius, the French character and temperament. It has not been thought necessary to take this into account; it has been easier to borrow German methods."
To follow preconceived tactics is more the part of the phlegmatic German than it is ours. The Germans obey well enough, but the point is that they try to follow tactics which are contrary to nature. The Frenchman cannot. More spontaneous, more exciteable and impressionable, less calm and obedient, he has in our last wars promptly and completely violated both the letter and the spirit of the regulations. "The German," said a Prussian officer, "has sentiments of duty and obedience. He submits to severe discipline. He is full of devotion, although not animated by a lively mind. Easy by nature, rather heavy than active, intellectually calm, reflective, without dash or divine fire, wishing but not mad to conquer, obeying calmly and conscientiously, but mechanically and without enthusiasm, fighting with a resigned valor, with heroism, he may let himself be sacrificed uselessly, but he sells his life dearly. Without warlike tendencies, not bellicose, unambitious, he is yet excellent war material on account of his subordination and stability. What must be inculcated in him is a will of his own, a personal impulse to send him forward."
According to this unflattering portrait, which we believe a little extreme, even if by a compatriot, it is possible that the Germans can be handled in tactics impossible with French. However, did they actually use these tactics? Remember the urgent warning of Blucher to his brigade commanders, not to let bayonet attacks break down into fusillades. Note the article in the present Prussian firing regulations, which prescribes trial shots before each fire delivered, "so as to dissipate the kind of excitement that possesses the soldier when his drill has been interrupted for some time."