Battle Studies | Page 6

men. The nervous grasp of an incomparable style models each of them, carves them with a certain harshness, communicates to them a fascinating yet unknown authority which crystallizes them in the mind, at the same time giving to them a positive form that remains true for all armies, for all past, present and future centuries. Herewith is the text of the concise and pressing questions which have not ceased to be as important to-day (1902) as they were in 1870:
"General,
"In the last century, after the improvements of the rifle and field artillery by Frederick, and the Prussian successes in war--to-day, after the improvement of the new rifle and cannon to which in part the recent victories are due--we find all thinking men in the army asking themselves the question: 'How shall we fight to-morrow?' We have no creed on the subject of combat. And the most opposing methods confuse the intelligence of military men.
"Why? A common error at the starting point. One might say that no one is willing to acknowledge that it is necessary to understand yesterday in order to know to-morrow, for the things of yesterday are nowhere plainly written. The lessons of yesterday exist solely in the memory of those who know how to remember because they have known how to see, and those individuals have never spoken. I make an appeal to one of those.
"The smallest detail, taken from an actual incident in war, is more instructive for me, a soldier, than all the Thiers and Jominis in the world. They speak, no doubt, for the heads of states and armies but they never show me what I wish to know--a battalion, a company, a squad, in action.
"Concerning a regiment, a battalion, a company, a squad, it is interesting to know: The disposition taken to meet the enemy or the order for the march toward them. What becomes of this disposition or this march order under the isolated or combined influences of accidents of the terrain and the approach of danger?
"Is this order changed or is it continued in force when approaching the enemy?
"What becomes of it upon arriving within the range of the guns, within the range of bullets?
"At what distance is a voluntary or an ordered disposition taken before starting operations for commencing fire, for charging, or both?
"How did the fight start? How about the firing? How did the men adapt themselves? (This may be learned from the results: So many bullets fired, so many men shot down--when such data are available.) How was the charge made? At what distance did the enemy flee before it? At what distance did the charge fall back before the fire or the good order and good dispositions of the enemy, or before such and such a movement of the enemy? What did it cost? What can be said about all these with reference to the enemy?
"The behavior, i.e., the order, the disorder, the shouts, the silence, the confusion, the calmness of the officers and men whether with us or with the enemy, before, during, and after the combat?
"How has the soldier been controlled and directed during the action? At what instant has he had a tendency to quit the line in order to remain behind or to rush ahead?
"At what moment, if the control were escaping from the leader's hands, has it no longer been possible to exercise it?
"At what instant has this control escaped from the battalion commander? When from the captain, the section leader, the squad leader? At what time, in short, if such a thing did take place, was there but a disordered impulse, whether to the front or to the rear carrying along pell-mell with it both the leaders and men?
"Where and when did the halt take place?
"Where and when were the leaders able to resume control of the men?
"At what moments before, during, or after the day, was the battalion roll-call, the company roll-call made? The results of these roll-calls?
"How many dead, how many wounded on the one side and on the other; the kind of wounds of the officers, non-commissioned officers, corporals, privates, etc., etc.?
"All these details, in a word, enlighten either the material or the moral side of the action, or enable it to be visualized. Possibly, a closer examination might show that they are matters infinitely more instructive to us as soldiers than all the discussions imaginable on the plans and general conduct of the campaigns of the greatest captain in the great movements of the battle field. From colonel to private we are soldiers, not generals, and it is therefore our trade that we desire to know.
"Certainly one cannot obtain all the details of the same incident. But from a series of true accounts there should emanate an ensemble of characteristic details which in themselves are very apt