Company Drill

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In our last number but one we called the especial attention of volunteers to the remarks of Colonel M’Murdo on company drill. We now recur to the subject as we think it is high time that its importance should be fully appreciated by every rifleman in the country.

The other day we took occasion to witness the battalion drill of a volunteer corps, which, on the whole, stands decidedly above the average of the force of this district in proportionate number of effectives, good attendance at drill, attention to duty on the part of officers, and, consequently, in general efficiency. To our great surprise, we found that there was very little progress beyond what we had seen this same corps perform some six months ago. The battalion movements came off slightly better than at the close of last season, but the manual and platoon were gone through in a rather slovenly manner. Even in shouldering arms, every man looked as if acting without any consciousness that he was to act in concert with some 400 men right, left, and in rear of him. In making ready and presenting, every rifle seemed to take a pride in coming to the proper position independently of its neighbours; and, altogether, a quiet disregard of the one—two, or one—two— three, by which the execution of each word of command is to be characterised, appeared the general order of the day.

In one corner of the barrack-yard in which this took place, we happened to see a squad of a line regiment fall in for drill under a sergeant. They were, we suppose, the awkward squad of the battalion, ordered for extra drill. What a difference! The men stood like statues; not a limb moved till the word was given, and then those limbs only moved which had to execute the command—the remainder of the body remained perfectly still.

When the command struck their ears, every arm moved simultaneously, every motion into which the execution of the command was divided was perfectly distinct, and was gone through at the same moment by every man. The whole squad, in fact, moved like one man. Those gentlemen who are so fond of boasting that the volunteers can do all their work quite as well as the line, would do well to go and study the line a little; they would then soon find out that between the best volunteers and the worst drilled line regiment there is still an enormous difference.

But what, it will be said, is the use of such perfection of drill to the volunteers? They are not intended to have it, they cannot be expected to have it, and they will not require it. No doubt this is quite correct. The very attempt to make volunteers emulate the line in perfection of drill would be the ruin of the movement. But drilled the volunteers must be, and so far drilled that common simultaneous action shall become quite mechanical, quite a matter of course with them; so far, that all their movements and motions can be gone through steadily, simultaneously, by all, and with a certain degree of military bearing. In all these points the line will remain the model which they will have to look up to, and company drill will have to be the means by which the required efficiency can alone be obtained.

Take the manual and platoon. That on any given word of command, the whole of the rifles in the battalion should be moved simultaneously, and in the manner prescribed, is not a mere matter of appearance. We must suppose that all volunteer corps are now so far advanced that the men can go through this exercise without positively hurting each other, or knocking their rifles together. But even beyond this, a mere slovenly way of going through the different motions has, undoubtedly, a great moral effect upon the battalion under drill. Why should any one man be particularly attentive to the command, if he has blunders committed right and left, and rifles coming up or down in a straggling way long after he has performed the command? What confidence, before the enemy, can a man on the left wing have in his comrades on the right wing, unless he knows they will load, make ready, and present together with him on the command being given, and will be ready again, as soon as he himself shall be, either to fire again or to charge? Moreover, every experienced soldier will tell you that the habit of such simultaneous action — the certainty of the officer’s command being responded to by those two or three round distinct sounds, denoting that every man acts at the same time as his comrades—has a very great moral influence on the battalion. It brings home to the senses of the men the fact that they really are like one body; that they are perfectly in the hand of the commander, and that he can employ their strength at the shortest notice and with the greatest effect.

Again, take the movements of large or small bodies of troops. Unless every man is so far confirmed in his drill that every movement he may be required to go through is done almost mechanically on the word being given, a battalion will never move steadily. A soldier who has still to ransack his memory or his intellect to make out what kind of thing the command given asks him to do, will do more harm than good in a battalion. So will a man who, either from habit or some other cause, is apt to think that certain movements will necessarily be followed by others; he will often receive a command quite different to what he expected, and then he will very probably blunder. Now, these defects can only be overcome by constant company drill. There the officer in command can put the small body under his orders, in a quarter of an hour’s time, through so many different movements and formations, and can vary the order of passing from one to the other to such an extent, that the men, never knowing what is to come, will soon learn to be attentive and to respond quite mechanically to the word of command. In a battalion, all movements are necessarily much slower, and therefore on the whole less instructive to the men, though more so to the officers; but it is an acknowledged fact that men, perfect in their company drill, will, under good officers, learn their battalion movements perfectly in a very short time. The more the men are tossed about in company movements by a competent quick-eyed instructor, the steadier will they afterwards be in the battalion. And it requires no pointing out how important perfect steadiness in a battalion is: a volley may be given rather irregularly, and still take effect; but a battalion thrown into disorder in forming square, deploying, wheeling in column, &c, may at any time be hopelessly lost if in front of an active and intelligent enemy.

Then there is the important point of distances. It is an indispensable fact that no volunteer officer or soldier has an eye for distances. In marching in open or quarter distance column, in deploying, every battalion drill shows how difficult to the officers it is to keep the correct distance. In re-forming column from square, the men of the centre sections almost always lose their distance; they step back too far or too little, and the wheel backwards is consequently done in a very irregular way. The officers can learn to keep distance in the battalion only, though company movements in sub-divisions and sections will tend to improve them; but the men, to learn how to re-form column from square (a movement of the greatest importance before the enemy), will have to practise it in their companies.

There is another point to be considered, and that is the military bearing of the men. We do not only mean the erect, proud, and yet easy position of each individual man under arms, but also that quick simultaneous action in company and battalion movements which is as necessary to a body on the move as to a battalion handling its rifles at a stand-still. Volunteers appear quite satisfied if they manage, somehow or other, to get into their proper places in something like the prescribed time, including, generally, a few seconds of respite. No doubt this is the principal point, and in the first year of the existence of a volunteer corps anybody would be perfectly satisfied with it. But there is for every move a certain fixed mode of doing it, prescribed by the regulations, and this is supposed to be that mode by which the object in view can be attained in the shortest possible time, with the greatest convenience to all concerned, and, consequently, with the highest degree of order.

The consequence is, that every deviation from the prescribed mode is necessarily connected by a slight degree of disorder and want of regularity, which not only makes an impression of slovenliness upon the beholder, but also implies a certain loss of time, and makes the men think that the detail of the regulations is mere humbug. Let any man see a body of volunteers advance by double files from the centre and front, form company, or go through any other change of formation, and he will at once see what kind of negligent habits we are attaining. But such faults, which may be suffered in an old line regiment, which has a good sub-stratum of solid drill, and will be made to go through the same drill again and shake off its easy ways, are far more dangerous in a body of volunteers, where that solid foundation of detail-drill is unavoidably wanting.

Their slovenly habits, which have to be tolerated in the beginning, as the men must be hurried through all elementary work, will increase and multiply unless regularly and assiduously checked by strict company drill. It will be impossible to drive such habits out entirely, but at all events they may be, and ought to be, so far checked as not to gain ground. As to the individual bearing of the men, that we suppose will gradually improve, though we very much doubt whether that peculiar waving of a line, marking time, seen in all volunteer drills, will ever disappear. We allude to a certain habit of moving the upper part of the body in marking time, which appears common to all volunteers we have yet seen. No sooner goes up the right foot, than up goes the right shoulder and down goes the left; with the left foot, the left shoulder moves upwards, and thus the whole line waves to and fro like a ripe corn-field under a mild zephyr, but not very much like a body of sturdy soldiers prepared to meet the enemy.

We believe we have said enough to call attention to the subject. Every volunteer who has the movement at heart, will agree with us as to the necessity of regular and diligent company drill; for, let us repeat it, the volunteer force has been unavoidably neglected in its elementary education, and it requires great attention and a deal of work to make up in some manner for this defect.