THE ARMY CORPS
The Prussian army in 1866 consisted of nine army corps. The German
army to-day has twenty, and in case of war the number would be
increased. Large forces like these are rendered manageable by grouping
them into armies of four or five corps, and dealing with the armies as
units. It is evident that the working of the armies and therefore of
the whole depends upon the ease and certainty with which the several
corps are directed. Some of the means taken to secure this end have
been already touched upon. In the first place each of the component
parts of the corps must be perfectly trained and disciplined.
Secondly, the corps must have had so much practice in working together
as a whole that it has none of the weaknesses of a "scratch team."
Thirdly, the general must be a real commander, able to read a
battle-field, to judge a situation coolly, and to decide promptly.
These qualities are secured partly by the selection[1] exercised in the
appointment of generals, partly by the frequent opportunities for
practice and testing afforded by the manoeuvres.
But it is not enough to secure a general of tactical and strategical
ability and experience. He must be protected against the danger of
being absorbed by the worries of administration.
Before a body of 30,000 men can be assembled on the ground selected for
manoeuvres or on the field of battle, a vast amount of business must be
transacted, requiring for its performance abilities of quite another
sort than those needed to handle and lead the troops in action. The
men must all be clothed and equipped. They must be properly and
regularly fed. The task of supplying an army corps with provisions is
like that of feeding a small town which, instead of remaining in its
place, moves every day to a new site ten or fifteen miles distant from
the old one. Among 30,000 men there will always be a number of sick
who require attention. If the corps should meet the enemy there may be
thousands of wounded to be tended, removed, protected, and fed. Order
must be maintained, so that a special set of functionaries is needed to
apply and enforce the laws by which the army is regulated. The numbers
of the corps can be maintained only by a constant stream of fresh men,
trained soldiers not before employed in the war, arriving from its
peace quarters.
Every one of these matters needs constant attention, or the whole
machine would get out of gear and cease to work.
The friction that inevitably arises from these complicated necessities
is diminished and to some extent overcome by the organization of
responsibility among the several bodies composing the army corps. But
the anxieties of the commanding general can never be removed. In order
to realize the magnitude and variety of his cares, the attempt may be
made to draw a rough picture of the army corps at work during a
campaign.
The corps is moving westward along one of the great Continental
high-roads. A vast forest spreading on each side for many miles
confines the troops to the actual roadway.
The cavalry division is looking out for the enemy in the open country
twenty miles in advance to the west of the forest. Parties of hussars
in every road, lane, and bypath are watching the country as they move
on across a front of eight or nine miles, followed two or three miles
behind on the main road by the rest of the division, a column two miles
long of dragoons, uhlans, and horse artillery. At the head of this
column is the lieutenant-general commanding the cavalry division, with
his staff. It is ten o'clock in the morning, and under the hot July
sun a cloud of dust envelops all but the leading squadron as horse and
guns move on at a steady trot. Now and then a fitful breeze carries
the dust towards the south and reveals for a moment the long cavalcade.
The pace has just slackened to a walk as two horsemen gallop towards
the road from the north-west. They are a young officer of hussars and
a private whose bandaged arm shows that he has been wounded. Both are
covered with dust, and their horses show signs of extreme fatigue. As
they approach the road the general and his suite move on to a pasture
field to the right to meet them, the column continuing along the road.
The lieutenant respectfully salutes and tells his story briefly. A few
questions are asked and answered. The column is halted, and during the
short rest which ensues the general dictates a note which is written by
one of his officers. The note is handed to an uhlan, who gallops off
at once along the road towards the rear. A few minutes later the
signal to mount is given, and the whole mass of horsemen and guns in a
succession of parallel columns leaves the road and trots over the
fields to the north-west, soon disappearing in a fold of the ground.
The uhlan sent back with the letter approaches after a five-mile gallop
a group of comrades lying by the roadside, with their horses tethered
near in the grass. One of the horses is saddled and bridled, and as
the messenger comes up its rider springs into the saddle. A few
sentences are exchanged as the new-comer, dismounting, hands the note
to the fresh rider, who in turn gallops off along the road towards the
rear. Three times the note thus changes hands. The fourth rider,
whose station was five miles from the western edge of the forest
region, is continually meeting troops on the march. He passes first a
few squadrons of cuirassiers, then a mile or two further infantry,
guns, more infantry, and then a string of waggons a mile long, laden
with cartridges, shell, bridging material, and appliances for the
comfort of wounded men. All this is merely the advanced guard of the
army corps.
As the rider draws nearer to the wood he finds a mile of clear road,
and then meets the general commanding the corps to whom his note is
addressed.
The hussar lieutenant had started before dawn, and after riding many
miles to the front, evading the enemy's scouting parties, had watched a
hostile cavalry division break up from its bivouac. He had been able
to identify the division and to ascertain that it was unusually strong
both in cavalry and horse artillery. On his return he had been seen by
an enemy's patrol, and had escaped capture only by running the gauntlet.
The information thus obtained is of great importance, not only to the
cavalry division, whose commander has promptly acted upon it, but to
the army corps and to the army of which it is a part. The general
commanding the army corps therefore sends an officer with the report
and a further note from himself to the army headquarters in rear, on
the east of the forest. This officer having to follow the high-road,
meets and rides past the main body of the army corps on the march.
The leading brigade of infantry, with a number of guns and ammunition
waggons, covers the road for a mile and three-quarters; then for
another mile and a half is the corps' artillery, then the whole second
division of infantry (with its cavalry regiment and its artillery)
trailing its length for four and a half miles. Then after having the
road to himself for a quarter of an hour, as he emerges from the forest
on its eastern side, the rider passes the heavy baggage, a line of
military carts and waggons conveying those requisites which the troops
need every night for comfort, and which cannot be carried in the
knapsacks. These waggons stretch for a mile and a half along the road.
Soon after passing them the rider takes a cross-road leading to the
north, just as he is meeting the foremost portion of the army corps
trains, which in their turn would cover the road for eleven or twelve
miles with their long succession of vehicles: ammunition waggons for
guns and small arms; provision stores for four days for 30,000 men; hay
and oats for the horses of cavalry, artillery, and waggons; the corps
pontoon train; the hospital carts, and a multitude of country carts
pressed into the service to enable extra stores of provisions to be
taken on, and to relieve the military waggons.
Thus from the general to the rear of the baggage proper would be nearly
twelve miles, from the rear of the baggage to the rear of the trains,
if all were on the march at the same time, another twelve miles, while
the general himself was found nearly five miles behind the front of the
advanced guard of the corps.
When the officer, late in the afternoon, rides back from the army
headquarters with a letter for the corps commander, he finds a
different scene. At a village in the middle of the forest the leading
waggons of the train are beginning to form up north and south of the
road. There is here an extensive open space, which before night will
be packed with waggons. Farther on the road is clear. The heavy
baggage has dispersed among the cross-roads, each set of waggons
seeking the quarters of its regiment. At the western edge of the
forest the troops of the army corps have taken possession of all the
villages on the road and in the neighbourhood, so that within a radius
of six miles from where the road enters the open country every farm or
cluster of buildings is tenanted by its company or battery. The
villages farthest to the west contain the advanced guard, and beyond
them still the outposts have placed picquets and sentries in all the
roads and lanes leading to the west.
The general's quarters are in a straggling village on the main road, at
the White Cross Inn. In front of the house an officer is explaining to
an old farmer that the provisions produced by the villagers are
satisfactory, that no further requisition will be made, but that for a
further supply of oats, cheese, and bacon, if delivered next morning,
payment will be made in cash. In a small parlour of the inn two
officers are busy examining the contents of half a dozen mail bags
collected from post-offices in the district.
Upstairs the general, who has just come in from the outposts, is
hearing reports. The corps intendant proposes to form a temporary
depot at the village where the trains are parked, and to send back the
requisitioned carts next morning to the railway terminus assigned to
the corps. Another officer announces that the telegraph from army
headquarters will by evening be opened as far as the same village, a
third that 150 horses are unserviceable, and that it will be two days
before fresh horses from home will reach the depot. A fourth brings a
list of the number of men who are disabled by sore feet, diarrhoea, and
sunstroke. At this moment comes the letter from army headquarters,
which instructs the general to be ready at short notice to march his
whole corps towards the north, along the front of the forest. This
involves the movement of the trains along a cross-road through the
forest, and arrangements must be made to ensure this road, which is a
bad one, being cleared of hindrances and made fit to bear the heavy
traffic.
The examination of the mail bags has yielded fresh information about
the enemy. All the officers but one are dismissed, and the general,
with his confidential secretary, is proceeding to study the new
situation thus revealed when a fresh messenger gallops up to the house
with a note to the effect that the advanced guard of the neighbouring
corps ten miles to the south is attacked by a superior force of the
enemy, and that its commander begs the general to move his corps to its
assistance, so as to be able to join in the action before noon next day.
This picture is a mere shadow of the reality.[2] It may help however
to illustrate the dual nature of the cares by which a general is
distracted. He has at the same time to perform the military functions
of command and to superintend the business of management. His duty as
a commander involves continuous attention to the enemy's movements and
to the instructions of his own chief. He must study the intentions of
the army commander to whom he is subordinate and conform to them in his
own movements against the enemy. But the mere management of his corps
requires an effort which tends to absorb his energies and make him
forget both his commander and the enemy.
A good system must as far as possible relieve the general from these
cares of management, so that he can keep his mind free to study his
instructions and watch his foe. Accordingly side by side with that
distribution of authority among the combatant units which facilitates
the exercise of the general command is an organization upon similar
principles of the administrative services. The supervision of each
branch is in the hands of an executive officer in the _entourage_ of
the general.
The corps intendant is responsible for the supplies of provisions,
stores, and money, and for their transport. The hospitals and
ambulance work are controlled by the surgeon-general. The legal
business is conducted and prepared for the general's decision by an
officer called the corps auditeur.
The strictly military functions of command fall naturally into two
classes, according as they are concerned with the direction of the
troops as pieces in the game played against the enemy, or with their
internal management. The everyday life of a soldier is to a great
extent a matter of routine. In every regiment there are at all times
guards and sentries and an officer of the day; there are patrols and
fatigue parties. These duties are undertaken by all in turn, and they
therefore need to be equitably distributed from day to day. A roll of
the regiment is therefore made every day accounting for all the
officers and men. The working of all this internal mechanism is in
every regiment arranged by the adjutant, under the authority and
supervision of the commanding officer. The brigade, the division, and
the army corps are each of them in like manner provided with an
adjutancy, which in the case of an army corps is formed by a bureau of
four officers.
[1] The thoroughness of this selection has increased in recent years,
inasmuch as most of the generals appointed have enjoyed the special
training of the staff. An incapable, of any rank is ruthlessly retired.
[2] The details of organization on which it is based are those of the
German army in the period between 1875 and 1885. The materials for a
similar account of the Prussian army corps of 1866 are not accessible.
The reader may imagine the confusion which would follow a battle,
especially a defeat which might compel the corps to retreat as best it
could through the forest, with its trains perhaps entangled in the
cross-road leading north.