THE TRAINING OF THE CAVALRY OFFICER
“However much thou art read in theory, if thou hast no practice
thou art ignorant. He is neither a sage philosopher nor an acute
divine, but a beast of burden with a load of books. How can that
brainless head know or comprehend whether he carries on his back a
library or bundle of faggots?”--SADI, _Gulistan_, p. 273.
As each year passes it appears to be more difficult to get officers
for the cavalry, consequently any attempt to state what is the best
way to train them is always subject to the proviso of the old-time
cookery-book, “First catch your hare.” We all know the type of officer
required, but we are also aware how hard it is to get him. He has been
described over and over again, and can be seen in any cavalry regiment;
a man who combines an addiction to, and some knowledge of, field
sports, involving horses, with sufficient intelligence to pass into
Sandhurst. In order to catch this hare, mess expenses in cavalry have
been reduced to a minimum. He is given chargers by Government; they are
hired by him if used for other than military purposes, but otherwise
they are not paid for. Uniform has been made less expensive. Finally,
examinations have been relaxed, though certainly an increase of pay
has not yet been tried. And still parents and guardians hesitate to
send their sons into a service which affords a better training and
discipline of mind, body, and manners for the first few years, than is
available in any other profession.
Extravagances in the old days have frightened candidates for cavalry
commissions away. The more irresponsible press write against the
Cavalry.[67] Fewer country gentlemen can afford the requisite allowance
to their sons.[68] Expenditure all round has increased, whilst incomes,
at any rate those derived from land, have shrunk. More youngsters go
abroad to the colonies. “How hardly shall the rich man enter” the
barrack gate now, when so much more work is to be done![69] All honour
to him when he does so, and sticks to his profession. Hard work,
danger, adversity are the making of a man, and those who fear or shirk
such are not likely to make good cavalry officers, or, for the matter
of that, good citizens of the Empire. A short comparison of the life
of the cavalry officer thirty to forty years ago and nowadays may
elucidate this to some extent.
Then, as a rule, throughout the winter one parade per week, a horse
parade on Saturday, took place. The officer who could afford to do so
could hunt every day in the week as long as he went round his stables
once during the day. Only the orderly officer (and often his belt was
taken by the adjutant, or riding master, or a sergeant-major in the
winter) remained in barracks. Sometimes there appeared in orders for
Saturday: “Riding School for officers not hunting.” In the summer there
were no manœuvres, and only in very exceptional cases was there brigade
training. A regimental parade under the C.O. once a week. An adjutant’s
drill (only officers junior to the adjutant being present) once a week.
All training of men, and they were of longer service then, was done
by the adjutant and regimental drill instructors; men and horses were
handed over, theoretically ready for the ranks, to the troop officer.
To sum up, then, the pay was nominal, and the enforced work was ditto.
Nowadays young officers begin work at daybreak and go on till midday,
1 o’clock, or perhaps till 3 P.M. The squadron officer is now training
a succession of men for the Reserve. There is winter training, then
squadron training, regimental, brigade, and possibly divisional
training. The men are trained to a much higher standard, and they are
trained now by the squadron officers and not by the adjutant and his
staff.
The nation, supremely ignorant in regard to the detail of military
matters, hardly appreciates the fact (i.) that nowadays a cavalry
officer does at least twice as much work as he did formerly, and (ii.)
that the cavalry officer not only devotes his life to a patriotic idea,
but must also devote a large portion of his income, at least £200 to
£300 a year, to the same purpose.[70] (iii.) The emoluments which he
derives from the public purse are, if anything, less nowadays than a
hundred years ago.
The old type of cavalry officer, who joined the service for the
amusement to be derived from it, is scarcer; but still he is to
be found, and he faces hard work cheerfully and well. Against the
discouraging influences, and the worst of these is “worry” substituted
for “work,” he has his _esprit de corps_ and a fondness for the life,
which is an open-air one, and in many respects an interesting one.
For the first few years or so of his service an excess of book
knowledge is not required, but it is desirable that the young cavalry
officer should be able to express himself clearly in words or on
paper, and this he must gain by thinking clearly. Let us consider his
duties in those first years, and then we shall see what to teach him.
The principle has always been maintained that it is right to work
him hard when he first joins, and later he can drop into the pace of
the remainder. You must teach him to ride and to train a horse. A few
officers can do this when they join, and think they are fit to pass out
of the riding school at once. But this is not the case; they have next
to learn to teach others. Again, he must learn to shoot. He must learn
to groom and shoe a horse, and to apply simple remedies. He must learn
the few main rules of tactics, reconnaissance, and scouting. He must
learn cavalry pioneering. He must learn to use his personal weapon on
foot and horseback. All these he must learn, not merely so that he is
able to do them himself, but so that he may be able to instruct and be
an example to others. He will be taught the care of his men’s health
in barracks and on service. He may even be taught book-keeping, and he
will certainly learn something of house economy on the mess committee.
But the high-spirited youngster whom we want, and who can leave the
service when he wants to, must in some respects be treated like a blood
horse, whom we feel we can guide, but cannot stop at a single stride’s
notice, as we could a temperate old horse. We must preserve his verve
and desire to take the initiative, even if it occasionally leads him to
do wrong, when we should remember the great legal maxim, “If the heart
is right,” and also our own youthful days.
The addiction to manly, and especially to rough and dangerous, field
sports must be regarded as an immense asset towards efficiency for war.
Time spent in the chase, “the image of war,” must not be regarded as
so many hours less given to his employer by the cavalry officer. We
particularly want the hunting breed of man, because he goes into danger
for the love of it.[71] He must also be able to perform any of the
diverse duties which he may be called on to carry out on service, such
as to fortify a village, construct a pontoon, court-martial a prisoner,
and so on.
It is very desirable that he should have as much as possible
practically taught to him. A knowledge of the tactics of the other
arms should be gained thus, and we are responsible for giving the
opportunities, since this will not and cannot be learnt theoretically;
_verb. sap._ Officers, _faute de mieux_, should be sent to infantry
camps and artillery practice camps, not to gun and company drill. This
attachment to other arms is carried out by some nations, and especially
France, to a far greater extent than in our service. It is invaluable
in breaking down the watertight compartment system of training, and in
establishing a closer union of arms.
The elements of strategy should also be taught. A few good lectures by
an officer who has a taste for this will teach more than a six months’
poring over books, for which during his first three years a young
officer has little time to spare. At the same time the genuine soldier
cannot but be interested in questions of strategy. A knowledge of it
gives an entirely new aspect to what might otherwise appear rather dull
history.
Then you may say that after three years of this “our young officer is
complete and a valuable asset”?
“Far from it.”
“But what more can be asked of him? This covers the complete syllabus,
appendices, etc., etc.”
“There is one thing without which all this is as ‘that which profiteth
not.’”
“And that is?”
“He must have a strong sense of DUTY, without which he is ‘as sounding
brass or a tinkling cymbal.’”
Now man is not born with a sense of duty (though the most riotous young
hound often becomes the best in the pack); it has to be taught; it
has to be learnt practically as well as theoretically; it has to be
borne in on him by precept and example as an excellent, a noble and a
desirable thing, a thing in which to glory. What is it? The abnegation
of self, the working for the good of all, _in foro conscientiae_, and,
above all, without making difficulties.
The French _Manuel du gradé de cavalerie_, p. 12, gives the following
definition: “Le dévouement, le sentiment généreux qui pousse l’homme
à faire le sacrifice de sa vie pour le salut de la patrie et de ses
semblables.”
He must learn that the “superiority which disciplined soldiers
show over undisciplined masses is primarily the consequence of the
confidence which each has in his comrades” (Von der Goltz, _Nation in
Arms_, p. 162).
The young officer begins by having a pride in his troop, squadron,
and regiment, by trying by his own individual exertions first to make
himself fit to lead and instruct, and next to make his own unit better
than others. If he does not set the example of being better than
others, he will not render much help to the men serving under him. They
will look to him, admiring what is good in him and despising what is
bad, summing him up, weighing him in mind, if not in words, as they see
him.[72] And the eyes of a regiment see everything. He must be a very
acute dissembler who can escape the five hundred pairs of eyes which
watch him at every turn. This alone is a good training for any man.
Very much indeed naturally depends on the influences under which an
officer falls on joining a regiment.
A strict but just commanding officer, who works, but does not worry,
the men under him, makes not only a good regiment, but a regiment
which will fight well in war, whilst a slack and indulgent commanding
officer, even if just, will soon lessen a regiment’s discipline to
an extent which will render it of little value in war. In peace, to
be sure, no one takes much notice of this fact, but in war the slack
commanding officer becomes an object of detestation to all concerned,
and he invariably “lets in” every one. He is most despised by the very
men whom he tries to save from dangers. It is a curious fact in human
nature that usually they think he is doing this because he himself is
afraid.
If, however, there are altogether some four or five really good
officers of various ranks in a regiment, their influence and
peace-activity will save the regiment from much that even a slack
commanding officer can do to its detriment. All young officers fall
under their influence, and there remains a substratum of rock under the
shifting sands.
Von der Goltz says (_Nation in Arms_, p. 144): “Every regiment brings
into the field a certain character of its own.” That character depends
on its officers--often on one officer long since dead and gone. In one
regiment the shoeing was remarkably good; it transpired that a former
colonel, a martinet dead thirty years before, used to “break” the
farrier if a horse lost a shoe in the field.
With his duties and his sports, for the first two or three years in a
good regiment, the subaltern has no time to think, and if he is the
right man in the right place, enjoys himself thoroughly.
Let us now hark forrard to the full-fledged cavalry officer of three
to seven years’ service who is learning to command a squadron, and may
find himself doing so often enough. He has now time to look round,
and much depends again on the tone of the regiment and the man himself
whether he takes to his profession seriously or “soldiers” on to pass
the time pleasantly. He may aspire to be a staff officer, or a good
regimental officer, or may have no aspirations.
With the staff officer we are not concerned; what we are now
considering is, What process will render the regimental cavalry officer
of most value to the service? Constant drills and parades will not do
so; they belong to the past. To put first spit and polish and show
parades is a thing of the past in nearly all minds. But this must not
be taken to mean that drill is not necessary. Those who have led in war
drilled and undrilled men aver, with reason, that smooth, easy working
and confident leading only exist where the men have been carefully
drilled. A good deal can be done at a slow, go-as-you-please pace with
semi-drilled intelligent men, but they have no chance, especially in
cases of emergency, against men of lower intelligence, well trained by
the officer who leads them. Drill in the evolutions necessary in the
field is consequently essential to a high standard of fighting ability.
To drill well largely resolves itself into the power to observe
and correct faults in such a way that the impression remains. The
experienced drill and the coach of a racing eight know by experience
that, owing to the imperfections of man’s nature, they are bound to
meet with certain faults which will have an unsteadying and deterrent
effect on the squadron’s or boat’s progress. They address themselves
to the correction of these characteristic faults, explaining their
reasons, often affecting decorative, if forceful epithets, similes, and
expressions, just as a preacher or orator does, in order to give point
and pungency to his discourse and to make it remembered. Von Schmidt in
his _Cavalry Instructions_ usually details at the end of each paragraph
bearing on an evolution or practice their characteristic faults, and
the cause, effect, and cure of these. Primed with a knowledge of these,
and possessed of some small power of explanation, the squadron or troop
officer will soon make an astonishing difference in his command’s power
of evolution. Without them, he too often gropes in the dark.
What we would suggest, then, is to encourage this officer (i.)
constantly to practise the situations in which he and his men may find
themselves in war, and (ii.) to train and exercise his command so that
it is difficult for circumstances to arise of which they have not had
some previous experience;[73] (iii.) to practise giving short verbal
orders in the saddle in proper form (_vide_ _F.S.R._, Part I.) till
it becomes a second nature, both in himself to give orders thus, and
his command to place those orders in their mind and act upon them in a
logical sequence; (iv.) to become by practice a person of resource, and
to train his men so that they become “handy men,” _e.g._ able to get a
waggon up and down a steep slope, or improvise rafts, etc., or to place
a farm in a state of defence, and to do so quietly and in an orderly
manner; (v.) to be himself a capable master of his weapons, and able to
instruct intelligently; (vi.) to know the situations in which a battle
on a large scale may place him, and to be able to foresee what are the
probable opportunities of which he may have to take advantage, and so
to train his men that they will act with intelligence in such cases.[74]
Here we must pause whilst we make it plain that the really stupid man,
who has no imagination, makes a very bad officer for training purposes,
because in peace-time he is quite unable to picture to himself what
does happen in an action. The same unfortunate trait makes him a bad
leader in war, because he is unable to picture what the enemy will
most probably do in certain cases. In the cavalry this type of officer
has no place, even in the lower ranks, because the cavalry officer so
frequently has to act by himself, and then the fate of an army may be
dependent on what he sees, or on the information which he sifts and
sends into the chief. As an infantry officer of the same rank he is
more under the eyes of a commanding officer.
What, then, are the conclusions at which we arrive?
1. That we draw on a class who have not been used to much brain work.
2. That the young officer should be for choice country bred, fond of
sport, a “trier,” and must have some private income.
3. That now he works much harder than he used to do, at first
especially; but the work is, or ought to be, congenial work. His pay
is the same as when he did little or no work in peace-time. So he is a
practical patriot.
4. That his work consists largely of teaching others.
5. That many of the attributes which are most desirable, can be tested
by no written examination.
6. That to recognize and do his duty is one of these. As regards this,
much depends on his surroundings in the regiment which he joins.
7. That a cavalry officer as he gets up to three to seven years’
service, though he requires little book learning, requires fairly wide
practical knowledge, also considerable powers of imagination; without
these, his abilities for training his men and for leading them in war
are likely to be defective.
8. Also that the main point which he must regard in all his training is
not only, “Is this a situation in which my command may find itself in
war?” but also, “Is there any situation in war in which my command is
not practised?”