SCOUTING
_26th June to 14th July_
Single Scouts preferable to Patrols—How to conceal
yourself—Skirt–Dancing a Useful Aid to evading an Enemy—The Enemy’s
Ruses for catching us—The Minutiæ of Scouting—The Matopo Hills—Positions
of the Enemy—A Typical Patrol—The Value of Solitary Scouting—Its
Importance in Modern War—The Elementary Principles of Scouting.
_14th July._—A bit of a break in the diary, not because there was
nothing doing, but just the opposite.
For one thing, we have been pretty busy in sending off three small
columns to the assistance of Mashonaland. And also, personally, I
have been fully occupied in another way: that is, in repeating my
experiences of the 26th June, and frequently by day, and very often by
night, I have been back in the Matopos, locating the enemy’s positions.
I go sometimes with one or two whites, sometimes with two or three
black companions; but what I prefer is to go with my one nigger–boy,
who can ride and spoor and can take charge of the horses while I am
climbing about the rocks to get a view.
It may seem anomalous, but it is in the very smallness of the party
that the elements of success and safety lie. A small party is less
likely to attract attention; there are fewer to extricate or to afford
a target, if we happen to get into a tight place; and I think that one
is more on the alert when one is not trusting to others to keep the
look–out.
Then we have a nice kind of enemy to deal with. Except on special
occasions, they don’t like going about in the dark, and cannot
understand anybody else doing it; and they sleep like logs, and keep
little or no look–out at night. Thus one is able to pass close through
their outposts in the dark, to reconnoitre their main positions in
the early dawn (when they light up fires to thaw away their night’s
stiffness), and then to come away by some other route than that by
which you entered.
[Illustration: SOLITARY SCOUTING
Scouting alone gave better results than reconnaisance in parties.
Accompanied by a reliable “boy,” who could keep a good look–out and take
care of the horses, one was able to do a lot of effective scouting. We
generally moved by night, and worked in the early dawn.]
So long as you are clothed, as we are in non–conspicuous colours, you
can escape detection even from their sharp eyes; but you must not move
about—directly you move, they see you, and take steps to catch you.
Half the battle in keeping yourself hidden, while yet seeing everything
yourself, is to study the colour of your background; thus, if clothed
in things that match the rocks in colour, you can boldly sit out in
front of a rock, with little risk of detection, so long as you remain
motionless; if you are hiding in the shadow alongside of a rock or
bush, take care that your form thus darkened is not silhouetted against
a light background behind you. To show even your hand on a skyline
would, of course, be fatal to your concealment.
[_P.S._—Do not wear any bright colours about you. I noticed that after
I had been on the sick list and resumed my scouting expeditions, the
enemy caught sight of me much more quickly than they used to, though
I took just as much care, and remained just as motionless; and I then
came to the conclusion that this was due to the fact that I had,
in accordance with the doctor’s advice, taken to wearing a flannel
cummerbund wound round my waist—and the only flannel at that time
procurable was of a brilliant red; and this was what caught their eye.]
Of course, anything liable to glitter or shine is fatal to concealment;
rifle, pistol, field–glasses, wrist–watch, buckles, and buttons should
be dulled, abolished, or held in such a way as not to catch the rays
of the sun by day or of the moon by night.
For efficient scouting in rocky ground, in the dry season,
indiarubber–soled shoes are essential; with these you can move in
absolute silence, and over rocks which, from their smoothness or
inclination, would be impassable with boots.
It is almost impossible to obliterate your spoor, as, even if you brush
over your footprints, the practised eye of the native tracker will read
your doings by other signs; still, it is a point not to be lost sight
of for a minute when getting into position for scouting, and a little
walking backwards, doubling on one’s tracks over rocky ground, lighting
a fire where you are not going to cook your food, or one of an hundred
similar subterfuges may often relieve you from the attentions of a
too–inquisitive enemy.
When they have found you watching them, they will not, as a rule, come
boldly at you, fearing that you are merely a lure to draw them on into
some ambuscade or trap,—for that is one of their own pet games to
play,—but they will work round to get on to the track you have made in
getting to your positions. Having found this, and satisfied themselves
that you are practically alone, their general rule is to lie in ambush
near the track, ready to catch you on your return. Naturally one never
returns by the same path. (_P.S._—Once I had to do it, later on, at
Wedzas, when there was no other way, and nearly paid the penalty.)
[Illustration: THE VALUE OF SKIRT–DANCING
When pursued by Matabele among the boulders of the Matopo country it was
of the greatest advantage to be equipped with rubber–soled shoes, and
to have that command of your feet which is acquired in the practice of
skirt–dancing.]
Sometimes they try to shoot or to catch one; but so long as one keeps
moving about, they do not seem to trust much to their marksmanship;
and I have heard them shouting to each other, “Don’t shoot at the
beast, catch him by the hands, catch him by the hands!” Then they would
come clambering over the rocks, but clambering awkwardly—for, lithe,
and active though they be, the Matabele are not good mountaineers,
especially in that part of it which Montenegrins say is the most
difficult (possibly because they themselves shine pre–eminently at it),
namely, in getting rapidly downhill. Consequently, if one is wearing
indiarubber–soled shoes (not hobnailed boots, for with them you merely
skate about the slippery boulders), it is not a difficult matter to
outpace them, provided you have the natural gift or requisite training
for “placing” your feet. I am a fair blunderer in most things, but I
was taken in hand in the days of my youth by a devotee of the art of
skirt–dancing, and never, till I was forced by dark–brown two–legged
circumstances to skip from rock to rock in the Matopos, did I fully
realise the value of what I then learned, namely, the command of the
feet.
The enemy are also full of tricks and ruses for catching us by
luring us into ambuscades. Thus they will show scouts, cattle,
women, and, at night, fires, in the hope of our coming close to
capture or investigate, and so putting ourselves in their hands. But
even if we were so simple as to be tempted, we should probably see
something of their spoor which would put us on our guard. And in this
respect the stupidity of the native is almost incredible; he gathers
his information almost entirely by spooring, and yet it is only
occasionally that he seems to remember that his own feet are all the
time writing their message to his enemies. Now and again he thinks of
it, and leaps across a path or sandy patch; but I suppose that, knowing
the hopelessness of trying effectually to conceal his trail, he has
acquired the habit of disregarding its importance.
There is naturally a strong attraction in reconnoitring, for, apart
from the fun of besting the enemy, the art of scouting is in itself as
interesting as any detective work.
It is almost impossible to describe all the little signs that go to
make up information for one when scouting. It is like reading the page
of a book. You can tell your companion—say a man who cannot read—that
such and such a thing is the case.
“How do you know?” he asks.
“Because it is written here on this page.”
“Oh! How do you make that out?”
Then you proceed to spell it out to him, letters that make words,
words that make sentences sentences that make sense. In the same
way, in scouting, the tiniest indications, such as a few grains of
displaced sand here, some bent blades of grass there, a leaf foreign
to this bit of country, a buck startled from a distant thicket, the
impress of a raindrop on a spoor, a single flash on the mountain–side,
a far–off yelp of a dog,—all are letters in the page of information
you are reading, and whose sequence and aggregate meaning, if you are
a practised reader, you grasp at once without considering them as
separate letters and spelling them out—except where the print happens
to be particularly faint. And that is what goes to make scouting the
interesting, the absorbing game that it is.
A small instance will show my meaning as to what information can be
read from trifling signs.
The other day, when out with my native scout, we came on a few
downtrodden blades of common grass; this led us on to footprints in a
sandy patch of ground. They were those of women or boys (judging from
the size) on a long journey (they wore sandals), going towards the
Matopos. Suddenly my boy gave a “How!” of surprise, and ten yards off
the track he picked up a leaf—it was the leaf of a tree that did not
grow about here, but some ten or fifteen miles away; it was damp, and
smelt of Kaffir beer. From these signs it was evident that women had
been carrying beer from the place where the trees grew towards the
Matopos (they stuff up the mouth of the beer–pots with leaves), and
they had passed this way at four in the morning (a strong breeze had
been blowing about that hour, and the leaf had evidently been blown ten
yards away). This would bring them to the Matopos about five o’clock.
The men would not delay to drink up the fresh beer, and would by this
time be very comfortable, not to say half–stupid, and the reverse of on
the _qui vive_; so that we were able to go and reconnoitre more nearly
with impunity—all on the strength of information given by bruised grass
and a leaf.
There should have been no reason for my going out to get information
in this way had we had reliable native spies or fully trained white
scouts. But we find that these friendly natives are especially useless,
as they have neither the pluck nor the energy for the work, and at
best are given to exaggerating and lying; and our white scouts, though
keen and plucky as lions, have never been trained in the necessary
intricacies of mapping and reporting. Thus, it has now fallen to my lot
to be employed on these most interesting little expeditions.
Under present conditions we, staff and special service officers, have
to turn our hand to every kind of job as occasion demands, and one man
has to do the ordinary work of half a dozen different offices. It is
as though, the personnel of a railway having been suddenly reduced by
influenza or other plague just when the bank holiday traffic was on, a
few trained staff were got from another company temporarily to work it.
We find a number of porters, station–masters, cleaners, firemen, etc.
available, but we have to put in a lot of odd work ourselves to make
the thing run; at one minute doing the traffic management, at the next
driving an engine, here superintending clearing–house business, then
acting as pointsmen, and so on.
It makes it all the more interesting, and in this way I have dropped in
for the scouting work.
The net result of our scouting to date is that we have got to know the
nature of the country and the exact positions of the six different
rebel impis in it, and of their three refuges of women and cattle. Maps
have been lithographed accordingly, and issued to all officers for
their guidance. These maps have sketches of the principal mountains to
guide the officers in finding the positions of the enemy.
The Matopo district is a tract of intricate broken country, containing
a jumble of granite–boulder mountains and bush–grown gorges, extending
for some sixty miles by twenty. It lies to the south of Buluwayo,
its nearest point being about twenty miles from that town. Along its
northern edge, in a distance of about twenty–five miles, the six
separate impis of the enemy have taken up their positions, with their
women and cattle bestowed in neighbouring gorges.
On the principle “_Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed saepe cadendo_,”
we have taken innumerable little peeps at them, and have now “marked
down” these impis and their belongings in their separate strongholds, a
result that we could never have gained had we gone in strong parties.
[Illustration: THE STRONGHOLDS IN THE MATOPOS
Our outposts were at Hope Fountain, Kami, Mabukutwane, and Fig Tree.
From these we reconnoitred, passing through the enemy’s scouts on the
north bank of the Umzingwane, and marking the positions of the impis in
the hills by their fires, tracks, etc.
A, Inugu; Imbēsa’s impi of young warriors; women; cattle.
B, Chilili; women and cattle.
C, Babyan and Priest of M’limo.
D, Babyan’s impi.
E, Sikombo’s women and cattle.
F, Inyanda’s impi.
G, Sikombo’s impi.
H, Mnyakavula’s impi.
K, Umlugulu’s impi.]
[Illustration: INUGU MOUNTAIN, A]
Commencing at the western end, near the Mangwe road is the stronghold
of the Inugu Mountain (see A in map), a very difficult place to tackle,
with its cliffs, caves, and narrow gorges. The impi occupies the
mountain, while the women and cattle are in the neighbouring Famona
valley.
Five miles N.E. of this is the Chilili valley (B), in which are women
and cattle of Babyan’s impi. This impi is located deep in the hills
near Isibula’s Kraal on the Kantol Mountain (D); while Babyan himself,
and probably the priest of the M’limo, are in a neighbouring valley at
(C).
[Illustration: CHILILI VALLEY, B]
Eighteen miles to the eastward, eight miles south of Dawson’s Store on
the Umzingwane River, we come to a bold peak (F), that is occupied by
Inyanda’s people, with a valley behind it (E), in which are Sikombo’s
women and cattle.
[Illustration: INYANDA’S, SIKOMBO’S, AND UMLUGULU’S POSITIONS
Looking south.]
A couple of miles farther west, Sikombo’s impi is camped behind a
dome–shaped mountain (G) close to the Tuli road.
On the west side of this road Umlugulu’s impi was stationed when we
first began our reconnaissance, but he moved nearer to Sikombo at (H),
with Mnyakavula close by on (K). Each impi numbered roughly between one
and two thousand men. Their outposts were among the hills along the
northern bank of the Umzingwana River. We used to pass between these by
night, arriving near the strongholds at daybreak.
The following account, taken from the _Daily Chronicle_, gives an idea
of what one meets with when out on reconnaissance with a patrol:—
“Is it the cooing of doves that wakes me from dreamland to the stern
reality of a scrubby blanket and the cold night air of the upland
veldt? A plaintive, continuous moan, moan, reminds me that I am at one
of our outpost forts beyond Buluwayo, where my bedroom is under the lee
of the sail (waggon tilt) which forms the wall of the hospital. And
through the flimsy screen there wells the moan of a man who is dying.
At last the weary wailing slowly sobs itself away, and the suffering
of another mortal is ended. He is at peace. It is only another poor
trooper gone. Three years ago he was costing his father so much a year
at Eton; he was in the eleven, too—and all for this.
“I roll myself tighter in my dew–chilled rug, and turn to dream afresh
of what a curious world I’m in. My rest is short, and time arrives for
turning out, as now the moon is rising. A curious scene it is, as here
in shadow, there in light, close–packed within the narrow circuit of
the fort, the men are lying, muffled, deeply sleeping at their posts.
It’s etiquette to move and talk as softly as we are able, and even
harsh–voiced sentries drop their challenge to a whisper when there
is no doubt of one’s identity. We give our horses a few handfuls of
mealies, while we dip our pannikins into the great black ‘billy,’ where
there’s always cocoa on the simmer for the guard. And presently we
saddle up, the six of us, and lead our horses out; and close behind us
follow, in a huddled, shivering file, the four native scouts, guarding
among them two Matabele prisoners, handcuffed wrist to wrist, who are
to be our guides.
“Down into the deep, dark kloof below the fort, where the air strikes
with an icy chill, we cross the shallow spruit, then rise and turn
along its farther bank, following a twisting, stony track that leads
down the valley. Our horses, though they purposely are left unshod,
make a prodigious clatter as they stumble adown the rough, uneven way.
From force of habit rather than from fear of listening enemies, we drop
our voices to a whisper, and this gives a feeling of alertness and
expectancy such as would find us well prepared on an emergency. But
we are many miles as yet from their extremest outposts, and, luckily
for us, these natives are the soundest of sleepers, so that one might
almost in safety pass with clattering horses within a quarter of a mile
of them.
“There must be some merit in wrapping up your head when cold,—even
at the expense of your nether limbs,—for here in Southern Africa the
natives have identically the same way as the men of Northern India
have of keeping up their warmth, and as they feel the cold increase,
so do they ‘peel’ their legs to find the wherewithal to further muffle
up their heads. The keen crispness of the air is in keeping with our
spirits, as, all awake, we trek along the hazy veldt. And what a lot
of foes one sees when one is looking out for them! Surely that’s a
man—yes—no—an upright bush! Ah, there! I saw one move. It is but the
sprig of a nearer tree deluding a too–watchful eye; the Kaffirs do not
move about as a rule alone at night, while if one is seen, you may be
sure there is a party close at hand, and so one needs to keep a very
sharp look–out. By going thus at night, we are hoping that we may slip
past the Matabele outposts stationed on the hills, and so gain the
country that we want to see beyond. Were we to attempt this feat by
day, or with a larger party, we should undoubtedly attract attention
and have to take a longish circuit. As it is, we make our way for some
ten miles along this valley, keeping off the stony path and in the
grass, so as to deaden sound as far as possible. High above on either
hand the hills loom dark against the stars, and on their summits our
enemy’s outposts, we know, are quietly sleeping.
“Now and again we cross a transverse donga or tributary watercourse
that runs into our stream, the donga sometimes rising to the dignity
of a ravine with steep and broken sides. And when we have found a
place, and safely crossed it, we turn and approach it from the other
side, so that should we happen later on to be pursued and want to get
across it in a hurry, we shall know the landmarks that should guide
us to the ‘drift.’ The stars are palpitating now and striving hard to
increase their gleam, which means that dawn is at hand. The hills along
our left (we are travelling south) loom darker now against the paling
sky. Before us, too, we see the hazy blank of the greater valley into
which our present valley runs. Suddenly there’s a pause, and all our
party halts. Look back! there, high up on a hill, beneath whose shadow
we have passed, there sparkles what looks like a ruddy star, which
glimmers, bobs, goes out, and then flares anew. It is a watch–fire,
and our foes are waking up to warm themselves and to keep their watch.
Yonder on another hill sparks up a second fire, and on beyond, another.
They are waking up, but all too late; we’ve passed them by, and now
are in their ground. Forward! We press on, and ere the day has dawned
we have emerged from out the defile into the open land beyond. This is
a wide and undulating plain, some five miles across to where it runs
up into mountain peaks, the true Matopos. We turn aside and clamber up
among some hills just as the sun is rising, until we reach the ashes
of a kraal that has been lately burned. The kraal is situated in a cup
among the hills, and from the koppies round our native scouts can keep
a good look–out in all directions. Here we call a halt for breakfast,
and after slackening girths, we go into the cattle kraal to look for
corn to give our horses. (The Kaffirs always hide their grain in pits
beneath the ground of the ‘cattle kraal’ or yard in which the oxen are
herded at night.) Many of the grain–pits have already been opened, but
still are left half–filled, and some have not been touched—and then in
one—well, we cover up the mouth with a flat stone and logs of wood. The
body of a girl lies doubled up within. A few days back a party of some
friendlies, men and women, had revisited this kraal, their home, to get
some food to take back to their temporary refuge near our fort. The
Matabele saw them, and just when they were busy drawing grain, pounced
in upon them, assegaing three,—all women,—and driving off the rest as
fast as they could go. This was but an everyday incident of outpost
life.
“And having fed our horses, each of us now got his ‘billy’ out,—a
‘billy’ (cooking–tin) is carried here by every officer and trooper
in a case upon his saddle,—and, having lit a fire, we got our coffee
boiled, and breakfast under way. Then two of us, taking with us our
two prisoners, clamber up a koppie, from whose top we hope to get a
view of the enemy’s country. There is something ludicrous in, and yet
one cannot laugh at, this miserable pair. Linked wrist to wrist, they
move as would a pair of sullen Siamese twins. The grass is prickly
hereabouts, and both want to keep to the tiny goat–track that we are
following, and so they have to sidle up like crabs, going hand in hand
along it. At length we gain the top; there is a splendid panorama,
and now that the sun is well up, the mountains out across the plain
look but a few hundred yards away, so clear is every rock, so deep
the shadows. The prisoners have no hesitation in telling us exactly
where their friends are camped upon the mountains, and where they keep
their women and their cattle. We sit and stare for half an hour, and
then agree that, having come so far without accident, we may as well
go farther, and get a nearer view of these redoubtable strongholds.
We return down to our party, and as we descend, we remember that our
native scouts and the prisoners have had a pretty long walk as it is.
They had shown us what we had come out to see, and we now proposed to
send them back.
“So, having seen them shuffling homeward, we turned our horses’ heads
towards the mountains, and continued our way across the open valley.
On and on, keeping everywhere a bright look–out against surprise.
The veldt was rolling grassy downs, all covered, sometimes sparsely,
sometimes densely, with bushes,—mostly thorns. Every open speck of
sand, every track, was keenly scrutinised for ‘spoor’ (or tracks of
men), and though there was not a soul to be seen about the veldt, the
signs of their propinquity were here too glaring to be missed.
“Leaving our horses, with the remainder of the men, well hidden behind
a rise, we two walked on on foot, each carrying a rifle with him. It
was an anxious time, as very soon the bush had shut us out of sight of
our support, but still we kept along, anxious to gain the summit of a
rounded, rocky hill, whence we could see all round, and so foresee all
danger.
“Now, on the paths before us were fresh tracks of an ox, behind whom
had walked a man with naked feet, and going a little lame on one—the
left toes dragged, he used a stick. They had passed along before
sunrise, because across the tracks there ran the spoor of guinea–fowl
heading towards their feeding–ground in yonder patch of maize. A single
ox thus driven in the night assuredly meant a pack–ox smuggling in
supplies to one of the rebel strongholds. More paths converged into
the one we followed, bringing more and more people, women’s feet and
children’s, oxen and donkeys, all fresh, and heading in the same
direction.
“Then, mounting on the rocks, we followed with our eyes the direction
of the path through thicker bush until it reached a solitary mountain.
There we could see a thin wreath of smoke curling up from the bush,
and, looking through our powerful telescope, we soon could see some
other fires high up the hillside close to some mighty caves. Dogs were
barking, cattle lowing, at the back of one particular shoulder of the
hill; and while we stared to try and distinguish figures in the rocks,
a sudden flash up near the mountain–top just caught our eye. Then,
focusing the glass upon it, soon we saw the dark brown figures of some
twenty natives squatting up about the skyline, and the frequent glint
and sparkle showed they carried guns and assegais. Nearer and nearer
we crept, gaining another koppie, whence we had a better view, and
from here we marked the line that our attacking parties ought to take,
and where to post our guns with best advantage. We might have stayed
there longer, for it was a tempting spectacle to sit and watch. But the
niggers in the hills are calling to each other, evidently suspicious,
if not actually aware of our presence—and they have eyes as strong as
telescopes. Now some crows fly startled from the bush a few hundred
yards to our right. Some one is moving there! Up springs a plover
screaming farther on—they’re on the move. We have seen all that we
want to see. To stay in one place for long when scouting is risky at
any time; to–day it looks even dangerous. So we quietly slip away—not
by the path we came—for that is the way you run into your enemy’s
ambuscades.
“Then, as we went along, a novel footprint caught our eye, and struck
us much as Friday’s must have struck old Crusoe. A deep indented
hollow of the fore part of a foot showed plainly in the grass to one
side of the path, heading as to cross it, and in the grass beyond the
other side the deep indent was seen of a heel in the earth. This was
the spoor of a man, running much in the same direction as ourselves,
yet wishing to avoid notice, because he jumped the path. Evidently a
messenger going out the way we had come, and knowing of our presence
there, and on his way to warn the outposts, through whom we had passed
in the dark, to catch us on our homeward road. Our horses now had had
their second feed, the men had had a kind of meal, and so we started on
again. We had to visit two more hills, but found them both unoccupied.
And then we turned our heads for home. Caution became more than ever
necessary now. There was only left the short afternoon of daylight, our
horses were no longer over fresh, and we had five–and–twenty miles to
go, ten of them along a defile valley. So with an advanced file sent
well ahead, and one dropped well in rear, we journeyed on, each man
keeping an ever–restless, bright look–out.
“And though we talked and chatted from time to time for many a weary
mile, you never saw your neighbour’s eyes look at you for a moment.
While talking, one had still to keep one’s eyes afield. And what a
mixture in our little band of eight! Under the similar equipment of
cocked–up Boer or cowboy hat, with ragged shirt and strong cord pants,
with cartridge–bandolier, and belt from which hung knife and pipe,
tobacco–bag and purse, all grimy and unkempt, and sunburnt to a rich,
dark brick colour, each individual was an interesting study in himself.
Here is one with _pince–nez_—(_pince–nez_ on a trooper!)—a Cambridge
man of highest education, who thought he would take to farming in
Rhodesia; but his plans are interrupted by the war, and while that
lasts he takes his place, like others, in the ranks. Beside him rides a
late A.B. seaman in the Royal Navy, a fine young fellow, full of pluck,
who will press on where devils fear to tread, but he is disappointing
as a scout, for, after having been close up to the enemy, he cannot
tell how they are posted, what their strength, or any other points
that the leader wants to know. This other man an architect, and yon a
gold–prospector—in fact, there’s a variety enough among them to suit
almost any taste.
“The sun has set and darkness has drawn on before we are well out of
the defile; but we are now beyond the rebel outposts, and getting
nearer home, so there’s nothing much to—bang! phit!—and a bullet flits
just over our heads! It came from behind; we halt and hear the clatter
of hoofs as the man who was left as rearguard comes galloping up the
road. A moment later he appears in the dusk rounding the next turn. He
no sooner sees us than he halts, dismounts, drops on one knee, takes
aim, and fires straight at us. We shout and yell, but as he loads
to fire again, we scatter, and push on along the road, and he comes
clattering after us. The explanation is that nervousness, increased
by darkness coming on, has sent the man a little off his head, and,
ludicrous though it be, it is a little unpleasant for us. None of his
comrades care to tackle him. ‘It is a pity to shoot him,’ ‘His horse is
tired and cannot catch us up,’ and ‘He’ll be all right as soon as he
has got over the first attack of fright’; and so we leave him to follow
us, keeping a respectful distance. At length the fires twinkle ahead,
and, tired and hungry, we get back to camp.
“At dawn our missing man turned up—without his horse, it had dropped
dead from fatigue. He had a wondrous tale of how he had pursued a host
of enemies. The sole reward he got was a ducking in the spruit.”
A small party such as that mentioned in this account of a scouting
expedition is often necessary, as in this case, for ensuring the safety
of the scouts in getting to and from their work through defiles and
the like, where it might happen that the way would have to be forced
past the enemy’s outposts. But once on their ground, the escort should
be carefully concealed. Their work is over for the time being, and the
essential part of the expedition, that is, the scouting by one or two
trained individuals, has commenced.
The scout must then be left with a perfectly free hand, and must not
be tied to any certain hour for return. He can only judge for himself
later on whether it is necessary to be away for two or three hours
only, or for a whole night, before he comes back to the party. And
that is one of the considerations which make me prefer to start from
home or camp without escort in the original instance, as it leaves one
altogether unfettered by considerations as to the feeding, resting,
etc., of the patrol, or of necessarily making one’s way back to the
exact spot where it would be posted.
_P.S._—As will be seen in the following chapters, the rebel impis and
their women and cattle were all found, when the troops came to attack
them later on, in the exact positions assigned to them in the sketch
map issued. Such “locating” would have been impossible had we tried to
effect it by reconnaissances of the usual kind, that is, by parties
of men. The natives would have gathered to oppose our coming, or—what
is more likely—to prevent our getting away again; instead of gently
stealing our honey bit by bit, we should have brought the whole swarm
of bees about us, and the probability is that they would then have
deserted that hive to take a new and more inaccessible one. Instead
of being able to lead the troops straight to the enemy, we should
merely have been able to say, “There is the spot where we fought them;
they seemed to come from yonder; but it looks as if they had now gone
somewhere else.” And reconnoitring parties would again have had to
follow them, with similar results, probably losing men every time, and
gaining nothing.
The value of solitary scouting does not seem to be sufficiently
realised among us nowadays. One hears but little of its employment
since the Peninsula days, when Marbot gave the English officers
unqualified praise for their clever and daring enterprise in this line.
It is not only for savage warfare that I venture to think it is so
important, but equally for modern civilised tactics. A reconnaissance
in force in these days of long–range weapons and machine–guns can have
very little chance of success, and yet for the same reasons an accurate
knowledge of the enemy’s position, strength, and movements is more than
ever necessary to the officer commanding a force. One well–trained,
capable scout can see and report on an object just as well as fifty
ordinary men of a patrol looking at the same thing. But he does so with
this advantage, that he avoids attracting the attention of the enemy,
and they do not alter their position or tactics on account of having
been observed; and he can venture where a party would never be allowed
to come, since the enemy, even if they see him, would hesitate to
disturb their piquets, etc., by opening fire on a solitary individual,
although they would have no such scruples were a reconnoitring party
there instead.
It is difficult to find in history a battle in which the victory or
defeat were not closely connected with good or deficient reconnaissance
respectively. Good preliminary reconnaissance saves premature wearing
out of men and horses through useless marches and counter–marches, and
it simplifies the commander’s difficulties, and he knows exactly when,
where, and how to dispose his force to obtain the best results.
But, as I have said above, such reconnaissance can often be carried out
the most effectually by single reconnoitrers or scouts. And a peace
training of such men is very important.
Without special training a man cannot have a thorough confidence in
himself as a scout, and without an absolute confidence in himself, it
is not of the slightest use for a man to think of going out to scout.
Development of the habits of noting details and of reasoning
inductively constitute the elements of the required training. This
can be carried out equally in the most civilised as in the wildest
countries,—although for its complete perfecting a wild country is
preferable. It is to a large extent the development of the science of
woodcraft in a man—that is, the art of noticing smallest details, and
of connecting their meaning, and thus gaining a knowledge of the ways
and doings of your quarry; the education of your “eye–for–a–country”;
and the habit of looking out on your own account. Once these have
become, from continual practice, a second nature to a man, he has but
to learn the more artificial details of what he is required to report,
and the best method of doing so, to become a full–fledged scout.
We English have the talent of woodcraft and the spirit of adventure and
independence already inborn in our blood to an extent to which no other
nationality can lay claim, and therefore among our soldiers we ought to
find the best material in the world for scouts. Were we to take this
material and rightly train it in that art whose value has been denoted
in the term “half the battle,” we ought to make up in useful men much
of our deficiency in numbers.
Houdin, the conjurer, educated the prehensibility of his son’s mind
by teaching him, in progressive lessons, to be able to recapitulate
the contents of a shop window after a single look at it; there is the
first stage of a scout’s training, viz. the habit of noticing details.
The second, “inductive reasoning,” or the putting together of this and
that detail so noticed, and deducing their correct meaning, is best
illustrated in the Memoirs of “Sherlock Holmes.”