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Title: The French Army From Within
Author: Anonymous
Release Date: October 31, 2016 [EBook #53417]
Language: English
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THE FRENCH ARMY FROM WITHIN
THE FRENCH ARMY
FROM WITHIN
BY
"EX-TROOPER"
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1914
By GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FRENCH ARMY 7
CHAPTER II
THE FRENCH SOLDIER AT HOME 18
CHAPTER III
THE HIGHER RANKS 27
CHAPTER IV
INFANTRY 44
CHAPTER V
OFF DUTY 51
CHAPTER VI
CAVALRY 60
CHAPTER VII
ARTILLERY 74
CHAPTER VIII
IN CAMP AND ON THE MARCH 85
CHAPTER IX
MANOEUVRES 104
CHAPTER X
WITH THE CAVALRY SCOUTS 119
CHAPTER XI
INTERNAL ECONOMY 133
CHAPTER XII
SOME INCIDENTALS 144
CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT GARRISON TOWNS OF FRANCE 156
CHAPTER XIV
SOME EFFECTS. ACTIVE SERVICE 171
CHAPTER I
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FRENCH ARMY
Before proceeding to the consideration of life as lived in the
French Army, it would be well to have a clear understanding of the
constitution of the Army of France, the parts of which it is composed,
and the conditions under which it is organised and controlled. The
British Army is a growth of years, and even of centuries, but with
the changes of government that France has undergone since 1815 the
constitution of the Army has undergone radical changes, and the French
Army of to-day dates back only to 1871--that is, as far as form and
composition are in question.
One of the principles under which the present Republic of France is
constituted is that "every citizen is a soldier." This principle has
been more and more enforced with the growth and consolidation of the
Republic since 1870, and successive laws passed with reference to the
Army have been framed with ever-increasing recognition of the need for
military efficiency. By the first law with regard to the constitution
of the Army, that of July 27th, 1872, every young man, at the age of
twenty, so long as he was physically fit, owed to his country five
years of active service, five years in the Territorial Army of France,
and six years in what was known as the Territorial reserve. On this law
the constitution and organisation of the Army were first based.
The law of July 15th, 1889, reduced the period of service to three
years in the active Army, but the principle remained the same. A
further modification in the length of service was brought about by
the law of 1905, which reduced the period of service with the active
Army to two years, and abolished certain classes of citizens who were
excused from military service for various reasons. Up to the passing
of this law, bread-winners of a family had been exempt, but by it they
were called on to serve, while the state pensioned their dependents
during their period of service; the "voluntariat," consisting of men
who paid a certain amount to the state in order to serve for a period
of one year only, was abolished--"every citizen a soldier" was made
more of a reality than ever, for the nation realised that it must keep
pace with the neighbour on the east, who was steadily increasing its
military resources.
From the age of twenty to that of forty-five, every Frenchman
physically capable of military service is a soldier. Each commune
complies yearly a list of its young men who have attained the age of
twenty during the preceding twelve months. All these young men are
examined by the _conseil de révision cantonale_, a revising body of
military and civilian officials, by whom the men not physically fit
are at once rejected, and men who may possibly attain to the standard
of fitness required are put back for examination after a sufficient
interval has elapsed to admit of their development in height, weight,
or other requirement in which they are deficient. Five feet and half
an inch is the minimum standard of height, though men of exceptional
physical quality are passed into the infantry below this height.
The _loi des cadres_ of 1907 supplemented the law of 1905 without
materially changing it. At the present time about 200,000 men are
enrolled every year, this number including the men who have been put
back from previous examination by the revising council. The active
Army of France thus consists of about 535,000 men, together with an
approximate total of 55,000 men serving in Algeria and 20,000 men
serving in Tunis. The gendarmerie and Republican guard add on another
25,000, and the colonial troops serving in the French colonies amount
to a total of about 60,000. This last number is steadily increasing by
means of the enrolment of natives of the French colonies in Africa.
These numbers concern the Army on a peace footing. In case of a
national emergency the total war strength of the French Army is
calculated at 4,800,000. Of these 1,350,000 comprise the first line
troops made up of the active Army and younger classes of the reserve,
who would constitute the first field armies to engage the enemy on an
outbreak of war. The remainder of the total of nearly 5 millions would
be called up as required for garrison purposes and to strengthen the
ranks of the field army.
The citizen is still expected to give twenty-five years of service to
his country; of these, two--or rather three, under the law passed by
the action of the war ministry of M. Viviani just before the outbreak
of the present continental war--years are expected to be spent in the
active Army, and another eleven in the reserve of the active Army.
During this second period of eleven years men are recalled to the
colours--that is, to service with the active Army--for periods of a
month at a time. At the conclusion of this first thirteen years of
service, men pass automatically to the Territorial Army, which is
supposed to serve for the purposes of home defence only. Service in the
Territorial Army lasts six years, after which the soldier passes to six
years in the reserve of the Territorial Army. After this the French
citizen is exempt from any further military obligation.
Registered at the age of twenty, the French citizen is called to the
colours on the first of October following his registration, and passes
from the active Army two years later on September 30th. In old days,
when the period of service in the active Army was for five years, the
French Army was an unpopular institution, but the shortening of service
together with the knowledge, possessed by the nation as a whole, that
the need for every citizen soldier would eventually rise through
the action of Germany, have combined to render the Army not only an
important item in national life, but a popular one. There used to be
grousers and bad characters by the score, but now they are rarely found.
In time of peace the active Army of France is so organised as to form
the skeleton on which to build the war forces of the Republic. The
system is one of twenty permanent Army Corps based as follows: the
first at Lille, the second at Amiens, the third at Rouen, the fourth
at Le Mans, the fifth at Orleans, the sixth at Châlons-sur-Marne, the
seventh at Besançon, the eighth at Bourges, the ninth at Tours, the
tenth at Rennes, the eleventh at Nantes, the twelfth at Limoges, the
thirteenth at Clermont-Ferrand, the fourteenth at Lyons, the fifteenth
at Marseilles, the sixteenth at Montpellier, the seventeenth at
Toulouse, the eighteenth at Bordeaux, the nineteenth at Algiers, and
the twentieth at Nancy.
The strength of an Army Corps is made up of two divisions of infantry,
a brigade of cavalry, a brigade of horse and field artillery, and one
"squadron of train," the last named including the non-combatants of
the Army Corps. Exceptions are the Sixth Army Corps with head-quarters
at Châlons, the seventh at Besançon, and the nineteenth at Algiers;
of these the first mentioned two contain three divisions of infantry
instead of two, while the Algerian Corps has four divisions, one of
which is detached for duty in Tunis.
In addition to the twenty stations of the Army Corps, eight independent
cavalry divisions have head-quarters respectively at Paris, Luneville,
Meaux, Sedan, Melun, Lyons, Rheims, and Dôle. There is also the
military government of Paris, which, acting independently of the rest,
contains detachments from four Army Corps and two cavalry divisions.
A cavalry division is made up of two brigades, each consisting of two
regiments which in turn contain four squadrons and a reserve squadron
of peace.
The infantry of the French Army consists of 163 regiments of infantry
of the line, 31 battalions of Chasseurs à Pied, mainly stationed in
mountain districts, 4 regiments of Zouaves, 4 regiments of Turcos or
native Algerian tirailleurs, 2 regiments of the Foreign Legion, 5
disciplinary battalions known as African Light Infantry.
The cavalry organisation is 12 regiments of Cuirassiers, 32 regiments
of Dragoons, 21 regiments of Chasseurs--corresponding to the British
Lancers--14 regiments of Hussars, 6 regiments of Chasseurs d'Afrique,
and 4 regiments of native Algerian Cavalry known as Spahis.
The French Army is rather weak in artillery, its total strength
consisting of 445 field batteries organised into 40 regiments of field
artillery; 52 batteries of horse artillery, the greater part of which,
however, have been transformed or are in process of transformation
to field batteries; 14 mountain batteries; 18 battalions of garrison
artillery, together with artificers to a total of 13 companies. Six
regiments of engineers are divided into 22 battalions, and there is
also a department of engineers known as the railway regiment. The
non-combatant branches of the Army are formed into 20 squadrons of
train, which contain the equivalents to the British Army Service Corps,
Army Ordnance Corps, and the _personnel_ of units connected with the
upkeep and maintenance of the Army in the field. In addition, there is
an Army Corps of colonial infantry, service in which is a voluntary
matter. Its strength is about 30,000 troops in France and over 60,000
distributed throughout the various colonies.
The officers of the French Army receive their training at military
schools established in various parts of the Republic, or else are
recruited from among non-commissioned officers. Not less than
one-third of the total number of French officers rise to commissions
by the latter method--Napoleon's remark about the marshal's bâton in
the private soldier's knapsack still holds good in the French Army.
The principal training schools are those of St. Cyr for infantry
and cavalry officers, the École Polytechnique for artillery and
engineer officers, and the musketry school at Châlons. The schools
of St. Maixent, Saumur, Versailles, and the gymnastic school at
Joinville-le-Pont are intended for the training of non-commissioned
officers selected for commissions.
The rate of pay for men in the first period of service is very low,
ranging from the equivalent of a halfpenny a day upwards; but the law
under which the Army is constituted provides for the re-enlistment of
such men as wish to make a career of the Army, and on re-enlistment
the rate of pay is materially increased, while a bounty is given on
re-engagement, and at the conclusion of a certain amount of service
re-engaged men are granted pensions. It is only reasonable that, with
the adoption of the principle of universal service, the rate of pay
should be low; voluntary re-enlistment, however, is a different matter,
so the Republic rewards the men who re-engage at the conclusion of
their first term. From among them are selected practically all the
non-commissioned officers, while, considering that all necessaries of
life are provided for them in addition to their pay, even the rank and
file are not badly off.
The armament of the French infantry is the Lebel rifle with bayonet,
this pattern of rifle having been adopted in 1886. It is understood
that an automatic rifle is under consideration, but a serious drawback
to the use of such a weapon is the fact that, with a rate of fire
three or four times as great as that of the ordinary magazine rifle
with bolt action, the automatic rifle would require more ammunition
than its user could carry. The weapon of the Field Artillery is a
shielded quick-firing gun of Creusot pattern, with a bore of 75
millimetres. On this gun the field-guns of all nations have been
modelled, but, although it was the first of its kind to be put into
use, it still gives the artillery of the French Army a decided
advantage over that of other Continental nations, when reckoned gun for
gun. The French cavalry is armed with a straight sword, in place of the
old-fashioned curved blade which the French discarded some time ago,
but which remained in use in the British Army up to the end of 1907. A
carbine and bamboo lance are also carried.
In all matters of military equipment and armament the French Republic
has led the world since its reconstitution after 1870. The Lebel rifle
and its adoption inaugurated a new era in the armament of infantry;
the 75-millimetre gun, as already noted, was the first of its kind
to come into use. The Lebel carbine which the cavalry carry is still
unsurpassed as a cavalry weapon. Further, France led the world in the
development of air craft; the lighter-than-air machine, certainly,
has developed into a German specialty, but the heavier-than-air
machine, or aeroplane, owes its development to French enterprise, and
very largely to French military enterprise. In all branches of the
service, and in all matters affecting the service, the French Army is
the home of experiment, and to this fact is due the greater part of
French military efficiency to-day. The bravery of French troops is
unquestioned, and, in addition to this, the French Army has nothing
to learn from the armies of other nations as regards _matériel_ and
equipment.
CHAPTER II
THE FRENCH SOLDIER AT HOME
British soldiers, serving under a voluntary system, have little to say
for the conscript system, but a glance round Paris in time of peace
might persuade them that there are various compensations and advantages
in a conscript army which they, serving voluntarily, do not enjoy.
It is a surprise to one who has served in the British Army to see
the French Republican Guards stationed on the grand staircase of the
Opéra, and also at all entrances and exits of this famous building. In
practically every theatrical establishment in Paris the Guards may be
seen on this class of duty, for which they get specially paid. There
are military attendants at the Folies Bergères, at the Nouveau Cirque,
at the Moulin Rouge, and even at such an irresponsible home of laughter
as the Bal Tabarin. As the darkey said of Daniel in the lions' den,
these men get a free show.
But it is not only when on duty that the French soldier is to be seen
in such places of amusement as these, for the non-commissioned officer
is to be found in company with his wife or _fiancée_ in every class
of seat. It is no uncommon thing to find among the most attentive
listeners at the Opéra a number of _piou-pioux_, in full uniform, among
the fashionable people in the stalls. The Republican rule, which makes
of every man a citizen and an equal of all the rest, leads to what,
in such a country as England, would be considered curious anomalies.
Beside the newspaper critic in full evening-dress may be seen the
private soldier, in uniform, taking notes with probably greater
intelligence than the newspaper man; for the soldier may be anything
in civilian life: the son of the rich banker occupies the next bed in
the barrack-room to the son of the Breton peasant, and the Cabinet
Minister's lad, when in uniform, is on a level with the gamin of Paris.
It must be confessed that the average French soldier, when off parade,
looks rather slovenly. The baggy trousers go a long way toward the
creation of this impression. Then, again, the way in which the French
soldier is trained to march is far different from British principles.
The "pas-deflexion" does not look so smart as the stately march of the
British Guards, but it is more effective. This bent-knee, slouching
method carries men along with a swing; the step is shorter than that
of British troops, but the rate is more to the minute than that of the
British Army, and the men swing along, to all appearances tireless, at
such a pace that they cover about thirty miles a day on manoeuvres.
This, too, with a pack at which a British infantryman would look
aghast, for the French pack is proverbial for its size and weight. It
confers a great advantage, however, with regard to marching, in that
it lessens the amount of transport which must follow on the track of
infantry, and is necessary to the well-being of the men.
A British infantry regiment on the march, and marching at ease, still
looks imposing; a French infantry battalion, on the other hand, is the
reverse of spectacular when marching at ease. The band comes first,
with its instruments carried anyhow so long as they are comfortable;
the rank and file, following, carry their rifles as the band carries
its instruments, in any fantastic position that makes for ease; step is
not maintained; the set "fours" which British troops maintain at ease
as well as at attention are not to be seen, for a man drops back to the
rank in his rear to talk to a comrade, or goes forward to the rank in
front to light his cigarette. They smoke and sing and joke; they eat
bread and drink wine by way of refreshment, since the evening meal
is yet a long way off; alongside the troops as they march may be seen
pedlars and hawkers offering their wares, and it is all quite the usual
thing, quite legitimate. The fetish of smartness is non-existent here;
comfort and use are the main points.
But, at the given occasion, comes the word from the colonel; correct
formations appear out of the threes and fives of men as if by magic.
The band is a corporate body, marching to attention, and playing
the regiment on with every bit as fine a military appearance as any
British band. The men resume step, and, with their peculiar swinging
march, follow on, a regiment at attention, and as fine a regiment, in
appearance as well as in fact, as one would wish to see. Work is work,
and play is play, and the French soldier does both thoroughly.
This attitude of the French soldier toward his work, and the fact
that he is permitted to maintain that attitude, are due to so large
a proportion of the officers having themselves served in the ranks.
There is a sufficient leavening of "ranker" officers to enable all
commissioned men to understand, when on a route march, what it feels
like to the rank and file. Unlike the British Army, that of France is
a Republican business. The very circumstance that discipline is more
severe arises from the fact that all men are equal, and both soldier
and officer know it. And, if ever the French soldier becomes conscious
that he is really suffering from the severity of discipline, he knows
that he is suffering in good company: under conscription there is no
escape.
The training of the French _piou-piou_ in marching is a scientific
business. At first he is required to execute 160 steps to the
minute--very short steps taken very quickly. In this way the recruit is
made to cover 3000 yards at first, and then the distance is increased
to 12,000 yards, the increases being made a thousand yards at a time.
As the distance increases, the length of the step is increased, and the
number of steps to the minute decreased. The full course of training is
reckoned at three practices a week for three months, and the infantry
recruit, before being dismissed from training, is required to cover
twelve miles at the rate of seven miles an hour. There is no doubt
that this scientific training in marching, and the teaching of the
half-shuffling trot, characteristic of French infantry, add enormously
to the marching value of the men. One battalion of Chasseurs-à-Pied set
up a record in marching while on manoeuvres by covering no less than
68 kilometres (equivalent to nearly 40 English miles) in the course
of a day. This constitutes a definite record in marching, for any
considerable body of men.
In the matter of smartness, it is hardly fair to compare a British
infantry battalion with a French one, for the point arises yet once
more with regard to the difference between a voluntary and a conscript
system. The English battalion is made up of picked men, while in the
French service all citizens are included; the fact of choice in the
case of the British battalion makes for uniformity. The recruits of the
French battalion include every man who has been passed by the revising
board, and there is not the same chance of maintaining that uniformity
which alone is responsible for smartness. And smartness itself is
but a survival from the days when a soldier was trained to no more
than unquestioning obedience, the old days before warfare became so
scientific as it is at present, when initiative was not required of the
rank and file. The only purpose served by smartness at the present day
is that of recruiting, and, obviously, a conscript army has no need of
this. Hence use rather than appearance comes first.
An island people may well wonder that a conscript army could be so
popular as is the French, but then an island people could never
realise, although they might vaguely understand, what it must be like
to know that some day the army of a hostile nation may march across
the frontier. The absence of sea bulwarks makes a difference in the
temper of a people; an ever-present threat colours and modifies their
life, and, no matter how set for peace the conditions may appear, the
threat is present just the same. Since 1872 France as a whole has known
that the day of reckoning with Germany would come, and the knowledge
has grown more complete and more insistent with the passing of each
year and the increase in German military preparations, which could be
destined to fulfil but one end. France realised its duty to combat the
fulfilment of that end, and the nation as a whole set itself to prepare
against "The Day."
By reason of this the French Army is popular; the discipline is severe,
far too much so for any English soldier to endure as a Frenchman
endures it; punishments are frequent, it is true, but they are
undergone in the right spirit by the great majority, who know that the
Army must be trained and kept in ultimate efficiency. The conscript
knows that his training is a part of the price that the nation must
pay for having a land frontier and a grasping neighbour, and he pays
his part of the price cheerfully and well. It may be said that no
conscript army in Europe is so popular as that of France; in none is
there a better spirit than that displayed by Frenchmen. The mercurial
temperament of the nation is yet another cause for severe disciplinary
measures, for in order to shape a Frenchman to military requirements
his extreme elasticity must be controlled, and this would be impossible
under such conditions as are sufficient for the maintenance of, say,
the British Army.
Moreover, Republican rule and French military methods have forged bonds
between officers and men which never have existed and never will exist
in the army of their great opponent, for instance. I have devoted a
considerable section of a chapter to punishment, and possibly at first
sight this list may appear severe. It is, however, only necessary to
recall the fact that while Germany takes only a percentage of its men
for military training, and France takes the whole for the same purpose,
German methods are twice as severe. Yet again, it is not the quality
of the punishment inflicted, but the spirit in which it is inflicted
that counts most. The French soldier admires, respects, and will gladly
obey the colonel or captain who writes him down so many days _salle de
police_ when he deserves it. But the German soldier is hardly likely
to respect the officer who not only inflicts punishments according
to scale, but will lash him across the face with a whip until the
blood flows. Between French officers and their men is the spirit of
comradeship, and in this is evidence of the value of the French method
of training. Between the German officer and the man whom he commands
are hate and despite in the great majority of cases, and this also
attests the value of a system.
CHAPTER III
THE HIGHER RANKS
So far as the rank and file of the French Army are concerned, no
officer above the rank of colonel is of consequence, for the man in
the ranks is not likely to come in contact with a general officer once
in a twelvemonth. The colonel is the head of the regiment, whether of
artillery, cavalry, or infantry, and his authority extends in every
direction over the men he commands. With the help of the Conseil
d'Administration he directs the administration of his regiment, and he
is responsible for discipline and instruction, all forms of military
education, sanitation, and police control, while, needless to say,
he is held responsible for the efficiency of the regiment and the
appearance of its men. He has absolute power as regards the appointment
of all non-commissioned officers and corporals, who, in the French
Army, do not rank as non-commissioned officers.
Corresponding very nearly with the "second-in-command" common to
British units, the lieutenant-colonel of a French regiment acts
on behalf of the colonel, and is the intermediary of the latter
in every branch of the service. In the absence of the colonel the
lieutenant-colonel is empowered to issue orders in his name, and he is
also especially charged with the discipline and conduct of the officers
of the regiment. He keeps the report books concerning the officers, and
is responsible for the entering up of reports as regards their military
and private conduct and their efficiency. The colonel, however,
countersigns the reports, adding whatever notes he may think desirable.
The French equivalent of the major of English cavalry is the Chef
d'Escadron, of whom there are two to each regiment, each in command of
two service squadrons. One is specially appointed to presidency over
the Commission des Ordinaires or arrangements for the food supply of
the regiment, while the other presides over the Commission d'Abattage,
which, in addition to the actual killing of horses, when such a step is
necessary, is concerned with arrangements for forage and all matters
connected with equine supplies. Each of the Chefs d'Escadron is
responsible for the culinary arrangements of his two squadrons, and the
management of canteens is also under his supervision. The two chefs are
in charge of the barrack police and transmit their orders with regard
to this duty through a captain and an adjutant.
The officer known in the British service as quartermaster is termed
major in the French Army, but the French major has more definite
authority than the British quartermaster. Under his charge are placed
the regulation of pay and accounts, the making of purchases, the
supervision of equipment and barrack furniture, etc. The French major,
in addition to these head-quarters duties which concern the well-being
of the whole regiment, has definite command of the fifth squadron,
which forms the depot for the regiment in case of war.
From the major the Capitaine Trésorier receives the pay and monies
which have to be distributed to the regiment. He is a member of the
Conseil d'Administration, from which he receives his authorisation
to make payment. The pay of the men is handed to them every fifth
day, when the Capitaine Trésorier or paymaster hands over to the
sergeant-major of each squadron, or to the captain commanding, the
pay of the squadron for distribution among the men. He also makes
all payments and issues demands for supplies for the horses of the
regiment, and a lieutenant or sub-lieutenant is appointed to assist the
paymaster in his duties.
The Capitaine d'Habillement is the head of the regimental workshops
of every description; he is held responsible for the well-being
of the armoury, clothing stores, and barrack furniture, of which
establishments he keeps the accounts. He has in addition to superintend
all the regimental workshops, including those of the tailor,
boot-maker, saddler, etc. His assistant is a lieutenant known as the
Porte Étendard, who carries the colours of the regiment on parade--for
in French armies the colours are still carried on parade and into
action, unlike the rule of the British Army, which has abandoned the
carrying of colours into action for many years.
The Capitaine-Instructeur is deputed to attend to the instruction of
the non-commissioned officers of the regiment, and is held responsible
for their efficiency in matters of drill and discipline. He also
lectures junior officers on their duties with regard to drill,
shooting, veterinary matters, topography, etc., and he is specially
responsible that the adjutants of the regiment perform their duties
properly.
Of officers of the rank of captain, two are appointed to each squadron,
the senior being the Capitaine Commandant and the junior the Capitaine
en second, or junior captain. The senior captain is in charge of the
squadron, which in peace time has a strength of about 120 officers
and men, but for active service has its strength raised considerably.
He is responsible for the military education of his squadron, for the
discipline of the rank and file, and the condition of the horses and
stables, and he is also responsible for the pay and supplies of the
squadron handed over to him by the paymaster and others. He has control
of the promotion of non-commissioned officers and the leave granted
to non-commissioned officers and men. He is responsible to the Chef
d'Escadron for the efficient performance of his duties.
The second captain of each squadron is, as regards squadron duties,
under the orders of the captain commanding, and is especially concerned
with all matters affecting food supplies. In addition to his squadron
duties, he has to take his turn every fifth week as "captain of
the week," when he has to supervise roll calls and assemblies, and
the mounting and dismounting of guards. As captain of the week he
supervises the cleanliness and security of the barracks and the work of
the police.
Of lieutenants and sub-lieutenants, four are appointed to each
squadron, each being responsible for a _peloton_ or troop of men.
Responsible to the senior captain of the squadron for the performance
of his duties, the lieutenant is expected to instruct his men at drill,
supervise their work in stables, and see that their barrack rooms are
properly kept. The lieutenant is empowered to hold such inspections of
kit and clothes as he may think necessary.
To every regiment two doctors are appointed, holding the ranks of
captain and lieutenant respectively. Each regiment of cavalry and
artillery is also provided with two veterinary surgeons. As the
duties of these officers are of a non-combatant nature, they are not
materially concerned with the discipline or military efficiency of the
regiment to which they are attached.
Corresponding to the warrant-officer of the British Army and standing
as intermediary between officers and non-commissioned officers of the
French Army, the adjudants are appointed in the number of three to a
regiment. Two of these known simply as adjudants have different duties
from the third, to whom is given the title of Adjudant Vaguemestre.
The two adjudants assist the work of the captain-instructor in
immediately superintending the efficiency of non-commissioned officers.
All sergeants and corporals are subject to their authority, and, in
alternate weeks, each takes turn as "adjudant of the week" under the
captain of the week. In this orderly duty the adjudant of the week
keeps the rolls of sergeants and corporals, and arranges their turns
of duty. He keeps the register of punishments of non-commissioned
officers and the rank and file, and is responsible for the sounding of
all regimental calls; he transmits the orders of the colonel to the
sergeant-majors of the squadrons, and inspects the morning roll-call
of each squadron. He attends to the closing of canteens and sees that
"lights out" is obeyed in the barrack rooms. The position of adjudant
in the French Army is one of considerable authority, which, to the
credit of the service be it said, is seldom abused. The Adjudant
Vaguemestre is but a minor official by comparison with the other two.
He is generally a non-commissioned officer who has nearly finished his
period of service, and he acts as regimental postman and postmaster,
being, on the whole, a sort of handy man for all matters of business in
which responsibility is incurred.
The sergeant-major of each squadron has almost as much authority as the
adjudant. He is, among the non-commissioned officers, what the senior
captain is among commissioned officers; he stands as right-hand man to
the senior captain, and, in constant contact with the non-commissioned
officers and men of the squadron, is able very largely to influence the
judgment of the captain with regard to the rank and file. He gives
all the captain's orders to the squadron with regard to instruction,
discipline, dress, etc. He is responsible for the keeping of books
and registers, and for this work has appointed to him as assistants a
sergeant _fourrier_ and corporal _fourrier_. He is in charge of the
squadron stores and of all the _matériel_ of the squadron.
The sergeants are appointed in the number of one to a troop, and are
held responsible for the efficiency of the corporals and troopers.
They take turns as "sergeant of the week" for their squadrons, a duty
corresponding to that of the orderly-sergeant in the British Army.
Nominally, the sergeant of each troop is responsible to the lieutenant
or sub-lieutenant of the troop, but in reality the sergeant is more
under control of the squadron sergeant-major, and, through him, of the
captain. The sergeant drills the men of his troop; he is responsible
that the troop barrack room is properly kept; that kits and clothing
are kept clean and complete; that arms and saddlery, also, are kept in
order. As sergeant of the week, the sergeant inspects and reports to
the sergeant-major the correctness of morning and evening roll-call;
he keeps the roll of fatigue men, and also of men in the squadron for
guard; he parades the sick for inspection by the doctor and also
parades all men for fatigues and guards. The sergeant _fourrier_
holding the rank of sergeant is more of the nature of squadron clerk,
as his duties, with the exception of escorting men sent to hospital,
consist mainly in keeping books and accounts, in which he has the
corporal _fourrier_ to help him.
The corporal of the French Army is placed in charge of a squad of about
ten men; he sleeps in the same room with them, is responsible for their
personal cleanliness and the arrangement of their kits, and sees that
any men of his squad for guard or special duty turn out correctly.
He superintends the general cleaning of kit which the captain orders
weekly, and a rather curious duty which falls to his lot is to see
that the troopers of his squad change their linen once a week. This,
however, is not so curious as may appear at first sight, for it must
be borne in mind that the French Army sweeps up every class of citizen
into its net, and with some of the men personal cleanliness is so
little a habit that insistence on the point by one in authority is a
necessity.
In addition to these intimate matters the French corporal has to
superintend the drill of recruits, teach them to arrange their kit
and packs, and show them methods of cleaning arms and kit, and
grooming horses. He is empowered to inflict minor punishments which
he must report to the sergeant in charge of the troop. The corporal
is responsible for the maintenance of order in the barrack room, for
the proper serving of meals, and the compliance with the order for
"lights out"; he takes turn as corporal of the week with his fellows,
and in that capacity is deputy for and assistant to the sergeant of
the week. Altogether, the corporal of the French Army has a very busy
time, and in addition to this his position is not so secure as that of
the British corporal; the latter's rank counts as a definite promotion,
while the rank of the French corporal is only an appointment, and he
may find himself "reduced" much more quickly than the British man in an
equivalent position.
The conscript system, leading to a number of unwilling soldiers, is
much more provocative of punishments than the voluntary system. In the
latter, all men who enlist get the habit of making the best of their
service; they have joined the army of their own free will, and have
only themselves to blame if they do not like it. In a conscript army,
however, there are many who hate the limitations imposed on them by
service in time of peace, and enter only with a view to getting the
business over and getting back to their former positions in life;
it is a disagreeable necessity, the period of military service, and
they are there to do as little as possible, without any regard to the
welfare of the country, though a national emergency like the present
finds every man willing to do his part. Not that such an attitude
is the rule in time of peace, but, especially among the very lowest
classes, it is not unusual. Since it is impossible to make sheep and
goats of the men, but all must be treated alike, discipline is much
more rigid and severe than in the British Army--which is the only
voluntary European army from which comparisons can be drawn. The view
is taken--necessarily taken--that men must be compelled to do their
work and learn their lessons of drill and shooting; for those who give
trouble in any way, there is the _salle de police_, or guard-room,
the prison for worse offences, and, for hardened offenders, there is
service in the dreaded disciplinary battalions of Algeria. This last
form of punishment is resorted to only in the case of men who have
"committed one or several faults, the gravity of which makes any other
mode of repression inadequate."
Contrary to the rule of the British Army, in which only commanding and
company or squadron officers are empowered to inflict punishment, in
the French Army any man can be punished by any other man holding a
rank superior to his own, under all circumstances that may arise. As
an instance: if a private of a British regiment insulted a corporal
of another regiment, the case would be reported to the man's own
commanding officer, who in due time would investigate the case and
inflict the requisite punishment for the offence; in the French Army,
if a private were guilty of a similar offence, the injured corporal
would be at liberty to inflict the punishment on his own account; his
action would have to be confirmed by a superior officer, but, under the
rules governing the administration of punishment, there would be no
difficulty about that.
The officer in command of a regiment has power to increase, diminish,
or even cancel punishments inflicted by inferior officers, and the
captain in charge of a squadron has a like power over the subordinate
officers directly under his command and over the punishments they may
inflict.
This system of giving so much power to all has more against it than in
its favour. Certainly, given a just junior officer or non-commissioned
officer, he is more likely to inflict a punishment that fits the crime
than the commanding officer to whom he may report the case--he knows
all the circumstances better than the man to whom he may tell them,
and, in direct contact with the offender at the time the offence was
committed, is not so likely to err on the side of undue severity or
that of undue leniency--and that is about all that can be said in
favour of the system. Against it must be said that it places in the
hands of very many men, of all ranks and grades, a tremendous power
which may easily be abused; under such a system a sergeant or corporal
who has a grudge against a particular man can make that man's life a
perfect misery to him, and, since in a conscript army authority must
be upheld at all costs, even more than in a volunteer army, the right
of complaint which belongs to the man is not often of much use to
them--discipline would be impaired if officers upheld their men against
their non-commissioned officers.
Further, officers are more liable to punishment in the French Army than
in the British. In the latter force, a court-martial on an officer
is a very rare thing, but in the French service the equivalent to a
court-martial is not an infrequent occurrence, and a certain percentage
of officers get "confined to room," "confined to fortress," suspended
from duty for varying periods, and cashiered (dismissed from the
service),--these things happening with considerably greater frequency
than in the British Army. It must be said, on the other hand, that
the French officer has more required of him in time of peace than
the British officer; he is required to be in closer contact with his
men, and to undertake more arduous duties, and, on the whole, French
officers are keen soldiers, intent on the performance of their duties,
taking themselves and their work very seriously. The lesson of Metz in
1870 has not been wasted on the modern French Army, and the knowledge
that some day the nation would again take up arms against its eastern
neighbour has led to a strict maintenance of efficiency on the part of
the officers of the Army, and to a keenness quite equal to that shown
in a voluntary force.
Non-commissioned officers are subject to punishments of a more severe
nature than those inflicted on their fellows in the British Army--the
constant comparison between the two, in matters of discipline, is
necessary in order to give a clear idea of conditions of service for
all ranks of the French Army. The British non-commissioned officer is
either reprimanded or reduced to the ranks; the French non-commissioned
officer may be confined to barracks after evening roll-call, confined
to his room for slight breaches of discipline, or sent to prison and
still retain his rank on his release, a thing impossible in the British
service. Only for repeated misdemeanours are non-commissioned officers
reduced to the ranks, while one offence is sufficient to ensure this
punishment in the British service. Privates are punished in various
ways according to the nature of the offence committed. The lightest
punishment of all consists of extra fatigue duty; next in order comes
inspection on guard parade, the man in question being compelled to
parade with the guard in full marching order for a definite number of
times; confinement to barracks for a stated period is inflicted for
still more serious but still light offences; being sent to the _salle
de police_ is a considerably severer form of punishment, and consists
in the offenders being kept at night in the guard-room, doing ordinary
duty during the day, and, in addition, doing all sorts of fatigues and
making themselves scavengers for the regiment. Prison and solitary
confinement in cells are two forms of punishment allotted to really
bad characters, on whom the previously named forms of punishment have
not sufficient effect. Finally, there are the Algerian disciplinary
battalions, and the man who is sent to one of these may be reckoned as
a criminal, as a rule. It is a curious fact that reading a newspaper
constitutes an offence against discipline in the French Army, and no
newspapers are permitted to be brought into barracks.
The list of officers given in this chapter has been taken from the
staff of a French cavalry regiment, but it applies almost identically
to artillery units, while, in the case of infantry units, it is
necessary only to delete all that refers to the care of horses, and the
staff of officers and non-commissioned officers is practically the same
as in the cavalry. The French "regiment" of artillery is a similar unit
of strength to that of most great continental armies, though it has no
equivalent in the British service, where the artillery is grouped in
units known as brigades, of not much more than half the strength of the
continental regiment. The French cavalry regiment also is considerably
stronger than the British cavalry unit, containing five squadrons to
the latter's four. This brings the cavalry regiment of the French Army
nearly up to the strength of the infantry unit.
The matter of punishments has been dwelt on at some length, owing to
the prominence given to punishment in the French Army. Made up as it
is of every class, the members of which are compelled to serve whether
they like it or no, punishment is a necessity, and a frequent one at
that, in the case of all ranks. It does not, however, alter the fact
that the great majority of French conscripts are keen and willing
soldiers, who make the best of their service and give a good account of
themselves.
CHAPTER IV
INFANTRY
Since the training of the French soldier lasts but two years, it is of
little use making a distinction between recruits and others, for two
years is a very brief period into which to compress all that a soldier
must learn in order to become efficient. It may be noted that, in the
British service, three years is considered the shortest period in which
an infantry soldier can be turned out as fully efficient. Again, it
must always be borne in mind, in considering the French Army, that
_all_ must be taught their work. There is as great a percentage of
stupid people in France as in any other country; a voluntary army is at
liberty to reject fools as undesirable, but the nation with a conscript
system must train the fools as well as the wise ones, for, admitting
the principle that strength consists in numbers of trained men, then
every rifle counts so long as its holder is capable of firing.
The conscript, coming to the colours on the first of October, is
usually given the choice of the arm of service in which he will do
his two years' training. The subject of this chapter has elected to
serve in the infantry of the line. He may have just completed an
expensive education, or he may have come from Montmartre, the slums of
a provincial town, the _landes_ of Brittany, or a village of French
Lorraine; in civilian life he may have been a peasant, a street arab,
a student of philosophy, a future president of the Republic--it is all
the same on that first of October, for now he is simply a conscript
with two years' military training before him, and a halfpenny a day for
his pay, together with a periodical allowance of tobacco, which is one
of the luxuries that the French Army allows to its soldiers.
Arrived at his station the conscript finds his room, and is allotted a
bed therein. He finds himself placed under a corporal who will teach
him all about his rifle, manifest an interest in the cleanliness of his
linen, see that he gets his hair cut, instruct him in drill, turn him
out of bed in the morning, and see that he is in, or accounted for,
when the roll is called at night. The first business of the conscript
is to get fitted out from the store in which the battalion keeps
clothes for its men. Here he gets his boots, his parade uniform, and
his fatigue outfit. His captain, with the assistance of the master
tailor, passes the outfit as complete and correct, and the conscript
says good-bye to civilian attire for a period of two years. There was
one youngster, a Breton youth, who mourned for a week or two after
coming to the colours, because the cow at home would not take its food
from other people as it would from him; there are many who remember how
they used to milk the goats, and these make humorous little tragedies
for a time, for their fellow conscripts.
Like the British infantryman, the conscript is concerned principally
in learning to march and shoot, and use his bayonet. In the matter of
marching, to which reference has already been made, the training of the
conscript is a complicated business. No walking that he has ever done
as a civilian bears any relation to this curious half-shuffling trot,
unless by chance he is a native of the Vosges country, and in that case
he may recall a rapid climb up some steep hill, to which this business
of the march is more nearly akin than to anything else. Perhaps he does
not take kindly to his work at first, but, in addition to the corporal
under whose charge he is placed, there are the men who sleep on either
side of him to inculcate in him the first principles of discipline, for
there is nothing on earth half so comforting to the man placed under a
system as to be able to give advice to a new-comer to the system and
its disabilities.
Thus, with the assistance of the corporal and of his comrades, the new
conscript settles to his work. Within a couple of months he has begun
to understand the principle of this marching business, and, in common
with all youngsters, he takes a pride in his new accomplishment. It
is a tiring business, _certainement_, but then, what would you? A man
must be taught, and, after all, it is only for two years, at the end of
which one may go back to the cow or the goats, or the kerbstone, or the
life of one who sits above these things--and Pierre, who occupies the
corner bed, is an amusing rascal; it is not so bad, this military life,
after all, but one would there were a little more money and a little
more time. However....
The conscript must be taught to shoot. First of all, and not
infrequently as a matter of necessity, he is taught the difference
between the butt and the muzzle of a rifle. He is taught how to hold
the thing, how to clean it, how to press its trigger, how to load it,
and how to adjust its sights. He is made familiar with the weapon
in the fullest sense of the word "familiar," for shooting is not
altogether a matter of blazing away ammunition; the good shot is the
man who has a thorough knowledge of the various parts of his weapon,
and who has been taught to nurse it and care for it just as the Breton
lad nursed and cared for his cow. The equivalent of the British Morris
tube is requisitioned to instruct the conscript in the first elements
of firing a rifle. Across a large white target a thin black line is
drawn horizontally, and the conscript is set to firing at this target
until he can make reasonably consistent practice on the black line.
His corporal is at hand to correct defects, and his sergeant is there
too, to instruct and ever to instruct. By and by the conscript begins
to feel with regard to his shooting as he feels about the marching. One
must learn, and rifle shooting is not an unpleasant business, though
the cleaning of the rifle is another matter, and they are wonderfully
particular about the way in which it is done. That corporal and that
sergeant must have eyes behind them.
Instruction in the use of the bayonet is very largely a similar sort of
business, a matter of perpetual care on the part of the instructors and
of gradually increasing efficiency on the part of the conscript. Then
there is the gymnastic class, by means of which limbs are made supple,
and muscles strengthened--it is only by continuous training that the
marvellous efficiency to which the French conscript attains in the
short space of two years is compassed. There is no "furlough season" as
British troops know it; the conscript goes up to work all the time, and
in that period of work he is transformed from hobbledehoy to man.
Marching, the use of rifle and bayonet, and gymnastic classes, do not
by any means exhaust the schedule of conscript training. There is all
the business of barrack room life, the cleaning of equipment in which
the corporal is ever at hand to instruct, and men in their second
year are also at hand to advise and give hints; there are fatigues,
white-washing, trench-digging, and all sorts of things of which in
pre-military days, probably, the conscript never dreamed. There are
route marches with the battalion, the commanding officer and band at
the head. There is always something to do, always something waiting
to be done, and in looking forward there is an endless succession of
very busy days to contemplate. One goes to bed tired--very healthily
tired--and one wakens to work. The work is not always pleasant, but it
has the charm--if such it can be called--of never-ending variety. A
monotonous variety it may be, but then, one has little time to think,
and then there is always the canteen, and Jean, who sleeps in the
corner opposite Pierre, has just received his allowance from home.
There is yet ten minutes before parade--we will go with Jean to the
canteen....
CHAPTER V
OFF DUTY
There is a strict but unwritten law of the French Army as regards the
canteen: no man may take a drink by himself. _Faire suisse_ is the term
applied, if one goes to the canteen alone, and the rest of the men in
the conscript's room look on him as something of a mean fellow if he
does such a thing as this. Of course, it works out at the same thing
in the end, and share and share alike is not a bad principle, while it
is eminently good Republicanism. Jean must share his remittance from
home with somebody; he can pick the men whom he desires to treat, but
he must not lay himself open to the accusation of _faire suisse_, no
matter what arm of the service he represents. It is bad comradeship,
for his fellows, when they have a slice of luck, would not think of
doing it. Why should he?
Thus, and with justice, they reason, and out of such reasoning comes
the sharing of the last drops of water with a comrade on the field, the
acts of self-denial and courageous self-sacrifice for which men of the
French Army have always been famed. It is a little thing in itself,
this compulsory sharing of one's luck, but it leads to great things, at
times.
Should Jean go to the canteen alone, punishment awaits him from his
comrades. If he is well liked, he will get off with having his bed
tipped up after he has got to sleep at night. If he is a surly fellow,
he may reckon on what British troops know as a "blanket court-martial,"
which means that his comrades of the room will catch him and place
him in a blanket, the edges of which are held all round by his fellow
soldiers. At a given signal the blanket will be given a mighty heave
upward by all who are holding it, and Jean will fly ceiling-ward, to
alight again in the blanket and again be heaved up. This process,
repeated a dozen times or so, leaves Jean with not a sufficiency of
breath to beg for mercy, while at the same time he is quite undamaged,
and, if he is wise, he will not incur the accusation of _faire suisse_
again.
He may be fool enough to report the matter to his sergeant, as, by the
rules of the service, he is entitled to do. In that case the sergeant
will threaten Jean's comrades with punishment for causing annoyance to
a man, but the threat, as the men well know, is all that will happen
to them--but not all that will transpire as regards Jean. The French
soldier abhors a sneak, and treats him as he deserves. Jean will get
a rough time for many days to come, and will not dare to complain to
the sergeant again. It is rough justice, but effective; so long as a
man plays the game properly with his fellows, he is all right, and the
sergeant knows it. Hence Jean may make complaints till he is black in
the face about the conduct of his fellows, but by so doing he will only
make himself unpopular, and before he has got far into his first year
of service he learns to take his own part, and not to go running to the
sergeant with his little troubles. It does not pay--and, if it did, the
French Army would not be what it is in the matter of comradeship and
good feeling.
One good thing about the canteen is its cheapness. One can get coffee
and a roll--which amounts to a French conscript's breakfast--for the
equivalent of three halfpence, and this charge is a fair sample of
the prices of all things. Whatever one may ask for, too, it is served
in good quality, for the canteen is under strict supervision of the
officers, who are quick to note and remedy any cause for complaint on
the part of the men.
Early morning breakfast, as it is served in the British Army, is
unknown in French units. On turning out in the morning, coffee is
brought round to the barrack rooms, but the first real meal of the day
is "soup" at ten o'clock. The food is properly served in dishes, and a
corporal or a man told off for the duty is at the head of each table
to help each man to his allowance, for which an enamelled plate is
provided. Crockery is unsafe in a barrack room, and the fact is wisely
recognised.
The canteen of the British Army, so far as drinks are concerned,
provides beer only for its men, but beer is scarcely ever seen in a
French canteen. Various brands of wine are at the disposal of the
conscript, and it is possible to get a bottle of drinkable stuff for
fivepence, though in order to obtain a really good brand one must pay
at least a franc, for which the wine obtained is equal to that for
which many a London restaurant will charge half a crown. Wine is the
staple drink of the Army, though brandy finds favour among the hardened
drinkers. The man who goes to the canteen for a bottle of wine to share
with a comrade must not be regarded as a tippler, for the clarets which
the canteen provides are not very alcoholic beverages, containing as
they do but little more alcohol to the pint than supposedly "teetotal"
ginger beer of some brands.
To each company of infantry, as to each squadron of cavalry and
battery of artillery, is allotted a barber, whose business is to
shave every conscript of his company at least twice a week free of
cost, the barber being remunerated by the authorities. Since most men
need to shave every day in order to fulfil the requirements of parade
appearance, it is obvious that the efforts of the barber in this
direction must be supplemented by the men themselves, and on the whole
the barber gets an easy time as a rule, for the man who shaves himself
three times a week will usually get the business done without troubling
the barber at any time.
Complaints used to be made, especially in infantry stations, about the
sanitation and lack of washing accommodation in French barracks, but
modern custom has remedied all this. Chief cause of reformation was the
Russo-Japanese War, which showed that an army is twice as effective
if matters of sanitation are properly attended to--it does not pay to
have men falling sick from the presence of nursery beds for infectious
diseases. The French Army, ever first in experiment for the efficiency
of its men and in search of ways to increase the fighting value of
the forces available, has taken the lessons of modern sanitation to
heart. In practically all barracks, now, the soldier can enjoy a hot
bath or a cold one when he wishes; all that is still to be desired
is a greater regard for necessary sanitary measures, and a greater
regard for personal cleanliness among the men themselves. The peasant
lad, who has lived a comparatively lonely life in absolutely healthy
surroundings, does not understand at first that barrack life exposes
him to fresh dangers, and he has to be taught what, to a town dweller,
are elementary facts as regards infection. For this reason, tubercular
and allied complaints still rank rather high in the medical statistics
of the French Army, though every year sees an improvement in this
respect.
But a dissertation of this kind has taken us far from the canteen,
and the methods employed by the conscript in spending his spare time.
Not that the canteen is the only place of amusement, but in stated
hours, as in the British Army, the canteen is the rallying point of
men off duty. It is closed to men undergoing _salle de police_ at all
times, and this forms a not inconsiderable part of their punishment;
for to a soldier the canteen is not merely a place where he may obtain
refreshments, alcoholic and otherwise, but also a place to meet his
friends, hear a good song, discuss the doings of various companies, and
of various friends, whom he meets here and with whom he can compare
notes. The barrack room may not contain more than one close friend--if
that--and the other men in the squad to which the conscript belongs
may be of different provinces, of totally different ideals and ways
of thought--as if a Highland Scot were planted down in a squad of
Londoners. In the canteen, however, a man can be certain of meeting
and sitting down for a confab with his own chums, men not only of his
year--that is, joining on the same first of October as himself--but
also hailing, perhaps, from the same town or village as himself, glad
to share a bottle of claret at a franc the bottle and to talk over the
things left behind with civilian clothing.
As for canteen songs, one may guess that in the French Army there is
always plenty of real talent, for the nation as a whole, like all
Latin nationalities, is a very musical one, and since all come to the
Army, the singers come with the rest. The songs, perhaps, are not of
the highest drawing-room order, even for French drawing-rooms, but the
musical and vocal abilities of the singers are beyond question; for in
a gathering of men where the best can be obtained, little short of the
best ventures to bring itself to notice.
This mention of canteen songs recalls the fact that the French
infantryman beguiles the tedium of route-marching by songs,
interminably long songs which go on and on for miles; in recalling
what the next verse will be, a man forgets the number of miles between
him and the end of the march, or he thinks he may be able to, which
amounts to very nearly the same thing. They still sing songs that were
in vogue at the time of Fontenoy, as they march at ease along the
endless straight roads of the country, with their rifles slung anyhow
and their formations broken up that friend may march with friend.
This is when marching "at ease" only, for let a column of marching
infantrymen come to the streets of a town, and they immediately stiffen
up to show themselves at their best before the girls at the windows.
The Army of the Republic is a part of the nation, but the women of
the nation manifest no less interest in it for the fact that their
fathers and brothers have served. There is something in the sound of
a military band and the sight of a column of uniformed men that will
always bring faces to the windows of a French house. "So our Jacques is
perhaps marching somewhere," they say, or--"Thus we marched to relieve
Bazaine," will remark a veteran of the '70 campaign, feeling the while
that these men may yet make of "'70" a thing no longer to remember in
connection with lost provinces. And, once the town or village street is
left behind, and the road stretches unbroken before the column, the
men begin to sing again, and their officers smile at the song--they are
too wise, in the French Army, to suppress the singing and the cigarette
smoking, and thus the men march well. As well, certainly, as any
infantry in the world, and probably better than most.
Although it is a conscript army, there are regimental traditions, as
in the British or in any other service. Your conscript in his second
year of service will tell how his regiment captured the colours
here, or saved the position there, in the way-back days, and is
nearly as proud of it as if he, instead of the fellow soldiers of his
great-grandfather, were concerned in the business. _Esprit de corps_,
though now a common phrase in connection with the British Army, was
first of all a French idiom--and is yet, and an untranslatable one
too--designed to express the French soldier's pride in his own unit of
the service, or in his own branch of the service. At the present time,
it has as much application to the French Army as in the day when the
phrase was coined; pride in his own powers of endurance, and pride in
the unit in which he serves, still characterise the French conscript,
and in the last ten years or so this feeling has grown to such an
extent as to place the French Army, although a conscript organisation,
on a level with a voluntary force.
CHAPTER VI
CAVALRY
As in all armies, the French cavalryman considers himself as good as
two infantrymen; the origin of this may probably be traced back through
time to feudal days, when only the better classes of vassals were able
to provide horses with which to come to the standard of the feudal
chief. Certain it is that even in these present days of scientific
warfare, when the guns and rifles count equally with the swords of an
Army Corps, the cavalryman still looks on himself as a superior person,
more efficient and more to be admired than a mere gunner or a mere man
in a line regiment of infantry. Certainly, he rides, and this fact he
is always ready to impress on the infantryman; what he keeps quiet
about is that he has to groom the horse he rides, and to attend to its
needs when the infantryman, having finished his march at practically
the same time the cavalryman finished his, has his meal cooked and
eaten before his fellow of the mounted unit has got away from stables.
Considering that the time of the infantry conscript is fully occupied
in the compression of all his tuition into his two years of service,
it may be imagined that the way of the cavalryman is not an easy one,
for he has far more to learn than the infantryman. He has not only to
learn to use the carbine which corresponds in his case to the infantry
rifle, and to execute movements on foot, but he has to groom his horse,
clean his saddle, keep the stables in order, and do all the things that
are absolute necessities where horses are concerned, as well as having
nearly twice as much personal kit to look after as the infantryman--and
then he has to be trained in the use of the sword, that of the lance in
some regiments, and to add to his other drills the business of riding
school.
The horses of French cavalry, as a whole, are not so well cared for
as those of the English cavalry regiment; methods used in connection
with the care of horses are not so complete and perfect, and the stock
itself is not such well-bred stuff, as a whole, as the horseflesh that
goes to the British Army from Irish and other breeding establishments.
At the same time, the cavalry trooper is taught how to care for his
mount in his own way, and, trained in a harder school, French horses
of the cavalry are tougher than those of English regiments. If a unit
from each army were placed side by side in a position in which there
was no chance of feeding horses on full rations of forage, but all had
to live on the country and make the best of it for a time, the French
animals would probably come out better of the two from the ordeal,
since they are more used to hardships in time of peace. The British
trooper is taught to treat his horse as he would a baby, while the
French soldier, inured to rigorous discipline himself, has a horse that
shares his own circumstances.
The cavalry conscript elects to serve in a mounted unit, for, on the
1st of October on which a man comes up for his training, he is given
choice between cavalry, artillery and infantry service, as far as the
exigencies of the service will permit. Like the infantry recruit, he
begins his service by drawing kit and clothing and fitting the latter
to the satisfaction of his superior officers; in addition to the
equivalent of the kit drawn from store by the infantryman, however, the
cavalry conscript must draw stable kit and cleaning materials, spurs
and all that goes to make the difference between the mounted and the
dismounted soldier. Unlike modern practice in the British cavalry,
the way with the French conscript is to get on teaching him at once
as much as possible; riding school, foot drill, gymnastic exercises,
and stable work are all crowded into his day, for there are but two
years available before he will go back to civilian attire and ways. And
there is much to teach him; more, really, than two years can be made
to serve for. It may be said that, except in the case of men who were
skilled riders before they came up for training, the French cavalry
conscript is not a complete soldier by the time he has finished his two
years, for it is impossible that he should be. All that can be done
to make him efficient is done, though, and the difference between the
finished article, going back to civilian avocations, and the conscript
from which he is formed, is little short of marvellous. Detractors from
the merits of a conscript system overlook the effect on the conscript
as regards physique and moral stamina; out of the rough schooling men
emerge far more fitted for the battle of life than they entered, and
the net effect of military training in a cavalry regiment--two years
of it, taken as the French soldier is made to take his training--is in
nineteen cases out of twenty all to the good.
Riding-school is a serious business; when a man first leads his horse
through the riding-school entrance and mounts, he learns what a
perfect brute--from his point of view--an instructor can be, and it
is not until he is nearing the end of his period of riding-school
instruction that he learns to look on the instructor as not a bad
fellow, a bit strict at his work, but responsible for the turning out
of some of the finest riders in the world. For in horsemanship the
French soldier is no whit behind his English confrère, and it is only
in recent years that the British Army has taken up the circus tricks
which for many years have been practised in the French Army in order to
make men thoroughly familiar with their mounts. A conscript is taught
not only to ride a saddled horse, but also to vault on to the back
of a cantering horse, to make his horse lie down, and various other
tricks--they are nothing more in themselves--which give him thorough
confidence in himself and thorough knowledge of the capabilities,
intelligence, and nature of his horse. Recognising the wisdom of this
form of teaching, the British Army has of late adopted it, to the
betterment of cavalry riding as a whole.
The new _loi de trois ans_, introduced in the war ministry of M.
Viviani, will be to the advantage of the French cavalry, when it
has had chance of a fair trial--it had hardly become a definite law
before the outbreak of war put a stop to peace training and peace
organisation. But, when things become normal again, it is certain that
the cavalry will benefit by the extension of the period of service,
and although they were perfectly capable of taking the field when need
arose, French cavalry will be improved in quality by the additional
training. This applies not so much to the main points of drill and
discipline as to little things; veterinary tricks and ways, capacity
for individual service, and self-dependence in the fullest sense,
especially to the extent demanded of the man who goes out on patrol
work and scouting duty, are not to be learned as thoroughly as could be
wished in two years, but must be ingrained by experience as well as by
tuition.
Before his first year of training is concluded the cavalry conscript is
expected to have learned all that the riding-school can teach him. In
addition to the class of riding which may be termed circus work, and is
taught on horses with handled pads instead of saddles, the recruit is
initiated into bending lessons, by which his horse is rendered flexuous
and easily amenable to pressure of leg and rein. It is worthy of note,
by the way, that the principle on which the modern training of horses
is based is due to a Frenchman, who brought to England what were at the
time considered revolutionary principles with regard to riding.
The method by which the French conscript is trained at riding school is
of such a nature that it trains horse and man at the same time. At the
beginning of training with saddles the ride is formed of about sixteen
men who walk, trot, and canter their mounts along sides of a square in
single file. The man is made to ride his horse well into the corners
of the square and to make three turns sharply, and, when men have
acquired full control of their horses so as to be able to perform this
simple movement properly, they are taken on to more complex matters.
While strung out along one side of the square, at the word of command
each man turns his horse at a direct right angle, proceeds across the
square, and, turning again at a right angle on the far side, the ride
forms single file again and proceeds. A diagonal movement of the same
nature is then taught; men are taught to halt their horses suddenly and
rein them back a length or two; they are taught when at the canter to
cause their horses to passage sideways across the square, and, in fact,
are instructed to make every movement of which a horse is capable.
At first, as may be assumed, the tuition is carried out with trained
horses, but, as men become advanced in the art and practice of riding,
they are put on to younger horses, and it will be easily understood
that, in learning himself to make the horse execute the movements, the
cavalryman trains the horse to its work as well as increasing his own
knowledge.
In the matter of foot drill there is not so much to learn in the
cavalry as in the infantry. Cavalry foot drill, as a matter of fact, is
practically a replica of the drill to which troops and squadrons of men
are subjected when mounted. The principle governing cavalry foot drill
in practically all armies consists in assuming that a man shall not be
called on to execute a movement which he cannot execute on horseback,
as, otherwise, confusion might arise in the course of mounted drill.
It would be interesting, for instance, if cavalry were taught infantry
drill, to see what would happen if a squadron of mounted men were
ordered to form fours in the infantry style.
Actual foot movements do not by any means comprise the total of drill
that the cavalry conscript must learn on foot before applying it to
mounted work. The use of the sword and also that of the lance are first
thoroughly taught to squads of dismounted men, and a recruit must be
fully conversant with sword and lance exercise before he ventures to
perform either offensive or defensive movements with either of these
weapons on horseback. The unskilled man waving a sword about when
mounted would probably do more damage to his horse's eyes and ears than
to anything else, and the man with the lance, if unskilled, would
probably find himself dismounting involuntarily if he tried to use
the lance on a spirited horse. Thus men are taken out, dismounted,
in squads; each man assumes the position which he would occupy on
horseback with feet well apart, knees bent and toes turned to the
front--an exhausting posture to maintain for any length of time. In
this attitude the recruit is taught such movements as are requisite to
full control of sword and lance. For final training in the use of these
weapons men are given fencing outfits and set in pairs to oppose each
other. When they have attained to proficiency, the whole business is
repeated on horseback, and by that time their training for actual field
work in the ranks is practically complete.
The part of his work that the cavalry conscript likes least is the
grooming and sweeping up and cleaning of saddlery in the stables.
There is a morning stable hour with which the day begins; there are
about two hours before midday which must be devoted to grooming,
cleaning saddlery, sweeping up, etc., and there is another hour or so
to be spent at stables in the afternoon, when the "orders of the day"
are read out to the men by the sergeant-major of the squadron or his
representative.
As is the case in the infantry, each conscript, on arriving at the
regiment in which he is to serve, is allotted to the charge of a
corporal, who instructs him in all things pertaining to his work, and
takes charge of him on _corvées_, the equivalent to the "fatigues" of
the British Army. _Corvées_ include the carrying of forage from the
stores to stable, fetching coal for the cooks, white-washing where
and when necessary, building riding-school jumps, and, in fact, all
and every class of work which men are unable to perform individually
for themselves. Much of this work is undergone by the men sentenced
to _salle de police_, which is the equivalent of the British Army's
punishment known as "days to barracks," with the addition that the
offenders sleep in the guard room at night instead of in the barrack
room. This of course involves entire confinement to barracks, which no
offender is allowed to quit unless he is on duty; it also involves no
possibility of attendance at the canteen at any time of the day, and,
further, the man sentenced to _salle de police_ devotes practically
all the spare time that is his under normal circumstances to some form
of _corvée_. On the whole, however, the punishment is not so severe as
it appears, for, with the exception of sleeping in the guard room at
night, and rising exceptionally early in the morning, a man undergoing
_salle de police_ is not debarred from the society of his comrades,
and there is usually some good-natured chum willing to fetch canteen
produce, and thus make up for at least one of the deficiencies involved.
This last, however, must be done when the corporal is not looking, or
else both men are likely to get into trouble. Strict discipline is
the rule and the conscript is expected to take his punishment--when
he incurs it--as part of his training. It must be added as a mark of
the quality of the material of which the French Army is composed that
punishments and rewards alike are usually accepted in equally good part.
The corporal, who is the superior officer with whom the conscript
is brought most frequently in contact, sleeps in the same room as
his squad; he is thus able to give men hints with regard to riding
school work; he trains his squad at elementary drill, both mounted and
dismounted; he instructs men in the way in which clothing should be
folded for placing on the shelf, and the way in which to clean kit and
equipment. In the matter of troop drill the conscript is taught his
work by the sergeant of the _peloton_ or troop, and the sergeant in
turn is responsible to the lieutenant or sub-lieutenant over him. He
is also responsible to the sergeant-major of the squadron, and through
him to the senior captain of the squadron. To follow the matter
through, the senior captain is responsible to the _Chef d'Escadrons_,
who again is responsible to the commanding officer of the regiment.
Decentralisation of command has been an important factor in French
military training for many years, and although the responsibilities of
the corporal and sergeant pass through so many grades before they reach
the ultimate head of affairs, both these lower ranks are extremely
important items in the discipline and training of the French cavalry
regiments.
There is one system pursued both in the cavalry and in the artillery
of the French Army which leads to pleasant expeditions for a certain
number of men in each of these branches of the service. The system
referred to is that of boarding out a certain number of horses away
from regimental control for that portion of the year which the regiment
spends in barracks. When the time approaches for the regiment to go
on manoeuvres, a party usually made up of a sergeant, possibly a
corporal, and two or three troopers, goes round to the farms where
these horses are at grass, and inspects them with a view to reporting
on their condition and fitness for use. As may be imagined, the men
selected for these expeditions are envied their appointments, for
it is a pleasant matter to get away from the discipline and strict
routine of service with the regiment for a time, and, if the sergeant
in charge is a companionable man, the whole affair becomes a perfect
picnic for the men concerned. On expeditions of this kind men are
perfectly certain of receiving full hospitality at such places as they
may visit, and altogether the trip is as good as the furlough which
the conscript, unlike his British _confrère_, does not get, save in
exceptional circumstances. The two years in which a man must become
fully conversant with his work is too short a period, in view of the
number of duties he has to learn, to admit of holidays.
Altogether, the life of the cavalry conscript in barracks is not by any
means an unpleasant business. A comparatively large number of men, when
given the choice of the arm of the service in which to serve, request
to be sent to the cavalry. The majority of those joining cavalry
regiments are used to horses in some way--and by this is implied very
many ways indeed, and very many kinds of horse. French cavalry as a
whole is built up out of good material; the spirit of the men is good;
the reputation of the French cavalry for horse-mastership is as wide
as it is deserved, and, bearing in mind the period of active service
for which men are required to serve, it may safely be said that there
is no better body of cavalry troops in the world than the French. This
remark, however, cannot be reckoned as a wise one if the speaker is
addressing a British cavalryman, who always regards himself as a member
of the premier squadron in the best regiment of the very finest cavalry
force existent. But then, the French cavalryman will tell the same
story.
CHAPTER VII
ARTILLERY
In the matter of armament and the quality thereof, French artillery is
second to none; but in the matter of numbers the Field Artillery might
have been stronger when considered relatively with the total strength
of the French Army. If the conscript electing to join either infantry
or cavalry considers himself in for a hard time, then it would be
difficult to say what are the anticipations of the conscript who goes
to service with the guns, for his work is practically twice as hard as
that of the average infantryman. Still, he makes up for increase of
work by a relaxation of discipline, and, after all, the conscript's two
years comes to about the same thing in the end, no matter what branch
of the service he may choose. For, just as there is a limit to a man's
endurance or efficiency, so there is a limit to the amount of knowledge
that a man can absorb in a given period. The infantry conscript absorbs
all the knowledge possible in the allotted time: the artillery
conscript can do no more.
It may be said, in fact, that the artillery conscript has a better time
of it than his fellows in either infantry or cavalry, for his work
is rendered more interesting than theirs by reason of its being more
varied. The artillery driver, certainly, is in much the same position
as the cavalryman, for his life is made up of horses and stables,
riding, driving, grooming, and care for the fitness and cleanliness of
harness and saddlery. He has a very busy life, this artillery driver,
and his remarks, on coming in on a wet day after two or three hours'
parade with the guns, might cause a little consternation in what is
known as polite society, for two muddy horses with their saddlery
and fittings, all to be dried and cleaned for the battery officer's
inspection within a given time, are not conducive to elegance of
expression or to restraint.
But compensation comes in the relaxation of the rigid discipline
which the infantryman, and to a certain extent the cavalryman, have
to undergo. This will appear more clearly when one understands that
infantrymen and cavalrymen alike need supervision throughout the whole
of their day's work. Their tasks are mainly of drill and routine: made
work, a good bit of it, in order to render them thoroughly efficient
soldiers. The made work of the artillery driver consists in rendering
him efficient in the art of controlling two of the horses which draw
the gun, under all possible and many impossible conditions. By the
time his training is completed, he has learned to harness up and turn
out quickly, and is capable of obeying without hesitation any word of
command the battery officer may give with regard to the evolutions of
the battery as a whole. He is trained in the matter of casualties; that
is to say, he is taught to regard one of his horses as suddenly injured
or dead, and knows exactly what to do to make the best of the loss, in
case such a casualty may occur. "Unlimber" and "limber up," as words
of command, find him equally unmoved and equally alert; he is, at his
best, a confident, self-reliant man, a far different being from the raw
youth who, on a certain first of October, came to be initiated into the
mysteries of artillery driving.
These things comprise very nearly all of what may be termed the made
work of the artillery driver, the work that is arranged with a special
view to making him an efficient soldier in time of war. The rest of
his work is absolutely necessary to the well-being of himself and the
two horses under his charge. As a matter of course, he must keep
himself and his kit smart and clean--as smartness is known in the
French Army. He must groom his horses, and keep their equipment in good
order; he must keep the stables clean; he must assist the gunners in
the _corvées_ necessary to the maintenance of health, good order, and
efficiency in the battery. Bearing in mind the fact that this one man
is responsible not only for himself, in the way that an infantryman
is, but is also responsible for his two horses and all their outfit,
it will be seen that there is not much time for the discipline which,
in the case of the infantryman, is practically indispensable to the
thorough control of the man and the full efficiency of the regiment.
The artillery driver is a busy man, who considers himself, by reason of
the amount of work that he gets through, a far more capable man than
either an infantryman or a cavalryman; in the driver's estimation, the
only class of man who comes anywhere near him as regards efficiency and
soldierly qualities is the gunner, and, the driver will say, the gunner
is not quite so good a man as the driver. This spirit, common to each
branch of the French Army, augurs well for the efficiency and fighting
value of all arms of the service.
Gunners in the French Army, as far as Field Artillery is concerned,
differ from English gunners in that they only ride on the limber
and on the gun when there is actual need that they should accompany
the gun. English gunners always ride, but in the French Army it is
considered better to save the horses by reducing the weight that they
have to draw to the lowest possible amount. On long marches the gunners
turn out two or three hours earlier than the drivers, and march like
infantry to the appointed destination for the day. Although turning out
later with horses and guns, the drivers usually reach camp at the end
of the day quite as soon as the gunners, for the trot is maintained
where possible, and, with a light load to draw, artillery horses are
able to get over ground quickly. This system has much to commend it; it
hardens the gunners, and is far better for their general health than
sitting on a gun or limber which jolts, springless, along a country
road; at the same time, it increases the mobility of the artillery, and
renders horses more fresh and fit for their work in case of several
days in succession, devoted to marching to a distant destination. The
only drawback to the practice consists in its being useless in time of
war, when the gunners must at all times accompany the guns and be ready
for instant action.
The work of the gunners is quite as hard as that of the drivers of
Field Artillery, and quite as varied. Coming to the battery with
absolutely no knowledge of the ways of using a gun, the raw conscript
is taught the work of half a dozen men, for, as in the case of the
drivers, each man has to be able to replace casualties in the ranks.
The actual drill to which a gunner is subjected is a complicated
business; there is a good deal of hopping and jumping about and aside,
for each man must learn to perform his part in loading, sighting, and
firing his gun, and at the same time each man must keep out of the way
of the rest. A gun crew amounts to a dozen or so of men: there are the
men concerned in the getting out of ammunition, others busied over the
actual loading, and yet others engaged in sighting the gun and firing
at the word of command; each of these men must be taught the duties of
all the rest, for, when a battery is actually in action, casualties
must be anticipated, and the men who are loading must be prepared to
get out ammunition if required, must be able to set the time fuse of a
shell for a given range, able to load, sight, and fire the gun. Thus
one man has to learn the various tasks which a dozen perform, though to
each is allotted a definite place, and each is specially trained for
the performance of a definite part.
Naturally, this training fully occupies all the two years of the gunner
conscript's service, and there is little time to spare. The fuss and
fret of discipline is correspondingly reduced; when a man is thoroughly
busy, and interested in his work as any man must be over a gun, if
he is in the least mechanically inclined, he needs no undue pressure
to keep him up to his work; the gunner, if he has any sense of the
responsibility and nature of his work, gets sufficiently interested in
it, and sufficiently keen over the points that he has to master, to
render him independent of more than actual tuition. The pleasure that
comes to the sportsman over a remarkably successful shot, or to the
cricketer over a good boundary hit, is akin to the feeling experienced
by the gunner as he learns part after part of his gun, and finds
himself well on the way to gaining complete control over the tremendous
power that the gun represents.
But this comes late in the training period, and is not attained easily.
There is so much to learn; the way in which a shell is timed, for
instance, is a complex piece of work that must be understood, to a
certain extent, by the gunner who has to do the timing; that is to say,
the mechanism of the shell, and the nature of the timing apparatus,
have to be taught the man as well as the mere action of turning the
ring to the required point and "setting the fuse." Traversing and
sighting the gun, elevation and depression, are movements that explain
themselves as they are taught; sighting to a given range seems easy,
but is not so easy in practice, for the sighting of a gun has to be
done swiftly and accurately--there must be no mistake in the range, for
a shell costs more money than the total pay of the conscript during his
two years of service, and to throw those costly projectiles to points
at which they explode without effect is a silly business.
To each man his part in the whole, and absolute efficiency in the
part--that is the ideal to which the training of the gunner is
directed; the quality of the French field artillery in action in
this, their latest real experience of war, attests how well the ideal
has been realised. Outnumbered by their opponents in batteries and
regiments, often confronted with guns of far heavier calibre than their
own, they have given good account of themselves, and shown that the
crews of the 75-millimetre gun are capable of holding their own as far
as lies within the bounds of human possibility.
With regard to the custom of sending forward gunners on foot, this
practice is also followed in the case of reserve drivers, or drivers
who are not needed for the actual transport of the guns and limbers on
the march. They are formed up in rear of the gunners, and are marched
off on foot with the latter instead of adding to the weight that the
horses have to pull, leaving only such officers and men as are actually
necessary to travel with the guns.
The artillery officer's training course is more severe than that
undergone by any other branch of the service, as, in view of the
complicated and responsible nature of his duties, it needs to be.
An artillery officer, gaining his commission after the fashion of
a British officer who elects to join the Army by way of Sandhurst
or Woolwich, goes first to the École Polytechnique, the highest
engineering school of France; after completing the course here,
the officer of artillery is sent on to the artillery school at
Fontainebleau, where a year is spent in further training, and then the
youngster is considered competent to take his place as lieutenant in an
artillery battery. The percentage of artillery officers gaining their
commissions from the ranks is smaller than that of other branches of
the service, and it is seldom that such officers reach higher than the
rank of captain, for, in order to learn all that is required of the
higher ranks of commissioned officer in the artillery, an officer needs
to start young, and a course at the École Polytechnique is almost an
essential. By the time a man has worked his way through the various
grades of non-commissioned officer and is thus eligible for such a
course, he is usually too old to take kindly to school work.
Altogether, artillery service is not a light business in the French
Army--it is not in any army, for that matter. Both gunners and drivers
must take themselves seriously, and officers of the artillery must
take themselves most seriously of all, with the possible exception
of engineer officers. The modern rifle is a complicated weapon when
compared with the musket of a hundred years ago; but in comparison
with the rifle, the big gun of the Army of to-day has advanced in
construction and power to an enormously greater extent. The character
of the projectile has changed altogether from the old-fashioned round
shot to a missile which is in itself a gun, carrying its own exploding
charge and small projectiles within itself. The range of the modern gun
is limited only by the necessity to make the gun mobile in the field,
and by the range of human sight or power to judge the position of the
target. The gunners of to-day, and the officers who command them,
must be skilled workmen, possessed of no little mechanical ability in
addition to their military qualities. They must be not only soldiers,
but artificers, mechanics, engineers, mathematicians--skilled men in
every way. The efficiency of the French artillery to-day is largely due
to the French turn of mind, which is eminently suited to the solving of
those mathematical problems with which the work of those who control
the big guns abounds.
CHAPTER VIII
IN CAMP AND ON THE MARCH
Manoeuvres fall at the end of the military year in the French Army,
being so arranged in order that the second-year conscripts shall pass
out from the Army and back to their ordinary civilian avocations
as soon as they return to barracks and have time to hand in their
equipment and arms. For the majority of these men, it is two years
since they have had time to see their friends, save for a stray day
or two of leave here and there for the man whose people live within a
short distance of the training-place to which he has been drafted, or a
stray visitor who brings news from home to one or other at infrequent
intervals. Thus manoeuvres mean a good deal to the conscript; even the
first-year men catch the infection from their fellows with regard to
the approaching time for going away, and there is as well the sense for
these juniors that, when they return to barracks, they will no longer
be first-year men, but able to advise and instruct such raw recruits
as they themselves were just a year ago. Added to this, again, is the
sense of freedom that comes from knowing of the days of marching,
billeting, and sight of fresh places and people from day to day, and it
will be seen that the change from barrack life with its perpetual round
of work to the constantly varying scenes of manoeuvres is one which is
anticipated with pleasure by all.
About a week, or perhaps more, before the time has come for the army
corps concerned--or the cavalry or other divisions concerned--to set
out on its march to the manoeuvre area, the cavalry and artillery send
out their patrols to gather up the horses which have been boarded
out at farms for the summer, and the men of these patrols are almost
invariably billeted on the inhabitants of the districts round which
they have to ride on their errand. It is a pleasant task, this; the
year is at its best, and summer just so far advanced that the early
rising, the riding through the day, and the evening tasks are alike
easy. The weather is good, the life is not too hard, and the party too
small to admit of strict discipline being maintained; the men know
that their picnic-time is due to their having been specially chosen
as reliable for such work, and consequently they do not abuse their
freedom.
And the horses come in from grass to train for what a horse can never
understand, though it is in the knowledge of all that a horse comes to
know his place in the ranks of the cavalry or in the traces of the gun
team, and would gladly go back to that place after he has been cast out
from the service to drudgery between the two shafts of a cart or cab.
Perhaps the horses have their own thoughts about going on manoeuvres,
and the change from stable life--such of them as have been kept in
stables while the troops are in barracks--to the open air existence
which is theirs in camp.
It is a great day for the conscript when the regiment marches out from
barracks. Farewell for a time, and in the case of the second-year men
farewell for good, to the barrack routine. They leave in barracks the
things they will not require on field service, the materials for what
the British soldier knows as "spit and polish soldiering," and the
conscript starts out with his field kit and equipment, prepared to have
a good time.
The infantry swing out through the barrack gates, a long column of
marching men; they talk among themselves of what they will do when
manoeuvres are over; the second-year men talk of going away, back to
their homes, and of turning their backs on military service; they have
done the duty their country asked of them, and now are at liberty to
think of a good time--almost a holiday, in spite of the hard work and
marching involved, with which they will end their service--to last them
through the coming weeks, after which they will resume civilian attire
and work. It has been a hard business, this conscript period, but
France asked it, and _ma foi_, but we are men now! The stern strictness
of the instructors, the unending discipline imposed by sergeants and
corporals, the everlasting watchfulness of the adjutant over buttons
and boots and the correct method of saluting--proper perspective,
rapidly growing in the mind of the man nearing the end of his second
year, assures him that these things are needs of a good army. And then,
he is going out on manoeuvres, among the apple orchards or the hill
villages; he is going to show the country what its soldiers are like,
and almost, but not quite, he regrets that the end of his period of
military service is nearly in sight. The time to which he looks forward
colours his view of all things; the barracks are behind, and before him
is the open road--that long, straight road which, in so many districts
of France, goes on and on across bare plains, to human sight a thread
laid right across the fabric of the world without bend or divergence.
A road of white dust which, as soon as the barracks are left behind,
rises from the many footsteps of the marching men and envelops the
column. The band in front goes free of the dust, and well it is that
the throats of the bandsmen are not choked and dried with the insidious
stuff, for one marches better, far better, with the music.
Somebody starts a song, for the regiment is marching at ease. A squad
takes it up, and it spreads through the company--the company in rear
has already started its own song, a different one. Interminably that
song goes on, and the miles slip behind. At the end of every hour the
column halts, and its men fall out for five minutes' rest--a good
custom, this, for one can get rid of some of the dust, and often get a
drink of water from a wayside spring--or Jean, who always gets enough
money from home to satisfy the desires of his heart, has brought
a bottle. It would be in the last degree injudicious to incur the
accusation of _faire suisse_ on this first day of the march, and Jean
has long since learned wisdom over such points of etiquette. Jean wants
to keep the bottle till the next halt, but it is pointed out to him
that the morning is already warm, and to carry a bottle for another
hour when one might empty it--with assistance--and be saved the labour
of transporting it further, is very bad judgment. Jean needs little
persuasion--but it is time to fall in and resume the march: the bottle
gets emptied while the column is marching, and Jean is voted _un brave
garçon_--as undoubtedly he is, in other things beside this.
Shrouded in dust the column goes on. The grey-headed colonel is at the
head, then comes the band, and then the men of the regiment follow, at
ease, singing, smoking, chatting together. They pass through a village
street in which is a simple monument to the men who fell in '70, and
the colonel pulls his men up to attention while they pass through the
street. Quietly, and with something ominous in the manner of their
march, the men pass out to the open road again, where "at ease" is
the order once more. But, when they march steadily at attention,
these French infantrymen seem the embodiment of military strength and
efficiency. The Army has taken them and made of them what it meant to
make, and, Breton lad or Paris gamin, they are stamped with the mark
of the Army--they are soldiers of the Republic, marching items which,
apart from their personal characteristics, mean each a rifle and a
bayonet for France when the hour shall strike. Over successive horizons
they go, stopping every hour for their five minutes; they grow heedless
of the band at the head of the column, and scarcely know whether it
is playing or no; one or two fall out, perhaps, for the first days of
the march throw out from the ranks all the unfit; there is a doctor
at hand to see to those who fall out, and the column swings on. Some
time, after what seems to the men very many hours, the band strikes
up definitely and with an indefinable new note--and the men know they
are marching into camp. Food and sleep are not far ahead; the column
stiffens at the call from the grey-haired colonel, and swings on to
the camping-ground apparently as fresh as when the men passed out from
the barrack gate. It is a part of their pride that they should come in
well, should end their march like soldiers and men, not like weaklings.
The cavalry also go out from the barracks with anticipations of good
times ahead. Unlike the infantry, they have to keep formation when
marching at ease as when marching at attention, for you cannot get a
horse to rein back into the rank behind you or come up to the rank in
front of you as easily as you yourself can drop back or go up, and,
moreover, you cannot regain your place in the ranks at the call of
"attention" as an infantryman can. But there are compensations. The
"fours" of men divide into twos, of which each takes one side of the
road; there is room in between the two inner men for the clouds of dust
to roll about, and, although some of the stuff comes up, especially
as regards the rear of the squadron, one is not so much down in it
as the soldier on foot. One sees the country, too; the infantryman,
keeping his place in his company, is just one of a crowd, and, in
marching along and getting very tired--so the cavalryman says--he has
no chance of looking about him and seeing what the country that he
is marching through is like. One's horse does all the work, in the
cavalry march, and one is merely a spectator, enjoying the fine day and
the new scenery. It is good to be in the cavalry, and who would be an
infantryman, when manoeuvres start? Patrol duty, for instance, and the
isolated tasks that take patrols of three and four men to farmhouses
where the milk is good and one is invited--yes, invited!--to pick fruit
from the trees--what infantryman knows anything of joys like these?
Assuredly it is a good thing that one chose to serve in the cavalry.
Supposing it is the first time one has gone out on manoeuvres, there
are all sorts of pleasant speculations in which one can indulge.
Guillaumette, the surly fellow, who when in barracks always occupies
the next bed and snores so atrociously--he who is not always perfectly
innocent of _faire suisse_, though he has the luck of a pig, and never
gets caught at any of his mean tricks--Guillaumette will be going away
when one returns to barracks at the end of the manoeuvres, and who
shall say what pleasant kind of a comrade may not come from among the
new recruits to take his place? Jacques, for instance, who belongs to
the third _peloton_ has a first-year man in the next bed to him, one
who is the son of a deputy, and has always plenty of money. When the
deputy's son was for guard and was warned for duty so late that he
could not possibly get ready in time, Jacques lent him kit and helped
him to turn out, with the result that Jacques had five francs--five
francs, think of it!--with which to go to the canteen. And, soon after
one has got back off manoeuvres, the new recruits will be coming in;
one will be a second-year man, then, with perhaps a deputy's son
to sleep in the next bed and dispense five francs at a time to one
who knows all the little ways of soldiering and can be of use. The
possibilities, both of the manoeuvres themselves and of what comes
after, are endless, and speculation on them is a pleasant business.
Surly old Sergeant Lemaire, too, is almost sure to get promotion this
year, and the _peloton_ will get another sergeant to take charge
of it--certainly not one with a worse temper, for that would be
impossible.
And the long road slips behind, while the troopers conjecture with
regard to their future, talk together of horses bad and good, sergeants
and corporals bad and good, comrades also bad and good; they smoke
as they ride, and talk yet more of horses, for any army of the world
the cavalrymen never tire of talking of horses and their own riding
abilities, while in the French Army boasting of one's own horsemanship,
and all the rest of one's own good qualities, is even more common
than it is among English soldiers. Not that the boasting among either
is carried to a nauseous extent, but the soldier is so subject
to discipline, so used to doing good work with only the official
recognition by way of return, that, knowing the work is good, he talks
about it himself since nobody is there to do the talking for him--and
this is especially true of the cavalry.
Some time ago Conan Doyle created in "Brigadier Gerard" an excellent
picture of a French cavalry officer of the old type, and to some extent
the picture of Gerard--the most human and realistic figure Conan
Doyle has ever penned, by the way--still holds good as regards both
officers and men. One may find in both officers and men of the French
cavalry to-day much of the absolute disregard of risks, rather than
bravery as that is understood among the English, which characterises
the brigadier. There is, too, much of Gerard's vanity in modern French
cavalry officers and men, much of his susceptibility to influence,
and all of his absolute loyalty to a superior. The French cavalryman
will tell his comrades how he dislikes his squadron officer, but he
will follow that squadron officer anywhere and into any danger--his
loyalty is sufficient for any test that may be imposed on him. Like
Gerard, he will brag of the things he has done, will devote much time
to explaining exactly how he did them and how no other man could
have done them just as well, until a British cavalryman, if he were
listening, would tell the speaker to pass the salt and hire a trumpeter
to blow for him. But, though the French cavalryman is true to the
Gerard picture in that he boasts inordinately, it will be found, when
one has got to close acquaintance with him, that he does not boast
without reason. He has done a good thing--why not talk about it, for if
he does not nobody else will? The British attitude toward a boaster is
one of contempt, since the man who boasts generally does little, and
exaggerates that little out of recognition. But the French cavalryman
boasts--and acts too; like the Englishman, he does his work, and,
unlike the Englishman, he talks about it. But it must always be
remembered that he acts as well as talks.
The picture of Gerard, however, is not a faithful portrait of the
French cavalry officer of to-day, for the modern French officer takes
his work far more seriously than Gerard took his, and understands it
more fully. For forty years or more French officers, in common with
the rest of the nation, have known that there would come a life and
death struggle with Germany; they have set themselves to the task of
mastering the difficulties attendant on the crushing of the invaders
and the avenging of Sedan--no matter to what arm of the service the
French officer may belong, he is first a soldier, and after that a man.
Gerard, on the other hand, was man first and officer afterwards. The
difference has been brought about by the training which the Army of
the Third Republic imposes on its officers, and since that Army is a
conscript force, the difference is of itself a necessity.
And it should always be borne in mind, especially by those who deplore
the training of the citizens of France into so huge an army, that the
step has been vital to the life of the nation. With a far smaller
population than Germany, France has been compelled, as a matter of
self-preservation, to keep pace with Germany in the means adopted with
regard to military training, has had to train and arm man for man,
produce gun for gun--and when the hour of trial came it was found that
the preparation had been none too great--there was not one trained
man but was needed to cope with the national enemy, with Prussian
militarism and Prussian greed of conquest. The conscript Army of the
Third Republic, unlike that of its eastern neighbour and unlike the
huge levies that Napoleon the First raised, has been intended as a
means of defence only; the worst enemy of the Republic cannot accuse it
of having maintained all its effective citizens as soldiers with a view
to aggression in any direction. The Army is, because it must be for
the safety of the nation, not because the nation desires territory or
conquest.
And all this time the squadrons are marching along the straight roads
that led over far horizons and to things unguessed, unseen by the
first-year men.
They stop, at intervals along their marching line, to water their
horses, loosen girths, and stretch themselves; they walk about
the roads and look at each other's mounts; they share packets of
cigarettes--those cigarettes made of black French tobacco that wither
the back of the throat when first one inhales smoke from them. The
lieutenant or sub-lieutenant comes round the troop to inspect the
horses and see that all are fit, and the sergeant comes round too,
probably to point out to the lieutenant some loose shoe or rubbing
girth that the less experienced eye of the commissioned youngster has
failed to detect. Then girths are tightened, the men mount again, and
go on, dividing the road between them as before.
As camp draws near, the line of men grows silent, or at least more
silent than at the setting out, and the horses take their work steadily
rather than eagerly, for this is their first day out, and they are not
yet hardened to long marches.
Then camp. The putting down of the lines, grooming, blanketing up for
the night, feeding--one casts a glance over toward where the infantry
have come in and got to their own meals, for this is the time when a
cavalryman may have doubts as to whether it would not have been better,
after all, to have joined the infantry. Unworthy thoughts, these--is
there anything in the world like a cavalryman, for real soldierly merit?
This business of believing one's own branch of the service to be
infinitely superior to any other is carried into the different branches
of the same arm, as well as existing between the three arms as a
whole. The cavalryman knows that service in the cavalry is infinitely
to be preferred to service in infantry or artillery, but further, if he
is a Dragoon, he knows that neither Cuirassier nor Chasseur nor Hussar
is nearly as good as himself, and the Cuirassier, the Chasseur, and the
Hussar have equally strong beliefs about the unquestionable superiority
of their own branches of the cavalry. Each branch, in the opinion of
its members, can produce the best riders, the best shots, the best
all-round soldiers, and the best officers. It is a harmless belief,
maintained quite impersonally.
Evening stables finished, the night guards are warned for their duty,
the men settle down to the chief meal of the day, and later they sleep,
the sound, healthy sleep induced by a long day in the open air. They
waken or are wakened early in the morning, and again they saddle up and
go on, for often the manoeuvre area is many miles from the barracks,
and days may be devoted to straightforward marching before the mimic
warfare begins.
One comes back to the guns, the long, murderous tubes that trail, each
behind six horses, just above the dust of the roads. The drivers are
there and the battery officers, but the seats on the guns are empty,
for the most part, for the gunners have marched out from camp very
early in the morning. The drivers are at a disadvantage, compared
with the men of cavalry or infantry--and even compared with their own
gunners; for if a cavalryman has to keep his place in the ranks when
mounted, then the gunner is absolutely a fixture in the battery. There
can be no dropping back to talk to a comrade, whatever the pretext
may be, for no man could take back with him the horse he is riding
and the one he is leading, when both are in the gun team. The driver
rides sombrely alone; the lead driver keeps his interval from the gun
ahead, the centre driver looks to it that his lead horse does its share
of work on the hills, and the wheel driver takes special care of the
direction of his team when an infrequent corner has to be turned, for
on him depends the track the wheels will make, and where they will run
with relation to the middle of the road. Were there only a lead driver,
the sweep taken on corners would not be wide enough, and it takes some
time to get such a ponderous engine as a 75-millimetre gun out of a
ditch.
The regiment of artillery comes out from barracks in one long column,
perhaps--unless one battery or a greater proportion of the whole has
further to travel than the batteries which take the straightest road.
For, if there are two or more parallel roads leading from the point of
departure to the destination, if it is possible for any considerable
part of the journey to divide up an artillery regiment into separate
batteries, this is done. The civilian has no conception of the length
of line on the road which an artillery regiment of ten batteries would
take up, nor can one who has not experienced the dust of a military
march understand what sort of cloud the last battery of ten would have
to march in. The column goes out as a whole, but as soon as possible
first one battery and then another turns off from the main route. If
there are only two alternate routes, then each alternate battery turns
off, leaving sufficient interval between the rest for the dust of one
to settle before the next shall come along. If there are more than two
roads, all are used, for the more a long column can be broken up into
separate units for a day's march, the sooner will the units of the
column reach their destination.
The fact that the larger a body of men is, the slower it moves, is one
well known to military authorities, though civilians and even many
military men would be prepared to dispute it. It will be seen to be
incontrovertible, though, if one realises that the pace of any body
of men which keeps together as one whole is the pace of the slowest
unit, and, moreover, that when a long column is in progress, not all
its units can keep exactly the same pace as the head of the column.
Consequently there occur a series of checks in the body of the column;
here and there crowding forward occurs, and then the units of the
column concerned in the crowding have to halve in order to rectify
this--or at least have to check their pace for the time. The check may
travel from the centre of the column right down to its rear, and then
there are gaps which have to be corrected, for when a check occurs it
is always prolonged just a little too long a time--and then the head
of the column has to check in order for the rear to catch up. And, the
longer the column, the more of these irritating little checks there
will be, with a net consequence that the column will take relatively
longer to pass a given point or to arrive at a given spot.
Because of these checks, as well as to give more air and comfort to the
men, in all arms of the service intervals are maintained on the march,
and a column is divided up into as many separate units as possible.
Infantry maintain intervals between companies, cavalry maintain
intervals between squadrons, and artillery maintain intervals between
batteries, while the two mounted arms split up their columns if
parallel roads are available, for the intervals do not quite compensate
for the checks described, and, the smaller the units of the force can
be made by means of separate roads, the shorter will be the march
between two points.
CHAPTER IX
MANOEUVRES
Manoeuvres form an expensive portion of the conscript's training, and
it will be understood, when it is remembered that under ordinary peace
conditions France maintains twenty military stations, each forming
the skeleton of an army corps, that the annual cost to the state
runs into a considerable fraction of the total military expenditure,
this including the cost of food for men, forage for horses, the
running of transports and stores, and all the expenses incidental to
the maintenance of troops in the field. One item alone, the cost of
shells fired by artillery during their annual practice, represent a
large expenditure, for each shell is in itself a complicated piece of
machinery, which must be perfectly accurate in all its parts, and is a
costly thing to produce.
Not that the soldier on manoeuvres ever counts cost; the majority of
the troops do not even think of such a thing. They are out roughing it,
a business which gratifies the instincts of most healthy minded and
bodied men, and one which is conducive to health and high spirits. Your
conscript on manoeuvres is a different being from the one who came to
the colours in the previous October. He has acquired a self-confidence
and self-reliance of which he was innocent at the beginning of his
training; he came as a boy, but now there are about him the signs of a
man, and the first camp more than anything else gives him a realisation
of the value of military training from a man's own point of view, and
quite apart from its value to the state. By the time the season of
manoeuvres is over he is a second-year man, and has begun to feel his
feet.
If one takes a map of France and picks out the twenty stations of
the various army corps scattered throughout the country, and then if
one realises the numbers of men actually serving that these stations
represent, one will see that it is quite impossible that all the army
corps of the country should make a point of undergoing their manoeuvres
as one united body. The disturbance inflicted from a civilian point of
view on the area chosen would be enormous, and the result of no more
value as regards the training of officers and men than when two or
three army corps conduct their mimic warfare together. Certainly more
than one army corps should be engaged in an annual set of manoeuvres.
For instance, if one took Lyons as the station concerned, and assumed
that the army corps stationed at Lyons conducted its manoeuvres
year after year independently of those army corps which have their
head-quarters at other centres, it would be easily understood that the
army corps with head-quarters at Lyons would, to a certain extent, get
into a rule-of-thumb way of working, and would fail to keep itself
abreast of the various discoveries that are constantly being made
by all sorts and conditions of commanders in the art of war. It is
essential that units should as far as possible be able to interchange
ideas, and learn new ways from each other, for war is a business
in which, given forces of equal strength, the most intelligently
controlled army wins.
The manoeuvre areas of France are many. There are stretches of hill
country like the district of the Vosges; forest stretches like the
Ardennes in which the French Army has recently conducted some of its
stiffest fights; great open plains like that which lies about Châlons,
or like the Breton _Landes_; and river basins of diversified country,
giving reaches of hill, valley and woodland, and most useful of all
from a military educational point of view, since they afford training
in practically all branches of the soldier's work.
In average manoeuvres, two forces, designated respectively as a blue
and a red force, or in some way distinguished from each other by marks
which enable men to tell "friend" from "enemy," are set to face each
other in a certain limited area. Each force is expected to do its best
to render the other ineffective as a fighting force, and the conditions
are made to resemble those of real warfare as nearly as possible.
It must be said, however, that up to the present, no nation in its
military manoeuvres has ever allowed sufficiently for casualties; as
an instance may be cited the case of a regiment which, on a certain
set of manoeuvres in France, was surrounded and entirely put out of
action early in the course of the operations. Had the business been
real, the men of that particular regiment would all have been either
dead or prisoners, but they were allowed to continue to count in
the force to which they belonged, and the commander of the opposing
force simply scored up so much credit for having achieved a brilliant
military operation. Of course, from the point of view of training
officers and men, for which manoeuvres are specially designed, it was
quite right that the officers and men of this unit should take part in
the operations up to the last day, but, since men do not resurrect in
this fashion after a real battle, it may be said, viewing the matter
disinterestedly, that there was no further tactical value in the scheme
carried out. The opposing forces were so constituted for the operation
as to be of about equal strength, and the presence or absence of the
regiment referred to would have been quite sufficient to turn the
scale one way or the other--and yet they were allowed to take part
after having been theoretically wiped out of existence! This anomalous
method of procedure is not peculiar to the French Army, however, but is
practically common to the armies of all nations.
The nature of the work which the conscript has to perform on manoeuvres
is purely a matter of luck. For instance, the force in which one is
serving may be compelled, in order to carry out the scheme of its
commander, to execute a wheeling or turning movement to either flank,
and, supposing a wheel to the right flank is required, then the men
on the right flank have very little marching to do, and very little
work, since their part in the scheme is to wait for the wheeling flank
to come round. An amusing old scamp whose service began when the five
years' law was still in force, and who served in a French infantry
battalion up to a short time ago, used to allege that he was once
right-hand man of an army corps which wheeled in this fashion with the
right flank for a pivot. "I stood for three weeks," he alleged, "on
that flank, waiting for the outer flank to come round, and looking up
the line to see that the men kept their dressing." The "dressing," it
should be explained, is a term used in both the French and British Army
for the keeping of line by the men.
But, speaking seriously, these wheeling movements occur frequently
during a term of manoeuvres; when the business is over, and the men
of the various units come to compare notes, they are often puzzled at
the enormous amount of work and marching imposed on one unit, while
another had practically nothing to do, and stayed very nearly in the
same place throughout the whole time. For, though the part that his own
regiment has to play in a scheme is usually explained to the conscript,
the strategical nature of the scheme as a whole is generally beyond
his comprehension. This is not to be wondered at, since a strategical
scheme is planned out by the best brains of the army corps--at least,
the staff officers are supposed to possess the best brains, and are
given their posts mainly on account of greater fitness for the planning
of military operations.
Manoeuvres as a whole approximate as nearly as is possible, in view
of the difference in circumstances, to active service, but "nearly
as possible" is not "quite," and the lessons learned on manoeuvres,
valuable though they are, cannot be unreservedly applied to active
service. Reference has already been made to the way in which the
soldier enjoys his period of manoeuvres, but no man enjoys active
service in a similar fashion, and _moral_, one of the greatest deciding
factors in war, is entirely absent from the mimic warfare in which
armies engage in time of peace. At the same time the lessons learned
from manoeuvres are as valuable as they are varied. Commanding officers
learn the amount of strain which they can impose on their men; the
conditions under which transport can and must be brought up for the
use of the troops can be studied with almost as much accuracy as in
warfare; the cavalry commander learns the value, from a war point of
view, of his men as scouts and on detached duties, while the artillery
officer finds out, as he never could without manoeuvre experience,
the possibilities of gun transport, and the business of ranging
positions with a view to rendering them untenable by shellfire. Where
the manoeuvre period fails as regards war lies mainly in the absence
of disadvantages. As already remarked, the conditions under which
transport can be brought up for the use of troops can be studied, but
sometimes in war transport goes wrong, or gets captured, and an army
has to do its best to keep the field until supplementary supplies
can be obtained; manoeuvres never impose this form of disability on
the troops. The cavalry commander is unable to ascertain what his
men would do when actually under fire, and though artillery officers
learn to range a position, they are unable to judge what the troops
occupying that position will be like after shelling has been carried
out. Manoeuvres teach up to a point, but from that point the art of war
can be learned only from the grim business itself, and, since no two
bodies of troops are ever in the same frame of mind, and no two battles
are fought under identical conditions, the art of war is never learned,
simple though its principles are.
The average conscript is troubled little about such matters as these.
As an infantryman, his business is to entrench himself when ordered
to do so; to advance by short rushes, squad alternating with squad,
during the work of getting nearer the enemy; to charge if bidden, or to
retreat as he advanced, in the way that would produce least damage to
the force of which he is a member if that force were exposed to actual
fire. Both in infantry and cavalry there exists a prejudice against
firing the first blank cartridge of a manoeuvre day, though, once that
first cartridge has been fired, a man does not care how many more he
fires, and often men have been known to beg blank cartridges from
others, after firing their own. The reason for the prejudice consists
in the fact that the firing of the first cartridge fouls the barrel of
the rifle and renders necessary far more thorough cleaning at the end
of the day than would be required if the rifle had not been fired. But,
no matter how many more cartridges may be fired through the same rifle,
they cannot make the fouling of the barrel any worse, and once the
fouling has been incurred, there is a certain amount of fun in blazing
off blank cartridges at the "enemy."
The work of the cavalry is considerably more varied than that of
the infantry. Charges, which form the culminating point of cavalry
training at drill, are infrequently indulged in on manoeuvres, for
even in actual warfare, apart from the fact that the quick fire of
modern rifles has rendered the charge a rare thing, the conditions
imposed by the selection of infantry and artillery posts do not often
admit of a definite cavalry charge, owing to the nature of the ground
to be covered. During manoeuvres the chief value of cavalry lies
in their ability to act as mounted infantry; that is, they are able
to concentrate fire rapidly on a given point, and to get near that
point more quickly than infantry, thus rendering their fire decisive.
Further, small bodies of cavalry are employed in reconnaissance and
detached duties of various kinds; the modern army in movement always
throws out well to the front a screen of cavalry, whose object is to
find and report on the presence of the enemy, to maintain contact with
him, but not to engage in decisive action, which is as a rule, and
practically always when the opposing forces are of equal strength, left
mainly to the artillery and infantry following on behind the cavalry
screen. During a period of manoeuvres cavalry patrols theoretically
cut telegraph wires, destroy bridges, and do all they can to impede
the progress of the advancing enemy. Sometimes small parties of scouts
are sent out to get on to the enemy's lines of communication, and, if
possible, cut them. An army with its line of communication cut is in
practice like a man with his windpipe severed, and thus it will be
understood that if cavalry perform this business effectively, their
value to the force to which they belong is enormous. This, however, is
more true of manoeuvres than of war, for in the latter communications
are so well guarded that as a rule it takes a stronger force than
a body of cavalry unsupported by artillery to get on to a line of
communication with a view to damaging it.
Mention has already been made of the prejudice which the infantryman
has against firing the first blank cartridge of the day. Since this
is the case where the rifle is concerned, one may guess what the
artilleryman's feelings are like when his gun has to fire the first
shot, for the cleaning of a field-gun, even after firing blank
ammunition, is no light matter. The bore of the gun has literally to
be scrubbed out in order to remove the fouling, and the gunner's task
is not an enviable one; the clothing of the first-year conscript, when
the gun has been cleaned after firing, looks as if the man had been
hauled up a chimney by his heels, and though men keep a special suit of
fatigue clothes for use on this task, they like it none the more for
that.
In addition to the ordinary manoeuvre period in which cavalry and
infantry participate, artillery units go every year to a practice camp
which is a special area set apart for the firing of live shells, with
a view to giving officers and men alike training in the realities
of their work. The so-called smokeless powder--which in reality is
not smokeless--used on these occasions, together with the passage
of a shell through the rifling of the gun, renders the cleaning of
the bore an even more messy business than that incurred in firing
blank ammunition during tactical exercises. Drivers and gunners alike
generally enjoy their time at practice camp, but the gunners use
language over cleaning the guns, and with good cause too, when one
considers the nature and difficulty of the task.
But, whether the occasion be that of practice camp for the artillery,
or tactical exercise for the three arms, there is more to enjoy than
to cavil at. Manoeuvres come at the best period of the year, from the
weather point of view; the days are warm, but not too warm, and the
cool nights induce healthy sleep. There is plenty of food, generally
a sufficiency of tobacco and cigarettes, and the canteen travels with
the men. There is a pleasant uncertainty about the nature of the day's
work and the length of time it will take; one may be out until late
in the evening, or one may finish in the afternoon, and, after an
inspection of arms, be at liberty to go to the canteen and discuss
things in general with one's comrades, or with the men who, coming from
other stations, have new stories to tell and new matters to discuss.
One may, granted the necessary leave, walk over to a near-by town,
where is certain to be at least a cinema hall, and restaurants outside
which one may sit by a table at the pavement edge and view civilian
life. Or there may be a night march to be accomplished, and, though
this is a tiring business, it has a certain amount of interest as long
as the weather holds good. The chief drawback to manoeuvres is a rainy
season, when the soldier has a particularly unenviable time of it.
There are seldom sufficient fires at which to dry one's clothes; there
is, perhaps, the business of pitching tents in the rain, and then the
crowding of self, arms, and equipment into the canvas shelter, while
outside the rain keeps on in a way which suggests that fine days are
things of the past, never to be experienced again. The infantry go
squelching out from camp in the morning; the cavalry pull up their wet
lines and, getting mounted, splash out through mud puddles, while the
artillery drivers harness up their horses with a knowledge that a hard
day is in store for them, both on the road, where their horses will be
overtaxed by the heavy going, and in camp, where the cleaning of wet
saddlery and equipment and the grooming of muddy horses is enough to
spoil temper at the end of the day's work. And the transport waggons,
standing parked in the rain, look as if they were used for the carriage
of materialised despair, and had been abandoned because the loads were
too heavy. A wet town or village is a dreary sight, but a wet camp is
the most depressing thing on earth.
Even in wet weather, however, the spirit of the conscript is usually
proof against depression. There are compensations: for one thing, work
is lightened as far as possible, and usually the operations of the
manoeuvres are modified in case of a continual spell of wet weather,
for it is not only the men who suffer from adverse climatic conditions,
and it is not the business of a period of manoeuvres to impose too
great a strain on the forces taking part therein. When the men are in
their tents and the rain is driving down outside, the interminable
songs of the army may be heard from the interiors of the tents. Even
in a standing camp--that is to say, a camp located in one position for
a period of several days--the men are made to undergo a certain number
of parades in order to keep them in health, for continued idleness in
camp almost certainly means disease, and, as has already been remarked,
the authorities of the French Army are fully alive to the necessity for
preserving the health of the men.
On the average, manoeuvre days are fine days; a spell of wet weather
is exceptional, for the season of the year is chosen, in some degree,
with a view to imparting as much instruction to officers and men alike
as is possible in the allotted period. Given fine weather, one has to
work--but then, one has to work in barracks, and not in such congenial
fashion as in this life of open air and comparative freedom.
As the end of the manoeuvre period approaches, the second-year men
get more and more excited, for your Frenchman, whether as conscript
or civilian, is an excitable person, and not ashamed of showing his
feelings as is the man west of the Channel. For these second-year men
civilian life is getting very near. Pierre will go back to the farm,
and Jacques will return to his place behind the counter, while Jean
will once more polish the seat of the office stool for a stated period
each day. But Jacques and Pierre and Jean will at times look back to
the good days and the cheery comrades of the last manoeuvres, and
perhaps, although this is a conscript army, they will know a transient
regret in that they will never again go out from the barrack gate as
units of a column setting out on the long march.
CHAPTER X
WITH THE CAVALRY SCOUTS
The incidents related in this chapter took place a few years back
during a certain manoeuvre season, and for obvious reasons it is
impossible to indicate the men, forces concerned, or locality more
closely than that. The forces concerned were an army corps advancing
from the south, and one advancing from the north, toward each other,
with a view to trying conclusions under manoeuvre conditions. The story
concerns scouts of the blue force, advancing from the north--it was
one of these scouts of the blue force who told the story. It must not
be taken as a typical story of army life, for the circumstances under
which these men were placed were exceptional, agreeably so; it is,
however, sufficiently typical for relation, in that it embodies things
actually accomplished by soldiers of the Army of the Republic. Like
most things that happen both in manoeuvres and in war, it could never
happen again.
The blue force, with at least fifty miles to go after leaving barracks,
knew that the red force would have further to travel, since the limits
of the manoeuvre area were clearly marked out on maps supplied to the
officers taking part, and each force knew from what garrison the force
opposing it was coming. Beyond this, though, neither officers nor men
of the blue force knew from what direction the "reds" would attack,
and the composition and strength of each arm of the "reds" was for the
"blues" to find out; that is what cavalry patrols and scouting parties
are for: to ascertain the strength and disposition of the enemy; and,
in order to make the manoeuvres as much like real war as possible, each
side was kept in ignorance, as far as might be, of the movements of the
other.
There were two days of steady marching, through days that were not too
warm and nights that were decidedly cold. Marching in column, this
business, with plenty of dust along the roads and the squadrons closed
up so that one's horse's nose was not far from the tail of the horse in
the next rank. In the cool weather the horses travelled well, and the
cavalry got into camp fairly early in the afternoon, when the bivouacs
were made and the men rested and ate, after seeing to the needs of
their horses. Late in the afternoon of the second day a canvas town
came into view after the troops had passed over a small river, and
here the regiments went into camp. At twelve o'clock that night the
manoeuvre period was to start, and no action of any kind bearing on the
actual manoeuvres might be undertaken until midnight had passed, though
commanders might make their plans and allot their units and men to the
various parts they intended the latter to play in the struggle for
points in the game. The troops themselves looked forward to an exciting
time: in the blue army, every man knew that he was to capture a "red"
if the chance came his way; he must act as in real war, except that the
cartridges would be blank and the business would be one of sport with
the grimness of war left out.
In a certain regiment of chasseurs which formed part of the blue
army, Lieutenant Lenoir received his orders with regard to special
reconnaissance duty, and, acting on these orders, he gathered together
Corporal Jean and Trooper Jacques, both qualified as signallers,
whose first names will serve for the purposes of this narrative. He
also collected from their respective troops certain men more than
usually efficient in scouting duty, known respectively as Pierre and
Guillaumette--or little Billy--from one _peloton_, Henri and l'Anglais
(the latter from his English way of drinking beer when he could get
it, a trick acquired in his native Lorraine, though his fellows gave
him his nickname because of it, and from another _peloton_ more good
men to the number of four). Lenoir would have liked to take more, but
he knew that for the success of the plan with which he was entrusted a
small body of men would get through with less chance of being seen--the
smaller the better, down to a certain point. So he took the minimum
possible. They obeyed the rules of the game thoroughly, for it was
not until the stroke of twelve that the men were given permission to
saddle up; all they knew at that time was that they were going out on
detachment duty of some kind, away from the army itself, and that was
enough for them. Detachment duty is always welcome, and Lenoir had
a reputation among the men of being one of the best officers in the
regiment, although a very quiet man, comparatively speaking.
The men were a good crowd, too. The signallers knew their work
thoroughly and were keen soldiers; the scouts chosen were men who
took actual pleasure in solving problems of country, second-year and
re-engaged men, who took soldiering seriously and enjoyed work like
this. Altogether it was a very contented and very keen little party
that set out from the camp a quarter of an hour after midnight, with
Lenoir leading into the black and rainy night that came on them as they
rode. They went steadily on for some time--it was three in the morning
when Lenoir halted his men under shelter of a tree that branched
out over their road and told them the object of their journey. He
explained, by the aid of the map, what they were expected to do.
The line of country that would be chosen by the "reds" had been
carefully calculated: the commander of the "blues" had estimated that,
with a view to avoiding rivers and hills, and keeping to open ground,
the commander of the red army would bring up his men--or, at least,
most of them--by the western side of the manoeuvre area, leaving a
large stretch of country unoccupied to the east. It was the business of
this patrol to go down by way of the eastern boundary of the manoeuvre
area, get on to the "reds" line of communication, and cut it, thus
preventing (in theory) the sending up of stores, and (also in theory)
reducing the red force to such a state as regards stores and ammunition
that it would be forced (once more in theory) to surrender. The scheme
bespeaks the way in which modern military plans are thought out, and
how one calculates on probabilities. The "blue" commander assumed that
such a course as bringing the men up the western side would be adopted
by the commander of the "reds": he was not certain of it, but assumed
it to such an extent that he considered it worth while to waste a
cavalry patrol on it; supposing he were wrong, then he only lost half a
dozen men or so and one officer from his effectives; supposing, on the
other hand, that he were right, he would have accomplished a movement
that would render ineffective anything his "enemy" might do.
It was their business, Lenoir explained, to get quite down to the
southern limit of the manoeuvre area, so as to cut the line as nearly
as possible to neutral ground, for the further back they got the less
likelihood there would be of encountering any strong force left for the
purpose of protecting the line. They were to ride warily, avoid hills,
and keep in hollows, and at the same time they were to keep an eye out
for any bodies of troops that they might see. Their business was to run
from everybody whom they might see during the following day, for it
would not do to risk the capture or loss of a man while on the journey;
every man would be needed at the journey's end.
All this was explained by the aid of the map, and, realising the
importance of their mission, the men were more keen than ever over its
fulfilment. They mounted again and rode on, Lenoir always leading; at
times he halted them that he might consult his map with the help of
an electric torch where two roads branched, or where there was any
uncertainty about their direction. The rain passed off; the stars came
out and paled as dawn grew; they halted in the grey of early daybreak
down under the shelter of a hill. Before them was a tiny valley through
which a stream flowed, and beyond an unbroken range of other hills of
which the crests showed no signs of human occupation. A short distance
along the way they had come was a farm-house built into a nook of the
hills, while open country marked the way ahead, beyond the base of the
hill under which they had camped. They gave their horses water at the
stream, and, since Lenoir said they would halt there for nearly two
hours to rest the horses, they got out their own food, after feeding
their mounts, but did not off-saddle or remove any equipment, for the
men as well as their officer knew that they were parallel now with the
enemy's force.
Jacques and l'Anglais went out to collect firewood, for they thought it
worth while to make coffee during their halt. These two passed well out
of sight of the rest round the base of the hill, and walked suddenly
and unsuspectingly on to two of the scouts of the enemy's force, who,
being a little more quick than either Jacques or l'Anglais, informed
them that they were prisoners and must come with them. Jacques,
however, temporised; he pointed out to these scouts of the "reds" that
he and his companion were, like their captors, mounted men, and they
certainly could not walk and leave their horses to break loose and
perhaps damage themselves. They had tied their horses up round the
corner, said Jacques, and if their captors would only come with them
they would get the animals and follow as prisoners without trouble.
The two "reds" hesitated a bit, but finally saw reason in this, and,
thinking that their two prisoners were quite alone, followed without
dismounting round to where the horses were supposed to be tied. So well
was Lenoir's little camp located that the two "reds" followed Jacques
and l'Anglais almost into it before they perceived that they were in
the vicinity of a force far stronger than their two selves. When they
grasped the situation fully, they put spurs to their mounts, turned,
and fled. Jacques grabbed at the bridle rein of one, but missed, and
l'Anglais was so lucky as to secure the helmet of the other man, which
he tied to his saddle by way of a trophy. The two "reds," who were well
mounted, went off round the base of the hill and vanished; apparently
they formed a patrol on the extreme flank of the red force, for no
other men appeared to reinforce or replace them while the little party
of "blues" remained halted.
The men of the blue patrol got their firewood and made coffee, which at
that hour of the morning was more to them than food. More quickly than
he had at first intended Lenoir bade them tighten girths and mount, for
he feared lest the patrol which they had encountered would carry news
of their presence, and bring down on them a greater force from which it
might be impossible to escape.
Through the early hours of the day they rode, sometimes on roads,
sometimes across country. The average of their course took them over
two miniature mountain ranges, and on the second of these little hill
ranges they saw, very far off, a body of cavalry advancing across
country. Corporal Jean, together with Jacques, got down from their
horses and set up a heliograph, with which they tried to "call up" the
troops away on the plain. They could get only fragmentary answers from
the other people's heliographs; Lenoir sat on his horse beside them and
waited for a coherent message, but evidently the cavalry force would
not trust them, nor reveal its own identity, for all Jean could get out
of it, after persistent calling up, was the query, "Who are you?"
"Don't tell them," said Lenoir, "but ask them that yourself."
This Jean had already done, but he tried it again with no better result
than before. By this time they could see that the cavalry signallers
who had stopped to answer them were getting left far behind by their
main body, and Jean, finding that he could get no satisfaction out of
them, packed up his own heliograph and mounted again. They went on down
the hill into a shallow valley through which flowed another little
river. At the foot of the hills they halted, and Guillaumette went back
on foot to the top of the hill to keep guard while the others rested.
After half an hour one of the others relieved him from this duty, and
both men reported that the country all round was clear of enemies, or
friends. This was as Lenoir had anticipated, for he had judged by this
time they would be well behind the main body of the advancing red force.
They made of this a long halt for the sake of their horses, which
had already done the equivalent of a day's work. It was late in the
afternoon, and the power of the sun had almost gone, when they slung
their saddles on their horses again, and girthed up. The valley through
which the little river flowed lay level before them for miles, and
they rode down it toward where a curve of the hills on either side
prevented sight of their destination. That curve seemed ever to recede
as they rode, and the sun dropped over the crests of the western hills,
leaving the men chilled and tired. By order of Lenoir, who set the
example, they dismounted and trudged on, leading their horses--all save
l'Anglais, who left his reins on his horse's neck and trusted to the
animal to follow him. L'Anglais and his horse were good friends.
Dusk fell on them as they mounted again; on their left the little river
had been companion of their journey since leaving the last range of
hills, but now they turned away to the right and ascended slightly
from the valley. Suddenly the ground fell away from before them, and
they went down past three houses to a railway station and goods yard,
in which stacks of forage and other stores, covered by waterproof
sheets, lay with only one man to guard them, one who was unsuspecting
of surprise and easily captured. Lenoir left here all his men with the
exception of Pierre and l'Anglais, and these he took with him away out
to the other side of the village. Beyond the houses the officer and his
two men sat down on the ground, waiting. At last the moon rose, and
they espied a tent almost concealed among trees. Within the tent they
found a corporal and a squad of men belonging to a squadron of train,
all asleep. Lenoir wakened the corporal and informed him that he and
all his party were captured, and that the stores under their charge
were subject to the orders of the officer commanding the blue army.
That was the end of the task. With his little squad of scouts Lenoir
had captured the unguarded stores of the red force, and had thus
rendered ineffective anything that they might accomplish in the matter
of field operations. Theoretically the red force was beaten on its
first day in the field, but in actual fact the stores went up from the
captured base to the red army, as if no capture had been accomplished,
for it would not do to go to the expense of moving out two army corps
from barracks for the purpose of manoeuvres, and then cancelling the
manoeuvres because a cavalry patrol had, by means of hard riding and
good cross-country judgment, achieved a theoretical victory. Practice
has shown that in real war a chance for such an achievement as that of
Lenoir's patrol does not occur in one out of a thousand situations,
and in actual war, also, no commander would be so foolish as to leave
his chief supplies in charge of a corporal and squad of men of a
squadron of train. Adequate protection is always afforded to lines of
communication by an attacking force in war.
The incident is noteworthy, however, in that it affords an example
of the way in which military plans are thought out. The commander
responsible for the conception of Lenoir's mission judged exactly
what line of country would be clear for such an advance. He could
not know whether or no his judgment would be at fault, but he saw
that the plan was worth the risk of an officer and a dozen or so
of men, whose absence would not materially weaken his force. Some
slight psychological knowledge must have been his as well, for even
on manoeuvres a commanding officer usually protects his lines of
communication, and the base from which his stores are sent, more
effectually than did this red commander. Again, the way in which
Lenoir chose his men is noteworthy. He picked the best scouts from
the squadron to which he belonged; possibly, had he chosen to look
throughout the whole regiment, he might have obtained even better men
to accompany him, but he chose men whom he knew to be good riders,
careful of their horses, and able to undergo a long march. The two
signallers represented a minimum that he must take if he wished to
send or receive messages to or from any other force. As a matter of
fact nothing occurred to render it necessary that any individual scout
should be placed in a position where the exercise of initiative would
be an essential; neither were the signallers called on for special
exertions, or for the full exercise of their special department of
knowledge, but they might have been. Lenoir chose his men with a view
to compressing the greatest possible effectiveness into the smallest
number compatible with the accomplishment of his mission. He chose them
also with a view, not to what they actually did as individuals, but
with a view of the demands that might have been made on them. As the
affair turned out, they simply had a quietly good time in this "base"
village until the manoeuvres concluded; Lenoir saw to it that the
horses received all necessary attention, and for the rest he left his
men to their own devices. And one may trust a soldier, either conscript
or volunteer, to make life worth living when given such a chance as
this.
It was a week or more before the scout of the red force got his helmet
back. He met l'Anglais by appointment in the canteen devoted to the
use of the blue cavalry, and received back the headgear undamaged. It
may be said in conclusion that he compensated l'Anglais in the usual
fashion--and any soldier will know what that means.
CHAPTER XI
INTERNAL ECONOMY
If one should take the trouble to enquire of the chef at any leading
hotel as to whether he had undergone military service as a conscript,
the answer would in nineteen cases out of twenty be in the affirmative,
and probably the full nineteen out of every twenty would also reply
in the affirmative if asked whether they were Frenchmen. It would be
enlightening for the average Englishman to make such enquiries, for by
that means he would realise to a far greater extent than in any other
way, the universality of the French Army. Comprehension of the fact
that virtually every man of the French nation is capable of taking his
place in the ranks of some regiment without undergoing some form of
preliminary training, is impossible to the English mind until concrete
examples of the effect of this are confronted.
The point with regard to the chefs is in connection with the way in
which the French Army has its food cooked and served. The _pantalon
rouge_ lives well, for cooking is an art indigenous to France, and the
very best cooks of France practise their art on their comrades of the
barrack-room, while there are few companies or squadrons in the French
Army that do not contain at least one professional chef. The British
Army suffers at times from monotonous menus, "stews" alternating with
"roast" until a meat-pie would be a joy, and any variety of diet would
be welcome. But in the French Army, given materials corresponding in
any way to the needs of the soldier, there is no lack of variety in the
food. There are two ways of cooking a potato in the British Army to
twenty in the French service; the British soldiers get eggs served in
two or three ways, but the conscript cook of the French Army can cook
an egg in a way that disguises it to such an extent that a hen would
disown it--and there are many ways of doing this. Soup precedes the
more solid course of the French soldier's meal, and there are savoury
dishes and concoctions which to the British soldier would be but
mystery. The French cook is an artist at all times, and his art is no
less evident during his conscript days than before and after.
Sweet dishes are rare, and the taste of the soldier lies more in the
matter of savouries. In addition to the regular provisions made for the
troops, there are many men, who, in their spare time, cook dishes to
suit their own fancies. The "messing allowance" of the British service
is a thing unknown, for the French soldier's limited pay is pay pure
and simple, and is not sufficient in amount to admit of deductions of
this nature. Much is often made of the fact that the rate of pay in
the British Army is far higher than that of any conscript force, but
against this it must be said that, so far as the French conscript is
concerned, the Government provides in kind for practically all his
necessities, leaving the total of his pay--small as that is--as his
own pocket money. The bread ration, for instance, is larger in the
French than in the British Army, and the French Government provides,
free of cost, all necessary articles for a varied and nutrient diet.
The sergeants in the French Army contribute to a slight extent toward
the cost of their messing, but then it must be borne in mind that all
non-commissioned officers of the French Army are re-engaged men on a
considerably higher rate of pay than that allowed to a conscript during
his first two years. Among the rank and file, mess books are kept
for the companies or squadrons of each unit, and usually these mess
books are placed in the hands of corporals, who eat with the men, and
thus benefit from their own good judgment in the matter of choosing
provisions to the value allowed by the mess book, and equally they
suffer for their own mistakes.
With a view to the possible disorganisation under war conditions of
arrangements for cooking food by the company or squadron, the French
soldier is taught and encouraged to cook and prepare his own food on
the field. During the manoeuvre period, the arrival of French troops in
camp is marked by the lighting of fires, at which men cook their own
food, and officers supervise this business in order to make certain
that no man goes to sleep for the night without having first had a
sufficiently sustaining meal. Within a quarter of an hour of the
arrival of an infantry regiment in camp, the kettles are boiling and
the coffee is made; the slabs of compressed soup, which form a feature
of the culinary service of the army, are broken up and dissolved, and
bread and meat are issued to form the solid part of the day's meal.
Motor-driven vans travel with the army, filled with quarters of fresh
meat hung in dust-proof compartments; these travelling meat safes form
a recent innovation, and have been found thoroughly satisfactory in
that they increase the fresh food supplies of the troops.
A point worthy of note in connection with the arrangements for the
supply of food is that in the French Army the principal meal of the
day falls at the end of the day's work, both in barracks and in camp.
In the British service the principal meal is taken at midday, with the
result that, so far as official meals are concerned, the soldier gets
nothing but a light tea between the dinner of one day and the breakfast
of the next, and he has to buy his own supper to compensate for this.
In the French Army men are provided with coffee before turning out for
the first parade in the morning; at ten o'clock soup is served; at two
o'clock or thereabouts, according to the nature of work on which men
are engaged, another light meal is provided, and then with the end of
the day comes a two or three course meal which corresponds in quantity
and nutrient value--though not in the manner of its cooking--to the
midday dinner of the British soldier. By this means the French soldier
is relieved of the necessity of buying any supper, and his official
rations of food are, in the majority of cases, amply sufficient for his
needs without his having recourse to his own pocket.
Although, as has been stated, the mess books are controlled by
corporals, this by no means forms the total of the supervision entailed
on French military cooking and provisions. The senior officers of the
regiment are especially charged with the supervision of these details
of internal economy; the officer of the week is a frequent visitor
of the cook-houses of his regiment, and surprise visits are made to
the dining-tables of the men in order to make sure that no cause for
complaint exists with regard to the quantity or quality of provisions
supplied. The adjudants also are concerned in the efficiency of the
cooks, and the provision of proper meals for the non-commissioned
officers, while, since these latter have a share in paying for the
goods supplied, they have also a voice in matters of choice and
cookery. On the whole, bearing in mind the quality of French cookery
and the fact that that cookery is as much in evidence in the French
Army as out of it, it may be said that the French soldier fares rather
better than the man serving in the British Army in this all-important
matter of food and its preparation.
In other matters of internal economy, officers manifest an unceasing
interest in the well-being and comfort of their men. The canteens of
the French Army are under the direct supervision of senior officers,
and thus such supplies as men may purchase individually in the way
of food, drink, or cleaning materials, are always up to the required
standard of quality. The matter of laundrywork is also in the care
of officers of the various regiments, and altogether the comfort
and well-being of the men are matters for which officers are held
responsible to a greater extent than in the British service, where,
with regards to some things, departments rather than men are made
responsible.
The conduct of drill and routine, directly under the supervision of
the commanding officer of each regiment, are managed differently
from drill and routine in the British service. For instance, British
soldiers go out to drill for an hour, and at the conclusion of that
hour, whatever has happened, the parade is dismissed; the French squad
turns out for drill nominally for an hour--assuming that as the period
taken for illustration--but in reality the drill lasts until the
superiors are satisfied that the men have done what they set out to
do. Stereotype is not compatible with the methods of the French Army,
but efficiency counts before set rules, and the object of training
is always efficiency, without regard to former practices. Slaves to
custom do not exist; custom itself does not exist, except in so far as
it is essential to the performance of duties, and the maintenance of
efficiency.
It should be borne in mind that this difference in the ways of two
armies, French and English, is rendered necessary by the basis on which
the armies are founded. The British Army is based on a voluntary
system, and the lowest stated period of service is three years. The
French Army is based on conscription, which does away with all idea of
selection, and the stated period during which men can be compelled to
train is two years only--or rather it was two years only up to a short
time before the army changed from peace strength and conditions to a
war footing. Under the two years' system, men must be kept at work all
the time in order to teach them the whole of their work; drill and
fatigues alternate, and there are but short intervals between; one
of the rules of the French Army is that the conscript shall be made
to work all the time, and another rule that must be borne in mind in
connection with this is that each man shall be provided with sufficient
food of a suitable nature to enable him to do his work, at no cost to
himself.
The rules of the army provide that during all manoeuvre periods
conscripts shall endure active service conditions. Pipeclay and polish
disappear, and no "parade movements" are indulged in. There are no
stage effects, and a cavalry leader who on manoeuvres indulged his
men in a charge that would not be really useful under war conditions
would get a severe reprimand, if not a more substantial punishment.
All unnecessary show is condemned, and the French Army on manoeuvres
is made to understand that its work is genuine preparation for the
rough business of active service. Another point worthy of note is that,
during manoeuvre periods, full use is made of all available buildings
for purposes of sleep and shelter, just as would be done in time of
war, and straw is used to supplement the coverings carried, when the
nights are cold. The bulky and ungainly-looking great-coat of the
French soldier is practically sufficient for covering when in camp,
since it is extremely warm, and is manufactured from a porous class of
material which swells and becomes waterproof in even a slight shower.
It has been long since realised in the French Army that individual
comfort makes for collective efficiency, and, though discipline is
exceedingly strict, yet this is counterbalanced by the way in which the
well-being of the men is studied.
To each regiment two doctors are allotted, and the medical service of
the French Army as a whole, though only a modern growth, is equal to
that of any other continental nation. The French Red Cross Society is
but little more than forty years old, but the facility with which the
nation as a whole, adopts and adapts all things to its use, has been
well manifested here, for the Red Cross service of the French Army
gives place to none in the matter of efficiency. In such a time as the
present, when every resource of the nation is strained in coping with
a ruthless invader, it is only to be expected that medical provision
will at times be found hardly or only just adequate for unprecedented
demands, but the medical service for the army has risen to the occasion
in just as heroic fashion as has the nation as a whole.
In the matter of making each regiment as self-contained as possible,
the French Army is about equal with the British. In a French regiment,
signallers, scouts, and others are trained from the ranks of the
regiment itself to undertake the special duties imposed on each of
these branches of military activity. In the matter of scouting, and
in such things as taking cover, trench-digging, the use of extended
formations, etc., the French Army has benefited largely by the British
war in South Africa, of which the lessons were studied quite as keenly
as in the British Army itself, and the training of men was modified on
experience thus gained by others. Again, French officers attached to
the Russian and Japanese staff in the Russo-Japanese war brought back
much practical knowledge which was applied in their own army, more
especially with regard to fortifications, defensive positions, siege
warfare, and the work of armies in close contact and in large masses.
It may be said as a whole, with regard to the working of the army, that
France has never hesitated to adapt the lessons taught by others to her
own use, while there can be no doubt that the lessons learned from the
failure of such armies as Napoleon the futile forced into action in
1870 have been taken to heart and applied, with a view to fitness for
the struggle that is not yet ended.
CHAPTER XII
SOME INCIDENTALS
The subject of disciplinary battalions is not a pleasant one in the
opinion of the French soldier, but the formation of such battalions is
a necessity in the conscript army of a nation which demands military
service of all its citizens. For in such an army the criminal classes
and bad characters are included with the rest, and, if they do not
conform to military rules in a better way than they submit to the
ordinary restrictions imposed on any law-abiding civil community,
then some form of discipline must be adopted in order to coerce
them. When the regimental authorities of any unit in the French Army
have ascertained, by the repeated application of ordinary corrective
methods, that it is impossible to make an efficient soldier of any man
in the unit in question, the man concerned is taken before the _conseil
de discipline_, which has power to recommend that he should be sent to
service in the disciplinary battalion stationed in Algeria.
The _conseil_ consists of a major as president, together with the two
senior captains and two senior lieutenants of the regiment to which
the man belongs, exclusive of his own squadron or company officer. The
case against the man is presented by the senior officer of the squadron
or company to which the man belongs; this evidence for the prosecution
having been taken, the prosecuting officer retires, and the accused
man is brought in to make his defence. Then the court, after due
deliberation, makes its report, recommending either that the man shall
be given another chance in the regiment, or sent to a disciplinary
battalion. The report is then sent to the colonel of the regiment,
who either endorses or rejects the decision of the court. Should his
decision be favourable to the accused, the man is given another chance,
but if, on the other hand, he endorses the recommendation of the court,
the sanction of the general commanding the station is required in order
to complete the proceedings. With this sanction the offender is sent to
Algeria, where the disciplinary battalions are known as "Biribi" and
are stationed on the most advanced posts of this French colony. Owing
to their shaven heads, the men in these battalions are known as _têtes
des veaux_, and their release from this form of service is entirely
dependent on their own conduct. In one historic case, the son of a
general served four years as a private in one of these battalions,
which include, in addition to men of a distinctively criminal type, a
number of social wrecks. A disciplinary battalion is a veritable lost
legion.
Some years ago one of these battalions was on the march from Biskra
in Southern Algeria, and on the march one unscrupulous ruffian, who
cherished a grudge against the major commanding, fell back to the
rear of the column, pretending to be ill. He feigned greater and yet
greater exhaustion, and at last sat down as if unable to march further.
The major came up and inquired kindly what was the matter, and on the
soldier stating that he felt too exhausted to march, the major handed
him a brandy flask, from which the man took a drink. As the major was
occupied in returning the flask to his saddle wallet, the soldier fired
his rifle at him, but fortunately missed, owing to the swerving of
the officer's horse. At this the major realised with what a dangerous
class of man he had to deal, and, drawing his revolver, he blew the
man's brains out. Some time later another officer of the same battalion
found a stone placed on the spot commemorating the memory of the
soldier criminal; the stone was removed, but was replaced; six times
in succession this was done, and yet it was never ascertained who was
responsible for cutting inscriptions on the stones, or placing them
there.
A very common mistake is made in confusing the disciplinary battalions
of the Algerian frontier with the world-famous Foreign Legion of
the French Army, and consequently the Foreign Legion has gained an
undeserved reputation for iron discipline and unduly harsh treatment
of its men. The chief disabilities attendant on service in the Foreign
Legion consist in periods of service in some of the peculiarly
unhealthy localities included in French colonial possessions. The
Foreign Legion suffered more than any other unit of the French service
during its period of active service in French Cochin-China, while
inland in Algeria its members are subjected to a peculiarly trying
climate, and in other parts of French Africa the Foreign Legion does
duty in company with a considerable amount of epidemic disease.
Service in the Foreign Legion is, of course, a voluntary matter,
and the fact that the Legion is always up to strength is sufficient
evidence of methods adopted with regard to the discipline of the men
and the treatment accorded to them. For, although the Legion itself is
famous, its individual members are not, and it cannot be said to offer
any conspicuous attractions to intending candidates for admission.
It is probably the most cosmopolitan body of men in any part of the
world, and the formation of such a body, in which the distinctions of
nationality are abolished, is peculiar to the French nation. The Legion
includes natives of every country populated by the Caucasian races,
and especially of Italian, German, English, and French citizens. It
is an agglomeration of adventurers, of whom the largest proportion
desire only obscurity; it may be said that the Legion is made up of
the bad bargains of half a world, but it is good fighting material,
for all that. Ouida has drawn a highly coloured picture of service in
the Foreign Legion in the book "Under Two Flags," but this picture
consists mainly of romance with the soldiering left out, while actual
service with the Legion involves soldiering with the romance left
out. Hard soldiering, in various climates and under many conditions;
in company with various kinds of men, of whom one never asks details
of past history; one is accepted in the Legion for present soldierly
qualities, and by tacit agreement the past is given the place allotted
to most sleeping dogs. The period of service in the Legion has the
merit of being intensely interesting to any man who, consciously or
unconsciously, is a student of the psychology of his fellows. The
Legion itself affords instances of devotion and self-denial as heroic
as any that Ouida has penned, but it may be said here with regard not
only to the Foreign Legion, but to all the armies of all the world,
that such systematic persecution on the part of an individual officer
toward any individual man as Ouida has pictured in "Under Two Flags"
is a rank impossibility. The system of decentralisation of command, of
interlinking authority and supervision, and of central control by heads
of units, renders impossible the persistent gratification of spite by
an individual officer against an individual soldier.
In this connection, stories of persecution of individuals who have
done nothing to merit the punishment inflicted on them, especially in
military service, should always be accepted with the proverbial grain
of salt. For there is never smoke without fire, and the man who is
unpopular with all his officers and non-commissioned officers to such
an extent as to incur a succession of punishments is usually deserving
of all that he gets. Humanity is so constituted that sympathy almost
invariably goes to the individual who is at variance with the mass,
and in the exercise of sympathy one is apt to overlook the qualities
and characteristics of the object on which it is bestowed. We hear,
usually, the story of the man who considers himself aggrieved or
unjustly punished, and, without listening to the other side of the
case, we immediately conclude that his statements are correct in
all their details. As a rule, the man who thus attempts to secure a
reversal of the decision against him has some inherent quality which
makes for unpopularity. He is inclined to curry favour, which renders
him a marked man among his comrades, or he commits acts against
discipline in such a way that, although it is practically certain that
he is the offender, the evidence against him is insufficient to warrant
punishment. These and other characteristics of the man concerned bring
heavy punishment on him when is finally caught, and, although the
punishment is perfectly just, the offender immediately whines over it
in such a clever way that sympathising outsiders accord him far more
consideration than he deserves, and consider that his just judges have
been inhuman brutes, though they merely fulfilled their duty. The
offender makes sufficient fuss to be heard, but the individual or body
of individuals who ordered his punishment are not able to advertise
themselves in similar fashion, and thus a one-sided view is taken.
To return to the Foreign Legion, it may be said that any attempt to
quote incidents typical of its members and their ways would be quite
useless, for there is in the Legion sufficient material to furnish
all the novelists of this and the next century with plots to keep
them busy. To outward seeming the soldiers of the Foreign Legion are
average men, engaged in average military duties, and it is not until
definite contact with them has been established that any realisation
of their exceptional qualities and curious defects can be obtained. As
is well known, the Legion includes every class of adventurers from men
of royal blood and noblemen of the highest rank downward, and many an
assumed name conceals a story which would be worth untold gold in Fleet
Street, or in the journalistic equivalent of Fleet Street in some other
European capital.
It is not generally realised in this country that the extent of
the French colonies is such as to necessitate the maintenance of a
considerable body of colonial troops. With the exception of the troops
stationed in Algeria and Tunis, service in the French colonies is
a voluntary matter; the natives of the various French dependencies
have been induced to accept military service on a voluntary basis to
a considerable extent. In addition to the famous Algerian Turcos,
battalions of Senegalese troops have been formed with excellent
results; it has been found that the natives of this dependency make
good soldiers, particularly suited to service in the interior of
Africa, owing to their immunity from diseases which render tracts of
country almost impenetrable to white troops. The numbers of native
colonial troops given in Chapter I are constantly and steadily
increasing, for, in addition to making good soldiers, the natives of
French dependencies come forward readily and in increasing numbers to
recruiting centres.
As regards the regular army, matters have been much better with
reference to discipline and punishment since the system which permitted
of _volontaires_ was abolished. The _volontaires_ were men who, on
payment of a certain sum to the State, were permitted to compress their
military training into the space of one year. The payment of this sum
was supposed to guarantee a certain amount of social standing in civil
life, and the _volontaires_ were always regarded theoretically as a
possible source from which to promote officers in case of need. In
practice, however, the experiment worked out quite differently. The
_volontaires_ were found to be men of varying grades in life, with
varying degrees of education, and equally varying mental qualities.
They were extremely unpopular among the ordinary conscript rank and
file, on whom many of them affected to look down as inferior beings.
The more unscrupulous of them would attempt to evade duty by bribing
non-commissioned officers, while those who were unable to compass
bribery railed against the unequal treatment meted out to them in
comparison with that enjoyed by their comrades. Their one year of
training was insufficient to make practical soldiers out of the raw
material submitted, and altogether it was a good thing for France
when the whole system was swept away, and, consistently with the
Republican principle, all citizens were regarded as equal under the
drill instructor. The _volontaire_ system was no more and no less than
favouritism on the part of the State.
It must not be overlooked that, although the initial period of service
in the French Army is compulsory, quite a large percentage of the
men remain in the Army of their own free will at the end of the two
compulsory years. For such as elect to make a career of the Army in
this fashion, there is a materially increased rate of pay, ranging
from an approximate equivalent of 8d. a day upwards, with a pension,
and usually with Government employment if desired, after only fifteen
years of service. These _re-engagés_ very seldom stay down in the
ranks, but form the chief source from which non-commissioned officers
are obtained. Kipling's phrase with regard to British non-commissioned
officers is equally applicable to the Army of the Republic, for the
non-commissioned officer is the backbone of the French Army just as
surely as the officer is its brains. The sergeant-major of a squadron,
or the French equivalent of a British infantry colour-sergeant in a
company, is the right hand of the captain commanding, adviser as well
as intermediary between officers and men. The sergeant in charge of
a _peloton_ or troop is not only the principal instructor with whom
the men of the troop have to deal, but is also counsellor and guide
to the young lieutenant who comes straight from a military school
to take up his commission, and needs experience of the ways of men
in addition to the theoretical knowledge he has already gained. The
corporal, who does not hold non-commissioned rank as in the British
Army, and counts his position as an appointment rather than a definite
promotion, forms a sort of go-between for men and sergeants, imparting
individual instruction to the men, and supervising their welfare in the
barrack room, while himself qualifying for the rank of sergeant. The
revolutionary proposal to abolish corporals in the French Army rose out
of an idea that men resented being governed by one who had formerly
been a comrade with them, but could no longer be so regarded after he
had assumed authority over them. It is to be hoped that the proposal
will never be acted on, for the principle of entrusting matters of
individual tuition and supervision to the old soldiers takes no account
of personal worth or fitness for command.
The life which the conscript must lead during his two years of service
is determined largely by the garrison to which he is drafted. Life in
a sunny and sleepy garrison town in the wine-growing district of the
south is--granted reasonable military conditions--quite ideal; the
monotony of the life spent in drill in a frontier fort tends to make
the conscript bad-tempered, while men stationed among the French hills
of the south and eastern frontiers gain most in the way of physical
fitness, and also, in their work of making new roads, clearing passes,
constructing frontier obstructions, ascertaining distances, and
carrying the heavy loads incidental to their work from point to point,
acquire a certain quality of mental celerity of which men stationed
in the sunny garrison towns of the south go free. But the various
attractions and drawbacks of the twenty great garrison towns, together
with their situation and special characteristics, are sufficient to
merit separate consideration.
CHAPTER XIII
THE GREAT GARRISON TOWNS OF FRANCE
Paris, as capital of the Republic, first merits consideration among
the great garrison towns of France. It has the most extensive system
of fortifications in the world, and has had the doubtful privilege
of having undergone more sieges, burnings, and other military
experiments than most large cities can boast or mourn. The inner
line of fortifications was planned as far back as 1840, with a total
measurement of 22-1/2 miles, but after the war of 1870 two main
lines of detached forts were erected in addition to those already in
existence, which formed the skeleton on which the more modern plan
is built. The older forts are those of St. Denis, Aubervilliers,
Romainville, Noisy, Resny, Nogent, Vincennes, Ivry, Bicêtre, Montrouge,
Vanves, Issy, and Mont Valérien; the new forts which completed the
scheme are those of Palaiseau, Villeras, Buc, and St. Cyr, which form
the Versailles portion of the scheme, and Marly, St. Jamme, and
Aidremont, round St. Germain. On the opposite side of the Seine are
situated forts Cormeillers, Domont, Montlignon, Montmorency, Écouen,
Stains, Vaujours, Villiers, and Villeneuve St. Georges. The Chatillon
fort occupies a position between the two lines, and is placed on the
site whence German batteries bombarded Paris during the siege of
1871, forming a proof of the wisdom displayed in the German choice
of position. The double line of forts thus disposed renders Paris as
nearly impregnable to the attack of an enemy as is possible under
modern military conditions.
The total number of troops garrisoned in Paris in normal times is
about 25,000, and there are also about 4500 _gendarmerie_. Paris in
itself ranks as a separate military district of the Republic, and
is noteworthy as being the head-quarters of the Republican Guard,
practically the only body of picked men in the French military system,
and analogous with the Guards' Brigade of the British Army.
Amiens, the head-quarters of the 2nd Army Corps, is a city of nearly
100,000 inhabitants, containing a cathedral which is generally
considered the finest existing example of Gothic architecture. Situated
eighty-one miles north of Paris, it is one of the principal points of
concentration for troops in the vicinity of the northern frontier, and
forms head-quarters for the departments of Aisne, Oise, Somme, and
parts of Seine-et-Oise and Seine. Although head-quarters of an Army
Corps, Amiens does not rank among the principal fortified posts of
France.
Besançon, situated 243 miles south-east of Paris, ranks as a
first-class fortress, and is the head-quarters of the 7th Army Corps.
It is the centre of military administration for the departments of Ain,
Doubs, Haute-Marne, Haute-Saône, Jura, Belfort, and part of Rhône. It
is an ancient town containing Roman remains dating from the second
century of the Christian era, including an amphitheatre and triumphal
arch. Situated on the main line of rail from Dijon to Belfort, Besançon
is one of the centres of mobilisation for the defence of the eastern
frontier, and it is from this point that a good many of the first
line of troops were drafted to the area of recent conflict in Alsace
and Lorraine. In itself Besançon is a quiet and pleasant city on a
peninsula stretching out from the left bank of the river Doubs, and it
has a reputation as the principal watch-making centre of France.
Bordeaux, the metropolis of south-western France, is 360 miles distant
from Paris by rail, and forms the head-quarters of the 18th Army Corps.
As one of the finest cities of France, and a coastal town, it is a
popular station among the troops, and serves as head-quarters for the
departments of Charente-Inférieure, Gironde, Landes, Basses-Pyrénées,
and Hautes-Pyrénées. The military history of Bordeaux dates back
to very ancient times, for it was sacked successively by Vandals,
Visigoths, Franks, and Norsemen, and attained to a period of peace
only at the middle of the twelfth century. As centre of one of the
principal wine-growing districts of France, it is as near climatic
perfection as the conscript can expect to get, though those who serve
in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées undergo more rigorous conditions
of weather. In addition to being a port of departure for trans-Atlantic
traffic, Bordeaux is a popular pleasure resort, and thus plenty of
amusements are within reach of the troops serving at head-quarters.
Bourges, the head-quarters of the 8th Army Corps, is one of the
principal military stations of France, although not in itself a town of
very great importance. Its training establishments rank very highly in
the military life of the nation, including as they do a national cannon
foundry, very extensive engineering works, and schools of artillery and
pyrotechnics for the training of officers. Bourges is head-quarters
for the departments of Cher, Côte-d'Or, Nièvre, Saône-et-Loire, and
part of the department of Rhône. It is one of the chief arsenals of
the Republic, and occupies a position near the geographical centre
of France. The town dates back to Roman time, and had the doubtful
distinction of being destroyed by Julius Cæsar, at about the time of
his invasion of Britain.
Châlons-sur-Marne has been a centre of conflict in most of the wars in
which France has been engaged from very early times. It was destroyed
by the Vandals, by Attila and his ruthless Huns, and by the Burgundians
in mediæval times, and is situated on a plain which has always been
considered an ideal battlefield, and has served that purpose throughout
the centuries up to the present day. It is the head-quarters of the
6th Army Corps, and is the military centre for the departments of
Ardennes, Aubes, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Marne, Meuse, and Vosges. It is
107 miles east of Paris by rail, and is one of the principal brewing
centres of France, the wine trade in which it used to be engaged having
gone northward to Rheims. In the scheme under which the French Army
is constituted, Châlons is one of the centres for early mobilisation
of troops of the first line with a view to the defence of the
north-eastern frontier.
Clermont-Ferrand is head-quarters for the departments of Loire,
Haute-Loire, Allier, Cantal, Puy-de-Dôme, and part of the department
of Rhône. It is the head-quarters of the 13th Army Corps, and is a town
of about 55,000 inhabitants, situated 260 miles directly south of Paris
by rail. It may be regarded as one of the first centres of systematic
mobilisation of which France affords historical record, for at the end
of the eleventh century Peter the Hermit preached the first Crusade in
the church of Notre Dame at Clermont-Ferrand.
Grenoble, dominated by Mont Rachais, a hill rising nearly 3500
feet above sea-level, ranks as a first-class fortress, and is the
military centre for the departments of Hautes-Alpes, Drôme, Isère,
Savoie, Haute-Savoie, and part of the department of Rhône. It is the
head-quarters of the 14th Army Corps, and is one of the most beautiful
of French cities. In consequence of this it is a well patronised
tourist centre, and as such is a popular station among the conscripts.
Le Mans, the military centre for the departments of Eure-et-Loire,
Orne, Mayenne, Sarthe, and parts of the departments of Seine-et-Rise
and Seine, is situated 131 miles W.S.W. from Paris by rail, and
has historical associations with Richard Coeur de Lion and Henry
II of England, having been the birthplace of the latter. It is the
head-quarters of the 4th Array Corps, and has a population of about
65,000, including the garrison of about 5500. It was a walled city
of the Roman Empire in the third century, and has undergone sieges
by the dozen from mediæval times onward. It was one of the centres
of conflict in the internecine strife between Bendean and Republican
troops at the time of the Revolution, while in 1870 it was the scene of
a French defeat. Its cathedral contains the tomb of an English queen,
Lion-hearted Richard's consort, and the town is one of great historic
interest.
Lille, the military centre for the departments of Nord and
Pas-de-Calais, is the head-quarters of the 1st Army Corps, and is in
the centre of one of the most thickly populated manufacturing districts
of France. It is situated 153 miles north of Paris, and up to a few
years ago ranked as a first-class fortress town, but, on account of
its great commercial importance, and the manufacturing character
of the district in which it is situated, it was decided that Lille
should be regarded as an open town, and not subject to bombardment.
The nature of the country in which Lille is situated and the density
of population may be judged from the fact that it forms a military
centre for two departments only, instead of for four or five, as in the
case of other head-quarters garrison towns. The old fortifications
of Lille have been converted into boulevards; under the old scheme of
defence the works were so constructed that large areas in the vicinity
of the citadel could be placed under water, in case of attack. As
French cities go, Lille is comparatively modern, dating back only to
A.D. 1030, when Count Baldwin IV walled in the village from which the
present prosperous town of nearly 200,000 inhabitants has sprung.
Limoges, the military centre for the departments of Charente, Corrèze,
Creuse, Dordogne, and Haute-Vienne, is situated about 250 miles S.S.W.
of Paris by rail. It is the head-quarters of the 12th Army Corps, and
even at the time of the Roman conquest was a place of importance,
having contributed 10,000 men to the defence of Alesia against the
Roman invasion. During the Hundred Years' War it sustained alternate
sieges by French and English, and from the time of John of England to
that of the Black Prince it was under threat to fire and sword, to
which the Black Prince gave it up after taking the town by assault.
Remains of a Roman fountain and amphitheatre still exist in the town,
of which the present population is about 85,000.
Marseilles is the military centre for the departments of Basses-Alpes,
Alpes-Maritimes, Corse, Vaucluse, Bouches-du-Rhône, Gard, Var, and
Ardèche. It is the head-quarters of the 15th Army Corps, and is a naval
station as well. It has been a place of commercial importance from
the earliest days, and, situated as it is in one of the healthiest
districts of France, as well as being on the coast, it forms an ideal
military station. In former times it was subject to epidemic diseases
on account of the sub-tropical nature of the climate, but modern
methods of sanitation have neutralised this drawback, and Marseilles is
now as pleasant a place as any that a conscript can hope for in order
to undergo his term of service. It is the principal port of France, and
as such is strongly fortified, but its fortifications belong to the
naval administration of the Republic. Historically, Marseilles dates
back to the year 600 B.C., when the Greeks established a colony here.
It passed to Roman rule at the time of the invasion of Gaul and became
connected with, among other notable Romans, Petronius, the arbiter of
elegance at Nero's court. Throughout the Middle Ages Marseilles enjoyed
a semi-independence, and it has always played a prominent part in the
history of the Mediterranean sea-board.
Montpellier, the head-quarters of the 16th Army Corps, is the military
centre for the departments of Aude, Aveyron, Hérault, Lozère, Tarn,
and Pyrénées-Orientales. It is about 480 miles south of Paris,
and about seven miles distant from the Mediterranean, from which
it is divided by the lagoons of Perols and l'Arnel. The town is of
comparatively late formation as towns go in France, having become a
place of note only in the eighth century. It is a wine and brandy
centre, and is also engaged in silk works, and, owing to its situation,
enjoys a congenial climate. The population is upwards of 80,000.
Nantes, the head-quarters of the 11th Army Corps, is known as the
most populous town of Brittany, and is the military centre for the
departments of Finistère, Loire-Inférieure, Morbihan, and Vendée. It
is situated about 27 miles from the sea and about 250 miles from Paris
by rail. The population is about 140,000, and from an historical point
of view Nantes is one of the most interesting of French cities. Its
name is derived from its having been the chief city of the Nannetes, an
ancient Gallic tribe, and under the Romans the city became one of the
principal centres of Western Gaul, having retained its prominence up
to the present day. It has seen many sieges and assaults, and was the
last city of France to surrender to Henry IV of France, who signed here
the famous edict that gave Protestants equal rights with Catholics for
nearly a hundred years. Many notable Frenchmen owned Nantes as their
birthplace, among them Jules Verne and several famous French generals.
Unto the present day the Bretons of Nantes and the surrounding district
retain their distinct peculiarities of character, forming for France
what East Anglia forms for England, and Norman influence, combined with
Celtic origin, is evident in the people of the country. The Breton,
by the way, makes a fine soldier, having more of doggedness than the
usual Frenchman to combine with the dash and agility of body and mind
characteristic of the Latin races.
Orleans, the head-quarters of the 5th Army Corps, is the military
centre for the departments of Loiret, Loire-et-Cher, Seine-et-Marne,
Yonne, part of Seine-et-Oise and part of Seine. It is situated 75 miles
south-west of Paris by rail, and has a population of about 60,000,
including its garrison. As the capital of a separate kingdom, Orleans
enjoyed great prominence throughout the Middle Ages, and it is always
remembered for its associations with the soldier-maid of France, Jeanne
d'Arc. One of the principal artillery schools of the Army is situated
here. An ancient Celtic centre, the town was renamed in the period of
Roman occupation, and was a flourishing city as early as the fifth
century. It was vainly besieged by Attila and the Huns, taken by
Clovis, and held against the English at the time when Jeanne brought
reinforcements to the garrison and compelled the raising of the siege.
The long wars between Huguenots and Catholics brought more strife to
Orleans, and in the revolutionary period it suffered severely, while
it was occupied by the Prussians both in 1815 and in 1870, numerous
battles being fought in its vicinity during the last-mentioned war. It
is worthy of note that a Duke of Orleans, a member of the old royal
family of France, served in the British Army in the reign of Victoria.
Rennes, the ancient capital of Brittany, is the head-quarters of the
10th Army Corps, and the site of a large arsenal in addition to the
barracks, while it is the military centre for the departments of
Côtes-du-Nord, Manche, and Ille-et-Vilaine. In the early part of the
eighteenth century the town was almost destroyed by fire, a catastrophe
that is not even yet forgotten; while as the birthplace of Boulanger,
who introduced many reforms into the French Army and was largely
responsible for its efficiency in recent years, Rennes is peculiarly
connected with military matters. It may be remembered, by the way, that
the second Dreyfus trial was held here in 1899. The population of the
town is about 75,000, and it is 51 miles south-east of St. Malo and 232
miles west-south-west of Paris. Historically, Rennes was the centre of
several Roman roads which are still recognisable, and in mediæval times
it suffered greatly from the wars between French and English. In the
revolutionary period the Republican Army made Rennes their centre for
the operations against the Vendeans, but it has no later prominence in
connection with military history.
Rouen, 87 miles north-west of Paris by rail, is the head-quarters of
the 3rd Army Corps, is the ancient capital of Normandy, and military
centre for the departments of Calvados, Eure, Seine-Inférieure, and
parts of Seine-et-Oise and of Seine. It has a population of about
120,000, including the garrison, and is a town of narrow, picturesque
streets and of old-world dignity and interest. Here William the
Conqueror died and Jeanne d'Arc was burned--a statue commemorates
the latter event in the town. Although 78 miles from the sea, Rouen
is one of the principal French ports, the bed of the Seine having
been deepened from the sea to the city by an ingenious system of
embankments, which forced the river to deepen its own bed rather than
extend its width--and military labour went far toward the construction
of the embankments.
Toulouse, the head-quarters of the 17th Army Corps, is the military
centre for the departments of Ariege, Haute-Garonne, Gers, Lot,
Lot-et-Garonne, and Tarn-et-Garonne. The town is peculiarly liable to
great floods, and those of 1855, which swept away the suspension bridge
of St. Pierre, and of 1875, which destroyed 7000 houses and drowned
300 people, are still remembered in the city. It is situated 478 miles
south of Paris and 160 miles south-east from Bordeaux, and, with a
population of about 150,000, ranks as the metropolis of Southern France.
Tours, the head-quarters of the 9th Army Corps, is situated 145
miles south-west from Paris by rail, and is the military centre for
the departments of Maine-et-Loire, Indre-et-Loire, Deux-Sèvres, and
Vienne. Under the Gauls it was the capital of the Turones, from whom it
derived the name which it still bears, and traces of Roman occupation
still remain in the form of the ancient amphitheatre. After the fall
of Roman power, Tours was fortified against barbarian invasion, and
subsequently it was closely connected with the great names of French
history, notably those of Clovis, who presented rich gifts to the
church at Tours out of the spoils won from Alaric and the Goths, and
with Charlemagne, who disciplined its monasteries. Few towns surpass
Tours in historic interest, and it is noteworthy in modern times, as
the birthplace of Balzac and the two Marshals Boucicaut. In 1870 the
government of the national defence was established at Tours, and the
Third Republic may thus be said to have had its birth here.
No list of the great garrisons of France would be complete without a
reference to Verdun and Toul, the ends of the great chain of fortresses
which defend the eastern frontier. Toul, 14 miles to the west of Nancy,
is the centre of a vast network of entrenchments and defences, and the
hills surrounding the town are crowned with forts which command all the
country within range to the east. A series of forts, echeloning along
the ridge of the Meuse, connect Toul with Verdun, and forms a defensive
line which is only equalled in strength by the defences of Paris, as
far as the French military defensive system is concerned. Verdun, at
the northern end of the line of frontier defences, is surrounded by a
ring of detached forts, eleven in number, and occupying a circumference
of 25 miles. Since the loss of Metz to Germany, Verdun has been so
strengthened as to form the most formidable fortress in France.
CHAPTER XIV
SOME EFFECTS. ACTIVE SERVICE
One of the principal effects of a conscript system such as that of
France is that the great majority of the population of the country
is characterised by fixed habits and ideas with regard to the way in
which work should be done. The Latin races are all marked by a certain
flexibility and dexterity of mind, a quickness of apprehension which
is absent, for the most part, from other Caucasian stock, and military
training increases this and applies it to physical use as well as to
mental qualities. The conscript, back in civilian life at the end of
his training, is to be compared to the sailor of the British Navy in
many respects; he has learned a certain handiness, a dexterity in
connection with his daily work, and it is a lesson that stays with him,
as a rule, to the end of his life.
While military service alters, it does not create; the stolid
Breton--stolid by comparison with the men of central and Southern
France, remains stolid as before he went up for training, for the
Army has grafted on him nothing that is new--it has merely added to
his knowledge and developed, in the way of characteristics, what was
already there. But the Breton is the better for his two years--without
them he would be a very stolid and unimaginative person indeed, and
he has learned to stir himself, to make the best of himself and the
work that is his to perform. Similarly the traditional Frenchman,
coming from the wine-growing districts of the south, and a hot-headed
and impetuous individual, has his eccentricities modified, for
hot-headedness does not pay in military service, and this man has
learned to control himself just as the Breton has acquired a little
more rapidity of movement. Yet the individual characteristics of the
two types remain; personal traits have been modified by discipline, but
not destroyed, for while the Army of the Republic creates nothing, it
also annihilates nothing. The men have been moulded to a pattern, but
they are the same men in essence, with no quality removed altogether.
Usually, they are vastly improved.
Especially is this last true of the many youths who think--it is a
common failing of youth--that they know everything and are capable
of all things. The Army modifies their self-conceit; it teaches
them that they are but as other men, needing to learn. It first of
all destroys the unhealthy growth of unjustifiable self-confidence,
reducing these men to utter self-abasement; then, on this foundation,
the Army and the training it involves gradually build up, not a belief
in self-powers, but a knowledge of the capacities and powers of self,
of their limitations as well as their extent. The braggart who goes to
his military training comes back chastened and, if he still boasts,
it is of things that he is really capable of doing, knowledge that he
has actually obtained--he makes no claims that he cannot justify, as a
rule. This much the Army of France does for the men who pass through it
and back to their normal tasks in life.
The life of the conscripts has been charged with blunting the finer
sensibilities of those who have to undergo its rigours, but the
charge cannot be allowed. For one might as well say that the engineer
is rendered incapable of appreciating music, or the doctor has no
conception of the beauty of a garden, by reason of the mathematical
nature of the work accomplished by the one and the physical
repulsiveness of much that the other has to perform. The Army and the
training that it involves never injured a Frenchman yet, so long as the
laws governing the Army received proper interpretation. In the end of
the last century there were injustices prevalent both among men and
officers, but the world and France gain wisdom with experience; the
Republican Army as at present constituted is a growth of only forty
years, and its predecessor, the Army of Napoleon the futile, showed by
the war of 1870 what an immense amount of reform was necessary before
French arms could regain their lustre. In the history of an army, forty
years is a very short time, and, rather than cavil at the slowness with
which reforms have been accomplished, it is due to France that one
should admire the way in which the Army has been built up from so sorry
a foundation into the great and effective machine of to-day.
In civilian France, military ways persist. Habits of neatness and
method, and accuracy in trifles, attest the military training that men
have undergone. The very step of a Frenchman walking is reminiscent
of the days when he was taught to march, and he has a respect for
and knowledge of firearms which the average civilian of English
life--unless he be addicted to some form of sport--never acquires. The
Frenchman is never at a loss with a sporting gun, knows better than
to point the weapon at the head of another man when loading, and in
other ways betrays familiarity with the tool of a craft--one that many
Englishmen regard as something to be handled carelessly or passed by
as a thing of mystery. This is given only as an instance of the many
ways in which the conscript system modifies men, for there are many
ways in which modifications are effected. Some students of the subject
question whether the French flexuousness and adaptability are results
of the military system of the Republic or whether they are ingrained in
the race independently of military training. Since practically every
citizen is a soldier, this is a point that cannot be easily determined,
but there can be no doubt that the characteristics in question are
increased by military service.
Every Frenchman who has passed through the Army is in possession of
a little book which he guards most jealously, since in that book are
inserted full particulars of his term of service with the colours, and
all things relating to his military history, as well as details of his
duties in case of mobilisation of the Army. The little book of the
ex-conscript is to him what "marriage lines" are to a woman--except
that the ex-conscript incurs penalties if he loses his book, while
the woman who loses her "marriage lines" can always get another copy
as long as the register containing particulars of the ceremony is in
existence.
It must be understood that, in case of need arising for the
mobilisation of the Army, the body of men brought to the colours is
so great that some system must be followed in bringing them on to a
war footing. The little book contains particulars of the place at
which the conscript on the reserve is to report himself, together
with the day of mobilisation on which he will be required to join the
colours--the actual mobilisation is spread over a period of days, in
order that some men--the first line troops--may be drafted out to their
posts before the rest come in. When the order for mobilisation has
been given out--by the ringing of bells, proclamation by criers, and
in various other ways--the reservist immediately consults his little
book, and ascertains on what date he will have to present himself to
the authorities, and at what station he is expected to rejoin. His wife
or his mother or sister cooks him food for the day of his going, and,
after a prayer at some wayside shrine or in some sanctuary, and perhaps
an offering vowed to the Virgin or to the patron saint, the citizen
sets out to become a soldier again. August, 1914, was the first time
of complete mobilisation in the history of the Third Republic, and the
system under which the men were gathered back to the colours worked
smoothly in all its details. There was no confusion anywhere; to each
man his place, to each unit its place, and the Army Corps went out to
the Belgian frontier or to the edge of the provinces that slope down
toward the Rhine, with ominous celerity, and with those interminable
regimental songs sounding as they sound when men go out to manoeuvres
at the end of the soldiers' year. The hour for which this Army had been
prepared had come, and the Army was found ready to meet the hour.
Although the effective strength of the French Army, when the last man
has been armed and placed in the field, is about 4,800,000 men, it
must not be supposed that the Republic maintains all these numbers as
a fighting force in the field throughout the campaign. About a million
and a half of men go out as the "first line," and from those who remain
this line is strengthened as and where required. It has become clear
since the battle of the Marne that almost a second army was collected
under the shelter of the Paris forts to reinforce the retreating line
of men who fell back from the Belgian frontier, and in this connection
it may be noted that the traditional French method of conducting war is
with sixty per cent of the men in the firing line, and the remaining
forty per cent in rear as reserves. France's conduct of the war against
Germany has shown that this method of fighting--diametrically opposed
to the German conception of war--is still being adhered to, and the
troops in the firing line by no means compose the whole of the French
striking force.
As to active service in the French Army, the general English view
is that the French soldier, with the exception of the Algerian
garrison, sees no service outside European bounds, and the deeds of
French soldiers are ignored as regards French colonial possessions
and expeditions. In the expedition to Tonquin, to which reference
has already been made in connection with the Foreign Legion of the
French Army, there were deeds done by individuals and by regiments
that are worthy of memory besides the brilliant exploits of our own
Army. It is not only to the war in the Crimea and the present campaign
that we must look for evidence of the indomitable courage that the
French undoubtedly possess, but also to service on the French colonial
battlefields, in Chinese swamps and African wilds.
The present campaign has proved that French soldiers are capable of
retreating in good order when strategy renders a retreat necessary--a
feat hitherto deemed impossible to the army whose sole strength was
supposed to consist in its power of impetuous attack. The retreat
from the Belgian frontier has rendered necessary a reconstruction of
ideas as regards French psychology, and has shown that the training
imposed on the conscripts of France in time of peace was the best that
could be applied. Just as in the field the best general is the best
psychologist, so in time of peace the best administration is that
which, regardless of criticism of its methods, prepares its men most
effectively for war, selecting the form of training to be applied in
a way that takes into consideration the mental characteristics and
temperament of the material required to be trained. The merits of the
form of training selected can only be determined by the effectiveness
of the trained material in action, and, granting these things, the
conduct of the French Army in the present campaign is a splendid
vindication of the peace training of that Army. The first stages of
the war have been all against the French way of fighting--the way in
which the French soldier is supposed to exhibit himself at his best;
yet in retreat, and in action approximating in length and tedium to the
monotony and continued exertion of siege warfare, the French soldier
has given his commanders cause for pride.
Let it be remembered that the men who are fighting the battles of
France, and of all civilisation, on French soil in these closing months
of 1914 are not like the veterans with whom Napoleon won his battles.
The wars of the Napoleonic era, lasting for years as they did, brought
into the field a host of trained men--trained in war by the practice
of war, rather than by experiments under peace conditions; from the
time of the Revolution onward there were sufficient veteran soldiers,
seasoned in real warfare, to stiffen the ranks of any army that might
be raised to attack--neither to retreat nor to defend, but to attack
in accordance with French tradition. The Army of the Republic to-day
is made up of men who have had two years' training apiece (with the
exception of the small percentage of _re-engagés_, who also have had
no war service) under peace conditions, and who for the most part have
never seen a shot fired in anger, as the phrase goes. Yet out of this
semi-raw material (semi-raw as far as war experience goes) France has
raised an Army which may without exaggeration be termed magnificent,
an Army that has kept the field under harder circumstances than those
which brought about the surrender of Sedan, an Army that no more knows
when it is beaten than does the British force fighting by its side.
End of Project Gutenberg's The French Army From Within, by Anonymous
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