THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN LITTLE WARFARE 6
Category:
The Rules
And so our laws all made, battles have been fought, the mere beginnings,
we feel, of vast campaigns. The game has become in a dozen aspects
extraordinarily like a small real battle. The plans are made, the
Country hastily surveyed, and then the curtains are closed, and the
antagonists make their opening dispositions. Then the curtains are drawn
back and the hostile forces come within sight of each other; the little
companies and squadrons and batteries appear hurrying to their
positions, the infantry deploying into long open lines, the cavalry
sheltering in reserve, or galloping with the guns to favourable advance
positions.
In two or three moves the guns are flickering into action, a cavalry
melee may be in progress, the plans of the attack are more or less
apparent, here are men pouring out from the shelter of a wood to secure
some point of vantage, and here are troops massing among farm buildings
for a vigorous attack. The combat grows hot round some vital point. Move
follows move in swift succession. One realises with a sickening sense of
error that one is outnumbered and hard pressed here and uselessly cut
off there, that one's guns are ill-placed, that one's wings are spread
too widely, and that help can come only over some deadly zone of fire.
So the fight wears on. Guns are lost or won, hills or villages stormed
or held; suddenly it grows clear that the scales are tilting beyond
recovery, and the loser has nothing left but to contrive how he may get
to the back line and safety with the vestiges of his command. . . .
But let me, before I go on to tell of actual battles and campaigns, give
here a summary of our essential rules.
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THE COUNTRY
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THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN LITTLE WARFARE 5
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