"In a similar vein; formations. If you've ever seen a platoon, normally of four vehicles, trying to bound forward by sections of two vehicles, when the platoon is down to only three vehicles, you'll know what I mean. It just doesn't work the same way. You end up with either an inadequate covering force—one vehicle—or the covering force is two vehicles and the single track sent ahead to bound feels alone and abandoned and advances most reluctantly. So under normal combat conditions the bounding drill has less benefit than you expect and need and all the time spent on drilling such movement tends to be wasted. On the other hand, a company bounding forward by alternating its platoons can work because even if a bounding platoon has taken some losses, it is still capable of covering its own front and has enough sub units left to give each other moral support to go forward. That, by the way, is the single most important reason Legion tank platoons have six tanks instead of the usual four other armies have; so they can take losses and still have two sections capable of forming some variant on a line to cover themselves while they move forward by bounds.
Carrera flipped one of his prompt cards over. "Back to the main subject: Fifth, time to execute the drill in battle is another consideration. Some things don't have to be conditioned to be done. Even in battle there is often time to give more than one word drill commands. So ask yourselves, before deciding to do something as a drill, if there would normally be time to give orders to have your troops act more appropriately than a drill would allow.
"Sixth, is the drill a matter of life and death for an individual, victory or defeat for a higher unit? I don't mean simply that under some rare circumstances a well-executed drill might be life or death for us or the enemy. I mean is a precise response virtually always that important. Reaction to a near ambush is that kind of circumstance. So is using a bangalore torpedo to breach an obstacle, especially when attacking a position held by an enemy with a very responsive artillery support network . . . if surprise fails you and you must clear a path quickly. In those circumstances a simple, on line rush, drilled in advance, may be your best bet.
"At a lower level, the individual level, there are also a few tasks like that. The whole field of combat demolitions is dangerous enough to justify drilling troops to do it perfectly every time. The time to put on a gas mask is about that critical, too. Although, if you want to see an interesting show, sometime have your troops come under a chemical attack when they are advancing at a crawl under fire, with inadequate cover and concealment. Our boys are already well drilled on immediate action for a chemical attack. I'd give odds that most of them stand up in direct fire to put on their masks. Hmmm. Maybe that's not such a good drill after all. See my point?"
Whether they really saw it or not, the officers and centurions nodded vigorously.
"Seven, 'only the very simple can work in war.' Clausewitz, as I'm sure you recognize. Complex drills simply won't work. Something will fail if a drill is too complex.
"Eighth, your enemy will adapt to your drills very quickly.
"Ninth and last, and why I'm not a drill enthusiast, is this: There is a mindset, common in many armies, which has no understanding of war as the chaos it is. To these people, everything is controllable, everything is predictable. They will forget that war is about prevailing against an armed enemy, who does not think about himself as a target set up to give you the best possible chance of success, but instead will do everything he can to thwart and destroy you. In peacetime maneuvers, these people and their units often do well, even better than those who see war more clearly. They then stretch the idea of drill beyond the legitimate limits it has, and try to make everything a drill, everything precise. Skills and purely measurable factors assume an unmerited importance. Leaders and troops are not trained to think. Their moral faculties are not developed.
"Let me give you an example from Old Earth history. After the First World War there, the victorious French Army developed some very standardized drills for higher formations. The German Army examined these division level drills in wargames on maps and came to the conclusion that they were, most of the time, more effective than the more chaotic approach the Germans had favored. Nonetheless, the Germans didn't adopt the French methods. The French continued to drill; the Germans continued to treat war as uncontrollable chaos and trained their army accordingly. France fell in six weeks in 1940. So much for the efficacy of drill."
Carrera's voice grew hard again, where it had softened as he lectured. "Here are my orders. To the staff and especially the operations and training staff: I want you to re-divide up the training areas, and especially the live fire training areas, such that no unit ever has to train the same problem on the same spot of ground within a year. Dan, I also want you to monitor that no unit does train the same problem in the same way on the same spot within a year. I want you to relook the non-crew drills we may already have instituted and get rid of any that do not meet the nine points of guidance I just gave you."
Carrera glanced around for his Inspector General. "You," he pointed, "are to change your orientation partly away from administrative inspections and more toward inspection of training, in accordance with my guidance.
"Remember this, IG: There are five functions to training; only five things we can expect out of training. One: Skill training, the individual, leader, and collective tasks that soldiers and units should be able to perform. Two: Conditioning of individual non-conscious characteristics, attitudes and the physical body. Three: Development of conscious characteristics, judgment, determination, dedication, and so forth. Four: Testing of doctrine and equipment. Five: Selection of leaders, of people for special or advanced training, of people to keep and of people to eliminate from the Legion.
"IG, there are no other reasons to train; everything we do in training must advance these causes.
"To the rest of you: if I discover you have not listened carefully, if I discover that you are not developing the mental and moral faculties of your units and your men, if I discover that you ever let training become routine, standardized and, in a phrase, mentally dulling, I will not only fire you, I will set you to turning large rocks into small ones, until you are old and gray."
"That's all."
Interlude
Clichy-sous-Bois, France, European Union, 13 July, 2078.
The Moslems had not, as many feared and others hoped for, ever become a majority within the European Union. For one thing, the United States and Australia, along with the Republic of Western Canada, had, after a time (and only for a time), refused to take more than a pittance in culturally Christian but politically social-democrat European immigrants. Moreover, the EU itself began to institute border and emigration controls that even Stalin and Castro would have approved of. For another, the unsustainable social democratic state had not, in fact, been sustained. When elderly German or French citizens went hungry, the Moslems were bound to be starved.