Wyre Forest Gamers - Tactical Training (1)

The British & Canadian Infantry in Normandy 1944

Tactical Training (1) - Battle Drill

The bibliography for this series of articles is available here

Infantry Attack Under Cover of Smoke, June 1942 ©IWM020978

The Evolution of Battle School

Tactical training was not an important consideration for the British army in the months following the evacuation from Dunkirk. Large numbers of new recruits had to be integrated quickly, equipment was in very short supply, coastal areas and potential landing sites had to be defended and significant resources were tied up in non-military activities such as gathering in the harvest. Consequently, training for combat took a back seat. Useful training material, such as Military Training Pamphlet (MTP) No. 33 Training in Fieldcraft and Elementary Tactics (March 1940) was available to junior commanders but the skills described within could not be assimilated by book learning alone and the training priorities of the army were not focused on minor tactics. It seemed to many soldiers at the time that shiny boots and well pressed uniforms were the chief preoccupations of CO’s.

The situation began to improve gradually from the second half of 1940, chiefly due to the initiative shown by a small number of senior officers. Lieutenant-General Alexander, commander of I Corps, began to encourage his subordinates to use tactical drills and in the autumn of 1940 issued the pamphlet I Corps Tactical Notes, largely based on drills developed at the end of the First World War. However, evidence shows it is probable that few battalions practised them with any degree of enthusiasm. The crucial development came in July 1941 when the commander of 47th Division, Major-General Utterson-Kelso, set up the first divisional Battle School at Chelwood Gate in East Sussex. It was placed under the leadership of the brilliant but unconventional Major Lionel Wigram, a Territorial Army officer and former lawyer with strong views about tactical training. General Sir Bernard Paget, who in December had succeeded Brooke as head of Home Forces, then set about expanding the scheme.

Major Lionel Wigram

In early 1942, an infantry-wide School of Battle Drill was established at Barnard Castle, County Durham and later that year was renamed the School of Infantry. Wigram was appointed chief instructor and was given the task of training additional instructors for the divisional battle schools, which were then being set up. Junior officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) attending the schools were taught minor tactics through a series of battle drills based on the techniques of fire and movement, i.e. the principle that an enemy unit in defence, being fired on and taking cover from one group of attacking infantry would not be able to interfere with the movement of a second group of attacking infantry. Flanking and pincer movements were described in a series of drills, many of which were then transcribed into highly formalised parade-ground exercises.

After completing the course, attendees were expected to return to their battalions and pass on what they had learned to their men. As the Battle School training regime was rolled out to all infantry units in the British Army it was also adopted with enthusiasm by the Canadian Army. The Canadian Battle Drill School was established in British Columbia on 10th May 1942 and was reorganised into the Canadian School of Infantry in August the following year.

The courses were codified in two important and influential training manuals. The first, The Instructor’s Handbook on Fieldcraft and Battle Drill, written by Wigram and his colleague Major R.M.T. Kerr was published in October 1942. By the end of the year, 175000 copies were in circulation. In March 1944 the official War Office publication Infantry Training Manual Part VIII – Fieldcraft, Battle Drill, Section and Platoon Tactics was issued. This publication was heavily influenced by the Instructor’s Handbook, though there were important differences.

Battle School - Carrying Equipment, November 1941 ©IWM015702

The Purpose of Battle Drill

It is not my intention in this article to go into detail about the content of these documents (Infantry Training is available online and there is a summary of both pamphlets in Stephen Bull’s book on infantry tactics pp73-86 - see the bibliography). Instead, the focus will be on what the manuals reveal about what battle drill was attempting to achieve, a review of the benefits it brought to the officers and men who received the training and a summary of its failings as a system of tactical instruction.

The principles of battle drill were set out at the beginning of the Instructor’s Handbook. Firstly, each operation and movement of war could, it claimed, be broken down to its bare essentials; consequently, it would be possible to devise an ideal plan to deal with each operation and movement and that plan could be taught as a drill. Because each soldier knew that drill had to be learned thoroughly, this would ensure that the details would be easily grasped. Variations of the drill could then be created to cater for different ground and conditions. Secondly, although the drill had to be mastered, officers and men should not allow the drill to master them. Imaginative soldiers would be able to adapt the ideal plan as the circumstances dictated, those lacking imagination would still not do too badly by carrying out drill in a wooden manner. Thirdly, the manual told its readers, modern battle conditions now dictated that every private soldier had to become “something of a tactician”. Men in combat should understand what their commander was trying to do, they must not wait for orders, they must act.

Battle Drilll Section Attack.mp4

The principles in the Instructor’s Handbook were then elaborated in detailed chapters covering section and platoon attacks, flanking and pincer movements, attacking strongpoints, clearing villages and houses, the defence of various positions, infantry/tank cooperation and infantry action against tanks. Later chapters expanded the tactical approach to company sized actions. All the sections described above were accompanied by tactical drills to perform in the field, many of these also mimicked in formal parade ground drills. The video to the left is part of an army training film that shows the barrack square drill for the section in the attack.

Large parts of the Instructor’s Handbook found their way, virtually unmodified, into Infantry Training, published nearly two years later. However, there were some interesting changes. There were no references to pincer movements in Infantry Training, only flanking attacks were described. The chapter on defence in the Instructor’s Manual contained eleven drills, none of which were included in Infantry Training. The chapters in the Instructor’s Manual devoted to the application of section and platoon tactics to company sized actions were omitted from Infantry Training as were the paragraphs on infantry/tank cooperation. A few short paragraphs dealing with subjects such as consolidation, section formations and the importance of sending back information appeared in Infantry Training whereas they were not present in the Instructor’s Manual. The significance of these changes will be discussed in future articles.

Great things were expected from battle drill. According to Infantry Training, the primary object of this form of tactical training was: -

“…to ensure a uniform standard of battle procedure throughout the Army. When every officer, NCO and man is taught the same procedure, the fullest cooperation in battle is assured even when casualties occur and changes have to be made”.

Wigram and Kerr, in the Instructor’s Manual, summarised the anticipated positive effects of battle drill as follows: -

Every individual would know what to do and why.
Every individual would know what their comrades were doing
Everything would be carried out at high speed with minimum orders
Barack square drill would ensure attention to detail
It would produce a psychological effect that aroused aggressive spirit and brought out the qualities of leadership
It would give men a sense of achievement and make them physically fit

To what extent were all these objectives realised?

House Clearing, 47th Division Battle School March 1942 ©IWM017791

The Benefits of Battle Drill

It must be admitted that battle drill as a system of training in minor tactics was a significant improvement on what had gone before. A small number of perceptive senior commanders had realised that an army massively and quickly swollen by an influx of conscripts and volunteers was unlikely to possess large numbers of men with the skills required to perform successfully in battle. Battle drill was, therefore, a praiseworthy attempt to “mass produce” leaders with tactical capability, to give men a set of guidelines to follow in combat rather than allow them to panic because they did not know how to proceed. As Alexander put it in his I Corps Tactical Notes, it was better for men to: -

“…know instinctively some orthodox line of conduct than to be paralysed by the uncertainty of what to do. Let us, therefore, study and draw up lines of conduct for the simple soldier - so that we may ensure that our soldiers, when faced with problems on the battlefield, will have an answer to them.”

The word ‘simple’ occurs many times in the training material. The drills were deliberately designed to be as easy to understand as possible and so be taught in a relatively straightforward fashion. It was expected that regular repetition of barrack-square drills would reinforce the lessons learned in tactical training and some men no doubt benefited from this approach.

Battle drill training in the field developed a high level of physical fitness and increased reaction times. It also improved morale. Most men found standard army training to be boring and uninteresting, battle drill was undoubtedly more exciting and realistic. It improved teamwork, helped the private soldier to understand how his role would contribute to the operation as a whole and gave the individual within the infantry platoon some tactical understanding to enable him to adjust his conduct to the developing situation without reliance on orders from a superior. Many commanders took up the cause of battle drill with speed and enthusiasm (particularly in the Canadian Army) with one British officer describing it as “…a breath of fresh air [that] had come to flutter the cobwebs of army training”.

Criticisms of Battle Drill

Despite the many benefits conferred by the adoption of battle drill, there were serious criticisms. The strongest and most common complaint from some officers was that the teaching of battle drill stifled initiative. Even though Infantry Training stated in its very first section that the methods contained therein “…should not be followed slavishly, which would cramp initiative and individuality”, many expressed the fear that the prescriptive nature of drills would rob officers and men of their tactical flair. At the Infantry Conference held in April 1944, one delegate raised the concern that: -

“The ever present difficulty with which COs are faced is that Battle School trainees are so often ‘wooden’ in their actions and so often try to apply a manoeuvre which they have previously seen to totally unsuited situations and ground”.

Some officers observed the dangerous consequences of this thinking in action in Normandy. Lieutenant Sydney Jary, a successful platoon commander with 4th Somerset Light Infantry remarked: -

“Too many junior officers did not think for themselves and persistently relied on the narrow teaching of the Battle Schools, whose dogma had assumed the proportion of holy writ”.

The training material expressed the hope that unimaginative leaders, unable to adapt the ‘ideal plan’ in the field, would still perform acceptably by sticking to the drill. Based on experience in Normandy, this hope proved to be unfounded. Future articles will describe the problems faced by infantrymen in France and how battle drill failed to provide a solution.

Battle drill was also probably expecting too much from officers and men. As we have already seen in Article 1, the physical and intellectual quality of a significant number of army personnel was not high and many junior officers had been criticised prior to the invasion for displaying poor leadership and man-management skills. For such soldiers, battle drill was fine in theory but in reality, under combat conditions, it was too complicated. It is significant that Wigram himself reached this conclusion after leaving the School of Infantry and then witnessing action in Italy. In August 1943 he produced a report in which he observed: -

“Probably about half of the platoon really understand the battle drill thoroughly….quite a number of the men in the platoon cannot be relied upon. I have, therefore, come to the conclusion that battle drill as at present taught is very useful training when applied by regular battalions who have practised it for many months, but we need something much simpler for this war”. (Forman p 199)

It is perhaps ironic that the man who had tried to ensure that his methods could be understood and adopted by the ‘simple soldier’ discovered, rather late in the day, that he was mistaken.

Another factor which impinged upon the effectiveness of battle drill was the quality of the training itself. In his memoirs, Lieutenant Sydney Jary claimed that too many Battle School instructors had not seen any fighting and suffered from a lack of creative intelligence. They were dogmatic and not open to counter arguments and suggestions. There was also very little attempt to discuss German training and tactics and not much heed was taken of officers returning from overseas theatres who had actually experienced combat. Jary was dismayed on one occasion when advice given by a visiting speaker, who had actually seen action abroad, was downplayed by an instructor because it deviated from the solution then being taught. Once subalterns and NCOs had completed training their task was to disseminate the lessons learned to the men in their battalions. It was up to the battalions themselves to ensure that this took place. The attitude of the CO was crucial in this respect. Those CO’s who had a positive view of battle drill were likely to enforce rigorous and frequent training, those who harboured doubts (and there were many) were much less likely to be assiduous in establishing a systematic training regime. What made the problem worse was the culture of doctrinal flexibility that existed in the British and Canadian Armies at this time. Formations, units and sub-units were expected to take a non-dogmatic approach and modify official doctrine as they saw fit. This made it extremely difficult for senior officers to impose a consistent, uniform approach to operations and minor tactics.

These were the major issues concerning battle drill. There were other specific weaknesses that manifested themselves when the fighting started in Normandy; these will be considered in future articles. However, in the next article we will examine more elements of tactical training, namely Battle Inoculation, Battle Discipline and Fieldcraft.

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