Sergeant Major Marching Up & Down the Parade Square - Return to Spit & Polish

[Kirkhill]

A note to Germanophiles TV and Infanteer:

Terry Jones wrote a great book "Barbarians: An Alternative Roman History" wherein he describes the Roman World from the point of view of everybody BUT the Romans.  The are simply the hole in the Barbarian doughnut.

In that book he discusses the Goose-Steppers hero Hermann the German - aka Arminius - the German that beat Varus in the Teutoburg (9 AD/CE).  Hermann had actually received his training..... wait for it ..... in the Roman Army.  He was one of the 250,000 or so German Auxilliaries that infested the ranks of the Roman Army starting from the time that Marius reformed it (circa 100 BC(E) in response to a beating by the Cimbri and Teutons)  from the Upper Class Twit era.

Jones quotes Tacitus (ca 50 AD/CE): 

"The old German unsystematic battle-order and chaotic charges were things of the past.  Their long wars against Rome had taught them to follow the standards, keep troops in reserve and obey commands."


Drill, discipline and comportment beat Varus's Legions.


PS - and for those commenting about the use of swords - a nice little gladius would make a useful addition to any kit.  Useful point, enough heft to chop wood and short enough not to get in the way.  You could even put a lug on it so you could attach it to your rifle..... >

 

[Kat Stevens]

Kat,

I work in a unit that works 24/7 in 3 shifts. There is no breezway for the troops to either sweep or sit in. We launch and recover aircraft daily for both training and operational flights. There is no sitting around i stores for hours. When the troops are actualy at home base ( a pretty rare event as most training events are abroad) they have plenty of academics to absorb so yes, it is "all training, all the time". We don't need a "no-to-low cost way of keeping the troops occupied", we have plenty of ways to do it that accomplish something.

There was plenty of sitting around when i was in the CERs but there more to life in the CF than the combat arms.

And i'm the one who got told i come accross as having a limited perspective............

I don't have a narrow perspective at all.  I can appreciate that in an undermanned and overworked unit, drill and ceremonial can and must take a back seat to doing your jobs or learning to do them.  In fact, it bugged me to no end to be doing Thursday morning parades when I had 2 AEVs and an AVLB with their guts out on the shop floor.


edited for clarity.

 

[mariomike]

Jones quotes Tacitus (ca 50 AD/CE): 
"The old German unsystematic battle-order and chaotic charges were things of the past.  Their long wars against Rome had taught them to follow the standards, keep troops in reserve and obey commands."
Drill, discipline and comportment beat Varus's Legions.

From "1918: Year of Victory" by Malcolm Brown an account from a British private in May 1918 ( page 133 ):
"They were all huge men, evidently Prussian Guards and they came forward in perfect order, all their actions were carried out with parade ground precision. They carried the rifle across the body, brought the muzzle down smartly, fired, and then carried back across the body.  There was something inhuman about these smart parade-ground movements on the battlefield, the Germans looking like a horde of robots, no haste, no flurry, just cold and calculating human machines."
"My impulse was to pick up my rifle and pick one or two Germans off, but I couldn't keep my rifle steady, I was shaking rather badly and taking aim was out of the question."

 

[aesop081]

Roman legions, the US civil war, 1918........

Good thing wars are still fought like that  :

 

[Kirkhill]

Perhaps a different tack then:

A agressive civilian fights because he/she wants to.  Likewise an aggressive soldier.  A pacifist soldier is a waste of oxygen and need not be discussed here except to note that armies need to recruit aggressive civilians and not pacifists and then convert them into soldiers in an army.

The question for me is: how do you train that agressive individual?  How do you train someone who fights when he/she WANTS to, and train them to fight when their Commanders want them to? And how do you train them for the more difficult task, I believe,  of training them NOT to fight, and equally not to flee, when their options close in to those two?

How do you train them to react to their Commanders' wishes in a timely fashion?  How do you convert them from a debating society, discussing all the options and only acting as they see fit, into a force of action that responds to command?

The problem is the same now as it was for Schlieffen and his Prussians, Lee and his Confederates, Arminius and his Teutons and Marius and  his mules.

 

[Blackadder1916]

Roman legions, the US civil war, 1918........

Good thing wars are still fought like that  :

Actually there is not much difference in the essence of the activity.  It is still taking relatively ordinary young men (and now women) with an average education and generally average family and social backgrounds and organizing and training them to perform (despite what some erroneously think) what is an unfamiliar and unnatural task - the successful application of violence on other relatively ordinary young men with average education and generally average family and social backgrounds.  The things that have changed are the size of the organizations and the equipment that these relatively young men use.  Getting to that point where they can successfuly apply that violence involves training, a lot of which is (in an oversimplification) rote.  While at one time the rote learning of "drill" was for the tactical movement of troops, it is still probably the most cost effective means to instill the "most basic lessons" that all new soldiers need to learn - that they are no longer civilians (and should stop thinking like one), that they must work as a team and that they must respond to orders.  It also has added benefits in being an effective evaluation tool, an easy and organized method (still) of moving bodies of troops and (if done properly) poetry in motion to entertain and encourage.

 

[aesop081]

Dear Lord.......

You guys can keep on living in the middle ages of you want to. My troops and myself will keep training for tomorow's war.

 

[a_majoor]

Roman legions, the US civil war, 1918........

Good thing wars are still fought like that  :

Maybe not wars in general, but I was once part of a platoon blocking a road on the Cypriot "green line" at the Mercedes gate (close to Richardson house AKA the paper factory for other old timers) with 2000 screaming demonstrators in front, minefields to either side and a company of Turkish army soldiers with bayonets fixed standing on their side of the fence. Keeping formation (especially after the gate was breached) was very important indeed. I think we can think back to events like Oka, former Yugoslavia and so on where this sort of thing came into play.

Good times......

 

[medicineman]

Also, I agree that there is no inter-relation between education and discipline. However, I believe that ''imposed discipline'' is for the uneducated, and 'self-discipline' is for educated (by which I mean grade 12) soldiers.

I disagree - as I've said, I've met some pretty educated people in my day that lack self-discipline, especially the smart ones that can get by on their natural intelligence.  Do you think some of those guys in my NETP would have the self-discipline to stay awake on duty when they couldn't/wouldn't stay awake to pay atention in a class that was meant to save their own life?  I'm willing to bet no - not without the threat of a charge or worse.  I'd suggest that kids/people with high school diplomas that HAD to work as well as go to school (and even those that had to work and dropped out of school to support their families) and succeeded likely have more self-discipline than the others, because they had to balance everything.  Imposed discipline across the board first, combined with self-discipline coming from within or taught to people is what makes soldiers of civilians IMHO.

MM

 

[Good2Golf]

Dear Lord.......

You guys can keep on living in the middle ages of you want to. My troops airmen, airwomen and myself will keep training for tomorow's war.

There, fixed that for you. 

 

[aesop081]

There, fixed that for you. 

Sure. I will carry on calling them "troops" though 

 

[Old Sweat]

I told myself over and over not to join in this recurring discussion which is going nowhere and which will come to an eventual pause without resolution. In my opinion there are two factors which colours the Canadian army’s approach to drill – an obsession which sometimes has seemed to me to confuse the parade square with the Promised Land. The first is that we are a British pattern army, with an excellent senior NCO cadre, and a fetish for fuss and feathers. The second factor is a generally competitive gene pool coupled with a desire for perfection. Now, there are other types of drill besides foot and arms drill. There is the old Second World War creature, battle drill, and the various natures of crew and detachment drill as well as the drill for individual skills. However, let’s concentrate on square bashing, because that is pretty well what we all think of when somebody says the d word.

I am not going to give you a long dissertation on the history of drill and how it had the same meaning as training in the 19th Century. Instead, let’s think about how our understanding of drill developed over the past 75 or so years. My take on it might be coming at it from a different angle, but mine is an historical approach, which should not be surprising. It seems to me that in the Second World War era, and probably into Korea and the start of the Cold War, our senior leadership believed as a matter of faith that the combat efficiency of a unit could be assessed by a formal parade and inspection. There is some evidence that the selection of units for certain tasks or their selection for disbandment relied on the impression they gave to a senior officer on parade. A battalion or regiment that performed well on the square, so the theory went, would do equally well in battle. The example used was usually the British Brigade of Guards, and helps explain why we created the Canadian Guards in the early fifties. As time went on and the Second World War leadership retired, a newer generation who also had fought in the war, but as more junior officers, emerged until they too retired in the early seventies.

These officers were often just as keen to take general salutes and inspect the troops, but they often wished to inspect the troops in the field and watch them do unit tasks. They also began to talk about tactical evaluations and test exercises, devices which their predecessors dismissed as “Americanisms” or gimmicks. As time went on, reliance on the formal parade and inspection as an evaluation of potential combat effectiveness waned, but in my opinion at least, it never disappeared completely nor is it likely to any time soon in the future. After all real warriors always had matching socks, grey, wool. Still, the flavour of the month in terms of assessing combat suitability seems to be the instrumented two-sided free play exercise combined with live fire training in realistic scenarios. Of interest, this first emerged as a concept for operational training in the 1960 Dare Report. Colonel Mike Dare was the commandant of the RCAC School at the time he headed the team that did the study that led to the report, and he went on to command 3 and then 4 CIBG, eventually rising to VCDS.

The trouble with all this is that training can be very expensive and lengthy. Perhaps it was too lengthy for the mission that is just ending, but there are few in the upper ranks who would describe it as ineffective. So what do we do? Is there really an emerging school in the Canadian army that considers drill a suitable substitute for training? Fortunately I am long retired – 17 years this fall – and am hence unable to inflict my theories on the troops, but it seems to me now is the time to be creative, not reactive. There is a time and a place for drill and for perfection on parade, but there are others activities that could well occupy the troops in an era of likely retrenchment.

 

[dapaterson]

There, fixed that for you. 

He's just a Tac Hel wannabe...

 

[aesop081]

He's just a Tac Hel wannabe...

Nice........ ;D

 

[Neill McKay]

My troops and myself will keep training for tomorow's war.

We hope it won't happen, of course, but tomorrow's war could involve a ship taking enough battle damage to require abandonment.  Never done it myself, obviously, but if the training video is anything to go by a foundation in drill is a definite asset in getting the ship's company off of the ship in an orderly (and therefore relatively safe) fashion.  That's at least one real-world, non-infantry, example of an application for drill training.

 

[aesop081]

That's at least one real-world, non-infantry, example of an application for drill training.

My kids can evacuate their school in proper order too but they don't have their time wasted pounding pavement to the sound of "left right left" every time a new principal takes over. They certainly did not take "drill" as part of their classes.

I know how to evacuate my aircraft because 404 Sqn showed me how and we practice it regularly, it has sweet nothing to do with parade drill.

There are "drills" and then there is "drill".

 

[Good2Golf]

Sure. I will carry on calling them "troops" though 

Cake and eating it too.  Ack.

Most 'troops' I know, while they may not be it's biggest fan, conduct drill as a part of what their profession requires of them.

Regards
G2G

 

[aesop081]

Cake and eating it too.  Ack.

Most 'troops' I know, while they may not be it's biggest fan, conduct drill as a part of what their profession requires of them.

Regards
G2G

I have always, and continue to do what i am asked to do and do it well. That being said, i do not have to like it, i do not see the need for most of it and do not buy the argument that it is a tool for teaching obedience or anything of the sort.

 

[Good2Golf]

...and you've made it amply clear that it isn't required for your airmen and airwomen to do their jobs properly.

So noted.


Regards
G2G

 

[the 48th regulator]

I will add some views based on historical aspect.

Rome fell, due to the fact most of her enemies were trained by the Roman Machine.  The "German Hordes" that finally invaded and defeated Rome, were mostly made up of former legionnaires trained by the Empire.

As for drill.  Well, the Roman empire had a road that spanned from one end to the other.  This was built by the Roman soldier.  Why?  As the saying goes idle hands are the Devil's playthings.  It was intended to keep the troops busy, so as boredom did not fester, and cause decay.

Now, when talking about modern times.  I am totally for constant training, however, as been pointed out, a good old fashioned parade is a hell of a lot cheaper than a day on the range.  It involves all ranks, and justifies employment to the treasury board.

If we can find alternative methods of keeping the troops busy, interested, and saving money, then I am willing to hear the opinion from anyone on this thread.

dileas

tess