United States or Croatia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A thin line of skirmishers, the men deployed at six paces or so apart, now pushes from the wood into the open. The commander speaks to his bugler, who claps his instrument to his lips. Tra-la-la! Tra-la-la! The skirmishers halt in their tracks. Meantime the young horseman has advanced a hundred yards. He is riding at a walk, straight up the long slope, with never a turn of the head. How glorious!
Adopt then a formation which permits your destructive agency, your skirmishers, to help you throughout by their material action and to this degree diminish that of the enemy. Armor, in diminishing the material effect that can be suffered, diminishes the dominating moral effect of fear. It is easy to understand how much armor adds to the moral effect of cavalry action, at the critical moment.
These troops moved forward in compliance with orders, but the road was so narrow as to render it impracticable to retain the column of fours formation at all points, while the undergrowth on either side was so dense as to preclude the possibility of deploying skirmishers.
What better arguments against deep columns could there be than the denials of Napoleon at St. Helena? Skirmishers Supports Reserves Squares This is singular. The cavalry has definite tactics. Essentially it knows how it fights. The infantry does not. Our infantry no longer has any battle tactics; the initiative of the soldier rules.
Trant, seeing that the enemy had no cavalry at hand, with the utmost effrontery and quite as if he had an army behind him, threw out a cloud of skirmishers beyond the bridge, dressed up a dozen guides in scarlet coats to resemble British troopers, galloped with these to the glacis of Almeida, spoke the governor, drew off a score of invalid troopers from the hospital in the town, and at dusk made his way back up the mountain, which in three hours he had covered with sham bivouac fires.
My critic was quite correct from the parade ground standpoint. The prescribed orders at that time were to deploy the column first into a line of squads at correct intervals, and then to give an order which, if my memory serves correctly, ran: "As skirmishers, by the right and left flanks, at six yards, take intervals, march."
Then the fighting between the skirmishers and heavy detached parties became continuous. During the days that immediately followed Harry was much with Sherburne. The brave colonel was one of Stuart's most trusted officers. Despite the forests and thickets there was much work for the cavalry to do, while the two armies circled and circled, each seeking to get the advantage of the other.
Between the two lines the earth was strewn with the Federal dead. Both sides had skirmishers in rifle pits in front of them, and any exposure of a portion of the body brought the "ping" of a bullet in close proximity. One struck about an inch above the head of Lieut. A. C. Hargrove, into the body of an oak against which he was sitting, a little in rear of embankment.
A small force of riflemen marched on either bank in order to uncover possible skirmishers. The advance was very slow and in silence save for the dip of the oars and the paddles. The moonlight grew stronger and stronger, and they could now see a good distance on the deep, still bayou.
In the wood on the left of the road from Mansfield, Major, with two brigades of horse dismounted, was to drive back the enemy's skirmishers, turn his right, and gain the road to Blair's Landing. As no offensive movement by the enemy was anticipated, he would be turned on both flanks, subjected to a concentric fire, and overwhelmed.
Word Of The Day