Prepare for Battle

Prepare for Battle:


Faced with the task of leading a section out through hostile country and taking out an enemy position, what do you do?

How should you prepare for the mission?

How will you react to enemy fire, or even find the enemy in the first place?

How will you mount a successful assault?

There are, in fact, six logical steps - "battle drills" - that you are trained to follow on such an operation. In the heat of battle it's not always possible to stick slavishly to the rules, but the six drills for a section likely to come under enemy fire give you a tried and tested framework on which to hang your plan of action.

Preparing for battle:
Before advancing to contact you must first check that your personal camouflage is correct. It should break up the outline of the helmet, equippment and the outline of the body by using scrim, facevail and suitable foilage representative of the ground over which the section is about to operate. Your weapon must be clean, serviceable and well oiled. Ammunition must be clean and magazines and grenades properly distributed throughout the section. The radio operator must ensurethat he is properly in touch with platoon HQ. As a section commander you must prepare and deliver your ordersbefore the section starts out on the operation. Those orders should ensurethat all members of the section know as much as possible about the nature of the ground they are about to cross, the likely weapons and dispositions of he enemy, and the location, intentions and tasks of the rest of the platoon and company. Everyone must know what his mission is and how he is going to carry it out.

You will give everyone details of the route, the formations the section will be using, which flank the machine-gun group should go on and any other relevant details. As the section advances to contact, you will give your anticipatory fire orders: "if we come under fire go to ground along that bank," and so on. All the details come under the heading of "Preparation for Battle".

Reacting to effective enemy fire:
Sections must be trained to carry on advancing regardless of the noise of fire directed at someone else and regardless of stray rounds. Effective enemy fire, on the other hand , is fire that would cause heavy casualties if the section continued on its course.

The immediate reaction to effective fire must be for the whole section to get off the killing ground immediately. If you have been able to give anticipatory orders, the section will know exactly where to take cover. If not, they must listen to orders and crawl into the nearest avaliable cover. Every man must try to establish where the enemy fire is coming from - and return it.

The drill for getting of the killing ground is:
1. Dash
2. Down
3. Crawl
4. Observe
5. Sights
6. Fire!

Locating the enemy:
Locating the position from which someone is firing at you can be very difficult, particulary in a built-up area. Clearly, you have to locate the enemy as soon as possible, in order both to continnue to advance and to prevent casualties. There are three methods of finding the enemy:

1. By odservation: If you look in the direction from which you think the sound of fire came, you may see movement, smoke, muzzle flashes, or something glinting. There are two components to the sound of a shot: a "crack", which is the sound passing you; a "thump", which is the explosion in the chamber of the rifle.

The time between the crack and the thump gives an indication of range - each second represents about 600 meters.

2. By fire: You can try to draw the enemy's fire by instructing perhaps two riflemen to fire into likely cover.

3. By movement: If the enemy has still not been spotted. You will have to order two men to get up and run for about 10 meters to a different position. This will almost certainly draw enemy fire, but don't worry. A man getting up and dashing 10 meters is a very hard target to hit.

Finally, if there is still no enemy reaction, you must continnue to advance. Anyone who spots the enemy must indicate the position to his comrades by firing a round of tracer at the enemy position.

Winning the fire fight:
As soon as the enemy has beed firmly located, you must bring down a sufficient weight of fire on the enemy to neutralise him. Having won the fire fight, you must maintain a sufficient weight of fire with the machine-gun group to allow your rifle group to move to a position from which it can assault the enemy.

The attack:
The attack concists of four stages:

1. Orders: The section commander issues brief orders so that each rifleman knows exactly what the is to do. Moreover, the machine-gun group, which will usually stay behind to provide covering fire, must be clear about precisely what is going to happen before the rifle group departs on its flanking attack.

2. The advance: The aim of of this stage is to move from the position where the section first came under fire to the suitable position from which to assault the enemy. In order to make an angle as near 90 degrees as possible between the supporting fire of the gun group and the assault position of the rifle group, most advances will be to a flank.

In certain circumstances, it might be best to move the gun group to a flank and advance forward on the same axis - if, for instance, there is some "dead ground" directly in front of the enemy.

3. The assault: Attacking troops normally need a superiority in the region of three to one. Therefore a section, by definition, is capable of attacking only a single trench, a sniper or a pill box. If you find that you are faced with opposition much stronger than this, call in any available reinforcements.

The assault is the final stage of the advance on the enemy position. The maximum fire must be brought to bear at this stage from both the aasaulting rifle group and the supporting machine-gun group. Fragmentation grenades can be thrown, or you can fire the section's light or medium anti-tank weapon to create the maximum shock. Smoke grenades can be thrown to cover the assaulting riflemen over the last few meters.

This is the most difficult part of an attack for the section commander: you have to coax your men to get up from a secure fire position and charge, with bayonets fixed, across probably open ground to close with and kill the enemy. It is a mean task.

4. Fighting through: The position may be sited in depth. Once committed, the section must maintain the momentum by using fire and manoeuvre to capture the whole position, or the assault may collapse.

Reorganising your section:
As soon as you have neutralised the enemy position, you must organise your section as quickly as possible, to be ready for a possible counter-attack.

You must allot arcs of fire to each man, deal with casualties, redistribute ammunition and, if necessary, dig trenches or shell-scrapes. The gun group must regroup on the position as quickly as possible.





6 Section Drills:

Prepare weapons and equippment.

React quickly to enemy fire.

Locate the enemy's position.

Win the firefight.

Assault under covering fire.

Re-organise the section.




Getting on target:

One of the biggest problems in controlling the firepower of the section is getting everyone to fire at the correct target. When Indicating a target to the rest of the section, shout out the range (e.g. '300'); the direction (e.g. 3/4 left); and any obvious point of reference (e.g. 'gate') - so the call is: '300' - 3/4 left - 'gate'.









Clock Ray method:

To identify more difficult targets to the rest of the section you can use the Clock Ray method. Give the same reference as before, but refer to an imaginary clock over one of the reference points. To refer to the man to the left of hte house in the drawing you shout: '300 - half left - 9 o'clock - man'. If someone is pointing out a target to you, shout 'Seen' or 'Not seen' as appropriate.

Judging distance: the 100-meter method:

The range is the first detail you must give when identifying a target to the section, and you should practice judging distances so that you can do so quickly and confidently. A full-size football pitch is about 100 meters long. Once you can visualise this distance, use it as a unit of measurement between you and the target.

Familiar objects:
Learn what familiar objects like trucks or houses look like at different ranges. This will help you judge the distance.

Things seem further away:
-- When you have the sun in your eyes.
-- In bad light.
-- When you are looking down a street or over a valley.
-- When they are smaller than their surroundings.
-- If you are lying down.

Things seem closer:
-- In bright sunlight.
-- If they are bigger than the surroundings.
--If they are higher than you.
-- If there is dead ground between you and them.