3. Pushing the supports into the firing line tends to mix units, makes control more difficult, and impairs the efficacy of fire. These criticisms are not applicable to a company, for it is in any case impossible for the company commander to control the fire; this is the business of platoon commanders.
The advantages of supports are, that they increase the number of targets offered the hostile artillery; that, by reason of their small size, they can utilize every accident of the ground; that they can be kept close enough to the firing line to reinforce it in case of sudden emergency; and that they allow companies in the second line to be kept farther to the rear. A battalion, when part of a larger force, need not keep formed bodies as suports; but a few platoons, following the firing line in close order on the flanks, are an advantage. The drawbacks of the petits paquets would appear only if every company were to preserve a support up to the decisive stage of the action.
11. COMPARISON BETWEEN CLOSE AND EXTENDED
ORDER.
In close order the men are placed so close together that they can be led by word of command and directly influenced by their officers. The position of the individual soldier is fixed; the men on either side of him interfere with his utilizing cover or his weapon. On terrain devoid of cover, close order formations present such large targets to infantry fire, that their employment, when exposed to the unsubdued fire of the enemy, is impossible and must lead to annihilation. Thus the hostile fire compels the most extended deployment.[1]*
- ↑ Even during the Franco-German war it was impossible to employ close order formations in the first line, when opposed by an unshaken enemy, although this was still prescribed by the regulations. Whenever this was attempted tremendous losses resulted. In the battle of Vionville the 5th and 8th Companies of the 35th Füsilier-Regiment, formed into a half-battalion, and following the other companies of the battalion, which were pushed forward as the first line,
