CORRESPONDENCE.
CYCLIST MANCEUVRES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.",
Sm,—Since you have so often insisted in your columns upon the value of mobile riflemen in war, some account of the work done in four days by two companies of cyclist Volunteers in August may illustrate your arguments :—
During the time that General Douglas was preparing to test large bodies of cyclists at Aldershot in the rudiments of mobility and organisation, with, I believe, satisfactory results, the force to which I refer was experimenting in the more advanced stages on a march undertaken from Winchester-4o Swanage by the 1st T.B. Hants Regiment (one of the selected battalions under the new scheme).
The idea of the operations was that this battalion, mobilised at Winchester as the advanced guard of a division at Aldershot, was ordered on the morning of July 29th to move with camp equip- ment and full transport on Swanage, where a small force of an enemy, represented by the Hants Carabineers, Imperial Yeomanry, and other details, was reported to have landed. Colonel Cave, the officer commanding this force, had at his disposal in lieu of cavalry two strong companies of cyclists of his own battalion. Being ordered by his imaginary General Officer commanding at Alder. shot to reconnoitre well ahead, and especially to obtain informa- tion, he detached one officer and thirty men to gain contact with, and report upon, the, movements of the enemy in Purbeck Island.
These, moving off from Winchester at 8 a.m. on July 29th carrying greatcoats and rations and 5s. each "commandeering money," reached Wareham at 4 p.m., dropping a forwarding post at Ringwood, and had reported their arrival by wile to Colonel Cave at the end of his first day's march near Romney by 6 p.m. A sergeant's patrol from the same party arrived simultaneously at Studland in rear of the Yeomanry camp at Swanage via Poole and a ferryboat, and effected a landing unobserved in spite of the presence of a Yeo- manry patrol at that village. At 7.35 a.m. on the following morning a cyclist despatch dated 8.30 p.m. 29-9.01 had arrived from Lieutenant Wells, the officer in charge of this party, to inform Colonel Cave that three of his advanced scouts had been taken in Wareham, which was held by the Yeomanry. At 9.30 a.m. a message from the sergeant at Studland reported that he had watched the Yeomanry camp all night, and before noon a third despatch-rider brought the information that the whole of Lieutenant Wells's party had established themselves inside the enemies' patrols in Purbeck Island. There, dodging from gorse to gorse, they remained for three days and two nights till the arrival of the battalion within etriking distance of Wareham.
As subsequently appeared, the arrival of this little party was a source of considerable anxiety to the Yeomanry. In spite of the presence among them of officers and men who had had experi- ence of the Boer, they were unable to form anything like a true estimate of the numbers and intentions of the cyclists. They spent most of the 30th in hunting high and low for their unseen enemy, and succeeded in capturing one cycle, the, owner of which watched the proceedings from a neighbouring corn- field, and on the morning of the 31st in finding the farm where a small party had breakfasted the morning before. That was the sum total of their discoveries, but they were so disturbed that they asked for and obtained of the chief umpire a day's truce that men and horses might not be unnecessarily harassed. Meanwhile the dyclists lay often within a few yards of the Yeomanry who sought them, and at times even assumed the offensive, to the discomfort of two prominent officers of that force, who were pursued for their lives on foot across some ploughed fields and owed their escape only to a timely train at Wareham Station.
All the while regular despatches of the minutest order were reaching Colonel Cave for transmission to his General at Aldershot. Peace mancenvres are frequently no guide at all to war, and there were, it is true, no bullets in the Yeomen's rifles- lint eyes and intelligence were in a marked degree the prePertY of both sides (the cyclists detailed for this duty were London BoaLe-sohool masters). Yet the advantages distinctly lay with the cyclists. They had, though quite untrained, covered a great distance with such rapidity that their arrival was not expected, they had magnified themselves tenfold, they had reported regularly to the main body, had "seen and not been seen," and they had throven the enemy into a state of apprehension which real war would have greatly augmented. Their despatch-riders had emu- lated the two C.I.V. cyclists from Johannesburg who passed south through De Wet's lines as he lay astr:de of the railway at Roodeval. The work performed by the main body of cyclists, if less pic- turesque, was equally instructive. Colonel Cave conceived his business to be to get to Purbeck Island as soon RR possible, and, what was less easy, to bring his men in a fit condition for a long day's fight. In order to do this he determined to weary his marching infantry with no flank guard or night outpost duties. For security he trusted to his two cyclist companies, one of which took the heavier duties every alternative twenty-four hours, while the other more or less took things easy as rearguard to the battalion. The cyclist duties' were divided into those of the" outer" and of the " inner " screen. The first day's orders will suffice to show the nature of the task that was to be performed.
The first day's camp out of Winchester being Pardtons Park, near Romsey, thirty men were sent on to scout ahead and secure all the tactical approaches to the camping ground at a radius of one mile from it. These formed the advanced guard, and on arrival resolved themselves into the "inner screen. Another seventy men were detailed to move as flankers by roads parallel to, and at a distance of about four miles north and south from, the main read of advance. By noon they had become the "outer screen" at a radius of about three and a half miles from the "inner screen,"—e.g., on the line, Totton, Nutley Marsh, Cadnam, Brainshaw, West Wellow, Shelley Common, and Blackwater Bridge. Each of the points thus selected com- manded crossroads leading to the camp in the centre. The posts were fortified. and the men (about ten to each post) told off in reliefs for the sixteen hours of duty. No doubt they were not very formidable against a determined enemy, but they were well concealed, and it is a bold foe that will come on at night after a few shots from magazine rifles have been fired at him unexpectedly by an unseen force. It was, therefore, pre- sumed that time would have been gained sufficient, at least, to warn the sleeping camp should any large body be advancing on it. The men of the two screens bivouacked, or found farms adjacent to their posts, and their evening's ration was supplied by a motor-tricycle with trailer attachment, which made the twenty miles circuit before nightfall. Lateral communication was kept up from post to post. On the departure of the battalion on the follow- ing morning. No. 1 Company concentrated and came on quietly as rearguard, No. 2 being employed on similar duties in their place. On arrival at the third day's camp at Moors River, the enemy being located as being west of the Stour River, the outer screen resolved itself into a "Wacht am Stour," posts being set on all the bridges over that river from C hristchurch to W im borne,—a d istance of some twelve miles as the river runs. At Paultons an element of reality had been added to the situation by the empire's warning that the newly raised New Forest scouts were doubtful friends, and at Moors River by the knowledge that the cyclists of the 4th V.B. Hants Regiment at Christchurch and Bournemouth were open enemies. No actual attack, however, was made by either party, though there wet a several instructive scares on their account. . By 3 p.m. on July 31st the battalion had reached their camp at Organford, within five miles of Wareham.
The officer commanding the cyclists now rode out to Lieutenant Wells, who bad withdrawn that morning by the umpire's order to the rising ground north-east of that town, watching the railway station and the bridge below. This was subsequently "blown up" by the Yeomanry. Finding a direct advance on Wareham the following day a doubtful undertaking, even for a large force with bridging material, it was resolved to assist the frontal attack of the infantry on that town by a flank march via Wool. A reconnaissance of the twenty-five miles or so of road that this involved was undertaken at 4 p.m. and com- pleted by 11 p.m. Then followed the final stage of the march. The battalion moved at 5.16 a.m. against Wareham, now strongly held by a mixed force of Yeomanry, infantry, and cyclists. One company of cyclists accompanied them and forded the River Puddle, carrying their machines, at a mill half-a-Mile west of the town. The other company left camp at 1.40 a.m., struck west to Bere Regis, then south over the Puddle at Wool, then east again towards the Wareham-Corfe road. At a point halfway between Wool and this road fire was opened upon their advanced scouts by a party of the enemy's cyclists, strongly posted on a wooded knoll commanding the road. Two sections were quickly dismounted and extended to right and left of the road. On their working round the flanks of the knoll their opponents retired, only to a similar position half -a-mile further down. The main body rode through the extended firing line, and the manceuvre was repeated, with the result that all but two of the opposing party were captured by the cyclists still ad- vancing on their machines up the road, and the force arrived at and established themselves on a hill commanding Corfe Castle at 5.30 a.m.
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A. rapid reconnaissance of the Castle itself had shown it to be strongly held, and the glacis upon which it stands made it tmassailable. The hill overlooking it was only carried with "heavy loss." but the main body of the enemy were holding WarebaD2 againat Colonel Cave's i
nfanty, and it may be claimed
that the mere occupation of the only road which communicated with their base at Swanage would in war have seriously shaken their nerves. Be this as it may, I hope that this account may sufficiently have demonstrated the possibilities of cyclists in war.
[Our correspondent's most interesting account of what riflemen-cyclists can do if properly handled should be carefully studied by all students of war under modern conditions. Particularly interesting and instructive is the really remarkable achievement of the small body of cyclists who lay hidden in the Isle of Purbeck, who escaped the Yeomanry who were trying to hunt them down, and who yet kept in communication with their own friends. But note, these men were not game- keepers or gillies, or New Forest freeholders, but London Board-school masters,—yet another proof that brains tell, and if properly used are a substitute for even woodcraft and country lore. It is also worth remembering that none of the men who took part in these manceuvres were Regulars !—En. Spectator.]
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