NAVY IN ACTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 108, 3 November 1937, Page 4

NAVY IN ACTION

A SHAM FIGHT ASHORE

OllD, LIGHT-HEARTED DAYS

"A GENERAL RAG"

The grim atmosphere in which modem combined manoeuvres, such as those which have recently been held, are performed nowadays, with their attendant mimic norrors of gas attacks, air-bombard-ments and general embroilment of the civil population carries its own significant message to our generation, writes Captain Lionel Dawson, R.N. (retired), in the "Daily Telegraph." It is not so very many years ago that such affairs were regarded in a very different light. They served largely as a holiday attraction for those of the non-martial public who found their way to the seaside at this time of year. A hark-back of little more than thirty years may provide some light relief to the somewhat unpleasant taste that is bound to be left in modern times by such exercises.

In the last years of the Victorian era a large portion of the "field training" was, as the-words would imply, concerned with the employment of- the sailor as an "imitation soldier" ashore— at least he was regarded as "imitation" to a great extent by his brethren of the land service. Not that this estimate was entirely justifiable. The trenches of the Crimea, the sands of the Egyptian deserts, arid the veldt and kopjes of South Africa had proved that the sailor ashore was a fighting man; and it was fresh in the public mind that at the outset of the .century the Royal Navy —with the somewhat confused cooperation of the navies of the Great Powers—had conducted a land expedition almost entirely "on its own" in the affair of the Peking Legations. SOMETHING TO LEARN. There was a feeling, however, that the success of this expedition. had not been commensurate with the force employed and that the sailor ashore still had a good. deal to -learn. Nor was this view entirely erroneous, though I doubt if it was admitted afloat. Whatever the reason for it—the need for further training or merely a notion of the value of soldiering for sailors as a means of smartening up parade discipline—it is a fact that, in the early 1900's, the ctyef idea of "combined operations" seems to have been to get the sailor ashore. I am not certain that the chief idea of the sister Service, unimpressed by his "playing at soldiers," was not to keep well clear of him. The first service which memory performs for me is to recall the events of a summer morning in 1903, when the Home and Reserve Fleets lays in a certain harbour and an assault by land from this base upon the neighbouring town was decreed—to the joy of the large temporary population of holidayma fars. In default of any co-operation from the local regiment, cantonned disapprovingly upon the adjacent heights, the long-suffering Marines, armed cap-a-pie, had left in the chilly dawn by boat lor their defensive position—propelling themselves under oars .for a long three miles, since the use of steamboats, except in moments of crisis, was forbidden. Bounded by the necessity for return in time for the, men's dinner-hour at noon, the whole event was an early one, and the sailors began their operations not long afterwards. THE ATTACKERS LAND. Forced reluctantly into boots, with blank cartridges distributed sparingly —10 rounds per man,, and enough, too, since the'sailor's main idea was to let it off on the smallest provocation—the attackers landed in large numbers. The final order issued to them was a reminder that bayonets (still called "sword-bayonets," relic of the days when cutlasses were insecurely clamped to rifle muzzles to serve as bayonets) were not to be fixed without an order from the highest authority. The reserves and coastguards were out for training in the reserve fleet, and bewildered fishermen from the Hebrides could be seen being shepherded into some semblance of military order, whilst stout coastguardsmen puffed along in charge of ancient muz-zle-loading field pieces, intended to batter the enemy into subjection if they ever succeeded.in traversing the 2J miles of shingle which they had to cross. Not long before this date, a burlesque of an army drill book had appeared which concluded a description of an attack upon a position (not, I may say, so very different from the official work then In vogue) with the statement:— "Colours will now be uncased, bands will play, officers will draw their swords, the battalion will charge and cheer." A codicil ; was added: "The enemy will retire In disorder." We worked niuch on these lines andeven embellished them by the provision of bearded "pioneers" carrying fire-hatchets and boarding pikes at the head of each ship's company. The navy was still 50 per cent, bearded, soj this peculiarity of the then army regftnental "pioneer" was easily achieved. NO COLOURS USED. We had no colours in those days, but we had our bands—strange-look-ing musicians in still more strangelooking uniforms of blue and white, with soft peaked caps, and looking like the bandsmen of some sect. The instructions contained in the codicil to the sham drill-book were faithfully performed by the harassed marines at the right moment. They rapidly put as much distance between themselves and the triumphant blue-, jackets, engaged in the final "charge and cheer," as was possible, in the time. Bayonets had become fixed. The delaying purpose of the caution: ary warning was evident when one saw the enthusiasm displayed for their use by the attackers. All this the holiday crowds viewed with interest and entertainment, unoppressed by the necessity for cooperation, and without thought of air bombardment or poisonous gases. A day or so later they were able to view a march past of both attackers and defenders, the bluejackets keeping a remarkably good alignment principally by the simple, if unofficial, method of holding the seam of the next man's voluminous trousers with two fingers of.the disengaged handalways provided that they Were not required to hold on the straw ha^of ceremony should there be a wind, for the regulation, serge chin-stays generally either did not fit, or were absent altogether. . Within another year or so combined operations in more like the presentday form were actually attempted when a force of real soldiers was landed on Clacton beach supported by the Navy, whose men remained afloat. Transports lay happily off-shore for days at a time, unhampered by any fears of under-or-over water attack, whilst men, horses, and transport were ferried ashore in ships* boats and "horse-boats" which had certainly seen service in the early Egyptian campaigns and, rumour had it, in. the Crimea.

BOYS MAN THE GUNS. Such was the demand upon the

naval squadron for boats' crews that the covering fire from the ships' heavy; guns' was provided by the ships' bojri. What its results would have been'in reality (even with the proper guns" crews) is doubtful, for "indirect fire" was not one of the branches of gun* nery with which the Senior Service was widely conversant. Indeed, even the control arrangements for fighting: the guns, at sea in those days left very; much to the imagination. ' Finally, "the winds blew and they were dispersed." The choice of this text for the celebration of the Armada victory always seemed to me to give little credit to the efforts of British. seamen which preceded the climatic disturbances. In the case of Clac(ton, however, our efforts in landing jthe Army were mild compared with j the labours which followed the gale, which strewed the coast-line with wrecked relics "of past campaigns. Once more, however, the British 'holiday-maker had been enabled to view his defenders in pseudo action with no inconvienience to himself. Indeed, the spectacle of a naval postcaptain, of "Captain Kettle" aspect and vocabulary, Tidirig: a.' troop-horse about in the surf off Clacton Pier as he directed landing operations, was probably a sight that many a gas-masked citizen, of today would go a long way to see. All this was a decade before the' war, and the actualities of such an operation were probably to be experienced later by many of those who, looked on. '■•■'•■-"■" ' ZEEBRUGGE REHEARSAL. During the succeeding years, com* bined manoeuvres principally consisted of assaults by torpedo craft upon the batteries defending naval ports, when destroyers steamed into close range with strange disregard of the possibilities represented by the discharges of blank with which they were received—a disregard subsequently to be finely exemplified round the Mole of Zeebrugge. . . , . In the summer of the war itself, two months before the opening of hostilities, I was a participant in an operation in which the sailors got ashore once more, and engaged a long-Suffer-ing Scottish yeomanry amongst th« hills of Invergordon., While the main body of the mariners, greatly outnumbering their opponents, played hide, and seek witb mounted Scotsmen in the country bordering their camp by the shore (and even captured and rode their horses), Marine detachments were sent around the coast. by trawler to capture the camp itself and, incidentally, the cooks and the hot meal which awaited the yeomanry's return. Had it been the bluejackets, I daresay that they woitfd have eaten that meal, but the kinship of the Marines to his Majesty's land forces, even Territorial 'Yeomanry, was proof against such temptation. But even we have changed all that nowadays. Even before I .-left th« Navy our shore tatties were improving and "landing parties" were beginning to be regarded a$ something mort serious than a species of combined disciplinary drill and general rag. . , The modern seaman, gas-masked, steel-helmeted, and so equipped as to be almost indistinguishable from his soldier-brother, is, I believe, nearly aa efficient ashore as he is afloat, whilst the increasing complications which make of modern warfare a contest between entire populations, render combined operations a serious event In the general technical education of the people. _____