There’s not enough Teamwork between our Fighting Forces . . .

Camp News, Volume 3, Issue 147, 6 November 1942, Page 2

There’s not enough Teamwork between our Fighting Forces . . .

From the “Daily Mirror,” Sept., 1941.

ON THE WAR

An army is a team. The British Army is already a team; and, as each month goes by, it becomes less “wooden-soldier” and more like a good team. Its forwards and halves work well together, know each others’ jobs and “feed” each other. , But other parts of the team are a bit “sticky.” In July of last year I got the chance to see a good deal of the Army, and to talk with many officers and men. Last month and this month, on a similar scale, I have had the chance to look at other units of the Army, visiting ten or a dozen in a week. My main impression is that there has been an immense improvement. Of. course, there are more arms, more transport, and more of almost everything an army needs. But there is also a great deal more knowledge, skill and general idea of how to fight. New ideas have been developed that are ahead of anything I was thinking or saying last year. Take, for instance, the-idea of battle drill, about which I \ wrote some weeks ago. Essentially, the idea is that each “team” of infantry plays or practices together until each man knows his place in the team and how he fits in with his team-mates. / This battle-drill — like a football team’s practice — starts off with each man in exactly his correct position. The “forwards” are properly placed and the “halves” just behind them. But the men taking part in it are not held down to any rigid positions, or fixed relation to others; sometimes a “half back” will be up with, his forwards, sometimes far back near his own goal. Centre forward and inside right can swop places during a dash forward and so on. So far so good; now for the cri- . ticism. A team that practises but never plays gets stale. The Army as a : wholeor at any rate the bits of it I " have seen or heard about — fed up < with inaction. : Some people say it needs more ' training before it tackles the Nazis. I would like to see a lot more training (and some altered training for some units). Y : But not now. More training, how- ;

ever good, will only make men more fed up, more “browned-off.” Next criticism: The Army is a team, but only within limits. It trains in water-tight compartments too much. The forwards and halves train together, get to know each other, and co-operate; but they seldom see the full backs or the goalie. One battalion, I found, could get tanks and artillery to “play” with it. Another week it would have a “scheme” with tanks and planes. A third week it would get together with planes and artillery. It could quite often, in this way, practise war with two out of three of its supporting arms. But it had never once had the luck to practise with all three together. I believe the need for action is, today, the British Army’s greatest need. But the next thing it needs— almost equal importance — is that it should develop team-work to a higher level than most divisions have yet achieved. And, particularly, team work between infantry units, of all sizes, and all the other arms that work with the infantry. In this the Air Force are still the biggest difficulty. They are doing what they think of as “their own job” so supremely well that it is hard to write anything that sounds like a criticism of them. But it is a fact that we shall never score the success that matters while the R.A.F. stick to “their own job” and treat co-operation with the Army as a side issue. . The Germans, everyone knows, have won in past campaigns largely because their air force acts like fastraiding wing forwards in close partnership with their gunners and riflemen and tanksthe rest of the team. The British people have always been good at teamwork. The Navy, in scores of expeditions throughout the whole world, has set an example for the last hundred and fifty years in the way one arm — independent, and proud of it—can serve and nurse and work with another arm, the Army. It can do that again, and is doing it. When we have all three arms working perfectly together, Navy, Army and Air Force, we shall be twice our present strength.