Spring 2011
Achilles triumphed over him…”1
The Section
Infantry
Leading, the
Doctrine and
the Training
Gerry Long
“Achilles sprang to meet him, his heart
filled with savage determination. He kept
his chest covered with his fine, ornate
shield…such was the gleam from his
spear’s sharp point as he weighed it in his
right hand with murder in his heart for
godlike Hector, searching that handsome
body for its most vulnerable point.
Hector’s body was completely covered
by his armour…except for the flesh that
could be seen at the windpipe, where
the collar bones hold the neck from the
shoulders, the easiest place to kill a man.
As Hector charged him, godlike Achilles
drove at this spot with his spear, and the
point went through Hector’s soft neck…
Hector crashed in the dust, and godlike
Soldiers from Burma Company The 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment patrol the Green Zone
in Helmand Province and along with Somme Company provide security for the clearance of Route Dorset
(Sergeant Ian Forsyth RLC)
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infantry, what have you got?’ Recruiting
“The skills required for today’s
infantryman to be effective are an order
of magnitude greater than those essential
to the riflemen of sixty plus years ago”2
Introduction
For all the employment of spectacular
military technologies it is still the man
on the ground that counts in the long
run. It is the infantry section that still
decides who wins and who loses and
the section commander is the fulcrum
of battle, the ultimate weapon in the
hi-tech war of the 21st century, much as
he has been since the linear tactics of
the Napoleonic age broke on the back
of the barbed wire and machine guns of
the Somme. The adoption of the light
weight machine gun, along with the
light mortar and grenade which brought
a decentralized command to formations,
has left the section and its commander
the pivotal tool of war ever since.
“Battle is the final objective of
armies and man is the fundamental
instrument in battle”.
Ardant du Picq3
Doctrine
Infantry soldering is still a formidably
difficult and dangerous profession, and
yet we still have young men coming off
the street saying, ‘I want to join the
is not the problem, nor is it the war
we are in. War makes the Army more
experienced at its core business of killing
the enemy but it can be damaging as
well. That damage comes from the higher
level where saving money saps the
morale of the soldiers. Penny pinching at
home destroys unit cohesion faster than
an enemy IED.
The mythical character of Achilles is fine
for Hollywood blockbusters featuring
Brad Pitt but the soldier who wants to
get the job done and done well is often
at odds with the bean counters who
while cutting his pay waste billions of
pounds elsewhere. In peace or war the
military experience is rewarding and
sometimes dangerous but for most young
men their combat experience will remain
the high point of their lives, nothing
is as intense or as exciting, and the
comradeship of a well trained section is
without equal on or off the battlefield.
The fire-team is our modern-day version
of the Hoplites (heavily-armed foot
soldiers of ancient Greece), half a dozen
men who, even as they redistribute
ammunition and water before the next
patrol, know danger is only a few yards
away.
“Each guerrilla conflict is a tactical, not a
strategic undertaking”4
The British Army has never been a
slave to doctrine, many of its personnel
never read it, let alone understood it.
Battles and skirmishes are usually won
by casting aside what did not work
and improving Tactics, Techniques and
Procedures (TTPs). Our flexibility at
platoon and section level is without
equal and it’s only when we get to the
higher echelon that process gets in the
way. That’s why our doctrine especially
for the infantry must reflect the tactical
environment and be responsive to
change. Proper doctrine is critical to an
Army, since “the Army should never forget
that the best weapons can be rendered
useless by improper employment”5 and
that “an Army that adopts tactical
doctrine it cannot apply will greatly
multiply its misfortune”.6

Cpl Steven Bircumshaw, 5 Platoon, 2 Mercian
Regiment fires the 66 at an insurgent’s fire
position during heavy fighting on operation
Panchai Palang in Babaji (Sgt Dan Harmer RLC)
The tactical challenges facing our
infantry today are no less challenging
than those faced by infantrymen
throughout history, whether it’s at
the gates of Troy, in the defence at
Agincourt, in the rearguards at Corunna,
Mons or Dunkirk or the Imjin River. At
some point the infantryman will have to
cross open ground and clear buildings
with the enemy having the best fields of
fire. Staff college graduates may argue
the merits of manoeuvre warfare over
attrition, but the section commander has
no such luxury. The section commander
operates at the tactical level and
will always emphasize firepower over
movement, since firepower enables
movement. The section commander is
concerned with finding, fixing, fighting,
and finishing the enemy. To do this, the
section commander moves his firepower
to gain an advantage over the enemy
and destroy him. At the tactical level
of war, therefore, there is only fire,
manoeuvre and attrition.
The modern infantryman understands
only too well Clausewitz’s concept of
‘friction’ he meets it head on everyday
whether it’s the local militia or Rules
of Engagement (ROE). In the challenge
that is the Contemporary Operational
Environment (COE), the soldier on the
ground is as good as he is has ever
been. While we may waste money
at the corporate level buying planes
that never fly or ships that will never
see an enemy the infantryman makes
every pound spent on training count.
B Company Coy, 1 R IRISH are forward mounted
into Patrol Bases or Check Points within the Nad-
e-Ali area of the HELMAND District, as part of 16
Air Assault Brigade (Sgt Rupert Frere)
In the modern infantryman’s war he
is providing time and space to gain
leverage in the struggle to enforce the
‘legitimacy of the rule of law and good
governance’. For all the money wasted
in Defence budgets, we still need to
provide our troops with the essentials:
body armour (light enough to operate
in), armour vehicles, and 21st Century
quality Helicopters. The rest is down to
training, training by section commanders
(or ex-section commanders) for members
of the sections and fire teams and the
commanders that follow.
The discipline of today’s soldier is
beyond question when compared with
his predecessors. This can be illustrated
by the unprecedentedly low number
of casualties compared with previous
historical campaigns. Everyday our
infantryman makes life and death
decisions and he usually gets them right.
In the tight battlefields of the COE where
gunships cannot get close enough and
where artillery would slaughter civilians
this is where we find our modern
infantryman.
The infantryman shoulders the weight
of the war. The battle comes down to
shrill calls on the radio, hand signals,
shouts and dashes for cover, the call
for covering fire directed at opponents
who become invisible in minutes. With
all the noise, the smoke, dust, sweat
and strength-sapping weight of the
equipment the infantryman carries he
requires great strength to meet the
The British Army Review Number 151
enemy on anything close to equal terms,
and yet he does.
This is “band of brothers” country where
each soldier trusts his life to another -
the handful of members of his Fire Team
he has trained with, lived with, argued
with, under the command of a Junior
Non-Commissioned Officer (JNCO) not
much older than those he commands. The
battle drill has to work and the men have
to function as a team. The TTPs have to
flow, the blood will often flow as well,
but the assault will go on regardless,
because even in the environment of
the ‘three block war’ and the day of the
‘strategic corporal’ the mission is to close
with and kill the enemy.
“Man does not enter battle to fight,
but for victory. He does everything
that he can to avoid the first and
obtain the second”
Ardant du Picq7
Soldier from 5 SCOTS observes his arcs (Sgt
Rupert Frere)
Training for COE
The British army came out of Basra
strategically bankrupt, what had
worked on the streets of Belfast had
spectacularly failed in the squares and
bazaars of Iraq’s second city. Much like
the US Army after Vietnam, despite the
magnitude of the defeat “the Army made
little effort to preserve the learning that
had occurred during the war; rather, it
expunged the experience from the service’s
consciousness”8. The Army has been here
before, and learned the hard way. After
the Boer War the following paragraph in
the 1902 Combined Training pamphlet
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Spring 2011

was written and is just as applicable

today as it was then:

“Success in war cannot be expected unless

all ranks have been trained in peace to
use their wits. Generals and commanding
officers are, therefore, not only to
encourage their subordinates in so doing
by affording them constant opportunities
of acting on their own responsibility
but, they will also check all practices
which interfere with the free exercise of
judgement, and will break down, by every
means in their power, the paralyzing
habit of an unreasoning and mechanical
adherence to the letter of orders and to
routine.”9

So training is hugely important. It’s

as much about the development of
judgement as the transmission of
knowledge. It’s what we are training our
soldiers for. Therefore exercises must
have a ‘red team’ up to the task. Scripted
scenario-driven exercises are only useful
training for opera companies, not light
infantry.
Tactically, the infantry needs to embrace
the experience gained throughout
history and use the current experience of
fighting in a complex terrain to prepare
for meeting the next enemy whoever
and wherever they may be. The purpose
of the infantry in the combined arms
environment is to maintain maximum
flexibility in order to repeatedly force
the enemy into an asymmetric situation
and then attack him efficiently.
The Way Ahead
Our infantry has never let the country
down in war but the country routinely
lets the soldier down often in
procurement of the tools the infantry
Patrol Base Viking Sangin Afghanistan OP HERRICK 11, 3 Rifles A Company find and destroy one of the
largest IEDs to be found in Helmand province (Sergeant Keith Cotton)
needs to do the job. In the past, the
essential requirements for combat have
given way to whatever industry wants
to foist onto the Army for job creation
schemes with the willing help of the
government. While soldiers are lost in
Afghanistan due enemy action and IED
attacks we know we cannot prevent all
combat losses but we should be ashamed
if we cannot give the soldier the tools
and training he needs to stay alive and
carry out his mission. Infantry training
must be robust, relevant and focused on
the ultimate challenge that has faced
the infantryman since Troy because one
day you just might meet your Hector. 
1. Homer the Iliad: translated by E V Rieu & Peter
Jones.
2. Ralph Peters, The Shape of Wars to Come, Armed
Forces Journal May 2005
3. Ardant du Picq, ‘Battle Studies’ (1926) Military
Service Publishing, Harrisburg, p 39 Colonel
Ardant Du Picq is arguably the greatest of the
soldier/scholars/psychologists post Clausewitz
and prior the great outpouring of self reflection
of the Great War. Du Picq was killed in the
Franco-Russian War in 1870, and his book, Battle
Studies, was published after his death, in death
like Clausewitz he found the influence he never
attained in his life time. His ‘studies’ based
upon his personnel knowledge, observations &
experience shows a keen understanding of the
‘art of soldering’ for future ‘warrior monks’ to
follow.
4. Lt Gen Victor H. Krulak USMC, Strategic
Implications of ‘the Little War’, US Army C&SC
1985, P 84
5. Robert A Doughty, the Evolution of US Army
Tactical Doctrine, 1946-76, Leavenworth papers
no 1, (1979) Kansas US Army C&SC p 48
6. Timothy J. Lupfer, “The Dynamics of Doctrine”
Leavenworth Papers No 4, Kansas, US Army
C&SC, P 56
7. Ardant du Picq, (1926) p 43
8. Andrew Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam
(1986) Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore,
p 260
9. Combined Training (Provisional) War Office
(1902)

Brigade Reconnaissance Force (BRF) is headed up by Officer Commanding (OC) Major Mudd and partnered with 3/215 Recce Tolay (Company) which is led by
(ANA) Commander, Captain Aziz. The Recce was a shaping op for further tasks to be carried out in the area around Gereshk. (Corporal Gary Kendall RLC)

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