Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1900 — Fighting intelligence. [ARTICLE]

Fighting intelligence.

Oa the battlefield nowaday* It I* only when men come to the bayonet charge that they fight shoulder to shoulder. In order to minimize the risk of their being hit the men fighting are at other times kept a distance apart. Thus the bullet that just misses oneman does not strike his neighbor. The order being so open, and the men thus spread out over a considerable extent of ground, it sometimes happens, especially when—as in the present war—many officers are killed, that a number of men find themselves without any commander. But the modern soldier has enough “fighting intelligence,” as It is called, to go on carrying out operations till he again has a leader. In battle the men under various commanders often get thoroughly mixed up; but that has no effect on them. They instinctively obey any commander; and in South Africa it has recently occurred that soldiers have fought gallantly under officers whom they never in their lives saw before.