Dismounted Drill

D Vautier
11/2006

Over time the military found it was easier to move large numbers of troops by marching soldiers around in step.  This worked pretty well as long as everybody had the same size legs, and as long as they didn’t cross a bridge or trestle, because the harmonic resonance of the bridge may be the same as the marchers, and could cause the bridge to collapse.  This used to happen.

So because of all the little oddities, such as different leg sizes and bridges and trestles, the military came up with a bunch of commands to deal with just about every possible situation when moving large groups of soldiers in the field.  This wonderful collection of commands makes up the science called Dismounted Drill, its very own rich and powerful tool.

For example, when issuing a command, you can’t just say “go” or “stop”.  You have to use a well-developed dialect.  Each command consists of a preparatory phrase, such as “forward” (faaawwwwd) or “left shoulder” (lefshldrrrrr) or “order” (oderrrrrr) so everybody kind of knows what to do next, followed by the command itself, like “march” (harrrrch) or “arms” (harrrms) or “face” (hassse).  But the way, as you will notice, these commands are spoken in quite a different way from the way they are spelled or spoken in everyday English.  The command “forward march” sounds like “fwwwrrrd Harch.” The harch is an unpronounceable guttural sound that originates deep in the throat.  By using a lot of breath to force it up and out, it finally emerges as a harsh and obnoxious sound, yet very recognizable to the marching multitudes.  Just try to imagine that you are a karate black-belt and someone has just slept with your wife, and you want to remove all his vital organs with the back of your hand.  At this point you are in the right frame of mind for a good healthy HARCH.  Let’s try it together.

FWWWRRRD  HARCH.  Once again.  A little deeper in the throat and from the diaphragm please.

FWWWRRRD  HARCH.  A little more raspy breath please.

FWWWRRRD  HARCH.  That’s it.  you've got it.

But there’s a lot more commands in this mysterious science, some confusing and contradictory, such as in the case of  “at ease” and “at ease”.   The first at ease is issued by a sergeant and sounds like “Ut Hease”.  Given from the position of attention (A-tennn-hugh) you move your right foot out 10 inches, and place your hands behind your back.  At ease is usually issued without arms, and can only be issued at order arms (that means your weapon is at your side with the rifle butt touching the right heal).  So the sergeant must say order arms (Oddrr Harms) and then the at ease command may be given.  Just imagine the embarrassment and frustration of some idiot sergeant who ordered an at ease command while the troops were still at right-shoulder arms—the poor guy would never live it down. (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist that one).

Now there’s the other at ease, issued in a normal voice “at ease”.  This at ease means that you can move all around, scratch yourself, stretch your balls, as long as you keep your left foot in place.  Sometimes it’s OK to talk and light up too, but you usually should wait for the sergeant to say, “light ‘em up”.  That’s another command I think.

My favorite is “route step march” (rut stp haurch) which means walk any way you want to as long as you’re not in step with anybody else, which is really hard to do, or easy to do if you don't really care.  But why do they say march (harch), when they are telling us to walk like normal people? (a mystery).

Many other strange DD commands fill my mind, like left shoulder arms, port arms, right-shoulder arms, left face, right face, about face.  They never did have a three-quarter face command.  I can see it now (three-quarter HASE).

Then there’s the file commands; dress left, dress right, and cover.  The idea is to arrange yourselves in nice need rows and columns.