Besides their copies of the regulation tactics, officers supplied themselves with such manuals as Mahan's books on Field Fortifications and on Outpost Duty.

I adopted at the beginning a rule to have some military work in course of reading, and kept it up even in the field, sending home one volume and getting another by mail.

In this way I gradually went through all the leading books I could find both in English and in French, including the whole of Jomini's works, his histories as well as his "Napoleon" and his "Grandes Operations Militaires." I know of no intellectual stimulus so valuable to the soldier as the reading of military history narrated by an acknowledged master in the art of war.

To see what others have done in important junctures, and to have both their merits and their mistakes analyzed by a competent critic, rouses one's mind to grapple with the problem before it, and begets a generous determination to try to rival in one's own sphere of action the brilliant deeds of soldiers who have made a name in other times.
Then the example of the vigorous way in which history will at last deal with those who fail when the pinch comes, tends to keep a man up to his work and to make him avoid the rock on which so many have split, the disposition to take refuge in doing nothing when he finds it difficult to decide what should be done.
The first fortnight in camp was the hardest for the troops.

The ploughed fields became deep with mud, which nothing could remove but the good weather which should allow them to pack hard under the continued tramp of thousands of men.