For thousands of years the signal to charge was given by blowing on a conch shell or a trumpet. It was something but think how limited this was in terms of what a commander could tell units at the other side of a battlefield. Romantic as it is there are limits to the detail which can be conveyed by a bugle call. Though there were a number of bugle calls which every soldier had to know: advance and run away being quite important amongst these. Bugle calls were messages from a leader to the whole of his command unless he had been able to issue orders to the effect that, ‘When you hear the bugle just the left flank move forward.’ What about orders for the artillery to move position or the cavalry to take the left flank or anything in reaction to what the enemy is doing?

This is where the messenger came in. It took time to tell or write the message, time to get it there even if the messenger wasn’t intercepted and time to get a reply back if the officer on the spot could see a better alternative or had a report to make. The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) during the Crimean War was deeply heroic but resulted in the total loss of an entire British Light Cavalry Brigade! This was all down to bad communications. The Commanding Officer, Lord Raglan, issued the order for the brigade to attack the guns to their front – meaning a certain small battery of artillery. The order was misinterpreted for various reasons, including petty bickering amongst the officers, and the brigade, led by its senior officers, charged the wrong guns.

Vietnamese bugler sounds the charge: Vietnam, 20 January 1966. (Corbis)

They rode down a valley with rows of guns on either side and to their front. They were cut to pieces – though some men got to the other end and destroyed a few guns – but the Russians were shocked at the stupidity. Remarkably, the British cavalry knew the order was in error before they set off but such was the discipline of the British Army that they carried it out without question. This whole disaster was down to bad communications and garbled instructions. Once the charge began there was no calling them back because they didn’t have the ability to send signals faster than a horse could gallop. Remember this when you are relaying instructions by mouth or on the radio.

Before radios the greater part of a battle had to be planned in advance and the control an area commander had over his regional/area/group commanders was limited by the speed a horse could travel. This is why the armies were laid out for what was called a ‘set piece battle’ – sort of like chess.

The use of radio

The primary form of communications an army has today, both at tactical and strategic levels, is radio. Radios at all levels of command have been around for so long now that there are no serving soldiers who have had to work totally without them. But instead of there being one radio per platoon as not so long ago, there is now radio at section and even individual level. With radio, two-way voice communication is effectively instantaneous. Orders can be passed down from any level to any level below and reports can travel the other way at the speed of light. This is a tremendous advance on messengers if the orders are good and the people at the other end understand what is required.

Voice procedure (VP): Radios don’t make up for bad orders but in an effort to achieve clarity and avoid misunderstanding everyone using a radio is taught a type of voice procedure which varies slightly between armies but amounts to the following:

Each radio set has a callsign which is known to the other callsigns. These are often arranged in a tree formation so within a battalion radio net there would be callsigns for each squadron, troop, section and so on down to the individual radio set. An example might make this plain: C41 might be C for C Squadron, 4 for 4th Troop, 1 for the first section or fire team. Then there are specific titles for motor transport, mortar group and so on to identify every fire group and every significant sub-unit in a battalion.

Once all this, and quite a lot more, has been committed to memory it is simple to call anyone in the battalion without someone else thinking you are talking to them. This is how it is done: ‘Hello C41, this is C44 is Sunray C at your location over.’

So here you have stated who you are calling, who you are and asked if Sunray, the commander of C Squadron, is present at that location. Using ‘over’ at the end of a message means you have finished speaking and expect a reply.

Then there are ‘radio checks’ where the lead callsign checks the reception of each of his units and much more. I can’t give you a radio course here, and in any event you need to learn the VP for your own army, but you will get the idea.

The problems radio brings: Having the use of radio communications does allow marvellous communications amongst a unit and solves many problems for today’s soldier but it also brings one or two problems unique to itself:

   Too much talk: Of course, with everyone being able to talk, and everyone on the same frequency being able to hear, there is lots of room for confusion and one person talking can block another person with an important message as only one message can be sent on one net or frequency at a time. To keep the volume of messages down to a manageable level for each military unit the radio net is generally split up along lateral bands: there will be one frequency, say, for platoon A to speak on amongst themselves, another for platoon B and another frequency for the platoon commanders to contact their superiors. This is achieved in slightly different ways with armies around the world but it amounts to limiting the number of people talking on each frequency.

   Position marker: Using your radio, or even having it switched on, can give away your position to an enemy with relatively simple direction finding equipment. Two such outfits pointing to your set give the exact position of your transmitter. To avoid this, the French Resistance in Occupied France during World War II for instance, would encode their message before switching on their set in a new place every day. Then they would read off the pre-prepared message as quickly as they could and switch off again before moving.

   Radio messages can be intercepted: Bear in mind that every message you send might have someone unfriendly listening in. It could be a member of a terrorist group in a hut in the next street listening to everything you say, or manning a nearby radio listening post or it could be the intelligence agency of a foreign power. There are interception services run by many nations around the world. In some circumstances they might be listening to you. Even neutral, or officially neutral, country might pass on useful information to your enemy.

The significance of eavesdropping on your communications depends to a great extent upon the level at which the communication has significance and the time over which the communication will be of use to the enemy. As a general rule a message between the leaders of large units is worth more effort to the enemy to intercept owing to the size of the units involved and potentially compromised. The time over which the information remains useful is likely to be greater too owing to the time required to prepare and move such units.

Side view of United States Air Force E-3A aircraft flying with raydome mounted on top and Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS). (Andy Holmes © UK Crown Copyright, 2002, MOD)