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tions as to the area and composition of their command, and as to their course of action under the different contingencies of attack. All this should be recorded in the Scheme under the heading of "Instructions to Officers Commanding."
This has not been done in the present revision of the Defence Scheme, and no sectional organization is adopted beyond the following general division of the command :—
(a.) Mount Auriol and river side: Infantry under a field officer W.I.R.
(b.) The town and batteries: Artillery under the O.C.R.A.
(c.) Wilberforce and Leicester: Infantry under the O.C.W.I.R.
The garrison of (a), according to the Table at the top of p. 17, consists of one company of infantry; the garrison of (b) of all the artillery and (assuming Tower Hill to be included) of the detachment of engineers and four companies of infantry; while the remaining three companies of infantry and a company of police constitute the garrison of (c).
The Divisions of Command are not called sections in the Scheme, but that term is used in connection with them in a letter of the O.C. troops, dated the 11th June, 1896, on the subject of telephonic communication between the Fortress Commandant and the Section Commanders. In that letter (b) is termed No. 1 Section, and has its head-quarters at Tower Hill Battery; (c) is No. 2 Section, with head-quarters at Wilberforce West; and (a) is No. 3 Section, with head-quarters at Kortright Hill.
The Divisions of Command proposed in this letter and in the revision of the Defence Scheme now under consideration, differ from those put forward in the revision to January 1893, which divided the infantry defence into three zones :--
Right-
Mount Auriol and Falconbridge, 2 companies.
Centre-
Tower Hill and King Tom, 3 companies.
Left-
Lumley, Wilberforce, and Signal Hill, 3 companies.
The Colonial Defence Committee have very carefully re-considered this question of sectional organization at Sierra Leone. As a rule, such an organization is only applicable to a large fortress where the garrison is too numerous to be controlled by one officer; in places where the troops consist practically of only a single regiment of infantry and a small force of artillery, an organization simply on regimental lines is generally more suitable. This is the case at Sierra Leone, and the Committee are now of opinion that it would be advisable to treat the station as one section, all under the direct command of the O.C. troops. The troops occupying the Mount Auriol and Wilberforce positions would then be detachments from the main body at Tower Hill, and the administration of the whole force would be carried out by the head-quarters staff there.
The distribution of troops proposed on p. 17 of the Scheme is probably the best that can be adopted with the present strength of garrison, at the earliest stage of preparation for attack. It is, however, scarcely necessary to point out that it may be advisable at time of actual attack to move the troops either in front of the positions there proposed, or to reinforce one position from another, especially the flanks from the centre where the infantry force will be mainly a reserve held in readiness to advance to the support of the troops elsewhere, or to cover their retreat from their original positions.
The proposals contained in the Scheme that the Second in Command. W.I.R. should command the three companies at Wilberforce, and that the next Senior Field Officer of the W.I.R., or, if none is available, the Captain of the company at Mount Auriol, should command that company, and the police working with it, are concurred in. Owing to the paucity of R.A.
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