rom physical-education activities to war-related activities
François Cochet
Dans Inflexions 2012/1 (N° 19), pages 191 à 205
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1Physical education, seen as an aspect of his ability to survive on the battlefield, was then completely transformed by the pacifism-imbued or even “demilitarising” interpretation then prevalent in Western societies. This process accelerated with the war in Algeria. From that time, there was indisputably a separation between French youth and the duty to defend their country. The physical “knocking into shape” changed from a factor to ensure suitability for combat under fire to being, in some militant interpretations, one in alienating recruits. This means that the armed forces’ practice in terms of physical exercises and sporting activity relied on practices relating to specific societies and historical periods, with changing views of its utility.
2We would like, here, to consider the question of the relationships between elements of sporting activity and elements of war, examining them from a number of overlapping perspectives. How does the military regard a soldier’s physical training, given that practising sport has been a component since the 19th century? How do the armed forces productively invest in aspects of physical education while adapting them to military practice – which does not necessarily mean fighting wars? How can we compare and contrast action inherent in war with action involved in physical exercises and sporting activity as inculcated by military training?
Reference works used by the armed forces
3Present-day society gives a lot of attention to the body, which has come to be seen not only as a living entity but even more as an anthropological idea. A soldier must be made more “technical”, that is made suitable for the practice of war, or at least preparing for war. But what technical aspects do the armed forces claim to use as a basis when training potential fighters?
4For a historian of waging war, it is desirable initially to clarify certain terms; these reveal different – though complementary – approaches by the military to bodily expression. What choices do the armed forces make? The terms “sport”, “gymnastics” and “physical education” are not synonymous. Gymnastics can be defined as “the art of exercising, strengthening and developing the human body through certain physical exercises”, while physical education is a collection of activities that are not specific to the military field. In France, the field includes physical education clubs and school physical education. This area has its own means, such as “physical culture”, game-type sports (notably football) and sporting or athletic activities such as walking, running, discus-throwing and shot-putting, fencing, wrestling and swimming.
5Military gymnastics appeared early in France, thanks to Colonel Francisco Amoros (1770-1848). After serving in the Spanish army, Amoros was made Minister of the Interior (by Joseph Bonaparte). He moved to France at the end of the First Empire and, in agreement with Napoleon, introduced the idea of gymnastic training into the French army. He summed up his approach – fairly simple, it may be said – in the concise formula: “My method ends where it ceases to be of use.” The approach was initially applied universally, and the École de Joinville, established in 1852, was given responsibility for training gymnastics instructors. When Amoros died, his methods were continued. The school’s first Director, Major Louis d’Argy, and his civilian assistant, Napoléon Laisné, had previously worked together. The exercises were sometimes fairly violent, but they stressed the link between physical education and mental training, particularly in the sense of subjugating oneself through physical exercises. Amoros took inspiration from the theories of Pestalozzi, who himself followed the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and affirmed that “doing good works and serving the common good are the main aim of gymnastics.”
6Those at the Joinville school, who thought only in terms of utilitarianism, accordingly remained sceptical about “sport”, as an activity marked by amateurism. We must, however, acknowledge that such categories are not fixed for eternity. In 1906, officers who were sceptical about traditional military gymnastics introduced boxing, swimming and cycling at Joinville – and those they trained distinguished themselves in competitions [1]
[1]
Colonel Aumoine (ed.), Une histoire culturelle du sport. De…. Five of them won awards in the complete athletics competition of 1913, awards being made to only six competitors in total! After the directive of 1 September 1912, reorganising the school, its influence indisputably grew. In August 1914, however, it had to close its doors, for reasons we can imagine.
7The most unclassifiable theoretician on physical exercises to train sporting champions is indisputably Georges Hébert (1875-1957), who came from the military world. As a naval trainee in 1893, he developed the “natural method”, inspired in part by the methods of Georges Demenÿ. It involved moulding the trainees’ characters as much as their bodies. He experimented with methods and practices, first within the French Navy, later developing them further for the (terrestrial) army, in Reims, from 1912 onwards. [2]
[2]
Jean-Philippe Dumas, Aux origines de la “méthode naturelle” :… He was given responsibility for training a unit of marines undergoing physical preparation before leaving for a naval posting. In that task, he showed all he could do. On 20 December 1905, Hébert sent a draft manual on special gymnastics to the Navy, and it was approved in January 1906. His idea was to impose gymnastics as the basis for training prospective marines. Armand Fallières, President of France, amended the Order of 30 April 1897 on organisation of the fleet, prescribing instruction in gymnastics and fencing for the battalion of trainee marines at Lorient. Hébert’s reputation in the Navy then grew enormously, and in 1910 he was appointed Technical Director for the Navy’s physical-exercise programmes, a newly created post. His first theoretical work, Practical Guide to Physical Education, was published in 1909, followed by The Code of Strength (1911), Manly Culture through Physical Activity (1913) and Sport versus Physical Education (1925). A total of nine books describing the “natural method” appeared in 30 years. It was a much more attractive method than its predecessors, revolutionising what was the norm in physical education. Being of virtually universal application, it could not help but be of interest to the military.
8However, Hebert’s uncompromising attitude, and his seeking for his approach to dominate ruined the prospects for his pioneering work to be recognised, notably by the academic world. This was all the more the case as those who worked in the theory and practice of physical training and sport, such as Hébert, were coming into conflict with another category of experts: doctors. Dr Nimier, the armed forces’ Medical Inspector General, for example, gave a shooting lesson in 1914: “Hold yourself in balance, load the weapon and then hold it, look at the target and pull the trigger. Those are all operations that, in all their movements – to the most intimate depths of the human body – involve extremely complex nerve impulses and muscle actions of highly varied natures. And, before being knocked into shape, the prospective marksman must repeat each of the abovementioned operations numerous times, separately at first and even by breaking them down into substeps, subsequently trying to reproduce them ever more quickly… The trainee must then, first of all, want to act – and it is only progressively, through habit, that these nerve impulses and muscle actions gradually become subconscious and ultimately, as a physiologist might say, reflex actions. To a trained marksman, it should be possible to call the various shooting actions automatic… To conclude, we agree with Captain Leblois [3]
[3]
Capitaine Leblois, Le dressage individuel du tireur de champ de…, who said that training someone to be a good marksman means developing the person’s understanding and physical qualities. It means giving the soldier the ability to size up the situation, together with self-esteem, and the ability to keep cool. In a word, it means creating individual worth.”
9With scant ceremony, Hébert sent the doctors back to their precious studies. “Some doctors believed for a moment that they were better qualified than anyone else, as a result of their professional knowledge, to understand the best processes of human development… A working method cannot, in fact, be inferred from a simple knowledge of anatomy and physiology… Their training is far from making doctors athletes or models of physical perfection.” [4]
[4]
Georges Hébert, L’Éducation physique, virile et morale par la…
10Whatever discussions there may be on the relationships between physical and sporting training on the one hand and war on the other, contemporary French history has repeatedly attributed defeats to a lack of physical training.
11That was the case following the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. A number of superior officers and generals, who were more in the nature of sycophants or order-takers – as had been the case since Napoleon – were not up to the mark. There is the story of the major-general who refused to get out of his bath! The feeling of defeat thus coincided with a period when ambitions for social progress came from the privileged social classes and political élites, expressing themselves in two ways: firmly instilling republican ideas through the schools and military service, and generalising sporting activities throughout society. As Pierre Armand [5]
[5]
Pierre Arnaud, Le Militaire, l’Écolier, le Gymnaste. Naissance… described it, a coherent military-civil partnership was thus being sketched out, through those two foci of citizen life: schools and military service. Odile Roynette also write eloquently about “military service, a source of national regeneration” [6]
[6]
Bons pour le service. L’expérience de la caserne en France à la….
12Prussia became the model to copy in order to improve the chances of again defeating that country. On 14 January 1883, Jules Galland, President of the La Cambrésienne gymnastics society, made a long speech [7]
[7]
www2.ac-lille.fr/patrimoine-caac. Heading: Les premiers élans,… in which he drew inspiration from the German Turnen movement, established by Professor Jahn, early in the 19th century. Galland extolled the role played by gymnastics societies, saying: “How different it would be if we sent to the army whole contingents of men accustomed to fatigue, drilled in marching, finding a rifle light compared to the weights with which they were used to juggling, and bold in the noble way that guides strong men in decisive moments.” In the same way as France’s military Staff College was modelled on the Prussian Military Academy, the advocates of physical training for French soldiers based their approach on German gymnastics.
13I don’t have to go back in detail here to the endless discussions that preceded the introduction of general military service [8]
[8]
Annie Crépin, La Conscription en débat ou le triple…. We should, however, bear in mind a number of recurring elements. From an ideological perspective, the idea, inherited from the time of the 1789 revolution, that an armed populace had to be created was often put forward. It is more or less specifically a French notion, and it led to a number of contradictions. The soldiers were, for instance, supposed to bring to bear the same virtues on the battlefield as they displayed in their urban existence. The civilian ideal is thus expressed in the democratic concept of debate, which is diametrically opposed to the military ideal of internalising discipline, resulting in perfect obedience.
14The most famous interpretation resulting from a simplistic reading of the post-1870 revanchist ideas, and an idealised expression of the armed forces/school duality, was the introduction of all too well-known school “battalions”. It was not the military establishment that demanded the institution of those cadets and similar practices, but a governmental Order of 1882 that provided for children from the age of 13 – that is the age when compulsory schooling ended – to be entered in the “battalions”. Each establishment was to have its own flag and military instructors who would introduce the pupils to basic discipline, gymnastics and limited shooting, with just 30 cartridges a year. That remained completely theoretical, however. The army was reluctant to spare NCOs from their normal tasks so that they could instruct children. Also, the teachers, despite being very patriotic at the time, did not necessarily look favourably on the prospect of someone else replacing them as authority figures, where they had hitherto been unchallenged. Alain Corbin, investigating the situation in Limousin, has shown that only one rural teacher in that region established such a battalion. There was relatively little participation in the movement by the high schools and junior secondary schools, and it looked as if these prescriptions of patriotism from “on high” were needed for the “good people” but not for middle-class children. The “school battalions” could, in fact, be summed up as a marvellous public-relations exercise by the Paris centres of republicanism. Proof of the venture’s success can be seen in the fact that the initiative is still today the subject of impressively overblown memories. On the other hand, when the “battalions” were disbanded, in 1892, the army encouraged the creation of military-preparation societies. Starting in 1903, these awarded military-preparation certificates giving certain material advantages such as days’ leave and access to the corporal-pupil platoons. As soon as there are material advantages, individuals are interested, and the societies grew. There were 2,000 of them in 1905 and 6,000 in 1913.
15With the Vichy regime, from 1940, we can again see a systematic invocation of the lack of physical training as an explanation for France’s defeat, blame being laid on secular teachers and on the fact that the French soldiers would have had the stamina only to run for the protection of the Loire valley. In a work devoted to the Phoney War [9]
[9]
François Cochet, Les Soldats de la « drôle de guerre » [The…, I have shown that it was difficult to get beyond the idealised images. You need only look at the pictures of some of the 1940 generals-in-chief to see that their shapes were often more impressive than their being in shape, in both the high command and the troops.
16Likewise in 1946, there were Jean de Lattre de Tassigny’s plans to reform military service, aiming to combat the soldiers’ flabbiness by devoting most of their instruction to physical exercises in camps where they would be under canvas in the open countryside.
Sport as a utilitarian tool: instruction for fighters
17The distinctive feature of the military is that it “must be able to adapt to the extreme constraints and demands made on professional soldiers” [10]
[10]
Patrick Godart, Le guerrier et la danseuse étoile [The fighter…, and this is associated with a state of social development. From the time that conscription was introduced, various methods have been implemented to measure the physical capabilities of potential fighters. This is evidenced by the revision councils, chaired by the regional Préfets, when universal military service was established in 1889. These days, the sigycop [11]
[11]
A summary of data collected in the course of a medical-profile… is the main instrument used to assess soldiers’ physical capabilities. It accompanies the soldier throughout his career and influences the roles in which he is asked to serve.
18Knocking a soldier’s body into shape with a view to war involves, first and foremost, working to enhance his stamina. For that, the army has always believed in the value of repeating actions. Repetition gradually increases confidence, and only confidence enables survival and winning.
19As an example, I wanted to search the officers’ manuals in order to check what images they gave the officers of the physical preparation of men. I selected two, published in the same year (1929), by the same publisher (Lavauzelle): the manual for infantry officers and the manual for artillery officers. My choice of the 1929 edition was deliberate, because it included lessons learned from the Great War.
20First of all, it is interesting to note that the artillery officers’ manual devoted only three pages to exercises in close formation and to limbering-up exercises, whereas that for the infantry devoted 15 pages to them. This, of course, reflects a matter of definition: it is the foot soldiers who most need a body in ideal shape, those in the artillery making use of horse-power, first literally and then in mechanical form.
21In the infantry officers’ manual, the “general considerations” specified the use of and role to be played by physical education: “Military physical education is aimed at developing soldiers as men, while military physical instruction is aimed at developing them as fighters. The former clearly relates to the individual, while the latter must be considered as instructing the group.” There is also the means to be used; for physical education it was: “lessons in physical culture, game-type sports (e.g. football), and athletic activities (such as walking, running, throwing the javelin and putting the shot, fencing, boxing, wrestling and swimming); backed up by observing health and hygiene rules.” [12]
[12]
Idem, now MGI/29, p. 54.
22Military physical instruction, in contrast, “makes use in a more specifically military sense of the qualities of agility and stamina that well-ordered physical education has inculcated in the soldier.” It comprises, for everyone, the practice of individual and collective sporting activities, developing the troop’s morale and collective values; with, for individual development, the military applications and training to fulfil the sub-group’s own role in combat. For infantrymen, this includes bayonet practice and hand-to-hand fighting, grenade-throwing and training for machine-gunner units (both for the machine gunners themselves and those who keep the weapons operating smoothly). There are special limbering-up exercises for riflemen, diverse training with equipment, arming and loading in combat (including marching, running, hiding, jumping and scaling walls). There are exercises in attacking in tightly restricted terrain with all sorts of obstacles. [13]
[13]
MGI/29, p. 55. Sometimes practice was a long way from theory. There is a reminder in bold that “all men in the company, including officers, employees and those from the auxiliary service, carry out, each day, a session of physical training.” [14]
[14]
MGI/29, p. 56. How were things in the daily practice of those units? To judge by the evidence of the fighters, the obligation to practise was far from evident.
23Applying the principles for physical education and instruction should make it possible to put the soldiers into three categories: normal subjects, those to be managed and controlled, and those to go for retraining. To achieve that classification, typical tests involve a 100-metre race (in a straight line!), a thousand-metre race, high jumps, long jumps with a run-up, putting the shot (of 16 lb, using both the left and right arms), climbing, two-hand weightlifting and swimming. The manual specified that 50-metres free-style swimming must be done “in the warm season” if the unit does not have a swimming pool [15]
[15]
MGI/29, p. 59.. The sessions must include three parts: warming up with walking, limbering-up exercises for the arms, legs, trunk, and then chest and combined. After the lesson, returning to calm includes slow walking with breathing exercises, marching with singing or whistling, and marching in quick time.
24The instructor is recommended to be alert to signs of fatigue in the soldiers and to have a perfect knowledge of the manifestations. “Jumpiness, bad mood, aggressiveness towards comrades, profuse sweating, characteristic facial pallor, contraction of the face muscles (looking drawn), looking exhausted are all unmistakable signs for the instructor. … The best cure for fatigue is eating and sleep.” [16]
[16]
MGI/29, p. 70. The terms used in Règlement général d’éducation physique. Méthode française [General regulation of physical education – French Method] can be found reproduced, word for word, in the military regulations.
25Alongside the true exercises, there is a recommendation to practise individual and collective games and sporting activities “in special sessions, two or three times a week”. Examples given are javelin-throwing, basketball, football and water-polo, though we may doubt whether this was widespread.
26We should, for instance, reflect on how the army, at least in the late 1920s, saw its relationships with sporting activities. Useful sports were of course sought, as, from the military’s perspective, the activities are not a desirable end in themselves. Apart from the “fundamental work”, to use Hébert’s expression, athletic practices directly associated with engaging in combat were used. Collective sporting activities were thought of only in terms of encouraging cohesion in the “primary group”.
27To lead into my next part, it is worth recalling an anecdote. In his remarkable thesis on the profession of 19th century gendarmes [17]
[17]
Arnaud-Dominique Houte, Le Métier de gendarme national au…, Arnaud-Dominique Houte calculated that in 1883 the gendarmes whose size we know averaged 85 kilos and were 1.68 metres tall: real athletes, used to physical exercise! I’ve been upbraided for ignoring the fact that the sample was very small (about 40 in the study in question), and that those members had often come from the army, going into the gendarmerie so that they didn’t have to fight.
