The Russo-Japanese War and
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On 26 February
1912 the chief of Military school, col. Ivan Pachev,
signed the School special order N° The first paragraph pointed out the importance of
the military engineer art in defensive fighting. Col. Pachev
stressed that “…today, after Russo-Turkish, Boer, and especially
Russo-Japanese wars it had gained more and more importance even in offensive
fighting”. Therefore it should be studied by all kinds of soldiers
: “The spade – he affirmed – proved to be the most indispensable
element of the military equipment; this means that it almost equate the gun
and consequently it should be widely used and utilized”. He tackled
also the question of the transmission of the orders and stressed that, as a
result of the recent developments of the art of war,
a great rapidity should be required in it. Therefore he demanded that all the
line-officers, teachers and school instructors should pay special attention
to this issue, while the commanders of the companies should make all arrangements
for the use of adequate principles and directions for the works of the
companies in every time and in every place. He affirmed that “only in this
way works will be done with the proper earnestness, energy, order and
accuracy”. In the second
paragraph, appreciating the great importance of the question of the engineer
equipment, col. Pachev designated a commission with
lt.col. Silyanovski as
president, maj. Yonkov
and cpt. Hesapchiev as
members. It had to examine the school area and choose a place where it could
be built a permanent drill-ground for practical training of fortification and
trench trial with the cadets. Furthermore in short time the commission had to
develop and to present a plan of the drill-ground. In the third paragraph col. Pachev
affirmed that the school had to pay great attention to all the innovations
appeared in the armies even after the Russo-Japanese war. This should be
applied to the cadets of the first and second special class – in 1912, on the
eve of the Balkan War, the education in the military school lasted three
years: in the preparatory class the cadets received a general education,
while in the in the first and second special class they studied military and
special military disciplines. Col. Pachev ordered
that every head of the school classes should examine all the innovations of
his specialization (cars, balloons, planes, searchlights, machine guns and so
on). The class inspectors had to achieve this goal through visits to
arsenals, barracks and depots or carrying these stuffs to the school. Every
cadet should know the peculiarities of the other army branch (artillery,
cavalry, and engineers) in order to “develop the mutual collaboration that should be characteristic of an
exemplary and highly patriotic army”. Since the Army
had recently adopted a 8mm Maxim machine gun, in the fourth paragraph col. Pachev ordered that the cadets of the two senior classes
“should have a good knowledge of the this machine gun, both theoretically and
from experience. In this way the officers recently promoted from the
beginning of their service had the opportunity to take advantage of operating
near the machine-gun and firing with it”. Therefore he
decided that cpt. Mitsev,
on officer educator, would be in charge of practical lessons with machine
guns. He had to examine the matter and by 15 March he had to present a plan
for the study of this weapon and a program of drills with it. Finally col. Pachev affirmed that in the following months also other
technical and tactical innovations should be introduced in the education of
the cadets of the |