A division of 8,000 men takes eight to ten hours for such a march in level country and on ordinary roads. In mountainous country, it will take ten to twelve. If a column consists of a number of divisions, a few hours longer will be required, even discounting the delayed starting time of the later divisions.
It is clear that the day is pretty well filled by such a march, and that one cannot compare the strain on a soldier loaded with his pack for ten or twelve hours with an ordinary fifteen-mile walk which would not take an individual more than five hours on a decent road.
Forced marches, if undertaken one at a time, may cover twenty-five miles, or thirty at the most; if they continue, only twenty.
A march of twenty-five miles will call for a rest stop of several hours, and a division of 8,000 men will not manage it in less than sixteen hours even on good roads. If the distance to be covered is thirty miles and several divisions are involved, one has to allow a minimum of twenty hours.
What concerns us here is a march by several complete divisions from one campsite to another, since this is the most common type that occurs in a theater of operations. Where several divisions are to form a single column, the first should be assembled and marched off in advance, and will consequently reach camp that much earlier. But this difference in time can never be so great as the time a division takes to pass a given point—the time required for what the French so aptly describe as its découlement (run-off). Thus the soldier is spared but little exertion, and each of the marches will take longer because of the larger number of troops involved. Moving a division by similar methods of assembling and marching off its brigades one at a time is only rarely practicable; that is why the division has been treated as a unit.
On long route marches, with troops transferring from one billet to another, marching in small detachments and without points of assembly, they may indeed cover longer distances. In fact they will be longer because of the detours needed to reach their billets.
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