Reply To: Books or articles specifically about close order?

[MartinR]

It should also be noted that the 1916 regulations for British infantry divisions specified battalion assault formations as a frontage of 200 to 350 yards with the battalion in waves 50 to 100 yards apart. Bearing in mind this was when everyone had supposedly learned to spread out

It isn’t exactly shoulder to shoulder, but you have 1000 blokes in area roughly 300 yards x 300 yards, and people wonder why casualties in WW1 were high. The French 1917 regulations are slightly more dispersed, but only a bit (around 500 x 500 iirc). The Germans aren’t hugely different either when you look at Regimental attack  frontages.

 

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke