Royal Army College

Lesson Overview

Earlier lessons gave you the thinking: tactical movement values control over speed, a section reads ground for cover and a route, and it holds a formation with proper spacing and arcs. This lesson turns that thinking into the physical business of moving a soldier, and then a section, across real ground when something might be watching. It is what a search line, a relief party, and an exercise are all made of, one bound at a time.

The principle is simple. The longer you are upright in the open, the longer you can be seen and engaged. So a soldier crosses exposed ground in short bursts, moving for only a few seconds before going down behind cover, and works from one piece of cover to the next rather than in one long visible line. A section does the same at its own scale: one part watches and stays ready while another moves, so the whole body is never exposed at once. The crawls, bounds, and drills are only ways of obeying that rule.

Treat all of it as method to be rehearsed, not facts to be memorised. Each technique is a sequence you can practise, with the reason behind every step, so that a drill you understand is one you can adapt to ground that does not match the diagram. Everything here is rehearsed on the milsim field under marshals; live fire and movement with real weapons is a separate skill, certified in person on a range under the Weapon Handling and Safety course. By the end you will be able to describe how a soldier uses ground to move in short bounds from cover to cover, name and choose between the field crawls and perform each, explain fire and movement and bounding overwatch including its two forms, describe how a section crosses a short open stretch, and explain why these drills serve safety and control rather than any appetite for a fight.

Key Terms

Bound: a short leg of movement, ideally from one piece of cover to the next, kept brief so the soldier is exposed for only a few seconds.
Cover: ground or an object that gives protection, and usually concealment too; the thing a bound moves to, never just a distance run.
Dead ground: ground a watcher cannot see into from where they are: a dip, the far side of a bank, the bottom of a furrow. The safest route, because in it you cannot be seen at all.
Field crawls: low methods of moving close to the ground: the high crawl on hands and knees, the low crawl flat to the earth, and the roll to change position.
Fire and movement: the principle that one element moves while another watches and is ready to give covering fire, so the whole is never moving unguarded at once.
Bounding overwatch: the section-level form of fire and movement, in which one part overwatches while the other bounds forward into cover, and then they swap.
Successive bounds: the form in which the moving element comes up only level with the watching element, so neither is ever far ahead; the slow, careful form for the most exposed ground.
Alternate bounds: the form in which the moving element passes the watching element and goes firm beyond it, so the section leapfrogs forward; quicker, but it asks for longer bounds and more trust.
Overwatch: the watching, ready-to-cover role; the part of the section that is still, oriented on the likely threat, and able to act while the other part moves.
Surrender call / "stop": the milsim safety controls that bound every rehearsal: the call that ends an engagement inside minimum distance, and the absolute halt anyone may call.

The short bound: why we move in bursts

Stand upright in the open and you are a clear, still, recognisable shape that anyone watching can see, study, and engage. The defence is not to move faster; a long sprint is simply a longer time on display. The defence is to be in the open for only a few seconds. A soldier rises, moves a short distance to the next piece of cover, and is down again before a watcher could mark them, settle, and act. That is a short bound, and its rhythm is taught as a thought you say to yourself: I am up, I have been seen, I am down.

This is why a bound is counted in time on display, not in metres. A person who notices movement needs a moment to register it as a target, another to bring something to bear, and another to act: a few seconds in all. The short bound steals those seconds, leaving the watcher looking at the empty patch of ground where you were. A useful drill is to have a partner count the seconds you are upright as you rise, move, and drop, then shorten the bound until that count is small and steady. The body learns the figure better than any number on a page.

Two habits make the bound work. First, a bound ends at cover, not at a distance. Pick the next bit of cover while you are still behind your present one, a wall, a fold, a bank, a ditch; fix it in your mind, decide your route, and only then move. The eyes do their work before the legs do. Second, observe before you move and after you arrive: a moment looking from cover to choose route and position, then the move, then settle and look again. Movement that never pauses to observe is blind, and movement that ends in the open has missed the point.

One refinement makes a bound safer than cover alone can. Where you can, route it through dead ground. Cover protects you while you are behind it; dead ground protects you while you cross, because the threat cannot see the line you take. A dip between two banks, the reverse slope of a rise, the bottom of a ditch all let a soldier move with the head down and be neither seen nor engaged for the length of the crossing. Reading the ground for these hidden lanes is the fieldcraft of the Navigation and Fieldcraft course, brought now to a soldier on the move: the best bound is often not the shortest line to the next wall but the one the threat's eye cannot follow.

The field crawls: moving low when cover is low

When cover is too low to move upright behind, the soldier gets lower than the cover. There are three plain ways to do it. None is glamorous and all are tiring; that is the price of staying unseen, and they are practised until the body picks the right one without debate.

The high crawl, sometimes called the monkey crawl, is movement on the hands and knees, body off the ground, head up enough to see and to keep the device controlled. It is quicker and less tiring than going flat, and it suits cover that is low but not flat: a wall, a bank, a furrow, or a hedge bottom that hides a soldier on all fours but not one standing. To do it: take the weight on the knees and forearms or flat hands, keep the back level and below the outline of the cover, carry the device clear of the dirt, and move a hand and the opposite knee together, then the other pair. Keep the head low but the eyes up; you move low so that you can keep watching, not so you can bury your face.
The low crawl, sometimes called the leopard crawl, is movement flat to the ground, body pressed to the earth, pushing forward with the lowest possible profile. It is slow and hard, but it is the way to cross the lowest cover, the open patch with only inches of dead ground, or to move close to a threat where any height would show. To do it: lie flat, face turned to the side, the device held alongside the body clear of the working parts, and pull yourself forward by bending one leg up flat and pushing off it while reaching forward with the opposite arm, keeping the buttocks and heels down so nothing rises to catch the eye. Progress is measured in inches and it is exhausting; where the low crawl is called for, the alternative is to be seen.
The roll is the short way to change position without rising, a deliberate sideways move between positions behind low cover. Its purpose is to break the habit by which a soldier looks out, drops back, then looks out again from the same place, presenting a watcher with a fixed spot to settle on. Having looked and dropped down, roll a short distance to one side and come up where the watcher is not expecting, so the head appears where no head appeared before.

The choice between them is just a reading of the cover in front of you. Ask one question: how much height will the cover hide? Enough to hide you kneeling, use the high crawl, because you should never crawl flatter than the ground demands. Only inches, use the low crawl, and accept the labour. Need to shift a metre or two to a new viewpoint without standing, roll. A common fault is crawling lower than necessary, wasting strength you will want later; another is breaking the line of the cover with a raised head, hand, or device. Move only as low as you must, and keep every part of you below the cover that hides you.

Fire and movement: never all moving at once

Everything so far protects one soldier. A section is several, and its protection comes from a single idea: when security matters, the section never has everyone moving at once. Part moves; part stays still, watching the likely threat and ready to give covering fire. The moving part is never naked, because the watching part has eyes and arcs on the danger. Then the roles change, and those who moved now watch while the others move. This is the short bound raised from a soldier to a team: as a soldier never crosses the open while a watcher could settle on them, a section never moves a part of itself across the open while no other part is ready to answer for it.

Be exact about the word "fire". In the RKA most of this is rehearsed on the milsim field, where the covering element is genuinely oriented and ready and, in simulation, may engage within the safety rules; far more often it is rehearsed as pure movement, the discipline of never crossing unguarded, with no shot fired or needed. Live fire and movement with real weapons, the actual coordination of real covering fire with a real bound, is not taught here. It is a separate, demanding, in-person skill certified on a range under the Weapon Handling and Safety course, and nothing in this lesson substitutes for that certification. What this lesson teaches is the geometry and the discipline: who moves, who watches, when they swap.

Two rules give the principle its edge, and they are the ones most often forgotten under stress. The first concerns the length of the bound: keep it short enough that the watching element's arcs reach the ground the movers cross, and so the movers are never between the watcher and the threat. A bound longer than the watcher can answer is not covered at all. The second concerns the handover: the watching element does not relax, look to its own kit, or begin preparing to move until the moving element has reached cover and signalled it is firm. There must be no seam in which both are busy with themselves and neither has eyes on the danger. The whole discipline lives in closing that seam.

Bounding overwatch: the section leapfrogs forward

Bounding overwatch is fire and movement grown to section size. The section is in two parts, ordinarily its two fire teams. One is the overwatch: still, in cover, oriented on the ground ahead and the likely threat, ready to cover. The other bounds forward, using ground and short bounds and crawls, until it reaches cover and goes firm. Now the part that bounded becomes the overwatch, and the part that watched moves up in its turn. So the section crosses in alternating turns, one half always still and watching while only the other moves. It is slow, deliberate, and tiring, kept for ground too exposed to cross any other way: the careful gear, not the everyday one.

A commander chooses between two ways for the teams to take their turns by reading the threat. In successive bounds, the moving team advances only until level with the watching team, then goes firm; the watching team then advances level in its turn. Neither is ever far ahead, so the two stay close and mutual support is strongest. It is the slower, more tiring form, kept for the most exposed ground. In alternate bounds, the moving team advances past the watching team and goes firm beyond it; the team that was watching then advances past that new position, and so the section leapfrogs forward. It is quicker, gaining the full length of each bound rather than half, but it asks for longer bounds, cover further out identified in advance, and more trust, since for part of each bound one team commits well forward of the other. It is the form for ground where the threat is real but contact is not thought close.

Whichever form is used, two small rules keep it honest. The watching team is always oriented and ready before the moving team breaks cover, never caught settling its own kit while comrades are exposed; and a bound ends at identified cover, so the moving team is never left standing in the open. The watching team stays ready until the movers signal firm, because overwatch that relaxes early is no overwatch at all. The commonest failure is the lazy bound, in which the moving team sets off without choosing its cover, runs until it tires, and ends in the open; the watching team, seeing this, grows reluctant to release it again, and the drill seizes up. The cure is to slow to a walk, the commander naming each piece of cover aloud before the team may use it, until choosing cover before moving becomes habit.

A clean way to picture it is two fire teams passing each other across open ground, in alternate bounds.

Threat axis is "up" the page (toward the top).

   == NEXT COVER ==============================   (a wall, a bank: where Team B is heading)
                       ^
                       |   Team B bounds: short, observed,
                       |   cover to cover, head in dead ground
                       |   where the ground allows
                       |
   .....TEAM A: WATCHING.....                     (firm in cover, arcs UP the threat axis,
        (o)  (o)  (o)  (o)                         ready to cover Team B the whole way)


   Then they swap once Team B is firm and has signalled "set":

   .....TEAM B: WATCHING.....                     (now firm in the cover ahead, arcs UP,
        (o)  (o)  (o)  (o)                         covering Team A across in its turn)
                       ^
                       |   Team A bounds up and PAST Team B
                       |   to the next cover beyond,
                       |   then goes firm and signals "set"
                       |
   == OLD COVER ===============================    (where Team A was watching from)

   At no instant is BOTH teams moving. One is always
   firm, arcs on the threat, until the other is set.

(For successive bounds, read the same picture, but the moving team stops level with the watching team rather than passing it, so the two stay abreast.)

Crossing a short open stretch

The commonest real version of all this is the small open gap: a stretch of field, a track, a gateway, a bare patch the section must get across. The temptation is to cross as a bunch, all at once, to "get it over with". That is exactly the mistake, because for those few seconds the whole section is in the open together, and a single sweep across that cluster catches every soldier. Instead the section crosses one or two at a time. Some go firm in cover and watch along the gap; one or two cross quickly to cover on the far side and turn to watch from there; then the next one or two cross, covered now from both sides; and the watchers come across last, covered by those already over. The exposure is real but brief, observed, and never the whole section at once.

The method repays a moment of order. The commander chooses a crossing point with cover on both sides and the shortest view from where a threat would most likely be, posts the watchers along the gap before anyone breaks cover, sends the first pair across to make cover and turn outward, and only then feeds the rest over in pairs at intervals rather than in a stream, so a watching pair is always on at least one side of whoever is crossing. A head count just beyond the far side confirms everyone is over before the section moves on. Detailed danger-area crossings, the road, the watercourse, the larger field, are a later lesson in this course; the principle to carry now is the same as ever: exposure is taken in small, watched pieces, not all together.

Holding it together: control, communication, and the milsim field

None of this works without control and communication, because the swap is the dangerous moment. If the movers go before the watchers are ready, or the watchers stand down before the movers are firm, there is an instant when no one is covering and everyone is exposed, and that instant is what the drill exists to prevent. So bounds are signalled, acknowledged, and confirmed: signal first, voice only when signal will not carry, on the silent system you learn in Signals and Field Communication. A bound has three moments that must each be given and answered: the watching team confirming it is ready, the moving team being released, and the moving team reporting itself firm and set. An unacknowledged signal has not arrived; the soldier who waves and moves without seeing the answer has guessed, and guessing is what the whole drill forbids.

The sequence is rehearsed over and over on real ground, because reading about a bound and performing one under stress are different things. In the RKA that rehearsal is airsoft military simulation: the same bounds, crawls, overwatch, and swap, practised under trained marshals and the Airsoft Milsim Safety and Conduct Standard, with full-seal eye protection always, velocity limits, a minimum engagement distance with a surrender call, safe zones where devices are made safe, the honour of calling your own hits, and the absolute "stop" anyone may call. On the milsim field the cost of getting the swap wrong is felt at once and harmlessly: release the movers a moment early, or stand the watchers down too soon, and the opposing force walks into the seam you left open. The airsoft device and the real weapon are kept clearly distinct and held to identical discipline, and live movement with real weapons stays where it belongs, certified in person on the range under the Weapon Handling and Safety course.

Above all, remember why a humanitarian and home-defence force drills any of this. These techniques are the net that keeps a section in hand if something goes wrong on a search or a relief task, not an appetite for a fight. They are bounded throughout by the Law of Armed Conflict and the Rules for the Use of Force, which decide whether force may be used at all, while these drills only decide how a section keeps itself controlled and together. The disciplined section is the one that stays calm, lawful, and joined up under pressure, which is what makes it useful on the ninety-nine quiet days and safe on the hundredth.

In Practice: A Bounding Serial at the Training Area

On a milsim serial at the training area, a Kaharagian section must cross a wide, open hayfield to reach a treeline, with a thinking opposing force somewhere beyond. The marshal confirms the field is safe and the velocity check is done; eye protection is on. The commander reads the ground and chooses alternate bounds, because the threat is real but not thought close and the field is large enough that leapfrogging will save time, and he splits the section into its two fire teams.

The first team goes firm behind a low stone wall, weapons oriented up the field on the treeline, and signals ready. Only then does the second team rise and bound, the leading pair up and moving for a few seconds, heads dropping into a shallow fold that runs across the field, then down behind a bank, then the next pair the same way, never the whole team in the open at once and never further than the wall team's arcs can reach. Reaching the bank, well forward of the wall, the moving team goes firm, turns its arcs up the field, and signals "set"; then it watches the treeline while the first team comes up and past it to a hedge line beyond, going firm and signalling "set" in its turn. The section leapfrogs across the field, one team always firm with eyes on the trees while the other crosses.

When a marshal calls a contact from the trees, the moving pair are already down behind cover, because their bound had ended at cover and not in the open; the watching team has eyes on the threat and answers within the safety rules; and the commander, in hand and unhurried, controls the next move by signal, weighing whether to push on, hold, or break clean under the Rules for the Use of Force. Nothing here is reckless or aggressive; it is two halves of a section taking turns to be safe for one another, which is the whole of bounding overwatch, and the same discipline that would carry the section calmly across an open approach to a real relief site with no shot fired at all.

Check Your Understanding

Explain the principle of the short bound in your own words. Why is a long sprint across open ground worse than several short bounds, why must a bound end at cover rather than at a chosen distance, and why is a route through dead ground better still than a route to cover?
Name the three field crawls and the roll, describe how each is performed, and say what cover each suits. For a low bank that hides a soldier on hands and knees but not standing, which would you use, and why would the low crawl be the wrong choice there?
Explain the difference between successive bounds and alternate bounds and when a commander would choose each. State the single principle shared by fire and movement, bounding overwatch, and crossing a short open stretch, and say why the swap, the moment one element takes over from the other, is the part that most needs control and communication.

Reflection (write a short paragraph): In bounding overwatch, your own safety while you move depends entirely on comrades who are still, watching the danger so that you do not have to, and a few minutes later you are the one lying still, holding your arc, while they cross in front of you. Think about what it asks of you to be the watcher: to stay oriented on the threat and ready to cover when nothing seems to be happening, to refuse to relax or see to your own kit until your moving comrades are firm, knowing they are trusting their whole crossing to your steadiness. Why is the soldier who can be reliably still and watchful, not only quick across the open, the one a section truly depends on, and what does that say about the kind of soldier you mean to be?

Summary

The longer you are upright in the open, the longer you can be seen and engaged; so a soldier crosses exposed ground in short bounds, up and moving for only a few seconds on the rhythm "I am up, I have been seen, I am down". A bound ends at chosen cover, not at a distance, the eyes choosing the next position before the legs move; better still, route it through dead ground, where the threat cannot see the crossing at all.
When cover is low, the soldier gets lower than it: the high (monkey) crawl on hands and knees for low cover, the low (leopard) crawl flat for the lowest cover, and the roll to change position and viewpoint without rising. Move only as low as the cover demands, keep every part of you below it, and let the cover in front decide which to use.
Fire and movement is the rule that a section never has everyone moving unguarded at once: one element moves while another watches and is ready to cover, then they swap, the bound kept short enough that the watcher can answer the ground the movers cross, and the watcher staying ready until the movers are firm. The geometry and discipline are taught here; live fire and movement with real weapons is certified in person on the range under Weapon Handling and Safety.
Bounding overwatch is this grown to section size, the two fire teams crossing in turns with one always firm and watching while the other bounds into cover; in successive bounds the moving team only comes up level, for the most exposed ground, and in alternate bounds it passes the other and the section leapfrogs forward. A short open stretch is crossed one or two at a time, never as a bunch, watched from both sides, the watchers crossing last and the section confirming all across before moving on. Bounds end at identified cover, and the cure for the lazy bound is to walk it while the commander names each cover aloud.
All of it is held together by control and communication, signal first, every bound confirmed ready, released, and set, and rehearsed on the milsim field under marshals and the Airsoft Milsim Safety and Conduct Standard. Bounded throughout by the Law of Armed Conflict and the Rules for the Use of Force, these drills are, for a humanitarian force, the net that keeps a section in hand if something goes wrong, not an appetite for a fight.

Individual and Section Movement