A patrol is a small group of at least 2 people who walk a planned route to see what fixed posts cannot, check the outer warning devices and supplies, and let neighbours know the area is watched. It observes and reports and does not look for a fight, and its three decisions are where it goes, in what pattern and when, because a patrol that is predictable, lost or mistaken for intruders is a danger to its own settlement.
Part of Watch and Patrol Scheduling
Patrolling is the regular walking of a planned route outside the fixed posts to observe, inspect and show presence.
What A Patrol Adds To A Post
A post sees from one place. It has dead ground and a limited range (Observation Posts), and it cannot examine tracks, check a cache, or see behind a ridge. A patrol can. The parent article lists its purposes:
- check outlying caches and resources;
- inspect the outer warning systems (Early Warning Systems);
- gather information: fresh tracks, new camps, changed conditions;
- show presence, so neighbours know the area is watched;
- confirm that water sources, fuel-wood areas and fields are undisturbed.
The dog-and-handler patrol of a household boundary is a related but separate practice, described in Perimeter Patrol Routes.
Three Decisions
- Where: the route, its checkpoints and its timing (Route Planning).
- In what order and how often: the pattern, the alternatives and how predictable it is (Patrol Patterns).
- When, and in what light: day or night, with the extra hazards of the dark (Night Patrols).
Composition And Cost
The parent article sets a minimum of 2 people, never a solo patrol, with 3 to 4 ideal: a point person who navigates and watches ahead, a main body of 1 to 2, and a tail who watches the rear and the trail. The cost can be counted.
Worked Example: What Patrolling Adds To A Posture
Example inputs: two posts watched round the clock, and the parent’s Yellow posture of two patrols a day, each of 3 people for 2 hours.
- Posts: 2 x 24 = 48 person-hours a day.
- Patrols: 2 x 3 x 2 = 12 person-hours a day.
- Patrols add 12 / 48 = 25% to the watch load.
The load is not trivial. Patrols are a choice to spend people, and they displace sleep and farm work like any other watch. A patrol that finds nothing for months has still done its work if it keeps the area known, but a patrol that is exhausted is worse than none.
Why Patrols Are Dangerous To Their Own Side
Most of the risk in patrolling is not from outsiders. A returning patrol at night can be mistaken by a sentry for an intruder. A patrol can fall, get lost, trip its own warning devices, or meet a neighbour who is frightened of it. The safeguards are simple and are in the child articles: every patrol is known to the posts in advance, comes back by an announced route and time, and identifies itself before it approaches, and its job on meeting a stranger is to observe and report, not to engage. Human Threats gives the corpus’s stance: be hard to find, easy to avoid and ready to leave.
Common Mistakes
- No briefing to the posts. An unannounced patrol is an unidentified party.
- A route nobody has timed. An overdue patrol cannot be recognised as overdue.
- Armed and keen. A patrol that is hoping to meet someone will.
- Patrolling to be seen doing it. The patrol must report something useful.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Route Planning — building a route with times and checkpoints
- Combine with: Communication Between Posts — how patrols and posts stay in touch