“And the platoon is the truly characteristic component of an army; it is the lowest unit habitually commanded by a commissioned officer; it is the real and essential fighting unit, whose action conditions that of the other arms and formations; it is a little world in which the relations between the led and the leader, the men and their commander, are immediate, actual, continuous, and entirely real?”

Major M.K. Wardle, DSO, MC, Foundations of Soldiering, 1936