And thus completely mess up alignment and spacing!
Now, no one wants to do this, but some Drillers do this and don’t understand how to fix it. I’ll explain the problem, show the negative results and tell you how to fix it. Easy!
Below is a properly executed flank movement. As you can see, when you march, you are actually creating two invisible lines that your feet march along- this is especially so when you are marching in a formation- you are either following along lines created by those in front of you, or creating lines for others to follow.
The image below points out a typical problem with some Drillers. In this case for a flanking movement to the right, the left foot moves too far to the right at the pivot point. This means the driller’s body has already begun to move to the right before turning. This creates an immediate alignment problem with the line from where he is marching since he is already too far to the right and after he turns, he will not be centered on those behind or in front of him since he will also be too far to the right. He has also created a distance issue and is now too close to the Driller in front of him.
This next image shows a compounded problem for the flank- flanking inside both lines, along with the problems listed above, our Driller has created a distance issue not only to the front of him, but also directly to his right and left.
So, it pays to pay attention to the small details of the execution of each movement.
You may now continue drilling. :-)