Gunnery

“ Knowing what the target is, knowing the object of the fire, hearing the scream of the projectile on the way and watching to see if it is to be a hit, when the British are fighting the Germans on the soil of France, has an intensive thrill which is missing to the spectator who looks on at the Home Sports’ Club shooting at clay pigeons—which is not in justification of war. It does explain, however, the attraction of gunnery to gunners. One forgets for the instant that men are being killed and mangled. ”

“ As fair play has always been my motto, I am actuated by no other desire than that of enabling the reader to form a true conception of the intricate nature of projectile science; and though the eulogium bestowed on the inventor’s own creation is rather egotistical, I give it entire, dissecting it afterwards in the manner I think most conducive to a correct knowledge of the real science of gunnery. ”

“ No doubt, as we were sometimes asked to believe before the war, the Service has gone to the dogs since 1900, for noisy and blatant Mr. Gunnery has usurped the place of the above-mentioned pair and life generally has become more strenuous. ”

“ In gunnery it is used to point a piece without exposing the person of the gunner. The simplest form consists of a small mirror set in the line of the sights, which reflects the sights and the object aimed at to the eye of the gunner. ”

“ The very intelligent commentator of Polybius [2] is of opinion, that the military art rather lost than gained by the exchange [6] of the catapulta for the mortar: but however that point may be determined in speculation, it is not likely that the ancient tormenta militaria will ever be revived; but that all nations will keep to the art of gunnery and study how to improve it; that is, they will adhere to a system of artillery, wherein the moving power depends on the expansive force of gun-powder, or of some other substance of a similar nature. ”

“ But those who were accustomed to more active existence found the time very heavy on their hands, and the excitement of seeing the men "knock about the guns," of hearing them and the boys say their gunnery catechism, "No. ”

“ But when upon a closer examination we find, that since the invention of arms of the quickest execution, neither battles nor sieges have been more frequent nor more destructive, indeed apparently otherwise; may we not thence infer, that such means as have been employed to sharpen the sword, have tended more to diminish than to increase the number of its victims, by shortening contests and making them more decisive. ”

“ All slave gun-barrels are made of it. Mungo Park detailed some of the lamentable atrocities committed by these guns bursting. The many thousands of mutilated wretches who have lived to curse the cupidity of their fellow-men, form not a bright side in the picture of human nature; but were you to bawl into the ears of those employed in the construction, all these and a thousand more such direful effects of their handiwork, you would not abate one in the number of these man-traps. ”

“ Never a gunner was seen to run! Never a gunner would leave his gun! Not though his mates dropped all around! Always a gunner would stand his ground. Take the army — the infantry, Mounted rifles, and cavalry, Twice the numbers I'd give away, And I'd fight the lot with the R.H.A., For they showed us how a corps SHOULD be run, That's what the gunners done! ”

“ With heads bowed, and limbs moving wearily, guns held at will, they swept by in unbroken column--cavalry, artillery, infantry--scarcely a face lifted to glance toward the house, with here and there a straggler limping to the roadside, or an aide spurring past--just a stream of armed men, who had been plodding on since daylight, footsore, hungry, unseeing, yet ready to die in battle at their commander's word. ”

“ Surely the Gunner’s relation to his horse is more intimate even than the cavalryman’s; for a lost horse only turns cavalry into infantry, but trouble in a gun team may mean death all round. And this is the Gunner’s war. The young wet officers said so 23joyously as they passed to and fro picking up scandal about breast-straps and breechings, examining the collars of ammunition-wagon teams, and listening to remarks on shoes. Local blacksmiths, assisted by the battery itself, do the shoeing. ”

“ You have netted the leaders--you will goad the leaderless sheep to leap after them. You will drive them to rise against you. Then you'll massacre them for rising. You'll turn your artillery against the helpless peasants. You'll mow them down like grass. You know their peculiarities--so far you are Irish. With a cudgel or a shillalagh there's none can beat 'em. But they're bad at firearms. Firearms! The use of gunpowder's been forbidden them for ever so many years!'
'On my honour, it's provoking to save people despite themselves,' affirmed the exasperated chancellor. ”

“ In the gunner's skill life that is young and sturdy, muscles that are hardened by exercise and drill, manhood in its pink, must place its trust. A little carelessness or the slightest error and monsters with their long, fiery reach may strike you in the back instead of the enemy in front, and instead of dead and wounded and capitulation among smashed dugouts and machine gun positions you may be received by showers of bombs. ”

“ And then come the fighting-men—a gallant, ragged, indomitable band. A martinet colonel would stand aghast—for save a regimental button here and there, he would find it hard to recognise the gaunt, hairy, sun-scorched squad for British soldiers. But let who might incline to disown these few war-worn men in their dirty flannel rags and fragmentary nankeen breeches, their foes know them for what they are, and make way for the white sahibs with no dressing indeed in their ranks, but each man with his rifle on his shoulder, the deadly revolver in his belt, and the fearless glance in the hollow eye. ”

“ There was much pride in the chief gunner as he took a cartridge from its bomb-proof shell chest, ran to his gun, threw open the cordite chamber, pulled out the breech block, rammed in the shell, snapped the block, and stepped back to signal the lanyard man; more pride than is usual in the Japanese gunner, a timid, simple being, dexterously handling his delicate instrument with as little vanity as he would handle a potato hoe. ”

“ So our garrison was five souls, and, counting the two guns I had brought, there were eight stands of arms and ammunition to match in the house.
The danger to be feared was not so much from the invaders’ shooting as from the possibility of their carrying out their threat to fire the house. Our only hope seemed to lie in frightening them off at the onset by as formidable a show of resistance as possible. Failing that, we should have to protect ourselves as best we could. ”

“ What would you say if one of our soldiers went to France without his gun?”
Tommy—“Please, sir, I should say he was an officer.”
SOMETHING TO THINK OF
The awkward squad had been having a lecture in musketry. Just before they were dismissed the instructor asked one of them:
“Why is the rifle placed in the hands of a soldier?”
“To protect my life,” came the prompt reply.
The instructor glared at him.
“Protect your life!” he snorted. “Who’s bothering about your life? The rifle, my lad, is placed in your hands for the destruction of the King’s enemies!” ”

“ Others are rushing for shelter to their squares of infantry, under whose rifles they lie flat and securely, while sheets of lead are tearing through us!
Oh, the superlative bitterness of that moment, when, with all our horses blown, I look back and see that we are without supports!
The guns are taken—the gunners almost annihilated; our horses are breathless. We have no aid, and no resource but to ride back, under such a concentrated fire as troops were never before exposed to. ”

“ A soldier, unless he is spoiling with garrison idleness, won't waste his genius for killing on innocent birds and their like. Besides, the artillery fellows over yonder have scared them away from the whole neighborhood. We were target-shooting with pistols. Oh, if you [Pg 43] knew the hot coals and icicles I had to swallow when I recognized you up there!" He looked ahead, and saw with joy that his companions had departed. "Here is Molly, and my bay is behind the rock. ”

“ From this designation the author would by no means exclude any portions of the armed land-defenders of the British empire, so far as they might have claim to it by character and attainments. Let the volunteer rifle corps and militia acquire and maintain (as did the county militias during the last great war, and as have done many of the yeomanry corps since that period) that drill and discipline without which, in the hour of danger, men-at-arms are jests to their enemies and pests to their friends, and they also may with justice be classed among the soldier-like guardians of their country. ”

“ I thought of them as I had seen them in the morning riding forward through the rain—thousands of independent riflemen, thinking for themselves, possessed of beautiful weapons, led with skill, living as they rode without commissariat or transport or ammunition column, moving like the wind, and supported by iron constitutions and a stern, hard Old Testament God who should surely smite the Amalekites hip and thigh. ”

“ And now came the crisis; for though three successive storming parties had been swept away, our ammunition began to fail, and, as the bandoliers emptied, our fire slackened, and then the Spaniards and Austrians—pikemen, halberdiers, and musketeers, all mingled pell-mell—led by officers having pistols in their belts, and swords, daggers, and demi-lances, poured into the ditch; rushing down their ladders, and planting them against the wall, they swarmed up its face in hundreds. ”

“ In the fire-trenches there is no talking save in whispers, but every now and then the almost uncanny silence would be punctuated by the sharp crack of a rifle, the tut-tut-tut of a mitrailleuse, or, from somewhere in the distance, the angry bark of a field-gun. ”

“ Of these, 900 were militia.
The rattle of the matchlock was as familiar as cockcrow. Every man became in fact, if not in deed, a volunteer. If the musket was not strapped to the tail of the plough, it leaned against the snake-fence—loaded. The goose-step, the manual and platoon took the place of the quadrille. Every clearing became a drill-hall, every log cabin an armoury. Many of the militia were crack shots, with all the scouting instincts of the forest ranger. ”

“ And yet—what else could we soldiers do but obey the order?
Already in the preceding night there had been encounters at Bertrix between the German military and the population. Houses were burning in every part of the town. In the market place there was a great heap of guns and revolvers of all makes. At the clergyman's house they had found a French machine-gun and ammunition, whereupon the clergyman and his female cook had been arrested and, I suppose, placed immediately before a court-martial. ”

“ An enemy found at a little distance from his camp, could be stealthily approached and silently shot down, without necessarily alarming persons in the neighborhood, when a rifle shot, ringing over the prairie and echoing among the bluffs, would call out every warrior in the village, to learn whence it came. I have been told, by warriors, that on their war parties, they left their rifles at home and carried only their bows, so that they might not be tempted by the sight of an enemy to fire a shot, which might bring themselves and their companions into danger. ”

“ One hears the zip-zip of the bullets, the boom of the great guns, the tang of our sharp French artillery, and in all this infernal experience of noise and stench, the screams of dying horses and men joined with the fury of the gun-fire, and rose shrill above it. No man may boast of his courage. ”

“ Adjutant Lawyer stepped behind a tree, when the bullet from the Confederate rifle passed over my head, and through the side of the house by which I was standing, wounding one of my soldiers inside of the house, the first soldier in my regiment to be struck with rebel lead. If you see a man shooting a rifle at you a mile away, you will have abundant time to dodge before the bullet reaches you ”

“ But before a rifle was forthcoming the two mounted police rode into camp. They were bronzed, burly men, arrayed in a corduroy uniform, with a wide felt hat bearing a large Imperial crown in gilt as a badge, and were fully armed with Mauser rifles, revolver and light saber.
"Donnerwetter!" exclaimed the leader, a big sergeant, or wachtmeister, as they cantered up. "What is this, murder?"
"Murder and there goes the murderer!" said the professor. ”

“ There also a people goaded into fighting by wrong were victorious; and succeeded both because the justice of their cause strengthened their moral fibre, and their guerilla warfare, for it was often little else, was in many cases accompanied by careful shooting. But the difference in the nature of the weapons at the end of the eighteenth and that of the nineteenth century is so great as to mark, by the heavy loss the defeated troops sustained, the terrible nature of modern rifle fire when carefully directed. ”

“ It is indeed difficult to conceive that any one should expect half-a-dozen expert gunners, each shut up in an iron box with a gun, to stop the rush of a thousand men, even by day. But imagine the feelings of the gunner on the night of a big attack, alone in his box, his nerves already strained by a preliminary bombardment and nights of watching. ”

“ You may kill the man you're riding with, or his horse, or your own horse. In old times we had to carry our guns loaded, but since we've got these britch-loaders it ain't needful. I expect you'd feel mighty mean if you killed a man, just by your carelessness, or if he killed you the same way. I came mighty near getting killed that way once by an Indian I was travelling with. We sat down side by side on top of a high hill to look over the country, and he had his rifle across his knees with the muzzle pointing toward me, and he was playing with the hammer of his gun, raising and lowering it. ”