headlam: developments in artillery 307 



the butt, so it has seen guns pushed into closer ranges than has 

 occurred for a century at least. On many occasions I have known 

 individual field guns put within 200 yards of the enemy's trenches. 

 This was of course for some special task, such as breaching a para- 

 pet or knocking out some particularly obnoxious *'nest" of ma- 

 chine guns. With time, ingenuity, and courage, a gun can be 

 got almost anywhere, and the effect of its fire at such ranges is 

 very marked, while its presence affords immense encouragement 

 to the infantry. Great care must of course be taken in working 

 out the preliminary arrangements, and in one case I may men- 

 tion where a gun had to be brought up over the open, it was 

 moved at night under a canopy, like a dignitary of the Church in 

 high festivals, and the gunners who carried the canopy were 

 trained to drop it on the gun whenever a flare went up. This 

 gun fired its 100 rounds at a range of 70 yards in nine minutes, 

 completely destroying its objective, and the detachment then, 

 strictly against orders, joined in the assault. 



Another case I know forms rather a touching story. When I 

 was on the Italian front beyond Gorizia in 1916 I happened one 

 day to see a gun very cleverly concealed in the front line, to be 

 used in much the same way. Curiously enough I met last year 

 the commander of the corps to which this gun belonged, and 

 talking one day he asked me if I remembered it. He said he 

 had been going around after me, and the noncommissioned officer 

 in charge had told him how an English general had shaken his 

 hand and congratulated him on being in the place of honor. 

 Poor fellow, he did his work with complete success next day, 

 but he and all his men were killed. 



Increase of heavy artillery. But, gentlemen, I am not sure that 

 the real romance of artillery in this war does not lie in the efforts 

 made to furnish us with the material we so urgently needed. At 

 the beginning, as I have said, we had one battery of "heavies" 

 per division, or 24 guns in the whole of our "contemptible little 

 army." On the Aisne we got our first siege howitzers of 6-inch 

 caliber, and I had placed under my command there the same bat- 

 tery which as a young staff officer I had guided tj* its first position 

 against the Boers at Pardeberg. During the winter of 1914, a 



