316 headlam: developments in artilleky 



Ohservation of fire. But however confident he may be of the 

 accuracy of the information furnished to him by his scientific 

 assistants, and of the correctness of his own calculations, the good 

 artilleryman will always do everything in his power to insure his 

 fire being observed. The possibility of sending artillery officers 

 forward with the advancing infantry had been hotly debated 

 before the war and in some cases practised as far as this could be 

 done in peace, so it did not take long to fall into the idea when the 

 first halt on the Aisne gave the opportunity — and the demands 

 that the w^ork made on the enterprise and ingenuity of our officers 

 caused it to be taken up with enthusiasm. The following example 

 may bring home to you some idea of what this meant. 



At one point on the Western Front there was a low ridge be- 

 tween the opposing front lines of trenches. Beyond the end of 

 this ridge there was an offset in both lines. There were ammuni- 

 tion dumps behind the ridge, and beyond the offset stood the 

 ruins of a farm-house, from which a good view could be had of the 

 German positions behind the ridge. One of our battery com- 

 manders discovered that he could get up to that farmhouse at 

 night. He went up one night and explored it and found that 

 there was a gable still standing, and that the end of the gable had 

 been knocked out by a shell, but that there were strips of drying 

 tobacco hanging in the opening which he thought would give him 

 shelter. So he got his telephone up there the next day, after 

 many difficulties; he was only about 150 yards from the German 

 lines. There he carried out a shoot which is a good instance of 

 what I said about the importance of accuracy. Here was the 

 ridge, and our trenches were just short of the crest. He wanted 

 to shoot at the point beyond the crest. It was extremely 

 difficult from th6 gunner's point of view to get a shell which 

 would clear this crest and hit the objectives desired, for there 

 was danger that the shell would hit the crest or drop into our 

 own trenches. He succeeded through his control of the fire by 

 direct observation, although he had to carry all that out in a 

 place where he could not move and where he was really in full 

 view of the Germans within almost pistol range. It was one of 

 the sort of problems that artillery officers are continually 

 attacking and solving in this war. 



