FIELD ALLOWANCE 



3137 



FIELD GUN 



1889, and With Trumpet and 

 Drum, 1892, charming verses for 

 children. His most attractive 

 essays are collected in The Love 

 Affairs of a Bibliomaniac, 1896. 

 He died Nov. 4, 1895. 



Field Allowance. Emolument 

 granted to officers on going into 

 camp or taking the field, in com- 

 pensation for the extra expense 

 of tent furniture, messing, etc. 



Field Ambulance. Active unit 

 of the Royal Army Medical Corps. 

 Organized in companies for ad- 

 ministrative purposes in peace 

 time, the medical units are re- 

 arranged for active service, and 

 the field ambulance is the unit 

 which can deal with all cases 

 of wounds and sickness in their 

 early stages, and which is suffi- 

 ciently mobile to accompany the 

 troops in the field. The personnel 

 of a field ambulance numbers 10 

 officers and 241 other ranks, with 

 10 ambulance wagons, 6 general 

 service wagons, 3 water-carts, and 

 3 forage-carts. They are divisional 

 troops under the command of the 

 administrative medical officer, and 

 three field ambulances are allotted 

 to each division in the field. 



The cavalry field ambulance is 

 a similar but smaller and more 

 mobile unit, the personnel num- 

 bering 6 officers and 110 other 

 ranks, with 6 light and 4 heavy 

 ambulance wagons, 2 general ser- 

 vice wagons, 2 water-carts, and 

 2 forage-carts. Four are allotted to 

 a cavalry division and one to a de- 

 tached cavalry or mounted brigade. 

 The general principle on which the 

 field ambulances work is to treat 

 slight cases which can be returned 

 to their units, to give temporary 

 aid to the more serious, and trans- 

 port them to the clearing hospitals, 

 and only to retain for any length 

 of time such cases as it is inadvis- 

 able to move. See Ambulance. 



Field Dressing. In modern 

 armies a packet, containing anti- 

 septic materials, stitched to the 

 clothing of every officer and man 

 proceeding to the firing-line. 

 Recent wars have shown that un- 

 complicated wounds caused by 

 modern high velocity bullets re- 

 quire little treatment beyond the 

 exclusion of dirt and air, and con- 

 sequently all ranks are now pro- 

 vided with a dressing for imme- 

 diate application which will effect 

 this purpose. The dressing actually 

 consists of a pad of sterilised gauze 

 or lint, to which is fastened a length 

 of bandage so that it can be se- 

 curely held over the wound. 



Fieldfare (A.S. feldefare, field 

 traveller). Bird of the thrush 

 family. Visiting Great Britain in 

 vast flocks in whiter, it spends 

 the rest of the year in Scandinavia 



Field Gun. 



Fieldfare. Member of the thrush 

 family, found in Great Britain 



and Russia. In plumage and 

 general appearance it closely re- 

 sembles the common thrush, but it 

 has not its vocal powers. It is 

 seldom, seen in parties of less than 

 twenty, and often the flock will 

 exceed a hundred. It feeds upon 

 grubs, small snails, and berries. 

 When feeding it continually ad- 

 vances hi one direction, and a flock 

 of the birds appears to move for- 

 ward in open order with almost 

 military pre- 

 cision. It nests in ' 

 great colonies . 

 and returns yeai 

 by year to the 

 same site, the 

 nests being 

 usually built in 

 pine woods. 



Field-glass. 

 Small binocular 

 telescope for 

 viewing distant 

 objects. The earlier field-glasses 

 consisted simply of two short tele- 

 scopes mounted side by side in a 

 frame and focussed by means of a 

 screw. The telescopes were of the 

 "Galilean" type, hi which the 

 object-glass is a convex lens which 

 converts the parallel beam of 

 light from a distant object into a 

 convergent pencil of rays. The 

 tube is a short one, and before the 

 convergent rays can come to a 

 focus they pass through the con- 

 cave eye-piece which transmits 

 them to the eye as a parallel beam. 

 In order that the images may be 

 free from coloured fringes, it is 

 necessary to substitute achromatic 

 combinations for the simple lenses. 



The advantage of this type of 

 telescope for field-glasses lies in the 

 shortness of the tube, its disad- 

 vantage in the narrowness of the 

 field of vision. Rays from objects 

 slightly off the direction in which 

 the glass is pointed get lost inside 

 the tube, and fail to reach the eye- 

 piece. To avoid this defect, prisms 

 were introduced into the tube to 

 catch the aberrant rays and reflect 

 them into the eye-piece. This was 

 the origin of the modern form of 

 field-glass, the prismatic binocular. 



There may be one object-glass or 

 two, but in either case the entering 

 pencil of rays is reflected twice or 

 more between parallel prisms, and 

 finally directed into the eye-piece. 

 This arrangement gives a wider 

 field than in the simple type of 

 field-glass, but as a certain amount 

 of light is lost at each reflection the 

 field is not so bright. In fact, the 

 prismatic binocular was rendered 

 possible only by the invention of 

 a glass for the prisms which re- 

 flected a specially large percentage 

 of the light falling on it. See 

 Telescope. 



Field Gun. Mobile piece of 

 artillery. It is mounted on wheels, 

 and capable of horse transport of 

 sufficient mobility to keep hi 

 touch with advancing infantry. 

 The field guns of all the great 

 powers have become standardised 

 at about three inches calibre, and 

 are capable of throwing a shell 

 weighing about 16 Ib. to an ex- 

 treme range of 9,000 yards, the 

 effective range being about 5,000 



18-pounder q.f. gun, unlimbered and ready 

 for action 



yards. The British weapon, known 

 as the 18-pounder q.f., is larger 

 than the majority, being of 3*3 ins. 

 calibre and throwing a shell 

 weighing 18 Ib. with a muzzle 

 velocity of 1,590 ft. per sec. The 

 weight of gun and carriage is 25 

 cwt., and with the limber 2 tons. 

 In the wider sense, field guns 

 may be said to include all pieces of 

 mobile artillery which accompany 

 moving troops. The Royal Horse 

 Artillery are equipped with a 13- 

 pdr. gun, which is much lighter 

 than the field gun, and enables the 

 units to work with the cavalry. 

 During the Great War artillery 

 played a more important part, and 

 in addition to the above, 6-in. and 8- 

 in. howitzers, 9'2-in. and 12-in.guns 

 and howitzers, and 15-in. howitzers 

 were designed to accompany troops 

 in the field, this being rendered 

 possible by the improvements in 

 mechanical haulage. See Artillery. 



Field-glass. Diagram illustrating path 

 of light in a prismatic field-glass 



IF 4 



