36 
METHOD OF BRINGING- GUNS INTO ACTION. 
Major May and Captain Headlam lay great stress on an experiment 
in running up guns by hand at Okehampton, on which the Commandant 
reported that “the fatigue entailed was very marked, most of the de¬ 
tachments were quite unfit for their duties for some minutes; anything 
like accuracy of laying would have been out of the question for some 
time.” I have carried out similar experiments in India, and have not 
observed such signs of excessive fatigue after the operation. But I 
know the ground at Okehampton pretty well, and I cannot remember 
any part of it where guns can be run up to a crest without hard work 
on the part of the gunners. The experiment therefore seems to prove 
nothing, for no sensible officer would run his guns up by hand on ground 
which would exhaust his gunners to such an exten-t as to incapacitate 
them for a time from serving the guns. 
A good deal is made of the difference between exposing men to view 
for 1' 14", and men and horses for 1' 20". These calculations hardly 
seem to me to touch the real argument, which is : how can guns be 
best brought into action so as to attract the least notice, and incur the 
least danger ? It is not likely that in either period much real damage 
would be done by hostile fire, but in one case the position might not be 
disclosed, in the other it certainly would he. I have more than once 
found the position of a battery in action, by catching the glitter of the 
metal of the harness on the horses of the limbers in rear , when I could 
not at first make out the guns. Captain Headlam asks :—“ how was 
it possible to bring the guns into action, without any sign of a man 
until fire was opened ?” Well, in my opinion, it is quite possible, and 
I will give an instance. At Muridki, one of the Punjaub practice camps, 
the batteries advanced to the range through a belt of scattered timber 
situated about a mile distant from the ordinary rendezvous, and on the 
several occasions when I have watched for their arrival the first thing 
which caught my eye through the trees was the glitter of the metal¬ 
work of the harness and accoutrements. Now if a battery had un¬ 
limbered beyond the trees, and the guns had been man-handled to the 
edge of the belt, (the ground is perfectly level) I should have known 
nothing of their approach till fire opened. 1 
I will give another instance which, though it is not direct proof, 
has a bearing on the question. I was watching the practice of a Moun¬ 
tain Battery near Quetta; the range party consisting of two or three 
men clothed in khaki were on the spur of an opposite hill, two or three 
hundred feet below the firing position and about 3,000 yards distant 
from it. Though I knew the men were there, and could see them with 
a telescope, I could not make them out even with good glasses. Now 
suppose a battery had been in action on that spur, firing cordite, would 
it not have been equally hard to discover ? for in India not only the 
carriages, but the guns themselves, are painted khaki colour. 
An invisible battery served by invisible gunners would introduce a 
1 There is an idea that Northern India is generally a treeless waste ; this is not so. For many 
miles round Lahore and Muridki there are tracts of scattered timber, usually in the form of belts, 
and sometimes two miles long; at Chillianwalla, the Sikh army was drawn up behind ground 
thickly covered with trees and scrub which greatly impeded our troops ; and at Meanee, a large 
portion of the Belooch Army had taken up a position behind a wood of considerable extent, 
