546 
SUPPLY OP AMMUNITION IN THE FIELD. 
We may summarize these objections as follows:— 
1. The danger to the gun detachments owing to (a) the increased 
target afforded to the enemy’s fire ( b ) the size of the explosive 
placed in such a conspicuous position (c) the impossibility in 
ordinary positions of obtaining cover for the same within a 
reasonable distance of the guns. 
2. The loss in men and horses, owing to the time necessarily taken 
in unhooking the wagons. 
3. The time and labour involved in transferring (a) from the wag¬ 
ons to the portable magazines and again from these to the guns 
each individual shell, fuze and cartridge required for their ser¬ 
vice ( b ) from one set of wagons to another each of the above 
except the cartridges, which may be transferred in their car- 
touches. 
The plan I suggest is roughly this :— 
The substitution for the present system of packing ammunition both 
in limbers and wagon-bodies of a number of large portable magazines 
similar to (but larger than) those at present in use, to be inserted hori¬ 
zontally from the rear, and capable of being rapidly withdrawn and 
placed on the ground in rear of the guns, each complete with a certain 
number of shells, cartridges, fuzes and friction-tubes. 
The advantages of such a system would be briefly these :— 
1. Wagons need not be brought into the battery at all. 
2. Limbers need only be detained a sufficient time to enable the 
numbers not required at the gun to remove the magazines, a 
matter of probably under a minute. 
3. Cover could be obtained for the magazines in a very short space 
of time by a line of rapid shelter-trench in rear of each gun 
which would be very fair protection against shrapnel bullets, 
indeed it is possible that in some positions this cover might be 
thrown up without attracting observation while the battery 
was in the preparatory position and during the preliminary 
observation, range-taking, &c. 
4. The replenishment of the gun-limbers from the wagon-bodies 
would be a matter of a couple of minutes, necessitating very 
few hands, and they would be ready in a few minutes (if re¬ 
quired) with a fresh supply of magazines, even if they did not 
(as they probably would) take the place of the wagon-limbers, 
replenishing at leisure from the wagon-bodies, and setting the 
former free to supply the battery in their turn, this being done 
perhaps with wheel-horses only. 
The difficulties of such a scheme, if approved in principle, would lie 
in matters of detail, and I will therefore sketch out the method of 
packing which appears at first sight the most feasible, though I have 
no doubt many possessed of greater technical knowledge will be able 
to improve upon it. 
The present limber-box lends itself readily enough to the proposed 
