THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
489 
ENTRENCHMENT OF FIELD ARTILLERY. 
BY 
CAPTAIN G. B. MACDONELL, R.A. 
The latest edition of the Field Exercise and Evolutions of Infantry ” 
contains instructions for carrying out a system of entrenchment for that 
arm of the service—a system which, if somewhat wordy and smacking 
rather of the drill-serjeant and his love of minute descriptions in uncom¬ 
fortable positions, is on the whole, when mastered by the trained soldier, 
excellent, and enables him to rapidly construct good, safe, and bullet¬ 
proof cover. 
In our branch of the service, taking a retrospect through the last few 
years, since the introduction of breech-loading small-arms in the 
infantry has rendered the service of guns in the field to be far more 
difficult and dangerous than it formerly was, and has prevented field 
artillery from asserting its proper position and preponderance among 
the arms, we find that little or nothing has been done—a few isolated 
experiments excepted—to establish a system of entrenchment to protect 
our field guns from the destructive effects of the fire of improved small- 
arms, and thereby increase their efficiency. There may be some who 
will object to the adoption of entrenchments, and will hold that any such 
system would tend to destroy the mobility of the arm, and reduce it to 
the role of artillery of position; and also a few others may say, “ Best 
leave well alone ; if entrenchment is wanted it can easily be done.” Of 
course it can; but the disadvantage of this latter plan is that the men 
must be untrained, and any experience that may be required will have 
to be acquired in presence of the enemy, where failures may be disas¬ 
trous, and modern warfare cannot allow of any disasters arising from 
want of preparation or previous instruction. 
As regards the decrease of mobility, such an objection hardly needs 
an answer; since the extended and accurate range of modern ordnance 
render the movement of batteries during an action less necessary than 
formerly with the S.B. guns, whose inaccurate and feeble fire necessitated 
the assembly of the batteries close to the points where the effect was 
required to be produced. In an ordinary battle-field of the present day, 
the fire of the guns could be massed on any given point without entailing 
the very frequent movement of the batteries. Besides, the practice of 
making and using artificial cover would only come into operation in 
defensive positions, while the power of passing to the offensive would be 
unimpaired, and the advantage would remain that while acting on the 
offensive, the result of previous instruction would appear in the increased 
ability that there would be to rapidly take advantage of inequalities and 
accidents of ground—which would mean so many projectiles arrested or 
diverted, so many lives saved, so much longer effective life to the batteries. 
So far is it from the wish of the writer to see the mobility of field 
artillery decreased, that he hopes that the day is not very far off when, by 
