82 
ARTILLERY POSITIONS AND SCREENING- GUNS. 
to be worse tlian useless. Wliy not construct artificial cover as recom¬ 
mended ? It is not an impossibility. Personally, I designed a screen 
some years ago and experimented with it. I claim that it is both 
invisible to the enemy, also very portable and easy to set up. 
However, apart from my feeble attempts, I am sure that some of us 
can invent a method of hiding troops in the open and on the forward 
slope. 
Already the problem is well nigh solved. The position on the field 
of battle of guns firing smokeless powder is not proclaimed to friend 
and foe by the first shot, as heretofore, when the charge consisted of 
black powder. At 3000 yards guns are not so very visible, even with 
a bad background. This is especially the case when firing over heather, 
as at the recent New Forest manoeuvres in 1895. I constantly noticed 
that it was hard to fix the position of Major Keir’s cordite battery. One 
heard the report—that was all. 
If shell were bursting in one’s battery and one could not see where 
the opposing guns were, the only chance of findiug the enemy would 
be to align oneself on the trough or furrow of a shell which had burst 
on graze. This cannot be called a very satisfactory method! 
MajorKeir’s Major Keir, R.A., in his article in the last April number of the 
batterj^at R-A..I. “ Proceedings,” is quite of the opposite opinion. In his “ Plea for 
the New Indirect Fire” he is all for staying behind the hill and fighting the 
manoeuvres battle with his clinometer. I tliink I can prove, with the help of the 
m i 89 o. 12-pr. and 15-pr. and also with the German “gun of the 
future” trajectories, that he is in greater danger behind his mountain 
than when exposed to the enemy’s plunging fire on the forward slope. 
All one has to do is to take a tracing of, or cut out, any of the three 
trajectories and put it to a section of the ground drawn on a scale of 
six inches to one mile [see Fig. 4). 
I cannot give the angle of opening of our 12-pr. shell, as the drill- 
book only gives it as half that given in the last hand-book and half 
that of “the gun of the future ” of General Rohne. But I think he, 
Major Keir, makes use of the best argument obtainable inlfavour of 
“ smokeless powder and guns on the forward slope ” when he says at 
the end of his article, “'At the conclusion of the New Forest*manoei:ivres 
an umpire was heard to observe that the smokeless powder had proved 
a failure, because it was impossible to tell what the guns were doing.” 
I, personally, can vouch for the truth of this statement, as I could 
never see Major Keir’s guns except on one occasion when they fought 
alongside. His was the only battery firing cordite. 
As to (3), “taking care that your background is unfavourable from 
the enemy’s point of view,” I cannot do better than quote a few 
extracts from a discussion on a lecture in Dublin on the 15th Nov., 
1892, by Colonel (now Major-General) J. F. Maurice, C.B., on “ The 
artillery in 1870-1,” Lord Wolseley being in the chair. 
0 present° f During the discussion after the lecture, I spoke as follows : “ I would 
Intelligent 0 to sa y one or two words about smokeless powder. We have now 
use Sf got guns which are invisible when they are'fired. I think you cannot 
background, see a field-gun at 2000 yards if fired vuth this smokeless powder—that 
Possibilities 
of conceal¬ 
ment with 
smokeless 
powder. 
