WITH THE ©REEKS. 
507 
the epaulments was appreciable. Still when the Turkish infantry 
eventually attempted to rush the trenches in somewhat unceremonious 
fashion the defenders were quite equal to holding them and to driving 
back the assailants with very heavy loss. Had a really well directed 
shrapnel fire of the 40 or 50 guns which could easily have been brought 
into play been delivered against a stretch of the Greek front line, it is 
quite possible that an assault on it might have succeeded in spite of 
the terrain so greatly favouring the defenders for these were covering far 
too great an extent of ground. 
Statistics will probably appear in due course of the percentage of 
wounds on the Greek side from artillery as opposed to musketry fire. A 
Danish officer gave me the figures as they stood prior to the battle of 
Domokos, but I have lost them; they were, I think, about 30 shell and 
shrapnel bullet wounds out of a total of about 400. I saw two or three 
bad shell wounds at Domokos, but did not come across a single case 
of a shrapnel bullet. The fact is that in this campaign the gunner was 
not a success, although the material used on both sides was good and 
decidedly in advance of anything that has been placed in the field in 
any previous European war. 
Colonel Marshall and his merry men have a dummy battery at Oke- 
hampton on a hanging spur with a small ravine behind it, and the diffi¬ 
culty of ranging on this has worried many a major. The majority of 
the Greek batteries must have presented just this same difficulty to the 
Turks. They were on knolls at the extremity of great rounded spurs. 
The ground fell a little in rear of them, allowing limbers, mules, &c., 
to be completely concealed from view and generally to be quite shel¬ 
tered. Owing to the high ground behind, none of the Greek guns 
can have shown upon the sky line, except the two 25 prs. in rear 
which were entirely beyond the range of the Turkish field guns. I 
happened to be going over to the advanced 25 pr. just when one or 
two of the hostile batteries suddenly took it as their target, and it was 
interesting to watch their efforts to find the range. The first shell came 
whizzing overhead and dropped into a squadron of cavalry near the 
Pharsala road, about 250 yards in rear of the gun and at a considerably 
lower level. The next, evidently at 100 or 150 metres less range, fell 
on the road among some wounded who were being brought up and 
about 100 yards in rear of the gun at a great angle of descent. Neither 
of these projectiles did any real damage and the bursts must have been 
quite invisible to the battery firing them. Then a lot of range must 
have been taken off, for the next shell burst on the steep forward slope 
in front of the gun and a long way down the hill. After this the enemy 
“ crept ” up the hill very deliberately. Some of the shells were blind and 
eventually about the tenth shot was unpleasantly near range. How¬ 
ever, for some reason no more shells came for some time and the hostile 
battery or batteries had probably been switched on to some other 
object. 
One does not recognize from Okehampton experiences or from an 
ordinary field-day that in the artillery fight it is most difficult to tell 
where the shells are coming from. There is a great line of hostile guns 
67 
