508 
WITH THE GREEKS. 
puffiing away and in the smoke and noise and excitement one finds it 
by no means easy even to distinguish between the bursting of shells 
(especially shrapnel) and the discharge of guns in the enemy’s line. 
There is a certain advantage in this where, as was the case with the 
Greeks, each battery commander selects his own target, because he is 
not tempted simply to take on the battery which is firing at him and 
the damaging of which may not be a matter of much importance. In 
the case of the 25 pr. above-mentioned it was thought that the Turkish 
battery which the gun was making rather pretty practice at was the one 
that was firing at us, but it seemed to me from the line the hostile pro¬ 
jectiles were taking that we were being bombarded from quite another 
direction. 
In a general engagement like this it is very difficult to tell what 
targets one’s own batteries are firing at without going into them to see. 
Quite early in the action, when the canonade was only partially deve¬ 
loped, the 25 pr. perched upon a rocky summit in rear of our right 
centre was firing right over our heads ; but, although I watched most 
carefully, I could not make out where its shells went to. Of course the 
time of flight had something to say to this, as the gun was firing at 
very long range. Later on, when some 120 guns were all blazing away 
for all they were worth, one could, through binoculars, see shells burst¬ 
ing in a Turkish battery but would not be able to tell from which of 
our batteries they came. There was some lively shrapnel fire as the 
hostile infantry was deploying for attack on our centre and, looking on 
from half-a-mile or more in rear of the Greek infantry and looking 
right down on the plain, it was difficult sometimes to tell if a puff was 
a Greek shell or a Turkish shell; the shooting was, however, very wild 
at this time and either the fuzes were untrustworthy or else they were 
set very irregularly. There is a kind of idea that a brigadier command¬ 
ing nine or twelve batteries in action would be able to send a galloper to 
one of them to say that its shrapnel is bursting all wrong, or something 
of that kind ; in point of fact, he can seldom tell what any one of his units 
is doing unless he is actually with it, and he will only have a very rough 
general idea of what his guns are firing at, unless he tells them exactly 
what their target is to be or unless he makes enquiry. 
Looking at it from the gunners’ point of view, this fight at Domo- 
kos shows the absolute necessity of plenty of practice, carried out under 
careful supervision, if artillery is to be of any use. The Greek artillery 
off the battlefield is not at all to be despised and is steady and well- 
disciplined in action. I was in Athens for several days a few years 
ago and saw how carefully the field batteries were drilled on mounted 
parades. The harness is well put on ; the horses are wiry and well 
looked after; the officers are the pick of the army. The contrast 
between the artillery bivouacs and those of the other branches of the ser¬ 
vice was extraordinary during the campaign. I should add that the 
mountain batteries also gave the impression of efficiency. And yet, 
fighting under extraordinarily favourable conditions, the Greek guns 
did nothing, because they depended chiefly on common shell and 
because when they used shrapnel they could not manage it. Greece 
