SOME EXPERIENCES IN EGYPT. 59 
it, for which service, it is gratifying to learn, lie was mentioned in 
despatches. 
Here the lecture terminated and the Lecturer resumed his seat 
amidst loud and prolonged applause. 
DISCUSSION. 
The Chairman : I have had a list given to me of officers present whom we 
should all, I am sure, he delighted to hear, if they would give us some account of 
their experiences. The first name on the list is that of Captain Dawkins, It.A., 
who was staff officer to Colonel Long at Omdurman. 
Captain J. W. Gf. Dawkins, (staff officer to Colonel Long, Commanding 
the Artillery at Omdurman) : Sir Henry Brackenhury, ladies and gentlemen, 
I have been asked to give a few notes as to the equipment and materiel of the 
guns and batteries other than those which have been explained to you by 
Major Elmslie. To start with the 32nd Field Battery, that battery like the 
37th left all its horses behind when it went up to the front, the guns were 
drawn by mules; eight mules was the normal team to a gun, increased 
to eleven on an emergency or when the gun came into action. The eight 
mules were hooked in by pairs with three extra mules hooked in between the 
three leading pairs. The wagons also were left behind, all the ammunition which 
should have been carried in them being carried on camels and extra mules. I 
may say that they found the guns about as heavy as they could bear—no heavier 
gun could have been used with that system of draught and in that heavy country; 
they were heavy both for the animals to draw and for the men to work; they had 
the full detachment of nine men for each sub-division. As regards the Egyptian 
Field Batteries (I leave the Egyptian Horse Artillery to Major Young who is 
here) they were commonly called Field Batteries, but they are in reality more 
Mountain Batteries than Field; they are armed with the little Maxim-Nordenfeldt 
gun, a gun which works in a jacket and has hydraulic buffers and springs to 
check the recoil and bring it back into position ; they are usually carried on 
mule’s backs, not draughted at all, though they can be drawn by two mules. 
The loads are distributed—one mule carries the gun, that is to say the gun itself. 
One carries the jacket and two more carry the wheels and the trail. Those guns 
also had a full detachment of nine men to work them. As regards the rate of 
fire of those guns, the ammunition, etc., they are not what we call quick-firing 
guns at all; that is to say there is no man who sits on the trail and works them 
from the shoulder, and there is no spade or other arrangement to stop the recoil, 
but the recoil is not very violent, and owing to these large detachments they can 
get through very quick, and an officer tells me their normal rate of battery fire is 
about five seconds per round. The ammunition is fixed ammunition, the cartridge 
and projectile all in one. I think that is all about the materiel and the rate of 
fire. I may mention that there was no inconvenience found from those brass 
cases which I have often heard urged as an objection against them ; but then, of 
course, there was no limbering up. These Egyptian batteries carried common 
shell as well as the ordinary shrapnel though they did not use very much of it. 
In one case there were some Dervishes who got in a little near, about 600 yards in 
front of the British position, who had to be shot at by the batteries and for that 
they used common shell. The expenditure of ammunition in those batteries was 
very large, especially one battery, the 4th Egyptian Battery, commanded by 
