78 
DISCUSSION ON ARTIIIDRT. 
something like the fingers of ones hand ; sometimes there may be as 
many as six or seven and sometimes as few as three or four; but four 
or five would be about the average. They are fairly big and if the 
shell is going horizontally with any velocity, they go on pretty 
hard in the original direction. The walls go into very small 
pieces. Sometimes you get a long piece from the wall, perhaps an 
inch and a half broad and two or three inches long’, but more commonly 
those long pieces break up into little pieces about the breadth of a 
finger and a length of half that. Close to the base the pieces 
are very small indeed, little rags no bigger than the thumb 
nail. The base itself generally goes into four or five pieces, but 
if the shell is going at any speed they are checked by the action 
of the explosive and do not, as a rule, hit things violently. If the 
shell is stopped before it bursts, as on a wall, they have the same 
velocity and violence as the other pieces, and perhaps a trifle more. 
The Chairman :—Does that answer your points Major May ? 
Major May :—Not quite, Sir. 
The Chairman :—Except with reference to the weight. 
Major May :—My point is whether the small pieces will kill a man, 
and at what distance. 
Captain May, R.N. :—Yes Sir, I am sure they will ; even the little 
pieces like your thumb nail will cause a deep wound. Of course they 
spread in all directions ; they would not be only at all points of the 
compass but at all points of the celestial concave, thus at even a small 
distance from the point of burst the pieces are somewhat scattered. 
Lieut.-Colonel Elmslie :—With regard to the area of explosion, I 
may say that at Cairo when we were firing at a wall there the range 
party were ordered to keep 1000 yards away which they did; but 
after a few rounds I saw that range party bolting like hares. And I 
remember something similar at Lydd last year; perhaps Captain 
Currie can tell us the distance the range party were off, but I remem¬ 
ber I saw them running. 
The Chairman :—Is there any other officer who would like to ask 
any questions ? 
Lieut. H. R. W. M. Smith :—With reference to what fell from Cap¬ 
tain Buckle, Sir, I should like to say that I went into Omdurman, and 
there is one point on which I should like to take issue with him, that is 
with regard to his statement that the people were killed by fragments 
of shell. I examined several bodies and I came to the conclusion 
that they were killed not by fragments but by the direct force of 
the explosion. There was one heap I saw where ten men had 
been killed by the explosion of a shell whose crater was visible at 
about ten yards distance. I saw no other trace of any shell 
near, and those ten men were all distinctly blown in pieces ; their 
limbs were blown off and they were otherwise mutilated, but I could 
see nowhere any wound such as [that which, I imagine, would be 
inflicted by the piece of a shell. 
There was one episode, Sir, that brought home to me very strongly 
