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AMMUNITION COLUMNS FOR MOUNTAIN OR 
IRREGULAR WARFARE. 
- BY - 
MAJOR H. C. C. D. SIMPSON, R.A. 
T HE object of this paper is to invite discussion on the above 
subject, from officers who have served with mountain batteries 
in the recent expedition on the North West Frontier of India 
or with Mountain or Maxim Batteries in the Soudan Expedition. 
Although our home and colonial establishments of Mountain Artillery 
are limited, still a large number of mountain guns, manned as a rule 
by natives under British officers, are now engaged in active operations 
in the field; and Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean Hinter¬ 
land seem likely to prove for officers, and to a less extent to 
N.C.O/s and men of the above establishments, what the Indian 
Frontier has proved itself to be as a happy hunting ground to the 
Mountain Artillery of the Indian establishments. I have included 
Maxim batteries because although admitting that the machine-gun is 
but a cluster of rapid-firing rifles and in regular warfare perhaps more 
aptly handled by infantry in sections, still when massed in a battery, 
in irregular warfare, their tactics and transport are those more per¬ 
taining to artillery than to infantry and thus renders it advisable that 
they should be organized by the artillery arm rather than by the 
infantry, whose legitimate duties have a greater claim on their 
services under these circumstances. However whether worked by 
infantry or artillery, Maxim guns as well as mountain guns and rifles 
require a large supply of ammunition to be transported for them in the 
field, and it is evidently desirable that tables should be formulated 
detailing the requirements of an ammunition coloumn in personnel, 
equipment and ammunition, to meet the various conditions of service 
and pack transport. I include also the carriage of Field Artillery 
ammunition when the greater portion of the ammunition has from 
circumstances to be carried in pack transport in common with that for 
the mountain batteries. 
d. VOL . XXVI. 
Id 
