106 
EXPERIENCES AT OKEHAMPTON IN 1891. 
also of our own artillery in India. When this is done effective fire is 
opened on the average in three minutes and 17 seconds from first gun. 
This result should lead to the general adoption of this method. 
Kates op Fire. 
There is still great room for improvement in the rate of fire ; very few 
of the batteries paid any attention to the keeping of regular intervals of 
time between the rounds when at ordinary or rapid fire., the consequence 
was that the fire was generally a sputtering discharge followed by a 
pause^ more or less long according to the smartness of the battery ; 
after a few rounds in this manner it was quite obvious that, in order to 
avoid this pause, the men were beginning to hurry, with the usual 
accompaniments, and there is scarcely a practice report of any battery 
which does not show that, after the word “ Ordinary fire 33 was given, 
the laying of the battery fell off. 
To insist on the intervals of time being kept to a second may seem 
pedantic, but there is a very good and sufficient reason for it, and it is 
better to risk being considered pedantic than to fall away into the 
other extreme. 
It is stated by foreign gunners who have been under heavy fire that, 
irregular fire such as that described, as well as the firing of salvos, 
tends to bring about bad practice and to render the men unsteady; 
because, when all the guns of the battery are empty at once, they feel 
that they are for the time defenceless and there is always hurry in 
order to get loaded again, and also that, unless kept very strictly in 
hand, fire tends to get quicker and quicker until it gets quite out of 
hand. What is striven after abroad is a regular rate of fire in which 
rounds shall be fired at stated intervals with the regularity of clock¬ 
work ; this regularity of fire, by its-very monotony, is stated to have a 
wonderfully steadying effect on the men’s nerves, and the comparative 
calm thus produced is conducive to good practice ; while by the irre¬ 
gular method of fire the men are worked up to the wildest pitch of 
excitement, with its consequent bad practice. 
There is also another very good reason why hurried fire should never 
be allowed, and that is to-avoid the too rapid consumption of ammuni¬ 
tion. It must be remembered that there is only sufficient shrapnel 
actually with the battery to keep up an ordinary fire for from two 
hours to two hours and 40 minutes, which is just sufficient for the 
Divisional Reserves to arrive in; but if the fire is rapid there is only 
enough shrapnel for from 56 to 80 minutes, and thus the battery might 
completely exhaust its ammunition before there was the least chance of 
replenishing the limbers and waggons. 
Besides slow fire, the only rate of fire, with one exception, that 
should be recognised in a battery firing under service conditions is 
rapid or ordinary fire from the right or left, and the guns should be 
fired in succession right through the battery, by this means only is the 
fire really kept under control and in the hands of the Battery Com¬ 
mander. 
Ordinary or rapid fire by sections against a standiug target should 
never be resorted to at service practice; it was allowed this year 
