FIELD ARTILLERY FIRE. 
398 
Range. 
Number of 
fuzes cal¬ 
culated from. 
Mean error 
of fuze. 
Yards. 
Yards. 
600 to 1000 
32 
18 
1000 to 2000 
105 
19-7 
2000 to 3000 
116 
19*5 
CHAPTER X. 
Drill and Instruction. 
The great object of drill is, as stated in a previous Chapter, to ensure 
a strict discipline under fire by teaching the men to perform their duties 
almost mechanically, even under the stress of extreme excitement. 
But purely mechanical drill is of all things most wearisome and 
most likely to disgust a recruit with his chosen profession. Such drill 
then should be avoided as much as possible, and, as some of it is indis¬ 
pensable, administered in the smallest possible doses at a time. Some 
officers can remember the time when hours were spent in throwing the 
sponge backwards and forwards over the gun and in the Nos. 2 step¬ 
ping up to sponge out, in order that all the battery might work exactly 
together. All this is a thing of the past, nor is there time, in the face 
of more pressing demands, to attain the standard of mechanical pre¬ 
cision of the long service soldier. 
Everything should be done to make the drill as interesting as 
possible, and, by a constant change of duties, to keep the men's 
attention fixed. Drill should be alternated with short lectures, which, 
in order to make them attractive, should be delivered extempore and 
illustrated by examples. Officers will find it a very useful thing, 
not only as a means for their own education, but also for rivetting the 
attention of their men during lectures, if they would keep a common 
place book, in which to jot down little stories which they may hear or 
pick up in newspapers or in general reading, especially in reading 
narratives of personal adventures in great campaigns, in which minor 
details are more often mentioned. The writer has kept such a book for 
some five years, and ventures to think that there is hardly anything 
which it is important that the men should remember that he cannot 
illustrate by some anecdote to the point. For instance, a gun-layer is 
observed to leave his sight in the gun when firing; in addition to draw¬ 
ing his attention to it, tell the detachment the story related by Prince 
Kraft of how the C.O. of a battery found the shell of his battery 
falling shorter and shorter as fire continued ; he afterwards found that 
the sights, which were then left clamped in the gun when firing, 
slipped down a little with each round, a fact which escaped notice in 
