COMMENDED ESSAY, 1895. 357 
It is a question whether in the case of the Auxiliaries, and especially 
in that of the Volunteers, whose course of training is so short, the 
principle of localization should not be carried a step further by 
assigning groups of guns to particular companies. This would be 
decided by the Commanding Officer according to circumstances. If 
some of his companies had greater facilities for drilling at their station 
than others, the more important groups should no doubt be handed 
over to them. When too the guns varied in type, it would certainly 
seem best to assign them permanently to particular companies. It 
would be a mistake to attempt to go still further in this direction and 
to assign to every man a particular place, except of course in special 
cases, as such an arrangement would make no allowance for casualties 
or unforeseen circumstances. Hyery man should be trained to take 
any place in his gun detachment or ammunition detail. 
(2) Though it has been found necessary to create a permanent 
staff of Specialists for the performance of certain special duties in each 
Battery, it does not follow that in the programme for the training of -a 
Corps manning a Battery these special duties may be entirely neglected, 
for it should not be forgotten that the District Establishment only 
provides for one relief of such Specialists, and that it makes no allow- 
ance for casualties amongst them. If no provision were made for this, 
what would probably happen in action would be that, to supply the 
want, Specialists would be withdrawn from the permanent Staffs of 
other Batteries which were less immediately threatened. This would 
be a most objectionable plan, as the permanent staff of a battery is the 
nucleus of its Garrison and should therefore never be removed from it. 
Clearly then it would fall on the Corps itself to provide for these 
contingencies; and it is necessary therefore that it should prepare 
itself in time of peace to do so. 
The plan that suggests itself is that from amongst the N.C. Officers 
and trained gunners of the Corps “ Understudies” should be selected 
for each post in the permanent staff, who during the training should be 
employed exclusively in practising their own special work. Selected 
as they would be from amongst the trained men, they would at any 
time be ready to return to their places at the guns if required, all that 
would be needed being an occasional re-drilling to enable them to learn 
any changes in drill. 
It is true of course that these special duties cannot be adequately 
performed by men who can only give them an intermittent attention, and 
that these “understudies” could not be expected to reach the perfec- 
tion which is attainable only by long and constant practice. As 
position-finding operators especially they would no doubt fall short of 
the requisite standard; but if the same men were trained at the work 
every year, they might hope in time to become competent operators. 
There is no reason at all events why the Auxiliary Artillery should not 
be able to provide itself with efficient Depression Range-finding 
operators. As regards the duties now performed by Gunners of the 
District Establishment, a Corps manning the same work year by year 
