MASSED GUNS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 152, 16 March 1918, Page 8

MASSED GUNS

WHAT AN " ARTILLERY CONCE*

TRATION" MEANS

A PICTURE FROM THE BATTLEFIELD

by the War Office, and for-; warded by courtesy of the Royal; Colonial Institute.] * *

In the accounts of any modern bat-c' tie the term "massed artillery", is ux' variably met with. The aim of an attacking commander is usually to bring as many guns as possible to bear upon tho trenches and strong points that'; lie between him and his objective, and' in order to do this he is compelled to; bring up a large number of batterieaj from elsewhere, and to rearrange thai batteries already in the area of at-' tuck. All these moves are bound-to,' take place by night, t.o avoid detection/' of the enemy, and within the shortest' possible period. The unavoidable re-' Bult is a temporary congestion behind) the line; an uncomfortable state of af-; fairs, in which the innate and good temper of British troops is;' shown to great advantage. This lit-' tie story illustrates the meaning of & large concentration of artillery. We got the word to move out of the; position we then occupied at six o'clock! one Sunday evening in May, and to be: on the road as soon after dark as posfcible. Wo were a battery of heavy; artillery, with guns and the usual complement of ammunition and stores,■ < numerous lorry loads in all. We could not begin work much before ten, as the sky was cloudless, and hostilo airmen* 1 were particularly active; evidently suspicious of something being in the wind.The business of hauling out and loading! up took us about a couple of hours,i and the long convoy of guns and lorries started soon after midnight. Darkness and Difficulties. There was 110 moon,. the night was intensely dark, and of course no; Tights were allowed to be shown. Ai! couple of us had reconnoitred the! route as best we could at such shorty notice, but a road looks very different l at night, when 110 landmarks can be; seen, from what it doss by day, andi the lorry drivers fully occupied:! in keeping out of tho ditches that ranij deep oil cither side. We made faiuj progress at first, mainly owing to the) fact that the road was then deacti straight, with no side turnings or! forks. But about one o'clock in the, 1 morning trouble began to dog ouri wheel tracks. '

The loading lorry developed carburet-j tor trouble about the fifth mile, andj this had to be diagnosed and cured,) by the-uncertain light of carefully-j shaded torches. Then, in a town of; tortuous narrow streets the convoy lost* its- way, and had to be turned, vehicle/ by vehicle, at the end of a cul de sac-j Finally, mist was encountered in the) valley of a small stream, and one o£ the ammunition lorries got ditched be* yond the power of hauling out. Thisj meant unloading it of its three tons oft shell, digging it out, and loading it up again. It was not until after dawaj that we reached our first stopping-: place. i This was a small village, and here wa proceeded to turn in as best we could,i in the lorries and in such billets as waj could find, having iirst parked the battery in the Square, where it became an object of great interest to all t-lier countryside. It began to rain during! the day, and by the time we were about to start again, soon after sunset, the weather seemed to make ujx' its mind, and it started to pour ini earnest, covering the country roads with sheets of mud and water. No sooner were we well on our way thani we discovered that we were not alone; upon our travels. We had readied: the edge of the area of concentration by now. In the Maelstrom. > , At, first, we passed a battery hereand there, thoir men greeting our own| jests and laughter in the dark. • By degrees the traffic became thicker and thicker, until at last, at a sudden turn-! ing into a main road, we reached the heart of tho maelstrom. It _ seemed as if every gun, heavy and light, in' the whole of France were on the move; tile road was blocked by huge and won-, derfully noisy "caterpillars 1 draggingi heavy guns of all calibres, by brigades of field artillery, horses, guns,, and wagons, by lorries drawing me-) dium-sized pieces like our own. lb) waE very dark, a sort of velvety black-j iiess; to our' excited imaginations halrj of the batteries seemed to have lost?, their way, the other half to havaj broken down. 'Worming their wajj. amidst the chaos were various odd battalions marching with all their goods and chattels on their hacks', and sing-j ing at the top of their voices. Mostf; wonderful of all was the fact that., everyone was in the highest spirits (except a Jot, unfortunates, whose business it was' to regulate the traffic), although upon all impartially fell the steady rain, and the, mud thrown up by the throng of feet and wheels flew about in dense streams, as'a river disturbed from its bed. At last, a short distance before we reached our final destination, we came to a complete stop, and some of UB- - forward to explore our chance* offsetting on the mova again. The road was blocked by two parallel columns of lorries, and by a regimentor two of infantry, all stationary, and exchanging jests and wholly improbable stories. A group of men started to chant one of the popular airs of the day and the countryside for miles round, as it seemed, joined in, until they were quellod, and told not .to make such an infernal row, unless they, wanted the enemy to hear them. Whereat they started to whistle ' \\e Won't, Go Home Till Morning." A little further on we found the cause of the delaytwo lorries c " rl " ously intertwined in tho middle of the load, with men, endeavouring to haul them apart. They succeeded m this,, after an hour or so of herculean labour, ■ and iu a short- time_ wo and t.io bat-j tery found ourselves in the village tnab, was our destination. It was a wonderful sight, every house full of men, till they overflowed at the doors and windows, and its narrow streets full of "caterpillars," lorries, horses, gunsguns of every imaginable calibrecrashing and struggling through the mud, ploughing their way through tho seas of it, as ships through the ocean, till the warm dark night seemed full of them. Yet, had we but known it, this was only one small corner of tho concentration that was proceeding. Billets were out of the -question, there was not a cliickon-ruh in the place that did not hold half a down men, so we made'the best we could of the i est of the night, finding shelter inside and underneath the lorries. It could scarcely be described as a com- , fortable proceeding, yet on.the morrow, the men, instead of resting, as they might have done till evening, insisted upon marching a couple of miles to the nearest unoccupied field, where they played a keenly-contested football match with a battery similarly _ sitnated_ to our own. Of such stuff is the British soldior made. Theirs is a spirit which nothing that ever came out of Prussia can equal or quell.