DEADLY RIFLE FIRE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 220, 11 June 1919, Page 8

DEADLY RIFLE FIRE

ECHO OF THE BATTLE OF CHATEAU- . THIERRY

TRIBUTE TO AMERICAN . MARKSMANSHI^

The famous accuracy of the deadly fire of the Continentals at Bunker Hill was repeated bv .the Yankee troops of 1918 in I'raiice." Mr. William Atherton Du Pay, correspondent of the St. Ijouis "Post-TJisputeh," gives some facts which prove that American skill with small arms is still valuable cither in attack or defence. What the riflemen accom-, plished-inßolleau AVood is thus described:— When the Yanks swung into action the French Army observe?'* witnessed what was to them an astounding sight. In the face of tho onrolling columns of Hun shock troops, every American soldier deliberately adjusted about his left arm a loop of leal her formed by his riflefilinsr to steady the hard-kicking weapon, took time to estimate the distance between him and the' attacking Germans, and carefully adjusted his sights for tho exact range before loosing off the bullets tha,t accurately singled out individual enemies, cutting .great gaps in the advancing line, and "finally turning the tide o£ battle—the tide which grev; in volume and culminated in the smash of tho Hindehburg line. To the man who has nevor,followed tho fascinating 6port of military rifle shooting, the connections between .the pre-parations-'of the Yanks for battle in Chateau-Thierry and the great retreat wliich tho future may prove to have been one of the critical'stages of the war, may appear vogue and difficult to understand; but the fact remains that the shock troops of the Hun, expecting to advance to close quarters,where bayonet, butt, and the invincible progress, of their unswerving mass formations would win the day for them, were met when more than 500 yards away from their 'objectives by a hnil of accurately-aimed bullets—projectiles which, did iiot depond upon happ'en-chanoe or upon tho mass of the target for hits, but which were directed against, individual marks bv cool, deliberate, expert riflemen, who knew how to shoot, and who knew they knew how to shoot. Marksmanship.

All this was in direct contrast to the accepted order of things along the Western front. That n soldier in battle should take time to adjust his sights so that neither the range nor the force of the. wind-would interfere with the straight flight of the bullet was in. comprehensible to tho French, by whom thei rifle had come to be regarded mainly as a staff for a liavonet, or, at-best, a firearm from which a man with little previous training might send projectiles against an attacking mass and feel confident that a certain percentage of the mi lets-one in every GOO' fired, statistics tell us—would find a human niarlt. Equally a revelation to the Hun was tiie marksmanship of the Yanks, the German Army never having believed in rifle practice at distances greater than 400 metres,- relying upon tho volume ot fire from its mass formation rather than upon the individual precision of tho soldiers composing thoso masses. In the' tost of the lighting around ChateauThierry there were in action a few Chaucat machine-rifles, weapons which automatically load ' and. firo i score of shots without recharging, but' the rank and file of the American forces were armed with nothing more rapid than oi'tr own Springfield rifle, the magazino of' which holds only five cartridges, and which is in no way automatic. Yet so fast, furi. ous, and destructive was the Yankee firo that German prisoners declared that at the timo they believed every American in-the fight was armed with an automatic weapon.

Tho exploits of the American rifleman in the war of wars arc legion. Tho full 6tory of his skill has never, and probably will never, be told, for it is all part of a day's red work. Yet official dispatches havo shown, how, with accurate rifle fire at Chateau Thierry, the marines ■n's a unit, beatfback" the advance of the enemy; how n/Tankeo sergeant, a few weeks" before at the Ma'rue,' pickcd\off 25 •Huns as* they' were crossing the'river from a distance of 000 yards; how an American private was found dead, ringed by about ten German corpses., each bearing testimony in his death wounds of tho rapidity and accuracy of fire which marked tho last stand of the unnamed Yhnkee, Who, when he was mortally bl\ thrust his bayonet in the ground to show ho was the last survivor of the unequal conflict; how, in short, individually and collectively, tho American' soldier has given tho riflo a. new effectiveness and a new importance in modern war. '