FRENCH ARTILLERY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 201, 3 February 1915, Page 6

FRENCH ARTILLERY.

\ A DEADLY FIELD GUN. SWEEPS TWELVE ACRES. The Revue de Paris chants the nraises of the French "seventy-five" field gun, acclaiming it the saviour and the liberator of France. Even the enemy have been forced to acknowledged the efficacy of this, the last word in the destructive machinery of war. The writer explains the manner in which the famour "seventy-five" does its terrible but salutary work. The system is that of "sweeping and progressive firing." When an advance of the enemy is signalled,] the battery, which of four guns, gets into action at the intHcated.range. The first shot fired from each gun, the gunner turns a handle which directs the second shot to the zone spared by the first, but laterally, and so with the third. Thus, each gun, as it were, sprays its shells a front of several hundred yards, creating a danger zo*c in which nothing before living can any longer live—[for the shells of the French "scventyIfive," bursting at a few yards above •the ground, spread laterally, at the (height of a man's breast, their mortal rain. And a battery firing twelve shells can clear in a few seconds a zone almost a kilometre in front and some hundred yards in depth. But that is not enough. A second salvo of three shells per gun is discharged at a point a hundred yards behind, covering a second zone of the same frontage, and the same depth. This is followed by a third discharge from guns aimed at yet another 100 yards beyond. By the time that the battery has discharged its thirty-six shells, a dozen acres have been cleansed of the enemy, if enemy were there. The rest is silence—the silence of the grave.