THE MORTAR IN MODERN WAR

Taranaki Daily News, 25 April 1918, Page 6

THE MORTAR IN MODERN WAR

RESULTS ACHIEVED BY THE NEW ZEALANDERS. RECORDS IN PAST SHOOTING. (From Malcolm Ross.) War Correspondents' Headquarters, February 10. The trencli mortar lias become an important adjunct, in modern war. Since the days when the Japanese used it before Port Arthur it has been greatly improved. But before they came to France the New Zealanders had little experience with the mortar known as the Garland, and a few of the well-made little Japanese mortars. We had also a catapult, rudely fashioned as in the days of' the Romans, from which, in those days of scarce Ammunition, we slung our home-made jam-tin bombs. One used to pass the factory on the way from General Godley's to General Birdwood's dug-out, and, on days when "Beachy Bill" or the Anafartii. guns were firing, wonder what would happen if a shell made a direct hit. Nothing ever did happen, and the men went on filling tlfe tins that, a few days before, held our plum and apricot, with a new jam for "Johnny Turk"—a mixture of powder, little scraps of iron, and empty cartridge cases. It was the best we could do. When we arrived in France and went into the trenches in the sector at Armentieres we found the Germans far ahead of us in the gentle art of trench i mortaring. They had a heavy mortar that, in action, weighed 11£ cwt. This threw a high explosive bomb of 2071b to a range of between 219 and 601 yards, and a. lighter bomb of 1341b to a range of between 492 and 807 yards. They had a medium mortar for a high | explosive shell of 1091b or a gas shell I of 921b, and also a light mortar for I high explosive or gas shells weighing a little over 91b. This machine had an effective range up to over 1000 yards. No one who walked the front line in those days will be likely to forget the "minnies" or "rum jars" that came hurtling towards him across No Man's Land. You could see them coming, and, in that caser there was generally time to get out of the way if you did a sudden sprint. But sometimes you were not quite sure where they were going to land, aiid sometimes a man ran the wrong way. They smashed up trench and parapet and parados, and, generally, they "put the wind up" the inhabitants of the front line. They made huge craters in the soft black loam. . There were also "pineapples," crenated like the tropin fruit after which they were named. They came over in showers. In the meantime the British army had bestirred itself, and a few mortars began to arrive at the front. The New Zealanders commenced the formation of trench mortar batteries—two from the infantry, and one from the artillery. Volunteers were called for, and readily they responded to the call. The C.R.A. picked his men, and they were a fine type. They started to train in April, 191 G. with 2in and 9.45 in mortars. Pits for the latter were dug, but. the mortars did not come to hand in time, and they were never used in that sector by the New Zealanders. The batteries, however, went into the line with the smaller mortars, though for three weeks they did not fire ft shot. In the early part of June we had our first shoot, cutting wire for a raid that was to follow. Later, there was another shoot in connection with a discharge of gas. It was then that the batteries had their first casualties—four men wounded. Some little time before this a mildmannered gentleman of the name of Stokes, residing in a peaceful county in England, had a brain wave, and the famous Stokes gun was the result. A number of these mortars arrived at the front., and our men practised assiduously with them. The new invention was a close secret till one night the Germans raided some of our neighbors, and, finding one of the mortars in the front line, carried it off to their own lines. The merit of the Stokes was its cheap and simple construction, jts mobility, and its rapidity of fire. For the destruction of trenches they are not of much use, but for shooting at troops in the open and going forward with the infantry in attack this gun is a most useful engine of war. Above all are they valuable in shattering a defensive line of enemy troops just prior to an attack. One will always remember how they joined the final artillery chorus just after dawn on the day of the opening of the great Somme battle. When the gun is being fired rapidly you can see a curve of a dozen bombs in the air at the same time. Strange., to say, the German, though he has by this time captured several of our Stokes guns, has never imitated the principle. Prob«nly he thinks his own nine-pound "minnie" is juat as good. At the second phase of the Somme Battle, in which we had a hand, the New Zealand trench mortars were not used. The artillery did all that had to be done. Afterwards we came back to the old locality, though we occupied different trenches, and there our batteries used the 9.45 as well as the Stokes. They did some remarkably fine shooting with the 2-inch mjrtars, getting off 402 rounds in two shoots of half an hour each. The heavies were also in action, and tremendous bursts of earth were seen. Saps were blown in, and the wire was cut to pieces. Our men also did a great deal of shooting before the Messines Battle in the "Plug street" and La Beise sectors. As a matter of fact the enemy got on to our mortars, and then, in the words of one of the officers, it was hell. But in spite of that the New Zealanders stuck it out, and did good shooting. One of our emplacements was blown out with a 9.45, but. fortunately, no serious damage was done. The New Zealanders simply moved back a couple of hundred yards and calmly resumed their shooting. On one occasion the enemy bombarded a New Zealand battery with fl.iVs for two and a half hoqrs, getting seven direct hits on to the emplacement, yet failed to destroy it. Next day our men opened up from the same place. The Germans returned to the charge, and after our third shot they landed a shell right in the mouth of the emplacement and blew the gun up. The crew happened to be just round the corner, working with the ammunition, at the critical moment., which was a great bit of luck for them. After that came Messines. The New Zealanders decided once more to get in their mortars for the cutting of the wire in connection with the attack of June. 1917, Some time was spent in making the emplacements, Tight under the nose of the enemy, and about a

fortnight before the battle our mortars commenced operations?! All the guns, medium and heavies, ; in the trench inortar batteries opened simultaneously in broad daylight. The enemy could be seen flying from his trenches shortly after the bombardment commenced, and our machine-guns got on to him with deadly effect. On .June 3 the New Zealanders put up another record of IflftO rounds from twelve of the lighter guns and 227 rounds from four of the heavies. This they did in three shoots, at 9, at 11, and at 1 o'clock. It was a very hot day, and the men, discarding their tunics and shirts worked in their singlets. The wire was blown away with their hurricane fire. Twelve Germans were seen running from one dug-out, and before they had. gone very far a bomb was exploded in their midst with disastrous results. That day wo had \one man slightly wounded in the arm. It was indeed a good day's work. The night before the attack a patrol went out and reported that the great belt of rusty wire, a familiar sight on the slope, was no longer an obstacle to the attack. The infantry lent valuable assistance in carrying ammunition from the Petit Douve Farm. Many of the men carried up, slung in sand-bags, each two bombs weighing 104ftu Men who were not strong had to m content with carrying one bomb of half that weight,

For some time now We had been using the new fuse with percussion or delay action. The former was so sensitive that it burst the bombs on touching a strand of wire. The delay action was used for blowing up dugouts and emplacements. This was one of the inventions of modern warfare in which we had stolen a march on the enemy. Of course it was not long before the German gunners had examined and copied' this destructive British fuse.

The new pattern trench mortar which the Germans brought into use in 1910 fired a boml,) weighing 2071b at the rate of twenty rounds an hour. Another heavy minnenwerfer, known as Flugelminnenwerfer, weighs in action a ton and a quarter, and has a personnel of 42 men. It fires a high explosive shell fitted with vanes, weighing 2201b, with or without delay action, and has an effective range of between 400 and 1319 yards. With delay-action fuse this shell has deep penetration, and where it lias burst one comes upon craters twenty feet deep and thirty feet in circumference. Their medium mortar fires a shell of O.OOin calibre, weighing 1001b, or a gas shell of 921b weight. A light minI nenwerfer fires a light gas shell weighing 9JI b. The gas shells have liquid contents which form into a gas the moment the shell bursts. It is a g.ns heavier than air, so that it settles in hollows, and, in calm weather, hangs about shell-holes and trenches. Our box respirators, if promptly put on, are a sufficient protection. Gas shelling is not very dangerous if proper precautions are taken. Moreover, the gas is not all on the ■ one side of the line in these days, and many a German soldier must have cursed the man who invented it and the men who decided upon its use in war.

When our trench-mortars first appeared in the front line the infantry did not always look upon them with a friendly eye. They were sometimes thought of as a means of bringing retaliation upon the heads of the unoffending infantry. But the C.11.A. had faith, the batteries chose their own emplacements, and very soon they justified their existence, till eventually the infantry asked for their assistance. Now the infantry will do anything they possibly can for their gallant trench-mor-tar comrades, and there are two infantry colonels that I know of who have been seen helping the carrying parties on their visits to the line by themselves shouldering a heavy bomb and bearing it up tn the guns. One of the later appearances qf our trench-mortar batteries was in the unsuccessful attack on the Polderhoek Chateau. They gallantly fired 850 rounds from exposed shell hole positions. For one hour and eight minutes they were under heavy shell fire. They started with five guns in action and finished up with three, yet they had only one man wounded., ilt is no sinecure being in a trench-mortar battery, yet with a great run of good luck the New Zealand trench-mortar casualties have been few, and I don't suppose there have been more than a dozen men killed from first to last. Both officers and men are splendidly brave and wonderfully energetic. Whatever they have been asked to do they have done, and done it well. One can only hope their good luck will continue with them. They certainly deserve it.