Back Aa

British Army From Within

<h2 class="vspace">CHAPTER VI ARTILLERY AND ENGINEERS</h2></div> The Royal Artillery of the British Army is divided into three branches, known respectively as Horse, Field, and Garrison Artillery. In normal times the Royal Horse Artillery consists of some twenty-eight batteries, distinguished by the letters of the alphabet, together with a depot and a riding establishment. On parade the Horse Artillery batteries take precedence of all other units, with the exception of Household Cavalry. The Royal Field Artillery consists of 150 batteries and four depots, and the Royal Garrison Artillery consists of 100 companies and nine mountain batteries. “A” Battery of the Royal Horse is officially designated the “Chestnut” troop, from the colour of its horses, and the Horse Artillery as a whole is one of the few corps of the service which retains the stable jacket for parade use. In the case of the R.H.A. this garment is of dark blue with yellow braid, and the head-dress of the horse gunner is93 a busby with white plume and scarlet busby-bag, similar to that of the Hussars. The Field and Garrison Artillery wear tunics in full dress, and their helmets are surmounted by a ball instead of a spike. While the weapon of the Field Artillery is the 18½-pounder quick-firing gun, and gunners ride on the gun and limber, the R.H.A. is armed with the 13-pounder quick-firing gun, and its gunners are mounted on horseback. The object of this is to obtain extreme mobility. The Royal Horse are expected to be able to execute all their manœuvres at a gallop, and to get into and out of action more quickly than the Field Artillery. They are designed specially to accompany cavalry in flying-column work; their mobility is only achieved by a sacrifice of weight in the projectile which the gun throws, and they are only expected to hold a position supported by cavalry until the heavier guns come into play. The horse gunners may be regarded as the scouts of the artillery, in the sense in which the cavalry are the scouts of the whole army. Since, in the Royal Horse, gunners as well as drivers are mounted, the number of horses to a battery is greater than in the Field Artillery, and work is consequently harder. Officers of the Royal Horse are specially selected from the R.F.A., to94 which they return on promotion, and the rank and file are picked men, chosen for physique and smartness. It is a maxim of the service that the work of the R.H.A. is never done, and when one takes into account the fact that gunners have a horse and saddle apiece to care for as well as their gun, while drivers have two horses and two sets of harness apiece to keep in condition, it will be seen that there is a certain amount of truth in the statement. In old times, when field-day and manœuvre parades were carried through in review order, the horse gunner was eternally in debt over the matter of the yellow braid with which his stable jacket is adorned, for these jackets are particularly difficult to keep clean. The general adoption of service dress for working parade has neutralised this disability. The horse gunner of to-day is a very good soldier indeed in every respect, both by real aptitude for his work and by compulsion. Not that the men of the Field Artillery are not equally good soldiers, for they are. The Field Artillery, however, divides itself naturally into two branches, drivers and gunners. Each driver has two horses and two sets of harness to manage, and, if the cavalryman has reason to grouse at the length of time he spends at stables, the driver95 of the “Field” has more than four times as much reason to grouse. Moreover, the cavalryman is permitted to clean his saddlery during the official stable hour, but drivers of the R.F.A. are expected to concentrate their attention on their horses during the time that they are officially at stables; they can stay in the stables and get their sets of harness cleaned and fit for inspection in their own time. They are then at liberty to clean up their own personal equipment, and, until the turn for guard comes round, have the rest of their time to themselves. Gunners of the R.F.A. have all their time taken up by the care of the gun, its fittings and appointments, as well as by the various separate instruments connected with the use of a gun. For instance, all arms of the service possess and make use of range-finding instruments, known as mekometers, but in the artillery the mekometer is a larger and more complicated affair, for the range of the gun is several times greater than that of the rifle, and range finding is consequently a far more complex business. The simple gunner must understand this, just as he must understand the business of “laying” or adjusting the sights of the gun to the required range, the use of telescopic sights, the delicate mechanism of the breech-block, the96 method of putting the gun out of action or rendering it useless in ease of emergency, and a hundred and one other things which involve really complicated technical knowledge, and lie in the province of the commissioned officer rather than in that of a private soldier. The reason for teaching these things to the private soldier lies in the accumulated experience which shows that on many occasions all the officers and non-commissioned officers of a battery have been blown to pieces by the enemy’s fire, and there have remained only a few private soldiers to do their own work and that of their officers as well. It is to the eternal credit of the Army, and especially to that of the artillery, that men thus placed have never once failed to do their duty nobly, and the present war has already afforded more than one instance of single men sticking to their guns to the last. Desertion of the guns has never yet been charged against British artillery, nor is it ever likely to be. Field-guns are always accompanied by an escort, sometimes of cavalry, but more often of infantry, for the gunner is admittedly helpless against infantry at close range or against charging cavalry. The charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava forms an instance of what cavalry can do against unescorted guns, and, though the pattern97 of gun in use has changed for the better, the projectile being far more powerful, and the number of shells per minute far greater, such feats as that of the immortal Light Brigade are still within the range of possibility. The business of the gunner in an army assuming the offensive is to open the attack. The fuse of the shrapnel shell is so timed that the missile, which contains a quantity of bullets and a bursting charge of powder, shall explode immediately over the position held by the enemy. When a sufficient number of shells have been fired to weaken resistance, the infantry advance in order to drive the enemy from the chosen position. In defensive action the use of the gun lies in retarding the advance of the enemy, and inflicting as much damage as possible before rifles and machine-guns can come into play. For this business ranges must be taken swiftly and accurately. Loading must be performed expeditiously, and, though the pneumatic recoil of the modern field-gun renders it far less liable to shift in action, the sights must be correctly aligned after each shot. A gun crew must work swiftly and without confusion, and peace training is devoted to attaining that quickness and thorough efficiency which renders a battery formidable in war. 98 There is, perhaps, less show about the work of a gunner than in that of any other arm of the service with the exception of the Royal Engineers. A good bit of his work is extremely dirty; cleaning a gun, for instance, after firing practice with smokeless powder, is a hopelessly messy business, and the infantryman, who pulls his rifle through and extracts the fouling in about five minutes, would feel sorry for himself if he were called on to share in the work of cleaning the bore of an 18½-pounder after firing practice. There is a considerable amount of drill of a complicated nature which the field-gunner has to learn in addition to ordinary foot-drill; there is all the mechanism of the gun to be understood; there are courses in range-finding, gun-laying, signalling, and other things, and on the whole it is not surprising that it takes at least five years to render a field gunner thoroughly conversant with his work. The finished article is rather a business-like man, quieter as a rule in his ways than his fellows in the cavalry and infantry, rather serious, and little given to boasting about the excellence of service in the Royal Field Artillery. He knows his worth and that of his arm too well to waste breath in declaring them. The driver of the Field Artillery has even more99 of riding-school work to do than the average cavalryman. It would be idle to say that he is a better rider, for the average cavalryman is as good a rider as it is possible for a man to be. Artillery horses, however, are heavy and unhandy compared with cavalry mounts, and the driver has not only to drive the horse he rides, but has also to lead and control the horse abreast of his own. The principal responsibility for the path which the gun takes lies with the lead or foremost driver, though almost as much responsibility is entailed on the man controlling the wheel or rearmost horses, and, compared with these two, the centre driver has an easy time of it in mounted drill and field work. Notwithstanding the extremely hard work to which drivers of artillery are subjected, the same trouble over harness as obtains over cavalry saddlery is experienced in some batteries. “Soft soap and oil” are the cleaning materials prescribed by the regulations, but certain battery commanders enforce the use of steel-link burnishers on steel-work, and brilliant polish on leather, the last-named polish being obtained by the use of a mysterious combination of heel-ball, turpentine, harness composition, and, according to legend, old soldiers’ breath. The mixture is known among the drivers as “fake,” and “fake and burnish”100 is synonymous with unending work in the stables. It is the fetish of smartness, a misdirected enthusiasm, which brings things like this to pass and inflicts extra work on men whose energies should be devoted solely to the attaining of fitness for active service, where “fake and burnish” have no place. The Royal Horse and Royal Field Artillery are the only branches of the service in which substantial prizes are given annually to encourage men in their work. In each battery three money prizes are offered for competition among the drivers; the amounts offered are substantial, and the general result is a spirit of healthy emulation, though far too often, and with the full sanction of the battery officer, this degenerates into the “fake and burnish” craze. This, however, is not the fault of the prize-giving system, but of the officers who not only permit, but encourage and even order this unnecessary work, which, while entailing added labour on the men, assists in the deterioration of the leather-work in harness. For all leatherwork requires constant feeding with oil in order to keep it fit and pliant, while the “fake” dries the fibres of the leather and starves it, rendering it liable to cracking and perishing. The branch of the Artillery of which least is101 heard is that of the Royal Garrison Artillery, whose hundred companies are scattered about the British Empire in obscure corners, engaged in the work of coast defence and the management of siege guns. It is fortunate for the garrison gunners that they have no “long-faced chums” to worry about, for they are admittedly the hardest-worked branch of the service as it is. Gibraltar houses several companies; you will find some of them managing the big guns at Dover, and at every protected port. They are big men, all; strong men, and lithe and active, for their work involves the hauling about of heavy weights, combined with cat-like quickness in loading and firing their many-patterned charges. The horse and field gunner have each to learn one pattern of gun thoroughly, but the garrison gunner, employed almost entirely in garrisoning defensive fortifications, has to learn the use of half a hundred patterns, from the little one-pounder quick-firer to the big gun on its disappearing platform, and the 13·4-inch siege-gun. The horse and field gunner may complete their education some day, for the pattern of field-gun changes but seldom, and the present pattern is not likely to be improved on for some years to come. The garrison gunner, however, is the victim of experiment, for every new gun that comes out,102 after being tested and passed either at Lydd or Shoeburyness, is handed on to the garrison gunners for use, and there is a new set of equipment and mechanism to be mastered. In order to ascertain the quality of their work, one has only to get permission to visit the nearest fort, when it will be seen that the guns are cared for like babies, nursed and polished and covered away with full appreciation of their power and value. Garrison gunners suffer from worse stations than any other branch of the service. They are planted away on lonely coast stations for two or three years at a time, and Aden, the bane of foreign service in the infantryman’s estimation, is a pleasant place compared with some which garrison gunners are compelled to inhabit for a period. Lonely islands in the West Indies, isolated places on the Indian and African coast, forts placed far away from contact with civilians in the British Isles—all these fall to the lot of the garrison gunner, and the nature of his work is such that, unlike his fellows in the field and horse artillery, he gets neither infantry nor cavalry escort. Reckoned in with the Garrison Artillery are the nine Mountain Batteries, which, organised for service on such hilly country as is provided by the Indian frontier, form a not inconspicuous part of103 the British Army. In these batteries the guns are carried in sections on pack animals; Kipling has immortalised the Mountain Batteries in his verses on “The Screw Guns,” a title which conveys an allusion to the fact that the guns of the Mountain Batteries screw and fit together for use. The use of these guns can be but local, for they are not sufficiently mobile to oppose to ordinary field-guns on level ground, nor is the projectile that they throw of sufficient weight to give them a chance in a duel with field-guns. They are, however, extremely useful things for the purpose for which they are intended; they form a necessary factor in the maintenance of order on the north-west frontier of India, and, together with their gun crews, they instil a certain measure of respect into the turbulent tribes of that uneasy land. A consideration of the various branches of the service would be incomplete if mention of the Royal Engineers were omitted. The Engineers are looked on as a sister service to the Royal Artillery, and consist of various troops, companies, and sections, according to the technical work they are called on to perform. Thus there are field troops of mounted engineers for service with cavalry, field companies for duty with the field army, fortress companies for service in conjunction with104 the garrison gunners, balloon sections and telegraph sections for the use of the intelligence department, and pontoon companies for field bridging work. Every engineer of full age is expected to be a trained tradesman when he enlists, and the special qualifications demanded of this branch of the service are acknowledged by a higher rate of pay than that accorded to any other arm. The motto of the Engineers, “Ubique,” is fully justified, for they are not only expected to be, but are, capable of every class of work, from making a pepper-caster out of a condensed-milk tin to throwing across a river a bridge capable of conveying siege-guns. There is no end to their activities, and no end to their enterprise, and in the opinion of many the Engineers, officers and men alike, are the most capable and efficient body of men in any branch of the Government service. Their work is little seen; to their lot falls the task of constructing the barbed-wire entanglements with the assistance of which infantry battalions can put up a magnificent defence against any kind of attack; the Engineers are responsible for the construction of the bridge by means of which the cavalry arrive unexpectedly on the other side of the river and spoil the enemy’s plans by getting round his flank; it is the Engineers,105 again, who repair the blown-up railway line and permit of the transport of trainloads of troops to an unexpected point of vantage, thus again upsetting the plans of the enemy. One hears of the magnificent defence maintained by the infantry; one hears of the brilliant exploits of the cavalry on the flank of the enemy; one hears also of the skill of the commander who moved the troops with such suddenness and disconcerted his enemy; but the work of the Engineers, who made these things possible, generally goes unrecognised outside military circles, and the Engineers themselves have to reap their satisfaction out of the knowledge of work well done. <hr /> 106 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.