september - october - Fort Sill

COMPARISONS AGAIN
conditions as are horse rations. It was hard to impress upon the drivers,
after motorization, the necessity for thorough "stables" for their vehicles,
but it was easy to discover the guilty. An unwatered horse may work for a
while apparently well, but a bearing burned out from lack of oil is a plain
sign of neglect. The same driver, who, at night and in the general
confusion did not let his horse drink as much as he wanted, knew that
there must be oil in the crankcase, gas in the tank and water in the
radiator if his motor was to run. When troops were billeted and the horses
scattered through a town, it was very difficult for the officers to be sure
that every horse was watered and fed, and supervised grooming was
impossible. Before horse billets could be occupied, they had to be passed
by the veterinarian. Tractors are easily billeted under shelter that would
be quite unsuitable for horses; or parked without shelter of any kind.
However, there was no less work in keeping tractors in proper shape than
in keeping horses in good condition; good maintenance is as important to
one as to the other. The task of the battery commander, close supervision,
is not different, but the work is done with less effort for the men
understand the general principles of mechanical maintenance, which
seem reasonable to them, while the regulations on the care of horses seem
to them like Army red tape. (Another point of importance in the training
of an emergency Army.)
Surely no one would believe that we have in the present motor
equipment the ideal. We have yet to find the ideal gun. The limitations of
tractor artillery are many: poor mobility in mud because of the present
accompanying vehicles—trucks; necessity for a high degree of skill in the
drivers; great weight, which would bar its use in districts where road
culverts and bridges are weak; considerable noise and the showering of
sparks which handicap it as a surprise weapon. But most of the above,
which are only a few of the limitations, can be resolved into a problem of
basic design. The solution may or may not be at hand in the present
commercial tractor and the truck with removable caterpillar tread, indeed
the whole problem is a big one. The fact remains, however, that the
number of men, who by training and environment are horse handlers is
constantly on the decline and specialists in this work, such as
horseshoers, are getting scarcer and scarcer. The number of men with a
fundamental knowledge of motors is increasing and the number of expert
specialists, such as garage mechanics who would be drafted for a war
army, is daily increasing.
More recently the writer was fortunate in his assignment to the 83rd
Field Artillery at Fort Benning, Ga., and though the limitations of motor
artillery are still obvious and many, it is his firm
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