the field artillery journal - Fort Sill - U.S. Army

THE FIELD ARTILLERY JOURNAL
etc. They are pointed very high in the air, an angle of 40º giving them
their maximum range. They are sighted by knowing the angle made by
a fixed point on their flank, their own position and the enemy's battery. .
. . From each gun runs quite an elaborate telephone system; it connects
with everything, even wireless on the aeroplanes. This battery had
seven scouts in their front, who telephone how their shells are going and
correct their fire. . . . A battery of 120 mm. long was wonderfully
hidden in a wooded swamp. You could stand within 50 yards of it and
not know there was anything there. It had been in position three months
without the Germans finding it."
Of German astuteness he says: "Lieutenant Kula told me that on
three successive days, although they changed position twice, the
Germans opened fire on them accurately. . . . One of the men noticed a
dead German lying on the field some distance and thought that he saw
him move. They investigated. He was not dead nor wounded, and
underneath him was a telephone. There he had been lying three days
correcting the fire of his friends." A.W.G.
STUDIES IN MINOR TACTICS, 1915. Press of the Army Service Schools,
Fort Leavenworth, Kan., 1915. Price, postpaid, $0.50.
The authors of this book are to be congratulated on a very readable,
interesting, and valuable addition to the literature of the profession. As
far as possible the central idea of the work, namely, to make the
situation continuous through a series of problems, has been carried out.
This greatly increases the inexperienced student's interest in the work,
without in any way impairing its tactical value.
The problems in artillery are as well-written and as well worked out as
any problems can be under the system now in force at the service schools.
As is however very clearly explained in the preface, there cannot really
be any artillery minor tactics for non-artillery officers. The only minor
tactics which affect artillery are those movements of the guns which are
usually familiar only to officers of that arm. What is needed is a special
course or sub-course in artillery tactics for non-artillery officers in which
the subject would be developed to the exact extent useful to commanding
officers of mixed troops, something analogous to the present engineering
course at Leavenworth. Such a course would be in no sense minor tactics
at all. By its very nature it would be a branch of the art of war utterly
foreign to the duties of an infantry subaltern.
These remarks must not, however, be construed as any reflection
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