ARTILLERY
I have at all times been tremendously impressed with the dominant importance in this war of artillery. My personal observations lead me to estimate that the percentage of casualties from artillery wounds has been nearly 50% of the total.
There are very distinct differences in the methods of the French and German field artilleries. The French field artillery is always used in indirect fire and the positions are usually a long distance behind the infantry—from fifteen to twenty-five hundred yards. The emplacements are often in deep wooded valleys. Too close proximity to the infantry is avoided.
In contrast to this, the German field artillery is nearly always very close to the infantry and is frequently in position for direct fire. In the most typical German arrangement the infantry trenches are on the front face of a hill along the “military crest” with the artillery two or three hundred yards behind over the natural crest. One often sees German field guns in such a position that it is difficult to say whether they are in “direct” or “indirect” fire.
In battles where there are no rapid retreats and rapid advances it seems to be the custom for batteries to be silent for one or two days while the battery commander, by means of observers, aëroplanes, and spies, endeavors to locate an objective. The point to be made is that the main forces of artillery do not seem to fire very continuously. Oftentimes in the middle of a very tense battle where heavy forces are opposed to each other there will be periods of half an hour or even longer when no firing whatsoever is to be heard. The importance of observers has become tremendous. On some occasions it seems as though the main object of an army were to get a single man into a location from which he can accurately observe the enemy’s position, and as if until this is accomplished the whole battle is at a standstill. Both sides try continuously in all sorts of original ways to get information. The German tendency is toward the use of spies, while the French more often employ daring volunteer observers who sacrifice their lives in order successfully to direct fire for even five or ten minutes. Aëroplanes are used for the same purpose by all nations, but with less and less success as the war progresses, because hostile infantry and artillery are better and better hidden. It has now become almost impossible for an aëroplane to locate hostile artillery except by the flashes. Battery positions are either placed in forests, or artificial woods are built around them. It is almost axiomatic that artillery shall give no signs of life while an enemy’s aëroplane is above, and as the result of this, one well-recognized method of temporarily silencing an enemy’s battery is to keep an aëroplane flying over its neighborhood. Volunteer observers are frequently disguised and sent forward to hunt for a place from which they can observe the hostile trenches of artillery and thus direct and correct the fire of their own batteries. Observers who thus volunteer to go forward are virtually always decorated and made officers, if, by some fortunate chance, they both succeed and survive. The French artillery officers take advantage of every “assist”; for instance, I saw a case where a shell made a groove on the reverse side of a hill and glanced off. The shell exploded, but its fuse was recovered by the French, the setting of the fuse determined, and by means of this and the direction of the groove made in the hill the German battery was located. The French reported that they had destroyed the battery. One of their aëroplanes was sent up before firing was begun and later observed the battery’s efforts to escape.
The French batteries are usually so far behind the infantry that when they have come under heavy artillery fire there is no danger of capture. The custom with the French seems to be, in a case like this, for the personnel to run and take cover during the bombardment. I saw this happen twice, and I learned of numerous other cases. Cover underground is constructed for all the personnel of the batteries. One enters these subterranean quarters through entrances which look very much like enlarged woodchuck holes. With no artillery of any nationality did I see any gun entrenchment other than a slight mound of earth coming up to the bottom of the shield. All guns that I have seen were in a line, except in cases where there was some peculiar rising of terrain. I have several times seen a “group” together in one line, at intervals of about twenty yards. In practice, the French tend to extend the intervals to about twenty-five yards, while the Germans either decrease them to about fifteen yards, or have the guns quite isolated, seventy-five or one hundred yards apart.
Telephones are the only instruments of which I have observed the use in the immediate neighborhood of French batteries. The battery commander controls the fire by word of mouth.
The French 75-mm. gun is the only field-piece which under practical field conditions does not “jump.” This gives a tremendous advantage to the French artillery in such duels as frequently take place in battles where there is rapid movement. I have been on battlefields after action had finished and observed positions where two batteries had shot at each other, both being in “direct fire” position. The French pieces can fire at a rate of twenty-five shots a minute and in such duels seem to be able to fire accurately with nearly twice the rapidity of the Germans.
The most unpleasant experience that I ever underwent occurred one day when I was directly in front of and under a French battery and it suddenly and unexpectedly fired about forty rounds in thirty seconds over my head. These discharges produced a great psychological effect and were much more disconcerting than any arrival of enemy’s shells.
I have never observed any “short burst,” or shells bursting in guns. I should judge that this accident happens very rarely, with the French, at least.
At the beginning of the war, the French carried shells and shrapnel in about equal numbers. The shells explode with the time-fuse exactly as do shrapnel. From several sources I was told that they were loaded with the new explosive which had been introduced only about three months before the beginning of hostilities. As the war progresses the French tend to use more and more of these explosive shells, which are used against infantry in the same way as are shrapnel. The only difference seems to be that they are made to burst a little lower. Their effect is very terrible. A heavy bursting charge is employed, and although the fragments are small they fly with such force that they make fatal wounds and even cut into the wood of rifle stocks. I observed the body of one German whose back had been pierced with about forty small particles of a shell which had burst close to him. These particles were as evenly spread as the charge of a shotgun. German wounded and captured Germans have told me that this French shell-fire was so hellish that no man escaped except by a miracle. The French infantry have a great affection for their “75,” and their confidence is always very greatly increased by its presence. Their spirits immediately rise when they hear it behind them. The French field artillery seem to have no favorite range but readily fire at any range. On the one hand a gun is sometimes taken into the trenches, and on the other hand I once observed a battery begin firing at 5300 meters and go to 5600 meters. One frequently sees French batteries of two and three guns and groups of eight or nine guns, lost guns not having been promptly replaced. I once saw a battery of two guns, the other two having been completely destroyed by direct fire the previous week. The heaviest piece that I saw at the front with the French was a 6-in. howitzer. The Germans use all sizes up to 12-in. in field operations, the latter being of Austrian construction. I have never discovered any conclusive evidence that Germany possesses 42-centimeter guns.
In my observations, when infantry charge infantry in battle movement, the majority of the casualties are caused by artillery. I have several times observed fields of dead infantrymen killed in an advance against infantry, where 90% of the dead had been killed by shrapnel. In my experience the Germans never use anything except shrapnel against infantry in the open. Shrapnel wounds are very ugly, being big ragged holes which usually become infected.
On the battlefields I have observed, very few German shrapnel have failed to burst in the air. In one field about a half mile square, where shrapnel cases were strewn about [I counted about forty or fifty], I observed only four craters. The French often say that the German shrapnel burst too high.
The German field artillery frequently place their caissons at a distance of two hundred yards behind the guns, there being no limbers or caissons with the guns. The ammunition is brought up by hand, each man carrying six shells in baskets holding three each. The caissons are usually in less numbers than the guns, there being two caissons behind four guns, or one caisson behind two guns.
In examining abandoned German ammunition, I have found shells bearing all dates from 1903 to 1914.
On no occasion have I seen observation ladders used by the French field artillery. This is probably due to the fact that, in general, their artillery is at so great a distance behind the scene of operations.
Shells bigger than 3-in. when used in field operations seldom do any damage, but have a tremendous moral effect even on veteran troops. The disconcerting effect of heavy shells exploding in the ground is very widely recognized at the front. The fire of big howitzers is, as a rule, very inaccurate. When one of these shells hits a building or a paved street its effect is considerable; when they burst in soft ground they are not dangerous. Most of the battlefields of France are on muddy fields, in which the 6-in. shells make a crater about forty feet in circumference and five or six feet deep. Their effect is chiefly upward and casualties are so rare as to be considered freaks. Mud is, however, thrown over the whole neighborhood. The bursting of the 12-in. shells is a very impressive sight—I saw two burst. (My authority for their caliber was a major of French artillery with whom I was standing at the time.) They burst at a distance of about 600 yards from us, one in an open field and the other in a small French village. The concussion was very heavy and even at 600 yards was felt in the feet. In the first case the air was filled with flying mud to a height of several hundred feet and there was a cloud of greasy black smoke about as large as a city block. The resultant crater was about one hundred feet in circumference, the ground being particularly soft. The second shell produced the same sensations, made the same sort of crater, and destroyed four or five small French brick and stone houses.
The largest German howitzers which are in the field were, in my personal experience, used only to bombard towns and villages.