INFANTRY AND FIELD ARTILLERY.
While stories told of the awful havoc wrought by the German siege guns in reducing the forts and fortifications in France and Belgium are true, it is also true that the bulwark of the military organization is the infantry and field artillery. The big guns may level the forts and reduce them to powder, driving off the opposing forces, but the infantry must advance and the small arms and rapid-fire guns must keep the opposing forces from resuming the position which they had abandoned.
The difficulty of handling the big guns has always been a problem, except in fortifications and at fixed points of defense, and it has only been within a few years that a solution of the trouble has been found. The solution lay in the use of tractors, or the tractor principle, which every person familiar with farming and the "traction engine" can recognize.
Germany and Austria, as in many other matters, solved the problem by building mortars for field service which outclassed the heaviest artillery of the old type, and mounting them on tractors. It would require a team of probably forty horses to pull one of the German 42-centimeter guns over the rough ground, and then a relay would be required every few hours. An immense number of horses would be required and the transportation would be slow, and not certain at best.
Early in the war Austria sent to the front a battery of 80-centimeter howitzers, and from the famous Krupp gun works there were 21 and 28-centimeter howitzers. Later came the 42-centimeter guns, which are classed as automobile field artillery. These are the weapons which leveled the forts at Liege and were used to bombard Fort Maubeuge.
The immense howitzers, with their caterpillar wheels, are taken apart and transported to the scene of action in sections, or units. An automobile tractor carries the artillery crew and tools and furnishes the motive power. The second car carries the platform and turntable on which the gun is mounted, and the third hauls the barrel, or gun proper.
THE MOVING OF HEAVY WEAPONS.
The weapons can be moved anywhere, though they weigh as much as forty tons in some cases. Sometimes it is necessary to build special roads where fields must be crossed, but on the highways there is little trouble. The big howitzers are built on the principle of the large caliber guns used on battleships—that is, there is a system of recoil springs and air cushions to take up the shock when the gun is fired, so that the terrific energy, when the charge is exploded, shall not be borne by the breech of the gun. The howitzers can be turned in any direction, and the gearing attached to the mounting is such that the barrels can be pitched at any angle.
Such guns fire an explosive shell weighing from 500 to 1000 pounds, and because of their form of construction—they have shorter barrels than the naval guns—which reduces the surface of the barrel subject to erosion, they are longer lived than the long guns. The endurance of the guns is a factor because it is difficult to get repairs for such great weapons on the field of battle.
At the outbreak the contending forces are said to have had 4,000 guns in the field artillery. Among the devices of interest identified with the artillery is the armored automobile, which has been described as the "cavalry" of motor driven artillery. The advent of the armored automobile in the war changed many features of campaigning and helped to revolutionize military methods. The armored automobile is an ordinary chassis with a body made of chilled steel.