Batteries of dummy guns are often used in this, as in former wars, to deceive the enemy.
It is highly important to have good points of observation within the first lines, whence the enemy’s defences may be searched with powerful field-glasses. To meet this need, artificial trees, rocks, etc., have been provided when nature failed to supply them.
The camouflage of the French army has been entrusted to a special corps of professional artists, which has proved a most useful unit, since it is necessary that the work done should deceive not only the human eye, but the sensitive plate of the camera.
CHAPTER IV
COMPOSITION AND USE OF THE ARTILLERY
1. Retrospective view. General considerations.
2. Different sorts of artillery: Artillery of an Army; Artillery of an Army Corps; Artillery of a Division; Trench artillery “Tanks,” or artillery of assault.
3. Mission and use of the artillery during a battle.
4. Anti-aircraft artillery.
5. Advance or withdrawal of the batteries.
6. Conclusion.
1. Retrospective view. General considerations. In the French army long before the war, several clear-headed and well-informed men had foreseen the necessity of having a large, heavy field artillery, similar to that of Germany.
To recall General Pétain’s motto: “The artillery conquers the positions, the infantry occupies them”—this simple axiomatic statement obviously compels the inference that an army shall possess an artillery able to bombard efficiently every species of fortification.
Unfortunately few people in the Government or parliamentary spheres could be brought to consider the possibility of a war; so this question of a heavy artillery, although continually agitated in those circles, remained unsolved.
In 1914, the immense majority of the French nation, including not only the politicians but also a great many army officers, scoffed at the possibility of a war with Germany. The Moroccan imbroglio, the war in the Balkans, and the Austrian policy of conquest were not sufficient warning for them. That France’s military preparation was entirely inadequate, and that this was due solely to the lethargy of the national mind, is generally admitted to-day. During the first year of the war, not only were we hopelessly outclassed in heavy artillery, but at Lille, Maubeuge, and La Fère the Germans captured a goodly number of our heavy guns with their munitions, and turned them against us. Fortunately we are able to assert that they used them with very little advantage to themselves.