A MOUNTAIN GUN.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 2203, 11 July 1910, Page 7

A MOUNTAIN GUN.

I was chatting at the club with some service men one day last week, when the question of trials with new guns cropped up. One of my friends had had to do with the Ordnance Committee some years ago. He told us of a small light gun which had been submitted to the War Office. The inventor claimed that it could not only be carried intact upon a mule, but that it could be fired from the animal’s back. A day for the demonstration was appointed, and the committee attended. A mule, with the gun on him, was led up in the line of the targets. The committee stood round, the gun was loaded, and would have been discharged, had not someone suggested that it was safer to fire it, for the first time, with a time fuse. This suggestion was adopted, and a fifteen-second fuse attached to the gun. The gun was pointed towards the butts, and they all stood away. Left to his own devices, the mule appeared more interested in some thistles than in the trial, and slowly turned itself round, with the muzzle pointing at the on-lookers. There was a yell of horror, and the committee flung themselves flat on the ground. No one ever knew where the shot went, but the recoil rolled the unsuspecting mule flat on his back.