BROKEN WINGS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2838, 1 August 1916, Page 9

BROKEN WINGS

REPAIRING SMASHED TARGETS THE LEADEN WAY (By Will Lawson.) Day after day,, almost continuously at Treutham, the roar and rattle of riflo fire comes from fee ranges, and a veritable hail of metal beats remorsely upon the targets of various kinds that are set up to test tho marksmen. So great is the quantity of metal hurled at tho targets that its recovery br digging, from the earth-banks behind the targets, has become quite a profitable camp industry. ' And what of the targets through which this holocaust of bullets is driven? Some idea of how they suffer may be gathered from the fact that every month 200 new targets are required, while over SOO have to be repapered. What, twelve months ago,- was the work of a few fatigue parties has developed to such an extent that eleven men are permanently employed at making and repairing targets, while a daily fatigue party of ten men. assists them. The workshop in which this work is carried out closely resembles the scenery workshop of a big theatrical firm, and it occupies a long building near the eastern parade ground. In the yards adjoining there are stacks of timber drying, for in target-making the timber must be seasoned. White pine is used chiefly, its recommendation being that it does not splinter when pierced by bullets, as would rimu, kauri, and other woods. No nails or metal of any kind are used. All joints are mortised and dowelled with wooden dowels, and the surface of the target is of paper, stretched on scrim. The weak points of the target, so far as rifle fire is concerned, are its mortises if a number of bullets chance to strike the same mortise the target is apt to collapse; but, in the straight, soft wood, tho bullets simply boro through, and come to rest in tho earth beyond. Some idea of how the rifle firo honeycombs tho targets may be had by inspecting, for example, a land scapo screen after it has been fired at for some time at a range of 25 yards. This kind of target is a long, narrow one, and it is set up on its side. On the surface facing the rifles is a country scene, showing hills, roads, farms, cottages, and other rural objects, all-drawn to a scale which, at 25 yards' range, gives the same, effect as would the actual countrjTside' at a range of several thousand yards. Shooting at it seems easy, but soldiers will tell you how difficult it is to hit tho object pointed out by tho instructor. But, oven so, tho landscape screens arc returned to the woTSsnop simply riddled with bullets. In course of time their woodwork becomes so perforated that it has to be renewed. The machine-gun targets are another much-injured section of the target community, which spends a good deal of its timo in the repair shop. They leave the shop for the range at Papawai, all spick and span in new paper and paint, and with realistic representations of lines troops on their flat, smooth faces. The machine-guns aro never more venomous than when they are faced with several of these, targets, and the result is that when .th'e targets are bundled back to T>e overhauled, they are mere wrecks of their former selves, and frequently they have to be entirely rebuilt. There is another target connected with machine-guns, but in this case it is not exclusively a mark for the Lewis and Vickers and Maxims. The target represents tho heads and shoulders of \the two men who are working a machinegun—one is firing and the other feeding the gun with cartridges. Their fresh, ruddy complexions—all the work of the artists of the target factory—make them appear as easy marks for rifle and ma-cliine-gun. But they are anything but that: in fact, the. many targets, made of wood and painted to represent men standing, kneeling, walking in long grass, sighting a. rifle, peering over the edgo of a trench—all these are hard marks to hit, and their renovation generally consists of the application of fresh paint. . The heaviest target casualties are sustained by the targets that wave their vanes, like the wings of white birds, as they are revolved in their trenches at the end of each gust of rifle-fire; the targets that face day after day the hail of hurtling metal. By hook or by crook these survive each day's ordeal, patches of paper covering the bullot holes and their woodwork hanging together somehow. . Then some of their places are taken by raw, new things that have never heard a. bullet's foug or tho whacking ring of the distant rifles. The musketry workshop is a busy place, where everything that is used in connection with the aiming of rifles and the recording of the results is made—everything, that is, except the rifles and live cartridges. Dummy cartridges, with wooden bullets, sight-testing apparatus by which the recruits' aiming is checked and corrected and many other indispensable things are shaped and stored there for future use. Listen! From the ranges, the sound of roaring rifle-fire comes, like,tho dropping of immense stonos from immense heights into a creek with a stony bottom— "plong! plong! ploug-plong-plong! r-r-oar! plong!" So it goes on. Some men are carrying out a brand new tar-, get, its'taut paper and scrim boom liko a drum to the touch. And other men are bringing in a wrecked mass of wood and, paper, a demoralised target that has' been plugged in its mortises. They are always busy in the target factory, and are likely to lxs busier still as the amount of ammunition served out increases.