WAR'S STRAIN ON THE GUNNERS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 84, 2 January 1918, Page 6

WAR'S STRAIN ON THE GUNNERS

NO TRUE BEST OR CHANGE OF CLOTHES. It is the gallantry and steadiness of our infantry that must in the last resort win battles (writes Mr. 11. Perry Robinson iroi.n the British front in Franco). Yv'ithouii them there.is no vioiory. But the few glorious hours of infantry advance aro made possiblo only by the no less glorious, if less spectacular, weeks of labour by the iiuas.

The reader at a distance perhaps :an imagine guas at work only as lie may have seen the;;; on some battleship at practice or from the eolid, peaceful embrasures in some coast fortress.' Try, instead, to visualise .fcheso battlefields, with the endless expanse of grey-brown slime- and stagnant ■.rater across which batteries aro pushed forward with incredible difficulty,, and where every round of ammunition to the forward field guns must sometimes bo packed on human backs, for mule or pony can get over the sodden, shell-torn ground. Here is no shelter for guns or gunners either from weather or enemy fire. A brigado commander is lucky if he has a dug-out for his staff headquarters^ Of rest in its true oense, or changing of clothes, of any comfort, there is none. What sleep is taken must bo snatched on a waterproof sheet spread upon tho slime. Meals are bolted a. , ; they may be- amid the all pervading horror of tho mud. Men sit down on an ammunition box to eat, and fall into a stupor as they sit. Officers drop asleep in tho act of giving a command to tho guns. And it never ends. And always there aro the enemy's shells, though it is the ono. kindly property of mud that it deadens the explosion of shells and makes their killing power less.

We know that what we do to tho German batteries is worse than anything ' they do ,'io .ours. So fearful is the damage that we do that it is no uncommon thing for us to find German reports in which we are credited with having three- times as many guns in a given area as wo have; and tnosa guns are accused of having carried out twice as many destructive shoots or "batteries" as has really been tho case.

None the less, the German artillery hero is very formidable. Many of tho enemy's guns are always reserved for counter-battery work, if occasionally inactive, and of late he has been shelling our forward positions comparatively little, devoting by far tho greater part of his attention to our guns. This again, is a compliment to our artillery, but it is a' compliment it could dispense with.

The real marvel' of what our -gunners aro doing, and have done, is not any measuro of the courago which they exhibit in facing danger, superb though that may be, but it lies in the enormous physical and nervous strain to which they are subjected. All tho guns have longer spells of work in tho line than any infantry, and some incomparably longer than others. Tho gunners have often to face long spells of work which would, in any circumstances, test human endurance to .tho uttermost," but in conditions such as those which prevail here now the things they have to do, the strain they stand, tho spirit and cheerfulness with which they carry on, are almost superhuman.