NEW METHODS AT THE FRONT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 4459, 29 January 1917, Page 3

NEW METHODS AT THE FRONT.

FRENCH ARMY NOW ALL SPECIALISTS.

RIFLES IN A NEW ROLE

(From H. Warner Allen.)

With the French Army, Nov. ,20.

A visit to an infantry training school is a remarkable object-lesson of the profound changes in military methods that have resulted from two years’ experience of war. The new French system has already been partially tested in the Somme offensive and the Verdun victory. It is still too early for it to have given anything like its full results, but experience has shown that it ensures the maximum of efficiency with the minimum of loss. The French, starting from their quality of initiative, in which the German soldier, however groat his qualities as a disciplined machine, -c. notoriously lacking, have devised a system which takes advantage in the highest degree of all the weapons that the present war has -shown to be most effective. Just after the Champagne offensive on September 25, 1915, a French officer said to me; “Our army has become an army of specialists.” If the generalisation was true then, it is infinitely more true to-day. Modern infantry tactics are bound to centre round what the French call the “specialties.” The rifle in trench and shell-hole warfare has but an insignificant part to play as a propeller of bullets. It still holds its place as a fighting handle to the bayonet, and it Jins found a new use as a propeller af grenades. But the essential weapon of the infantry is the grenade supported by the “fusil mitrailleur” (automatic rifle) and the bayonet.

THE OLD AND THE NEW. The exposition of the new tactics that we witnessed yesterday opened with a defensive manoeuvre according to the old system. A company in a trench received an attack with rifle lire. The firing was heavy and continuous, and would no doubt have stopped any charge across open ground. But by hypothesis the ground was riddled with shell holes, capable of providing the advancing infantry with shelter. Moreover, the riflemen firing over .the parapet wouly in a real engagement have been exposed to a barrage fire. Then an attack was received in accordance with the now method by half a company of specialists in the new weapons. It was obvious to the merest novice that their fire was far more deadly than the rifle fire of the whole company had been. In front of the trench was a zone of death that the best troops in the world could scarcely pass. The fusiliers, that is, the men armed with the grenade rifle, were tbe first to open fire. They threw a screen ot grenades along the front of the trench at a distanced’ between 150 and 200 yards, firing a surprisingly large number of grenades to tbe minute_ Thirty seconds later everything find disappeared in thick waves of smoke. There was one perpetual rattle of explosions. There was a clearly marked zone, as we saw when wo wont over the ground afterwards, in which m, man could have lived. Shell-boles otfored but feeble protection, for the grenades were shot into the air as though from a mortar, and would have promptly disposed of any men who had taken shelter. The fusiliers themselves could fire from then trench without exposing themselves at all. A LINE OF VOLCANOES.

In the next phase of the action it was supposed that the enemy had succeeded in passing the zone of the rifle grenades. The hand grenadiers were ready for him, and for a second or two we had a vision of men industriously tapping their grenades as a man might crack a hard-boiled egg, to set the fuses, and then hurling them with a swift automatic motion thirty or forty yards in front of their trench. Then the explosions and the smoke started again, and a fresh line of miniature volcanoes opened across the enemy’s path. It seemed inconceivable that any German could ever have come through that fire alive, and if be did there were the trusty bayonets of the voltigeur's waiting for him. It might almost be said that the grenadier is the foundation of the infantry of to-day. The French grenadiers are picked men. They are organised in small groups, each commanded by a. non-commissioned officer, so that all their movements may be as elastic as possible and that each man my have that confidence in In's comrde which can only come from intimate acquaintance. In close quarter fighting the revolver has its part to play, and, as a general rule, it is the secondary armament of the specialist troops. The bayonet is still indispensable, and it is still the principal weapon of a large proportion of the infantry, though every infantryman under _ the new training is a specialist in every weapon that is used.