MACHINE GUNS AND MOBILITY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 15303, 26 August 1920, Page 4

MACHINE GUNS AND MOBILITY.

derous machine gnm fire from their saddles into the Tanks of the pursuing- Poles who suffered terrible losses. * The Poles were forced to abandon their line of the Slucz and to retreat west of Rovno, continually harassed and decimated by Budenny's cavalry. The entire Polish Iron? was shaken and became involved m this retreat. The Poles lay stress on the fact that their front was never really broken, but rendered untenable by General-Budenny's sudden appearance m their rear and his entirely novel tactics. . ' * General Pilsudslty now is organising a special force with which to -oppose the .{led leaders' machine-gun cavalry. General Budenny has laid waste the entire district around Rovnp, burning farms and villages, shooting peasants and torttfringPolish, prisoners so cruelly, that m many cases the retiring Poles liave shot their own wounded, whom they were forced to leave behind, m order to $avo them from falling into his hands alive. „ r ' I j

.GENEVA, July 14— How General Budenny's cavalry thrust against the forces of the Polish commander Pilsudsky I was so successful is attributed by observers to the mobility of a mounted troop' arid to the fact that each horseman carried 'behind his saddle a machine gun. . There is no system of permanent trenches along ihe vast Polish front m Russia as was the case during the war m France and there are inevitably many gaps where troops are few and far be-: tween. Through one such gap to the northwestward of. Kiev, Budenny slipped with bis; 2o,ooo picked horsemen, each man carrying mounted on tho saddle behind him -a-niachipe gun -of _peeially light construction. The marvellous mobility i>i General- Budenny's force upset all of Marshal- Pilsudsky >. calculations and, the enormous number of machine guns at his disposal rendered It. equal m fighting power to much large* bodies of infantry,-

Advancing with extraordinary rapidity, General Budenhy captured Hqvno. : and then pushed on to Dubno, almost 100 miles In the rear of the line of Slucz which the Poles were holding with 100,000 men. before the Polish general stair giew fully aware of his movement. When outnumbered iv battle, General Budennyadopted parthtan tactics and his troopers Jdcnjiu; precipitate Hi:. IU U'mKd a unir