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Of these, one was on the eastern side of the Adige and merely cannonaded across the valley: another column wound painfully with most of the artillery and cavalry along the western bank, making for the village of Incanale and the foot of the zigzag leading up to Rivoli: three others denied over Monte Baldo by difficult paths impassable to cannon: while the sixth and westernmost column, winding along the ridge near Lake Garda, likewise lacked the power which field-guns and horsemen would have added to its important turning movement.
Two field-guns were brought up on the night of the 14th and placed in épaulements that had been dug in rear of the front-line trench to receive them. They were to be kept masked till the last moment before the attack, when they would cut wire and silence machine-guns along the front over which we were to attack.
Besides the Turks, the only troops to oppose them were the cavalry at the west end of the valley, the 93rd Highlanders, under Sir Colin Campbell, and the marines and naval brigade on the heights above Balaclava, with a battery of field-guns.
Then a flash from one of the field-guns of our 3rd Division caught my eye, and before the sharp bark of it reached my ear, a white tuft of cotton-wool-like smoke suddenly appeared in the air above the galloping Cossacks, and more of them went down.
The city was open to the enemy at all sides, save where we held our footing; large forces marched in and out of the town; provisions and stores poured into it; and we can scarcely be said to have fired a shot at it until our batteries opened to effect a breach a few days before the final assault. The artillery consisted of some thirty pieces, mostly light field-guns.
I ordered Resaca to be further reenforced by rail from Kingston, and ordered General Cox to make a bold reconnoissance down the Coosa Valley, which captured and brought into Rome some cavalrymen and a couple of field-guns, with their horses and men.
The enemy soon stopped this ineffective fire from his field-guns, however, and on the basis of careful observations made from a captive balloon behind Hilgard, the Japanese began using explosive shells in place of the shrapnel. The very first shots produced terrible devastation.
Sure it's an infantry fight, and must be, wid the field-guns helpin', and the siege pieces boomin' away over the throops in the mud betwigst our own breastworks and the inner line of our forts.
This force did not appear sufficiently strong to resist the three or four thousand Boers, with field-guns, who were advancing to its attack under one of their best Generals namely Cronje but everyone remained wonderfully calm, and the townspeople rose to the occasion in a most creditable manner.
I ordered Resaca to be further reenforced by rail from Kingston, and ordered General Cox to make a bold reconnoissance down the Coosa Valley, which captured and brought into Rome some cavalrymen and a couple of field-guns, with their horses and men.
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