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Updated: June 24, 2025
A hundred yards distant, on our right, the navy guns were firing lyddite that burst with a thick yellow smoke; on the other side Colt automatics were put-put-put-ing a stream of bullets; the field-guns and the howitzers were playing from a hill half a mile behind us, and scattered among the rocks about us, and for two miles on either hand, the infantry in reserve were firing off ammunition at any part of the three hills they happened to dislike!
Farther on, the branches of the avenue of trees which shaded the road had been slashed as if by a whirlwind of knives, where the French soixante-quinze field-guns had found a target.
By an old mill-house called the Moulin Vivier, outside the village of Meaulte, were masses of cavalry Indian cavalry and Dragoons drawn up densely to leave a narrow passageway for field-guns and horse-transport moving through the village, which was in utter darkness. The Indians sat like statues on their horses, motionless, dead silent. Now and again there was a jangle of bits.
But here, as at Neuve Chapelle, we found that the enemy front line, once penetrated, brought us in front of a series of strong points bristling with machine-guns, with dug-outs of almost incredible strength, some of them twenty and thirty feet under ground and safe against anything but the heaviest of field-guns, weapons that we were lamentably short of.
On this coast alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and from Colchester the brigade division of artillery, from Ipswich the R. H. A.'s with siege-guns, field-guns, quick-firing-guns, all kinds of guns spread out over every foot of ground from here to Hunstanton. They thought they'd give us a surprise party. They will never give us another surprise party!"
Field-guns and caissons filled the Tuileries garden, whilst in the grounds of the Luxembourg Palace one again found cattle and sheep; yet other members of the bovine and ovine species being installed, singularly enough, almost cheek by jowl with the hungry wild beasts of the Jardin des Plantes, whose mouths fairly watered at the sight of their natural prey.
Following up the war teachings of Nietzsche and Treitschke and others, General Von Bernhardi issued book after book defining in clear language the alleged national beneficence, biological desirability and inevitability of war, which, when it came, would be "fought to conquer for Germany the rank of a world-power;" the universities and schools and press teemed with militarist ideals and practices; the army charges rose to $250,000,000 and the trained soldiers available at the beginning of 1910 were alleged to have 6,000 field-guns; Colonel Gaedke, the German naval expert, stated on February 24th of that year that the German government was building a fleet of 58 battleships and that "the time is gradually approaching when the German fleet will be superior to all the fleets of the world, with the single exception of the English fleet," and that in the past twelve years Germany had spent on new ships alone 63,200,000 pounds, or $316,000,000, while between then and 1914 she would spend 57,500,000 pounds more, or $287,500,000.
That at any rate was a certainty, and it would settle the whole thing without a blow; for Johannesburg would have everything, and the Boers would have rifles, but neither ammunition nor field-guns.
The check administered to Colonel Gore's column at St Denis, in the first engagement of the rebellion, was the only victory which fell to the rebel forces. In the meantime Lieutenant-Colonel Wetherall, with several companies of infantry, a troop of volunteer cavalry, and two field-guns, was marching on St Charles.
Soon after this, Jack and his companions, who were watching the English cavalry, expecting to see some of them sent in pursuit of the Cossacks, greatly to their surprise observed the whole of them moving away to the northward over the ridge till they were lost to sight, summoned, apparently, by one of Lord Raglan's aides-de-camp, thus leaving Balaclava without any other defence than the Highlanders and the battery of field-guns.
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