AN EXPERIENCE WITH A TERRITORIAL FIELD BATTERY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] Si.n,-Knowing your interest in all that concerns our citizen soldiers, I think you may like to hear something of the experiences of a brigade of the new Territorial Field Artillery from the point of view of an onlooker. On learning where the annual camp-training was to take place, the Commanding Officer, greatly daring, determined to 9nurch his brigade thither. Leave was applied for and granted, but there were not a few who proclaimed that the whole idea was impossible. I should say that in the past the brigade has been armed with heavy guns, the last being 4.7. Now it nominally consists of three four-gun batteries of the converted fifteen-pounder guns. Only four of these latter have up to the present time been delivered. For the purposes of the march there were eight guns, four fifteen-pounders and four twelve-pounder Royal Horse Artillery guns. Our transport consisted of four ammunition waggons, two lorries, and two furniture removal vans, covered with canvas to make less prominent the fact of
their daily occupation. These with three hundred and twenty men and seventeen officers and some hundred and thirty horses constituted our marching strength. We moved out from bead-quarters late in the afternoon of Saturday, . July 25th, and reached our permanent camp on Sunday, August 7th. We had in all nine marches, covering on an average ten or eleven miles a day. The weather and scenery alike were delightful, and beyond some sore. feet there was no sickness or accident amongst the. men, and only one horse badly hurt. What makes the successful issue of the march . more remarkable is the fact of the conditions under which it • was undertaken. For years the brigade has had no Royal Artillery Adjutant. The Adjutant is and has been a gentle- man who has his own business to attend to. With the exception of the Quarter-master, the senior Subaltern (who had seen a good deal of service under General French in South Africa), the brigade instructors and a few others, no , one had any experience, e.g., in picketing horses, or of the routine work of a constantly moving camp. These and other things had to be learnt en. route. The first night was certainly not joyful. We did not get into camp until late, but after two days the work went quite smoothly, and the new. routine quickly became second nature. The greatest praise is due to the gun-drivers. How they managed to do as well as they did is a mystery. For reasons of supposed economy the horses of which the men had some knowledge could not be hired by the brigade authorities. With the exception of the twelve horses belonging to one section of one of the batteries, every horse was new to its job, and every driver new to every horse. Imagine the scene in the drill-shed on the Saturday morning, as all these strange horses kept arriving, the place packed with the animals, harness, waggons, guns, and men.. For untrained men did ever task look more hopeless P That order was so quickly evolved out of such chaos speaks volumes for all concerned, and the pluck of the drivers of the gun-teams who dared to drive these strange cattle is beyond praise. That under such circumstances we should have moved off with six horses to a gun seems little short of a miracle. By the end of a fortnight the drivers had become so expert that they could manipulate difficult gates and very rough roads with comparative ease, and bring their guns smartly into action at a trot. The humours of the road were not wanting. Those from whom the local harness was hired saw to that. The owners thereof evidently hoped to claim a new set on our return, to judge by its condition at starting. It so happened, however, that the officer in charge of the transport was the very man for the job. He had done some trekking in Matabeleland, knew what roughing it meant, and had no false pride. If a difficulty came along, the thing was to get out of it, never mind from whom the needful suggestion came. He ran his show, he said, not on Army, but on Republican lines. On the second day's march a breakdown occurred among the transport waggons; no one seemed quite to know what to do, but seated on a wall hard by was a broken-down individual who immediately began to give advice. The aforementioned officer, realising its sanity, at once enlisted the man in his service, and it is truth to say that his services were invaluable. He became, in short, the Deus ex machiva of the expedi- tion. Whenever anything went wrong there " Stevie," as he came to be called, was to be found. He was an absolute genius with a horse, became the right-hand man of the Brigade Sergeant-Major, and was known in the ranks as the regimental pet. When not otherwise engaged on the march, he lay on the top of one of the furniture vans ready for any emergency that might arise. The fact that there were only two batteries of guns instead of three made the work more irksome and difficult than it would otherwise have been, for no one likes chopping and changing. To the credit of the men be it said that all ranks did their best to make the training effective. What struck me per- haps as much as anything was the amount of latent capacity in all ranks. Given the implements of their trade, coupled with encouragement and sympathetic instruction, great strides can no doubt be made in efficiency. If the Territorial. Field Artillery is to succeed, it is earnestly to be hoped that . officers and non-commissioned officers of the Regular batteries. stationed in the neighbourhood of the Territorial ones will do all that in them lies to stimulate and help them. The warm- hearted friendliness of the Major and non-commissioned officers of the 103rd Battery towards the non-commissioned officers of the brigade of which I am speaking, is one of its happiest memories. They helped them in every possible way when they were heavy Artillery; such help will be all the more valuable in their new role. Space forbids me to say more; I can only hope that the late venture may be the augury of future success, and that it may be an encourage- ment to an exceedingly capable lot of officers to make the brigade what it may be made by keen interest and diligent work. I ought to say that the work of the brigade Sergeant- Major was beyond all praise. There surely never was a man more fitted for his post !—I am, Sir, &c., ONLOOKER.
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