THE " SPECTATOR " EXPERIMENTAL COMPANY.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—As your readers are already aware, I have not during the musketry practice of the Company been free from con- siderable anxiety as to the result. The scores made in several of the earlier practices were but moderate, and I began to fear that I bad imposed upon the men too high a trial.
It is therefore not merely a great joy to me, but also an immense ralief, to be able now to report that we have thirty-one marksmen and fifty first-class shots, and that the figure of merit, 190834, exceeds by far my most sanguine expectations. Had the average reached only 175—the standard of " first-class shots "- I should, in the circumstances, have been perfectly satisfied. It is now desirable, I think, to detail the precise conditions under which the Company commenced the " Trained Soldier's Course, Table B." Neither time nor funds admitted of our attempting to fire both the "Recruit's Course, Table A," and the Trained Soldier's Course. I decided to undertake the latter, although well aware of the great risk of failure. Instead of firing the 200 rounds prescribed for the Recruit's Course, our men fired only twenty rounds, on the thirty yards range at the barracks, merely to accustom them to the recoil and noise. For actual instruction in musketry we have depended upon the Wilkinson Sub-Target, aided by plenty of "position drill,"—not of the modern type, but of that which I myself and the rest of my contemporaries were accustomed to undergo five-and-twenty to thirty years ago. The drill is in any case essential; but for the instruction required to make a good shot I am convinced that the " Sub-Target "Is
worth at least 150 rounds of the Recruit's Course. At all events, I elected to stand or fall by the Sub-Target, and the result has justified me. Of the miniature range I think very little in com- parison, and except for recreation we have made little use of it. Its influence upon our musketry average I regard as negligible.
So much for the means and methods of instruction. We now pass to the disclosure of a very serious disadvantage under which our men have laboured. Fearing a heavy charge for damage on account of wear and tear, I borrowed from the War Office only twenty-five " Service " rifles (in addition to the condemned weapons used for "drill purposes "), with the result that, in spite of every effort, it was found impossible to arrange that each man should shoot at every distance with the same rifle ; our difficulties were, moreover, increased by the fact that several rifles were undeniably bad ones, and consequently unpopular. That the rifles differed in value is. I venture to think, at least suggested, if not proved, by the fact that under my own eye a man who is now a marksman made no score whatever in practice 17, simply because he could not have the rifle he had usually fired with. The " order of firing" is changed with each practice, and the result was that two men detailed for the same rifle were sometimes at the firing-point together, so that one or other had to use whatever rifle he could get.
I now pass to what is, in my opinion, the most remarkable feature of our course of musketry. No less than 37 men failed to "qualify"; that is to say, failed to make 95 points in the "qualify- ing practices." Properly speaking, these men should have repeated the practices again and again until they had succeeded. For this we had neither time nor surplus instructors. I there- fore decided to let them fire with the Company on probation, and to discard any who appeared absolutely hopeless after firing the practices at 200 yards. I so discarded seven men, and two others subsequently became "casuals,"—one owing to an accident in the gymnasium, and another owing to the illness of his mother. Thus the actual number who completed the course was 94 out of a total of 103. Included in the 94 were 28 who had failed to "qualify," and yet we have no third-class shots in the Company. The achievements of these 28 men appear deserving of notice. Five became marksmen, and 15 first-class shots. Two men, both of whom had made only 62 points in the qualifying practices, made 196 and 191 respectively ; and another who had made but 66 succeeded in scoring 197. My idea was that if the men had in them the qualities necessary for good shooting, the actual course would probably develop those qualities just as well as a repetition of the qualifying practices. I do not pretend that the results might not have been much better after a second attempt to qualify, yet I venture my opinion that they have been good enough for all practical purposes. At all events, the Commandant of the School of Musketry has informed me that this year an average of 180 points is considered good, and that last year 165 was the measure of the higher standard of shooting. We have, as I have already boasted, made 196-84, in spite of the fact that about one-third of the men who fired the course had failed to qualify ; whereas in the Regular Army no soldier fires the course until after he has first qualified for it.
One thing more. Our best scores have been made in " snap- shooting." I can only explain this result with but partially drilled men by confessing that, my principal anxiety having been upon account of those practices, every spare moment was recently devoted to preparation for them,—to, I fear, the neglect of the others. The "running man" and "vanishing" targets held possession of the barrack square daily with perhaps wearisome persistency, the men snapping at them with dummy cartridges. The lower half of the stable-door furnished conveniently the neidful cover for a fatigue man representing the vanishing figure. In the event, four men made " possibles" in all four of the concluding practices, and at least half the Company made two or more " possibles " in the same four. Upon one occasion the left- hand target was raised accidentally, without the rest, and imme- diately lowered; but, brief as had been this exposure, the target was struck.
Whether we shall eventually fire the " Marksmen's Classes " or no, I am at present unable to say. It is obvious that if the marksmen go to the range they must thereby miss other instruc- tion, and by the withdrawal of instructors from the rest of the Company in order to supervise the shooting occasion some inconvenience. However, if I can see my way to it, I hope to give the marksmen an opportunity of establishing their reputa- tions,—or the contrary.
In conclusion. I can only express a hope that when the sub- scribers and others see the Company at drill, and engaged in a small field-day on Friday, our efforts to win their approval may meet with reasonable success. The Company signallers will that day make their debut ; they have not hitherto attempted to perform their task in the course of actual operations. We shall also employ in the field for the first time the " Barr and Stroud Range-Finder," in the use of which all the lance-corporals and many of the privates are now expert. The superiority of this range-finder over all others with which I am acquainted lies in the fact that a single operator, lying down, can take the range with it with almost absolute accuracy. That it is reliable is proved by the fact that three or four men taking the same range will seldom differ by more than five yards. Finally, I will ask subscribers to bear in mind that the field-day which is to take place on Friday will be the first that we have attempted. Apologising for the rather unwarrantable length of this letter, my only excuse for which is my own satisfaction in having com- mand of such keen soldiers—both instructors and instructed— I am, Sir, &e., A. W. A. Poixocir, Lieut.-Colonel.
Ifoupslow, July Ma.
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