ARMOUR AND SHIELDS. T HE Times this week has had three
very interesting articles on the question of armour as applied to modern warfare. When mobility was the essential need of the soldier—that is, when what an army had to dread most was being surrounded and destroyed by a nimble foe—it was madness to weigh down soldiers with pro- tective armour. Now, however, that trench warfare has for the time made the soldier an almost stationary creature, or at any rate confined his movements to a few hundred yards, the uses of armour are rightly being looked into very closely. Further, men are beginning to realize that with the present high-velocity bullet it is not necessary to have armour which cannot be penetrated when rigidly fixed and presented full-face to the rifle. It is sufficient if it turns aside the missile. Fortunately the modern bullet is very easily turned, especially when it strikes an object obliquely. A bone, a book, a cigarette- case, even a five-franc piece in the pocket, will often save a man from death by a bullet. Still oftener will these flimsy substitutes for armour save life in the case of scraps of shrapnel or pieces of shell which have no very great penetrating power. The French Army has already adopted the steel cap for the trenches, with excellent results. Not only are a great many men wounded in the head, but head wounds, owing to the germs preserved in hat and hair, are exceedingly likely to prove septic, and so dangerous, or even fatal. Experiments have also been tried with steel breastplates, apparently with good results ; and Dr. Hewitt, a, naval surgeon, advocates a coat of light chain-armour, or even of leather, for naval service. The difficulty with such coats or breastplates, however, is that they could not be worn per- petually, for if they were they would greatly immobilize the soldier. Better in this respect would be the device of the Italian infantry, who are said to crawl along the ground when attacking trenches with a sandbag on their backs. This gives almost perfect immunity from shrapnel or bursting shell. The bag can be thrown away or emptied with the greatest ease when it is not required. A similar advantage is in theory to be found in a shield for turning bullets. Some African tribes use the shell of a tortoise or some such creature to ward off the blows of the enemy. A shield of about that size, say eleven inches long by eight wide, if grasped strongly in the left hand and held in front of a man when running crouched down, would protect the vital parts of his body, and give him a very great deal of confidence in attack, which, after all, ie a function, and a very important function, of armour. The further advantage of the shield is that it can be made to taper to a point like a small Crusader's shield, and be driven into the earth by a, man who wished to throw himself down and shelter behind it. It used to be said that in South Africa men would for a short rush carry a small boulder with them, so that the moment they flung themselves on the ground they had shelter. A shield of hard steel is a portable boulder. The shield, too, if tapered, could be used as a spade or pickaxe when the beat of all armour, the earth, is available. The difficulty about the hand shield is, of course, its weight. The man who takes it into action must also carry a weapon of offence, and if the weapon of offence is the rifle, he will be overburdened. Even if, as happens now when the French advance, the rifle is discarded and a dagger taken instead, the shield might prove an encumbrance.
Might not the ideal be found in a moderate-sized spade, not a mere entrenching tool with a handle only a foot long, but a real spade, and a very strong one, with a metal handle, say, two feet six inches long? The outside of the spade should be slightly convex in order the better to make the bullet glance off, and the side edges should be sharpened so that it might be used as a hatchet. We venture to say that men who charged a trench with a thick spade of this kind firmly held up with both hands as a shield, one hand close up to the blade, would be in a. very good position, both for defence and offence. When they reached their enemy the spade could be used for striking, either as a. clubbed rifle is used, or else as a battleaxe, straight down like a chopper or with a side sweep. No doubt the man expert with the bayonet can do great execution therewith. It has often been noticed, however, that in moments of excitement men use whatever weapon they have in their hands as a club. A cavalry soldier when he sees red tends to bang his foe over the head with a cavalry sword instead of spiking him, and in riots men are often seen using sticks or umbrellas in this fashion, though these civil swords would be far more efficacious if employed as rapiers. A thrust with a stick or umbrella will give a much more formidable blow than the straight stroke down. A hundred powerful men wielding spades with cutting edges would be terrible antagonists, especially if they had at their side a, dagger or sword-bayonet. One of the advantages of making an assault armed with a cutting spade-shield would be that the men thus armed would instantly be able to put the position they had carried into a good posture of defence —i.e., dig themselves in while they were waiting for their second line or reserves to bring them their rifles.
There may, of course, be many arguments against the spade-shield battleaxe which we, as armchair critics, have not being able to perceive. We cannot help thinking, however, that the matter is one which is worth considera- tion. Let our readers imagine themselves to be Germans holding a trench only fifty or sixty yards from a British trench. Suppose the British charge, when it came, to be led by a hundred men rushing forward fast, but with their heads and a good part of their bodies covered by spades held short so as to protect the face and as much of the body as possible. The knowledge that these men could not be stopped, or only stopped by very lucky shots, and that the moment they were over the parapet they would lay about them with so ugly a, weapon as the spade, would have a very demoralizing effect upon the defenders of the trench. Remember that a sharpened spade, besides acting as a battleaxe, could give a very unpleasant wound if used bayonet fashion, and this power of shoving and stabbing with the spade might be increased by letting it taper, of course very gradually, to an obtuse angle. The weapon, we admit, is a clumsy one, but in a, rough-and- tumble struggle, and when men are very much excited, the roughness and clumsiness may often prove an actual advantage. In a scrimmage there is little opportunity for delicate work. If, in addition to the spade-shield, the attacking soldier had a good steel cap with a, brim which, when his head was a little bent, would give protection to his eyes, he would require a, great deal of stopping.
Unquestionably the problem of armour should be looked into without delay. The essential thing in its use, how- ever, is to remember that it must be primarily employed for attack and not for defence. If armour is used to increase the power of the attack, there is little danger of its demobilizing the soldier and rendering him unfit for his work. If, however, it is regarded chiefly as a safe- guard and as increasing the power of defence, it would destroy initiative, and put the soldier at the mercy of the light-armed man, just as the steel-clad mediaeval warrior often found himself at the mercy of the light-armed Saracen. Here again is another advantage of the spade- shield. It can be thrown aside and the rifle and bayonet resumed with the utmost ease. It makes no permanent suggestion to the soldier that the day of mobility is past.
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