"LINESMAN" ON THE SPADE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR." _I SIB,—With reference to the most interesting article on the spade as a part of the " mechanism of war " which appeared in your issue of March 15th, I should be glad if you would kindly publish the following corrections in one or two of the facts employed by your correspondent in his able demonstration of the usefulness of the spade in the attack. The night before the assault on Cronje's laager General Smith-Dorrien's foremost trenches had been pushed to within four hundred and seventy yards of the corresponding trenches of the enemy. At dawn on February 27th the trench, dug and manned by the survivors of the assaulting party, was ninety-five yards distant from the nearest group of the enemy's trenches, and enfiladed upwards of a mile of the chain of rifle-pits which formed the main trenches of the enemy. The party of forty Royal Engineers who formed the right of the rear rank of the two lines of Canadians composing the " covering " and " working" parties did not carry sacks of earth, as " Linesman " states. The equipment of the assault- ing party was as follows. The front line of Canadians carried the rifle only. The second line, ten paces in rear, carried the rifle in one hand and a pick or a shovel in the other•. The Engineers, with rifles slung, carried both pick and shovel per man, with the exception of some half-dozen who carried armfuls of empty sandbags, hand-axes, wire- cutters, &c. These sandbags were not filled until after the "first fierce outburst was passed " and the excavation of the trench was in progress. The sandbags were then used to form loopholed head-cover, and traverses against the cross-fire which was expected from both flanks at dawn. A similar reference to imaginary sacks of earth occurs in the early editions of Dr. Conan Doyle's vivid and interesting " Great Boer War," though it is difficult to trace how it could have arisen. A small calculation of the number of sacks of earth that could be carried by forty sappers would hardly inspire confidence in the prospective safety of the four hundred men who were to seek shelter behind them when the time came to
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