ED NOTE Major General Hughes is with the Royal Artillery Institution, Old Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He is the author of "Firepower, British Smoothbore Artillery." We take so much for granted! We now have means of communication the reliability and ubiquity of which have been improving steadily in our time. As a result the centre of gravity of responsibility has been constantly shifting upwards. That does not mean that we can make do with less responsible and reliable juniors, particularly in an emergency; but it does mean that tactical and technical decisions are now normally made higher up than in the past. Let us go right back for a moment, and consider the position in the Napoleonic wars. The only means of communication then were the trumpet and bugle calls, the shouted word, and personally delivered verbal or written orders. Let us then give credit to that unsung hero of that time, about whom little has ever been written -the Number One of a gun detachment. Phases In most battles in that period the fighting fell into phases each lasting for about half an hour. At the end of that time either one side had attained its objective or its attack had been halted, and there was a pause of temporary exhaustion before the next phase began. During that half hour of conflict a single gun, firing without a pause, could have fired some 60 roundsabout a quarter of its ammunition supply. But the many impedances which occurred, particularly the dense clouds of white gunpowder smoke which enveloped the whole battlefield and hid the target at frequent intervals, would have made it quite impossible to fire so many properly laid rounds. It is unlikely that more than 20-30 rounds could have been fired from that gun in any half hour. It will be seen, therefore, that each single round of this small number was highly significant, and that around wasted through inaccurate laying reduced the effect of the battery's f ire to a marked extent. Who then was primarily responsible for the effective performance of each gun? The answer is the Number One. The battery commander and possibly another officer were of course on the gun position, gave the initial orders, and exercised general supervision. But, though they could certainly correct gross errors, they could not be everywhere at once, and the noise and excitement, and above all the swirling clouds of smoke created by each discharge, made it impossible for them to exercise more than general supervision. The performance of each gun, and the matter of whether it was a contributor or a passenger, depended almost entirely on the Number One. Number One Duties Let us see, then, what he had to do. To begin with, he was of course in command of his gun detachment; and, in the days of highly explosive, and exposed, gunpowder, that meant that the complicated drill of spongeing, loading, priming, and firing had to be carried out meticulously. Any failure there such as an unserved vent, or a carelessly swung lighted portfire, could easily cause a premature and the death or mutilation of a member of his detachment. Assuming, however, that he had a well drilled detachment requiring only a watchful eye to ensure that they did not blow themselves up, he had next to lay the gun himself. Laying for line with the aid of the handspike at the end of the trail was fairly straightforward; but laying for elevation demanded much skill and experience. There are some modern photographs in the Rotunda which show what was seen over the open sights of a smooth-bore gun when laid on lines of soldiers at various ranges. They show the difficulty of laying, and laying consistently, with the coarse open sights of that time. At all but point blank range too, the estimation of range, was important so that the correct elevation could be set on the tangent sight. It must be remembered that, with round shot, any plus error meant that the shot passed over the target's heads and did no damage whatever. A round having been fired, the Number One was faced with one of his biggest responsibilities. He it was who had to observe the fall of his shot and correct the next lay accordingly. This was indeed a difficult task when many guns were firing simultaneously at a target which was frequently hidden by its own smoke or moving over broken ground. Nor was there any shell burst to catch the eye, though it must be admitted that, once clear of the smoke of its own charge, the round shot could usually be seen throughout its flight. There is an excellent description of this process of adjusting the lay as a result of the observation of the fall of shot in Mr C S Forrester's Flying Colours. He tells how Captain Hornblower engaged the pursuing French boats with a 6 pdr gun of the cutter Witch of Endor, correcting his fire round by round till the target was hit. He also emphasises the knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of his own gun which an experienced Number One would have had to help him. There was yet another problem of those days about which nothing at all seems to have been written. It was that of the distribution of the fire of a battery. Given that the battery commander indicated the lateral extent of the target to be engaged, there remained the need to distribute the fire of the six guns evenly so that there would not be overhitting or gaps. Furthermore a moving target, particularly charging cavalry, might well have caused the battery commander's initial orders to become inappropriate. All that can be said is that there must have been that problem, and that, in solving it, much must have depended on the Number One. Lastly there was a matter which faced everyone who controlled the fire of short range, single shot weapons with long reloading times. The time which elapsed between the arrival of a charging enemy within effective range and his reaching the defending weapons was such that, in the case of the muskets, it was only just possible, with perfect drill, to fire one round at extreme effective range and to have reloaded and be ready to fire again at point blank range. The timing of that first round was therefore most critical. This problem was presented to the guns in a different way. Their range enabled them to engage the advancing enemy with round shot or shrapnel virtually as soon as he came in sight. The timing of fire became critical, however, when enemy cavalry came within case shot range, i.e., at 350 yards. There was then only just time to fire two rounds of case before the enemy arrived at the gun position. Any error in judging the moment at which to fire the first round could have led to the long sequence of running up, reloading, and re-laying not being completed in time to fire the second, and far more destructive, round. It is of course possible-even probablethat, in such a crisis, the battery commander would have taken command himself, ordered the change to case shot, and fired salvoes from the battery as a whole; but there must still have been many occasions when the decisions had to be made at each gun. So there were the tasks which were required of senior non-commissioned officers who, though rarely highly educated, formed the very backbone of the artillery unit. They always have, and it is to be hoped they always will, perform their honourable duty with an efficiency which has seldom been advertised. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. IV #1 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1982 by The Courier Publishing Company. 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