The doubtless apocryphal story of the Horse Artillery officer of the old days, who is supposed to have said 'How we could gallop if it wasn't for these damned guns', had no counterpart among the Mountain Battery officers. They merely claimed that they could take their guns anywhere where a man could go, and did so. They and their men were not less renowned for their hawk-like vision which could pick out the lone Afridi sniper on the distant hillside who was annoying the advance with his modern rifle. Whether they and their pack mules are a thing of the past must still be a moot point; in their day they were among many other things, probably as competent users of a pack-saddle as were to be found anywhere. The hillmen said they feared "not the child-rifle, but the devil guns, which killed half-a-dozen men with one shot (shell), which burst and threw up splinters, as deadly as the shots themselves." Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 119 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1971 by Donald Featherstone. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com