longer range with shrapnel, say at 6,000 feet up, which is a
most important fact to remember in shore fighting, and was well
illustrated by the Boer 6" gun at Pougwana Mount (7,000 feet) over
Laing's Nek, killing several of our Infantry on Inkwelo (Mount
Prospect) at 10,000 yards range; of course this was helped by the
height they were up, as well as by their superior double-ringed time
fuse which we have picked up on their shrapnel, and which gives them
in shrapnel fire a great advantage over any of our guns, which have
not got these fuses at present. It is interesting to note that many
4.7 lyddite shells were picked up, or rather dug up, by our own men
and others, quite intact--this, of course, was always in soft ground,
noticeably near the river (Tugela), and shows that the "direct action
fuse" should have been screwed into the nose of the shell, instead of
the "delay action fuse" that it had in it for use against thin plates
of ships.

Before leaving this subject of the gun and its fittings (12-pounder),
I again wish to emphasise the fact of how important is the question of
recoil. At one time, in front of Brakfontein with the 8-gun 12-pounder
battery, we all dug trail pits and blocked the trails completely up in
rear to prevent the guns recoiling at all on the carriage. This most
certainly gave a gun thus blocked up over one allowed to recoil on the
level an advantage of several hundred yards at an ordinary range of
say 6,000 yards; but of course it threw on our weak makeshift wooden
trails an undue strain, and after a couple had been smashed had to be
given up. Still, although I would never advocate doing this to any
field gun (_i.e._, bringing a gun up short as it shakes the mounting
too much) the fact remains that the range or shooting power of the gun
may be varied with the recoil in a great degree, and that therefore
what I mention about a system to check recoil uniformly and with
certainty seems to me to be an important one with our Naval field
guns. This fact of increased range, got by blocking up a gun, is
useful to remember in many cases, especially in this war when the
Boers had the pull of our guns at first, and when it might have been
worth while just temporarily disabling one gun, and to get one shot
into them and so frighten them off.

The newspaper controversy, very hot at one time, as to whether the
Boer guns were better or not than ours, and the ridiculous statements
one both read and heard from