Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/577

 Teaching Our Soldiers How to Figlit

Problems in minor tactics are worked out in models of mud

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���Above: A squad under instruction. Those on the left are making a simple trench and those on the right, embankments. At right: Tools and supplies for making fortifications and relief-maps

SAND table work is acknowledged to be one of the most important means of instruction in military science. Work n the sand table has been done for many ears, but First Lieutenant J.J. Fulmer, of the First Disciplinary Battalion of the Inited States Disciplinary- Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, has introduced into the work scientific exactness.

The sand tables used are ten feet long, four feet wide and three and one-half feet high to top of box, and the box is eight inches deep. Sand is put in the box to a depth of six inches. It is well watered with n ordinary watering can. Two sets ofjmplements are used. One is known as the fortification set and the other

��as the terrain set. The fortification set contains eight gabions (round, bottomless baskets, filled with earth), four fascines (bundles of sticks bound together) four hurdles, twenty bags for sand, one box of blocks, representing sod, and one bundle abatis (obstacle composed of felled trees). Besides these there are trench models and material to represent hills, woods, streams, railroads, bridges, concrete, king post.

��A portion of country as laid out on the sand table, showing rail- roads, hills, |town, woods, etc.

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