Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/883

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���Machine-gunners learn from artistic reproductions of the terrain iijw to j i<J<ie ol distance and of the interrelation of objects. Art with a capital A helps them to become experts

��trained eyes and in part to their lack of familiarity with the mechanism.

How many men are there who grasp a description and act at once upon it? The officer gives the command, "Lay on black rock left clump of trees — three fingers!" Instantly the sergeant must repeat this order and see to it that the smooth barrel is so adjusted that it will guide bullets in the direction named. The quick under- standing of the description of objects in a landscape can be developed by the use of the imitation terrain of paint. The firing of machine guns effectively is quick, sharp work and all the training of eye and brain which can be im- parted stands the soldier in good stead in an emergency.

So exact are these high-art targets, owing to the co-operation of the military authorities and the designers, that even the complicated problems of strategy can be solved quickly by their use.

Grain Field a " Nest of Death "

After the marksmen have become more experienced they are assigned to devising ways for routing snipers out of hidden retreats supposed to be in all these mimic landscapes. The purpose is always to kill as many of the enemy as possible with the smallest amount of ammunition. Assume that there is in the center of one of the painted transcripts of nature a waving grain field, all golden in the sun, and en- veloped in a mellow haze, as an art critic might see it. The machine-gun captain considers it as a yellow nest of death in

��the midst of which are certain big and deadly wasps, the stings of which are laying low comrades of another command. He cannot see exactly where the buzzing pests are straddled, but no time is to be lost. He gives the command to "traverse the field," which means that his gunners so divide the whole expanse of nodding stalks among them, that the zones reached by the rain of bullets account for every square foot of the suspected area. The variation of fire is made by causing the individual gunners to tap their pieces gently, so that a difference of two inches at the end of a barrel becomes a large space with the widening angle reached in a distance of a mile or so. The method of tapping can be learned readily in front of one of the brush creations and a man who is quick of eye and hand may soon be- come very proficient.

Useful in Estimating Trajectories

The counterfeit countrysides serve just as well as the real ones in estimating trajectories of projectiles intended for a certain locality and in the mastering of much of the theory of gunnery practice. The mistakes of the tyro can be con- stantly corrected. As the canvases are becoming more and more exact in their proportions, they are considered already as among the indispensables. A British officer on seeing some of these examples of American skill at Camp Upton recent- ly, remarked that if the Allies had had as good ones they would have been able to have killed more Germans.

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