These farmers lay curled up behind
their stones and boulders while shrapnel bullets by thousands rained
over their position, and common shell threw masses of earth and rock
into the air. Then at the moment when the artillery fire was compelled
to cease, owing to the near approach of our infantry, the crafty
sharp-shooters crawled out of their nooks and crannies and used their
rifles with deadly precision and rapidity.
On this point--the general ineffectiveness of artillery fire when the
enemy possesses good cover--the history of modern warfare repeats
itself. The Russian bombardments of Plevna were quite futile, and
General Todleben acknowledged that it sometimes required a whole day's
shell fire to kill a single Turkish soldier. At the fight round the
Malaxa blockhouse in Crete, at which I was present, the united squadrons
of the European powers in Suda Bay suddenly opened fire on the hill and
the village at its foot. In ten minutes from eighty to one hundred
shells came screaming up from the bay and burst amongst the insurgents
and their Turkish opponents. We all of us--on the hill and in the
village--bolted like rabbits and took what cover we could. The total net
casualties from these missiles--some of them 6-inch shells--were, I
believe, three, all told.
Some of those amateur critics at home who write indignant letters about
the War Office labour under a twofold delusion.
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