Artillery Gun Quotes

What makes Bolshevism strong is not the Soviets' artillery and machine-guns but the fact that the whole world receives its ideas sympathetically.

Lying in a foxhole sweating out an enemy artillery or mortar barrage or waiting to dash across open ground under machine-gun or artillery fire defied any concept of time.

More than Iran's enemies need artillery, guns, and so forth, they need to spread cultural values that lead to moral corruption... a senior official in an important American political center said: 'Instead of bombs, send them miniskirts.' He is right. If they arouse sexual desires in any given country, if they spread unrestrained mixing of men and women, and if they lead youth to behavior to which they are naturally inclined by instincts, there will no longer be any need for artillery and guns against that nation.

I made a mental note to familiarize Fabian with modern artillery so he'd be able to give better descriptions. "Machine guns?" I asked, miming holding one and making a series of rapid staccato noises. Bones's mouth twitched, but he dipped his head so I wouldn't see his clear amusement over my "GI Jane does Pictionary" imitation.

Whatever shortcomings vexed the Allied high command, they paled when stacked against the German fiasco. Dozens of tanks, assault guns, and artillery pieces stood immobile for lack of fuel.

You cannot reason with a rifle bullet fired from across the battlefield. You cannot negotiate with an artillery shell lobbed from over the horizon. You cannot compromise with a nuclear warhead screaming in from half a world away. The only answer to the gun, the only defense for the gun, has been more guns.

No one would believe that in this howling waste there could still be men; but steel helmets now appear on all sides out of the trench, and fifty yards from us a machine-gun is already in position and barking. The wire entanglements are torn to pieces. Yet they offer some obstacle. We see the storm-troops coming. Our artillery opens fire. Machine-guns rattle, rifles crack.

It was there in that green forest that we ran into the most frightening weapon of the war, the one that made us almost sick with fear: antipersonnel mines. By now I had gone through aerial bombing, artillery and mortar shelling, open combat, direct rifle and machine gun firing, night patrolling, and ambush. Against all of this we had some kind of chance; against mines we had none. They were vicious, deadly, inhuman. They churned our guts.

It will hardly be wise to adopt the suggestion… that we must stop treating the little sins as though they were big sins. That suggestion means apparently, that we must not worry too much about the little sins, but must let them remain unmolested. With regard to such an expedient, it may be suggested that in the moral battle: we are fighting against a very resourceful enemy, who does not reveal the position of his guns by desultory (lacking purpose) artillery actions when he plans a great attack. In the moral battle, as in the Great European War, the quiet sectors are usually the most dangerous. It’s through the “little sins” that Satan gains an entrance into our lives. Probably, therefore, it will be prudent to watch all sectors of the front and lose no time about introducing the unity of command.

The artillery officer had mastered the technique of firing accurately in the dark by registering the guns beforehand, that is, determining the variance in each gun for barometric pressure, wind speed, and direction. The artillery could thus fire unceasingly both day and night prior to an attack.

The vastness and deadly desolation of the field, the long-distance operation of steel machines, and the relay of every movement in the night drew an unyielding Titan’s mask over the proceedings. You moved toward death without seeing it; you were hit without knowing where the shot came from. Long since had the precision shooting of the trained marksman, the direct fire of guns, and with it the charm of the duel, given way to the concentrated fire of mechanized weapons. The outcome was a game of numbers: Whoever could cover a certain number of square meters with the greater mass of artillery fire, won.

Tauride Palace, where “the entire square of Tauride Palace was filled with artillery, machine guns, field kitchens . . . Machine gun cartridge belts were piled up pell-mell.”5

A blessing on those happy ages that did not know the dreadful fury of these devilish instruments of artillery, whose inventor is, I feel sure, being rewarded in hell for his diabolical creation, by which he made it possible for an infamous and cowardly hand to take away the life of a brave knight as, in the heat of the courage and resolution that fires and animates the gallant breast, a stray bullet appears, nobody knows how or from where - fired perhaps by some fellow who took fright at the flash of the fiendish contraption, and fled - and in an instant put an end to the life and loves of one who deserved to live for many a long age.

Mad Rogan took in the canvas-covered vehicles. His eyebrows rose. “Is that a tank?” “Technically that’s a gun on tracks. Mobile field artillery. That’s a tank in the corner. His name is Romeo.” Mad Rogan shook his head in disbelief.

Once the mobilization button was pushed, the whole vast machinery for calling up, equipping, and transporting two million men began turning automatically. Reservists went to their designated depots, were issued uniforms, equipment, and arms, formed into companies and companies into battalions, were joined by cavalry, cyclists, artillery, medical units, cook wagons, blacksmith wagons, even postal wagons, moved according to prepared railway timetables to concentration points near the frontier where they would be formed into divisions, divisions into corps, and corps into armies ready to advance and fight. One army corps alone—out of the total of 40 in the German forces—required 170 railway cars for officers, 965 for infantry, 2,960 for cavalry, 1,915 for artillery and supply wagons, 6,010 in all, grouped in 140 trains and an equal number again for their supplies. From the moment the order was given, everything was to move at fixed times according to a schedule precise down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time.

The most desperate need was for ammunition, which was expended at a rate exceeding two tons every minute of every hour of every day, despite incessant rationing in the second half of 1944. By late September, fewer than four rounds per day were available for the largest guns, such as the 8-inch howitzer. By early October, ammunition shortfalls were “truly critical” across the front, with many Third Army tubes down to a single shell per day—Patton wanted sixty—and 12th Army Group reported that supplies of artillery ammunition had “reached a state of almost complete collapse.

In state after state, one portentous incident after another, breathlessly reported in newspapers throughout the country in the days following the election, alarmed even confident Republicans who had insisted that a Lincoln victory could never loosen the bonds that held the Union together. As early as November 9, pro-secession placards appeared on the streets of New Orleans, calling for the formation of a defense corps of Minutemen. Dissidents unfurled palmetto flags in Charleston, where artillery saluted their appearance by opening fire with a defiant fifteen-gun cannonade.

In addition to aerial bombardment, according to a report issued by the Israeli logistical command in mid-August 2014, well before the final cease-fire took hold on August 26, 49,000 artillery and tank shells were fired into the Gaza Strip,31 most by the US-made M109A5 155mm howitzer. Its 98-pound shells have a kill zone of about 54 yards’ radius and inflict casualties within a diameter of 218 yards. Israel possesses 600 of these artillery pieces, and 175 of the longer-range American M107 175mm gun, which fires even heavier shells, weighing over 145 pounds. One instance of Israel’s use of these lethal battlefield weapons suffices to show the vast disproportionality of the war on Gaza.

Clutching a map and a field phone, Second Lieutenant Murphy leaped onto a burning tank destroyer and for an hour repulsed the enemy with a .50-caliber machine gun while calling in artillery salvos. He “killed them in the draws, in the meadows, in the woods,” a sergeant reported; the dead included a dozen Germans “huddled like partridges” in a nearby ditch. “Things seemed to slow down for me,” Murphy later said. “Things became very clarified.” De Lattre described the action as “the bravest thing man had ever done in battle,” but Murphy reflected that “there is no exhilaration at being alive.” He would receive the Medal of Honor. At last an Allied preponderance began to crush the pocket.

The established German Army no longer had the physical power to overcome the uniformed private armies of Left and Right. This weakness was not due to a lack of rifles, machine guns, or artillery, or even to a lack of men, but to a shortage of trucks. The vital role of the truck had already been recognized by some military experts. In England Captain B. H. Liddell Hart greeted the six-wheel truck as a landmark in military evolution.

More than 100,000 mostly urban Red Army troops were deployed, along with special Cheka detachments. After public executions, hostage taking, and conspicuous deportations of entire villages to concentration camps, by the third week of June 1920 only small numbers of rebel stragglers had survived.317 Tukhachevsky was flushing rebel remnants out of the forests with artillery, machine guns, and chlorine gas “to kill all who hide within.”318 At least 11,000 peasants were killed between May and July; the Reds lost 2,000. Many tens of thousands were deported or interred. “The bandits themselves have come to recognize . . . what Soviet power means,” the camp chief noted of his reeducation program.

How are you off for drink? We have got everything in the world on board here. Can you catch?’ and almost immediately a large bottle of champagne was thrown from the gunboat to the shore. It fell in the waters of the Nile, but happily where a gracious Providence decreed them to be shallow and the bottom soft. I nipped into the water up to my knees, and reaching down seized the precious gift which we bore in triumph back to our mess. This kind of war was full of fascinating thrills. It was not like the Great War. Nobody expected to be killed. Here and there in every regiment or battalion, half a dozen, a score, at the worst thirty or fourty, would pay forfeit; but to the great mass of those who took part in the little wars of Britain in those vanished and light-hearted days, this was only a sporting element in a splendid game. Most of us were fated to se a war where the hazards were reversed, where death was the general expectation and severe wounds were counted as lucky escapes, where whole brigades were shorn away under the steel flail of artillery and machine-guns, where the survivors of one tornado knew that they would certainly be consumed in the next or the next after that. Everything depends upon the scale of events. We young men who lay down to sleep that night within three miles of 60,000 well-armed fanatical Dervishes, expecting every moment their violent onset or inrush and sure of fighting at latest with the dawn – we may perhaps be pardoned if we thought we were at grips with real war.

the military-industrial-scientific complex, because today’s wars are scientific productions. The world’s military forces initiate, fund and steer a large part of humanity’s scientific research and technological development. When World War One bogged down into interminable trench warfare, both sides called in the scientists to break the deadlock and save the nation. The men in white answered the call, and out of the laboratories rolled a constant stream of new wonder-weapons: combat aircraft, poison gas, tanks, submarines and ever more efficient machine guns, artillery pieces, rifles and bombs. 33. German V-2 rocket ready to launch. It didn’t defeat the Allies, but it kept the Germans hoping for a technological miracle until the very last days of the war. {© Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library.} Science played an even larger role in World War Two. By late 1944 Germany was losing the war and defeat was imminent. A year earlier, the Germans’ allies, the Italians, had toppled Mussolini and surrendered to the Allies. But Germany kept fighting on, even though the British, American and Soviet armies were closing in. One reason German soldiers and civilians thought not all was lost was that they believed German scientists were about to turn the tide with so-called miracle weapons such as the V-2 rocket and jet-powered aircraft. While the Germans were working on rockets and jets, the American Manhattan Project successfully developed atomic bombs. By the time the bomb was ready, in early August 1945, Germany had already surrendered, but Japan was fighting on. American forces were poised to invade its home islands. The Japanese vowed to resist the invasion and fight to the death, and there was every reason to believe that it was no idle threat. American generals told President Harry S. Truman that an invasion of Japan would cost the lives of a million American soldiers and would extend the war well into 1946. Truman decided to use the new bomb. Two weeks and two atom bombs later, Japan surrendered unconditionally and the war was over. But science is not just about offensive weapons. It plays a major role in our defences as well. Today many Americans believe that the solution to terrorism is technological rather than political. Just give millions more to the nanotechnology industry, they believe, and the United States could send bionic spy-flies into every Afghan cave, Yemenite redoubt and North African encampment. Once that’s done, Osama Bin Laden’s heirs will not be able to make a cup of coffee without a CIA spy-fly passing this vital information back to headquarters in Langley.

As a matter of fact,” says a commandant, “anybody — or, rather, everybody did. The general idea is after such-and-such system, the patent of which had expired, and we improved it; the breech action, with slight modification, is somebody else’s; the sighting is perhaps a little special; and so is the traversing, but, at bottom, it is only an assembly of variations and arrangements.” That, of course, is all that Shakespeare ever got out of the alphabet. The French Artillery make their own guns as he made his plays.

Lon assisted his cannoneers in loading the number four gun. Finding the leather thumbstall charred and ruined through frequent use and no replacement anywhere to be found, he stoppered the gun’s vent with his bare thumb. The escaping gases from the swabbing of the barrel burned his thumb to the bone. Lon grabbed his thumb, grimacing in pain. His agonies were indescribable.87

Bearing a banner of American democracy, the United States was, in other words, on the move — producing planes, tanks, and matériel on a scale that beggared description: fifty-two thousand airplanes, twenty-three thousand tanks, forty thousand artillery guns in the first six months of 1943 alone, he reported. American shipyards were launching “almost five ships a day.

The bad visibility to prevent flying, which Hitler had so earnestly desired, was repeated day after day. It does not, however, appear to have hampered artillery-spotting aircraft on unofficial business in the Ardennes. Bradley received complaints that ‘GI’s in their zest for barbecued pork were hunting [wild] boar in low-flying cubs with Thompson submachine guns.

By the following morning, September 15, Jackson had positioned nearly fifty guns on Maryland Heights and at the base of Loudoun Heights.  Then he began a fierce artillery barrage from all sides, followed by a full-out infantry assault.  Realizing the hopelessness of the situation, Col. Miles raised the white flag of surrender, enraging some of the men, one of whom beseeched him, “Colonel, don't surrender us. Don't you hear the signal guns? Our forces are near us. Let us cut our way out and join them." Miles dismissed the suggestion, insisting, “They will blow us out of this place in half an hour." Almost on cue, an exploding artillery shell mortally wounded Miles, and some historians have argued Miles was fragged by Union soldiers. Jackson had lost less than 300 casualties while forcing the surrender of nearly 12,500 Union soldiers at Harpers Ferry, the largest number of Union soldiers to surrender at once during the entire war. For the rest of the day, the Confederates helped themselves to supplies in the garrison, including food, uniforms, and more, as Jackson sent a letter to Lee informing him of the success, "Through God's blessing, Harper's Ferry and its garrison are to be surrendered." Already a legend, Jackson earned the attention of the surrendered Union troops, who tried to catch a glimpse of him only to be surprised at his rather disheveled look. One of the men remarked, "Boys, he isn't much for looks, but if we'd had him we wouldn't have been caught in this trap." Jackson

In the second week of June, two second-lieutenants were shot by firing squads drawn from their own companies, for allegedly failing to press home their attacks. Orders also went out that battalions abandoning positions or retiring during an attack were to be fired on by their own machine-guns or bombarded by French artillery. Some of these orders were actually obeyed but the resentment they caused far outweighed the influence they had on the front-line soldier.

sufficiency of artillery depended not only on the number of guns provided but on the width of the front attacked. The guns-per-yards-of-front ratio was crucial; to expand the latter, it was necessary to increase the former, or the infantry would go over the top without adequate support.

The French Army expended more artillery ammunition in September 1914 than it had done in the whole of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Total French production of the 75 mm shell in 1914 amounted to 14,000 shells a day, at a time when one single battery of 75 mm guns could easily shoot off 1,000 shells a day.

The troops were, however, still very poorly armed and equipped. The old smooth-bore musket was the principal weapon of the infantry; the artillery had mostly the six-pounder gun and the twelve-pounder howitzer; and the cavalry were armed with such various weapons as they could get—sabers, horse-pistols, revolvers, Sharp's carbines, musketoons, short Enfield rifles, Holt's carbines, muskets cut off, etc.

When faced by artillery the Vendéens adopted an unorthodox but successful tactic. The officers would fix their eyes on the enemy cannon and as the matches were lit would cry out ‘ventre a terre’ on which order the men would throw themselves flat on the ground, then on the call ‘portez vos armes’ they would leap up and with the shout ‘en avant’ would charge the guns. By racing forwards and throwing themselves flat between rounds they would eventually attack and overpower the gunners.

There are unquestionably points at which Lewis believes the past to be preferable to the present. For example, Lewis’s battle scenes tend to emphasise the importance of boldness and bravery in personal combat. Battle is about hand-to-hand and face-to-face encounters between noble and dignified foes, in which killing is a regrettable but necessary part of securing victory. This is far removed from the warfare Lewis himself experienced in the fields around Arras in late 1917 and early 1918, where an impersonal technology hurled explosive death from a distance, often destroying friend as well as foe. There was nothing brave or bold about modern artillery or machine guns.

the town. But, with the enemy massing beyond the river, the position ceased to be tenable after the 13th when a partially masked battery was disclosed commanding the broken bridge. General Paget’s small force had no alternative but to withdraw in haste, leaving the French free to cross. A battle under the walls of Corunna could no longer be avoided. Fortunately on the evening of the 14th the missing transports arrived, 110 sail strong, bringing the total at anchor in the harbour to 250. With them came a squadron of battleships – Ville de Paris, Victory, Barfleur, Zealous, Implacable, Elizabeth, Norge, Plantagenet, Resolution, Audacious, Endymion, Mediator – a glorious spectacle, thought an onlooker, had it been possible to forget the service for which they had come. Yet it was one which brought relief to thousands of British hearts. That night Moore, not daring to waste an hour lest a sudden change in the wind should enable the French artillery to destroy the fleet at anchor, embarked the remainder of his sick, all but eight of his guns and, since the rocky terrain did not admit of their use in battle, the whole of his cavalry. Only a thousand horses could be taken. The remainder, having foundered during the retreat – not for want of shoes but for nails and hammers – were shot on the beach. During the morning of the 15th Soult, forcing back Paget’s outposts, occupied the heights round the town, overlooking and partially enclosing the inferior British positions on the slopes of Monte Mero. Sharpshooting and cannonading continued all day, about a hundred men falling on either

In the Army of the Potomac were fifty-one brigades of infantry, eight brigades of cavalry, and three hundred and seventy guns of artillery. The artillery appointments were so superior that our officers sometimes felt humiliated when posted to unequal combat with their better metal and munitions. In small-arms also the Union troops had the most improved styles.

Mushrooms use a catapult powered by the acceleration of a tiny droplet of fluid over the spore surface to launch spores from their gills; a relative of mushrooms called the artillery fungus employs a snap-buckling device that resembles a miniature toilet plunger to propel a spore-filled capsule into the air, and cup fungi and other ascomycetes use microscopic squirt guns to blast their spores skyward. Most

Fourth, Michael realizes that in the twenty-first century, Christianity - along with all world religions - must develop a more mature, robust, and ethically responsible theology of violence and peacemaking. It was one thing for our ancestors to use God’s name to legitimize violence inflicted with swords and spears; it was another thing when more recent ancestors sought to justify violence with guns and artillery. But for us and our children, living in a world of nuclear bombs, biological and chemical weapons, and as-yet unimagined terrorist adaptations of these weapons of mass destruction; the issue of God and violence takes on unprecedented importance.

I knew I had determination and the ability and drive to work hard. I was smart and had an aptitude for retaining information. Those were things had I focused on. My whole life I’d fought to be the best at everything I did, but I never felt good about myself. It always seemed to be an uphill battle because I considered myself fundamentally flawed, like I wasn’t properly equipped. It was like I was going to war with a pocket knife when others around me had machine guns and heavy artillery. This

Birds of the Western Front Your mess-tin cover's lost. Kestrels hover above the shelling. They don't turn a feather when hunting-ground explodes in yellow earth, flickering star-shells and flares from the Revelation of St John. You look away from artillery lobbing roar and suck and snap against one corner of a thicket to the partridge of the war zone making its nest in shattered clods. History floods into subsoil to be blown apart. You cling to the hard dry stars of observation. How you survive. They were all at it: Orchids of the Crimea nature notes from the trench leaving everything unsaid - hell's cauldron with souls pushed in, demons stoking flames beneath - for the pink-flecked wings of a chaffinch flashed like mediaeval glass. You replace gangrene and gas mask with a dream of alchemy: language of the birds translating human earth to abstract and divine. While machine-gun tracery gutted that stricken wood you watched the chaffinch flutter to and fro through splintered branches, breaking buds and never a green bough left. Hundreds lay in there wounded. If any, you say, spotted one bird they may have wondered why a thing with wings would stay in such a place. She must have, sure, had chicks she was too terrified to feed, too loyal to desert. Like roots clutching at air you stick to the lark singing fit to burst at dawn sounding insincere above the burning bush: plough-land latticed like folds of brain with shell-ravines where nothing stirs but black rats, jittery sentries and the lice sliding across your faces every night. Where every elixir's gone wrong you hold to what you know. A little nature study. A solitary magpie blue and white spearing a strand of willow. One for sorrow. One for Babylon, Ninevah and Northern France, for mice and desolation, the burgeoning barn-owl population and never a green bough left.

It was between noon and one o'clock of 17 December, on the road between Modersheid and Ligneuville, that the German advance guard ran into an American truck convoy moving south from Malmédy. This was ill-fated Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. The convoy was shot up and the advance guard rolled on, leaving the troops to the rear to deal with the Americans who had taken to the woods and ditches. About two hours after, or so the dazed survivors later recalled, the Americans who had been rounded up were marched into a field where, at a signal, they were shot down by machine gun and pistol fire. A few escaped by feigning death, but the wounded who moved or screamed were sought out and shot through the head. At least eighty-six Americans were massacred here. This was not the first killing of unarmed prisoners chargeable to Kampfgruppe Peiper on 17 December. Irrefutable evidence shows that nineteen unarmed Americans were shot down at Honsfeld and fifty at Büllingen.135

My teeth clatter in my mouth as everything ripples and shudders in the storm of shells, whining, whizzing. The kid on the bicycle rolls out of sight. Untouched. A miracle. A dream. The shells abruptly cease and there is only the settling creak of the car seat, a scatter of twittering birds in the shrubs and trees. I could use some gum. Where do you buy gum so early besides the service station? It seems wrong to go there since we don't need any gasoline. We don't drive enough. A tank of gas lasts us forever. I get behind the wheel and in the mirror I can see my eyelids fluttering. I sit squeezing the steering wheel until I realize I haven't started the engine. The garage conceals me. I don't want to go out into the open. A horse whinnys – are they bringing up the artillery? It's the farm field where old Wallam tills a little garden, his yard is the biggest and runs alongside the back of ours to the farm where his family has their orchards. What's wrong with me? Sounds of explosions, bullets, voices of men. Volleys. I smell smoke. Burning things, festering ruptured corpses with maggots pulsing under horrible skin and the shells, the horse, it's hit, it shrieks, explodes apart – can we pull the gun by hand? The crew is dead too, bullets are making their bodies jump even after they have broken apart like smashed holiday nuts. I want to scream. Maybe I am? I begin breathing rapidly. I don't know how long I am there but I hear the screen door open and I key the ignition. “Car troubles?” Mr. Kincaid calls out to me from the front porch. “No troubles,” I say setting my arm out the window and holding the mirror to keep my hand steady. “Lovely day.” The sun was really rising, taking the temperature up with it, hot shards of searing light coming over the treetops to stab at everything that couldn't find the shade. I couldn't find the shade.

In the series of great offensive pressures which Joffre delivered during the whole of the spring and autumn of 1915, the French suffered nearly 1,300,000 casualties. They inflicted upon the Germans in the same period and the same operations 506,000 casualties. They gained no territory worth mentioning, and no strategic advantages of any kind. This was the worst year of the Joffre régime. Gross as were the mistakes of the Battle of the Frontiers, glaring as had been the errors of the First Shock, they were eclipsed by the insensate obstinacy and lack of comprehension which, without any large numerical superiority, without adequate artillery or munitions, without any novel mechanical method, without any pretence of surprise or manœuvre, without any reasonable hope of victory, continued to hurl the heroic but limited manhood of France at the strongest entrenchments, at uncut wire and innumerable machine guns served with cold skill. The responsibilities of this lamentable phase must be shared in a subordinate degree by Foch, who under Joffre’s orders, but as an ardent believer, conducted the prolonged Spring offensive in Artois, the most sterile and prodigal of all.

When God made the world he made the big plain just for the cavalry. It was firm, or would be when the sun had dried off the night’s rain, and it was mostly level. The sabres could fall like scythes in the corn. The Arapiles, Greater and Lesser, God made for the gunners. From their summits, conveniently made flat so that the artillery could have a stable platform, the guns could dominate the plain. God had made nothing for the infantry, except a soil easily dug into graves, but the infantry were used to that. All

This kind of war was full of fascinating thrills. It was not like the Great War. Nobody expected to be killed. Here and there in every regiment or battalion, half a dozen, a score, at the worst thirty or forty, would pay forfeit; but to the great mass of those who took part in the little wars of Britain in those vanished and light-hearted days, this was only a sporting element in a splendid game. Most of us were fated to se a war where the hazards were reversed, where death was the general expectation and severe wounds were counted as lucky escapes, where whole brigades were shorn away under the steel flail of artillery and machine-guns, where the survivors of one tornado knew that they would certainly be consumed in the next or the next after that. Everything depends upon the scale of events. We young men who lay down to sleep that night within three miles of 60,000 well-armed fanatical Dervishes, expecting every moment their violent onset or inrush and sure of fighting at latest with the dawn – we may perhaps be pardoned if we thought we were at grips with real war.

Newspaper writers and politicians treated the pilots as “knights” of the war. They flew fast and dangerous maneuvers in order to defend critical artillery observation balloons. They battled other pilots either one-on-one or in squadrons, fought like heroes, and died in droves. France alone produced at least 68,000 aircraft, of which 52,000 were lost in battle. The planes reached speeds of over 100 mph and fired machine guns, pistols, or rockets at each other. The winners sped away; the losers spiraled to the earth

The building was a sniper’s heaven; it was long with dozens of windows and many points of view. Three floors. Someone had put cardboard in each of the panes, dozens of cardboard boxes, making it almost impossible to see inside. The marines kept firing, thousands and thousands of rounds. The barrels of their machine guns glowed and sagged. “Get me another barrel,” one of the kids said. More firing commenced. “I don’t know who he is, but he is very well trained,” said Lieutenant Steven Berch, another one of the platoon leaders. Omohundro was downstairs. He listened to the commotion and called in an airstrike. “Just blow the building to shit,” he said. First a 2,000 -pound bomb, then a 500 -pounder flew into the building and burst. A cloud unfolded upward and revealed a gigantic fire. It rose through the ruined ceiling. Part of a wall collapsed. Crack! Crack! Crack! The marines ducked, cursed loudly and returned fire. No one spotted the sniper this time. The sniper fired back. The marines responded with another blast of gunfire, many thousands of rounds. I stood with some guys at the back of the roof, behind a shed. A blue and green parakeet fluttered out of the sky and hovered in tight circles. Bullets flew past. The parakeet landed on a slumping power line. The marines stared in amazement. “Someone’s pet?” a marine said. I ran across the top of the roof and the sniper took a shot. Crack! The bullet whizzed by. An artillery barrage began. First came the 155 mm shells, each filled with fifty pounds of high explosives. One after the other the shells sailed into the building. Fire swept through the three floors. What was left of the ceiling collapsed in the smoke. Cardboard sailed out of shattered windows. Twenty shells, then thirty, each one large enough to end the world. The shelling ceased and the shooting stopped. The building burned. Remarkably it still had a frame, and parts of its three floors still stood. Suddenly a sound rustled from a storefront on the first floor. The marines tensed. A cat sauntered out, dirty yellow, tail in the air. It walked like a runway model in front of a construction site. “Can I shoot it, sir?” a marine asked his squad leader. “Absolutely not,” came the reply. Crack!

Oman’s book Wellington’s Army is 400 pages in length but just a single page is devoted to the artillery with the opening, ‘only a short note is required as to Wellington’s use of artillery’. Historians ever since

Brent Nosworthy’s excellent work on Napoleonic battle tactics concluded that ‘at close range, artillery was generally unable to inflict a greater number of casualties than competent well-led infantry occupying the same frontage’. The complications of providing that intimate level of artillery support

Nosworthy summed up the problem, ‘artillery although able to break enemy infantry when sufficiently massed or carefully orchestrated to achieve converging fire, was unable to exploit its own success’.

Howie Muir in his introduction to Captain Hew Ross’s Memoirs provides an excellent appraisal of the efficacy and flexibility of horse artillery of the day:14

The situation became so serious that it ended, later in the year, with his Foreign Secretary, Lord Canning, fighting a duel against his Secretary for War, Lord Castlereagh.

Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utility Lift and Evacuation System (HERCULES) (M88A2) Mission Provide towing, winching, and hoisting to support battlefield recovery operations and evacuation of heavy tanks and other tracked combat vehicles. Entered Army Service 1997 Description and Specifications The M88A2 HERCULES is a full-tracked, armoured vehicle that uses the existing M88A1 chassis but significantly improves towing, winching, lifting, and braking characteristics. The HERCULES is the primary recovery support vehicle for the Abrams tank fleet, the heavy Assault Bridge, and heavy self-propelled artillery. Length: 338 in Height: 123 in Width: 144 in Weight: 70 tons Speed: 25 mph w/o load; 17 mph w/load Cruising Range: 200 miles Boom Capacity: 35 tons Winch Capacity: 70 tons/670 ft Draw Bar Pull: 70 tons Armament: One .50-calibre machine gun Power train: 12 cylinder, 1050 HP air-cooled diesel engine with 3-speed automatic transmission Crew: 3 Manufacturer

We turn right along and walk along the side of the Parade to look at a long-barrelled cannon about 30 yards away. Known as ‘the Turkish gun’, it was made in 1524, captured during the Egyptian campaign against Napoleon, and installed here in 1801. It is a splendid piece of artillery but achieved notoriety when it nearly became the largest assassination weapon in the world. A couple of years after the gun had been placed here, a man with the appropriate name of Captain Despard formed a conspiracy to assassinate George III while he was reviewing troops here. The cannon, loaded to its full capacity with grapeshot, was to let fly at the Royal coach as it trundled across the parade ground. The conspiracy was discovered in time, which was just as well because it would have blown the coach into a thousand pieces. Have a close look at it and note, on the carriage, the sly crocodile sneaking up on Britannia on the banks of the Nile.

A magnificent fireworks began: magnesium flares blindingly white, yellow, and then red, like dying stars; straight bright red streaks of machine-gun fire; elegant and clear lines of bullets traced like fugitive neon light; and scarlet, sinister rugged patches from antiaircraft artillery. Then the noise: after the solemn, promising silence of the flares came the mad disorderly reaction of the inhabitants of the earth to the regular, obstinate sounds of the invisible motors in the sky. The airplanes replied to the nervous coughing of the machine guns with great battering blows that shook the earth. It was a celebration in honor of death.

You want revolution? Then dismantle all indifference and stand up - stand up and do not move - do not move from your conviction of justice - do not move from your conviction of equality - do not move from your conviction of humanity - do not move an inch - even if all the artilleries in the world are charged against you - do not move and do not harm - just stand - keep standing - keep standing like a pillar of insanity - an insanity for sanctity - an insanity for serenity - an insanity for unity - let them break every single bone in your body - let all the blood in your veins pour out - let every trace of life seep out of your wounds - but still do not move - till there is a single kernel of life left in you. This is what revolution looks like - this is what civilized revolution looks like - no guns, no bombs, not even a baton, just a whole lot of determination, that even the mighty gods cannot deter - a revolution that turns an animal world into a human world - a revolution that turns a jungle into a modern society – a revolution that turns distance into unity.

Soon she started barking—a sound slightly louder than an artillery gun—like she needed to go for a walk. The other campers didn’t think it was funny when she went to the bathroom in the arena. It had caused more than one unfortunate slip-and-slide accident.

It was a good lie, whoever had come up with it. Blaming the Germans wasn’t an option—too many incriminating duds still littered our funkholes—but since the French 75-millimeter gun was also the main field weapon of the American artillery, guilt could be plausibly shifted in that direction.

The situation in the angle was critical. Faint from loss of blood and terribly ill, gritting his teeth in a vain attempt to withstand the severe pain, Lon asked Fuger to order the two remaining guns double-shotted with canister.94

Whatever China has and Vietnam needs, we will provide,” Mao intoned. The Chinese Communist Party “offers all the military assistance Vietnam needs in its struggle against France.”[67] True to his word, Mao gave Ho everything he requested. During the first nine months of 1950, the Chinese shipped the Viet Minh 14,000 rifles, 1,700 machine guns and recoilless rifles, 60 artillery pieces, 300 bazookas, and a variety of other military equipment.

To set the scene: Madzy Brender à Brandis was a young mother with two small children, trying to survive through years of hardship and danger – and some unexpected pleasures. In May 1942, after her husband was suddenly taken prisoner and sent to a German camp, she began writing a diary to record the details of her life – for her husband to read when he returned, if he returned. She called it “this faithful book.” Here are some passages: 28 October 1944 [when the electricity was cut off because of lack of fuel for the generating plants]: “We have to use the daylight to its utmost, and we figure this out already in the morning. [At the end of the afternoon] We flew faster and faster to use the last bits of daylight, lay the table, lay everything ready so that at 5:30 we could eat in the dusk until we couldn’t find our mouths any more. Blackout and one candle, finished eating and washed the dishes. Read to children in pyjamas and then they to bed. Then unraveled a knitted baby blanket [so that the yarn could be used to knit other things] and at 9:00 blew out the candle and continued by moonlight. But now I’m going to bed, tired but satisfied with my efforts, though very sad about all the misery.” 1 November 1944 [after a threat of having the house demolished]: “Well, our house is still standing. I filled a laundry bag with many things, and everything is standing ready [in case there was a need to evacuate]. Because there is much flying again. At one moment an Allied fighter plane flew over very low; just then three German soldiers were walking past our house and one, “as a joke,” shot his gun at the plane. Tje! What a scare we had!” 24 December 1944 [addressing her husband, still in the camp]: “The whole house is in wonderful peace and I’m sitting by the fire, which gives me just enough light to write this. [The upper door of the small heater, when opened, gave a bit of light.] My Dicks, I don’t have to tell you how very much I miss you on this evening. It is a gnawing sense of longing. But beyond that there is a sorrow in me, a despair about everything, that pervades my whole being. Besides that, however, I’ve already for days seen the light of Christ coming closer and in these days that gives me hope. So does the waxing moon, the hard frost, the bright sun – in a word, all the light in nature after that endless series of misty, rainy, dark days. And so I sit close to my unsteady little light, that constantly abandons me, and think of you. It’s as though you are very close to me. I’m so grateful for everything that I have: your love, the two children, and everything around me.” 12 February 1945 [during the “Hunger Winter” of 1944-45, after one of her trips to forage for food]: “Today I went to Rika in Renswoude: 1¼ hours cycling there, 2½ hours walking back pushing a broken-down bicycle and with 25 pounds of rye [the whole grain, not flour] through streaming rain, while there was constant booming of artillery and bombing in the distance.

On April 12 lighted tapers were put to the touchholes of the sultan’s guns along a four-mile sector, and the world’s first concerted artillery bombardment exploded into life.

In June it took part in an elaborately planned action at Messines Ridge, in Belgian Flanders, which opened with the Allies detonating a million pounds of explosives next to the German trenches, instantly killing 10,000 enemy soldiers. The blast was heard in London and felt across southern England. In the fighting that ensued, Bill Alabaster led the parties carrying grenades, ammunition and water from the 45th Battalion headquarters to the troops at the front line, across open ground raked by artillery and machine-gun fire. Herring recommended him for the Military Medal. The 45th lost seven officers and 344 other ranks over four days of combat.

Unlike Heldt, he’d been spared the endless horror that followed: the gas, the artillery, the grenades, and, most of all, the vast wasteland of barbed wire and landmines between the rat-infested trenches, where Lewis guns spat out death at five hundred rounds a minute, and flyblown corpses bloomed like roses.

Marshal Zhukov gave me a matter-of-fact statement of his practice, which was, roughly, ‘There are two kinds of mines; one is the personnel mine and the other is the vehicular mine. When we come to a minefield our infantry attacks exactly as if it were not there. The losses we get from personnel mines we consider only equal to those we would have gotten from machine guns and artillery if the Germans had chosen to defend that particular area with strong bodies of troops instead of mines’… I had a vivid picture,” Eisenhower noted, “of what would happen to any American or British commander if he pursued such tactics.

arms began flowing into Israel in large quantities: machine guns, rifles, artillery, ammunition, and even tanks and planes. The IDF doubled its manpower, due in part to the new arrivals from the detention camps in Cyprus, as well the continued influx of overseas Jewish volunteers. Unlike the detainees from Cyprus, the overseas volunteers had, for the most part, served in the Second World War.

Behind them, filling the roads that converged on Liège came the infantry of Emmich’s assault force, rank after rank. Only the red regimental number painted on helmet fronts broke the monotony of field-gray Horse-drawn field artillery followed. The new leather of boots and harness creaked. Companies of cyclists sped ahead to seize road crossings and farmhouses and lay telephone wires. Automobiles honked their way through, carrying monocled Staff officers with orderlies holding drawn pistols sitting up front and trunks strapped on behind. Every regiment had its field kitchens on wheels, said to be inspired by one the Kaiser had seen at Russian maneuvers, with fires kindled and cooks standing up stirring the stew as the wagons moved. Such was the perfection of the equipment and the precision of the marching that the invaders appeared to be on parade.

Officers from St. Cyr went into battle wearing white-plumed shakos and white gloves; it was considered “chic” to die in white gloves. An unidentified French sergeant kept a diary: “the guns recoil at each shot. Night is falling and they look like old men sticking out their tongues and spitting fire. Heaps of corpses, French and German, are lying every which way, rifles in hand. Rain is falling, shells are screaming and bursting—shells all the time. Artillery fire is the worst. I lay all night listening to the wounded groaning—some were German. The cannonading goes on. Whenever it stops we hear the wounded crying from all over the woods. Two or three men go mad every day.

In June 1842 the British fleet entered the Yangtze. The Chinese were ready to receive their enemy, having assembled a considerable fleet of sixteen war junks and seventy merchant men and fishing vessels requisitioned for naval duty. In the forts of Woosung, near the mouth of the river, they had placed 253 heavy artillery pieces. The Chinese also unveiled a secret weapon: paddle-wheelers armed with brass guns, gingals, and matchlocks, and propelled by men inside the hull operating treadles. Nin Chien, governor-general of Nanking, wrote of them: `Skilled artisans have also constructed four water-wheel boats, on which we have mounted guns. They are fast and we have specially assigned Major Liu Ch'ang to command them. If the barbarians should sail into the inland waterways, these vessels can resist them. There is not the slightest worry.`23 The battle of Woosung was swift. The British ships of the line soon silenced the guns of the forts. The Nemesis, towing the eighteen-gun Modeste, led the fleet into the river, firing grape and canister at the Chinese crafts, which fled. The Nemesis and the Phlegethon thereupon chased the fleeing boats, captured one junk and three paddle-wheelers, and set the rest on fire.

The War of Attrition began in March 1969, with an ever-spiraling cycle of violence. Egyptian guns would shell Israeli positions. Israel would respond with commando raids on the Egyptian side of the canal, blowing up enemy forts and capturing equipment. When this failed to stop the artillery attacks, Israel responded by using their planes as flying artillery. These attacks caused considerable damage to the Egyptian artillery forts, as well as the cities on the Egyptian side of the canal. A massive flight of civilians from the Egyptian Canal Zone ensued.

on the afternoon of October 6, 1973. Egypt would send 100,000 men and 1,550 tanks against 436 Israeli soldiers with 3 tanks manning the Bar-Lev Line, while Syrian deployed 1,500 tanks and 942 artillery guns against 177 tanks in the Golan Heights. The latest battle for the Jewish state’s survival had begun.

At the age of twenty-one, as a second lieutenant just out of St. Cyr, Gallieni had fought at Sedan and been held prisoner for some time in Germany, where he learned the language. He chose to make his further military career in the colonies where France was "growing soldiers." Although the Staff College clique professed to regard colonial service as "le tourisme," Gallieni's fame as the conqueror of Madagascar brought him, like Lyautey of Morocco, to the top rank of the French Army. He kept a notebook in German, English, and Italian called Erinnerungen of my life di ragazzo, and never ceased studying, whether it was Russian or the development of heavy artillery or the comparative administrations of the colonial powers. He wore a pince-nez and a heavy gray mustache that was rather at odds with his elegant, autocratic figure. He carried himself like an officer on parade. Tall and spare, with a distant, untouchable, faintly stern air, he resembled no other French officer of his time. Poincare described the impression he made: "straight, slender and upright with head erect and piercing eyes behind his glasses, he appeared to us as an imposing example of powerful humanity.

artillery pieces were lined up, only more of them, 4,000 in all, a gun every six yards stretching for fifteen miles. The enemy would be pounded with shells, only more of them, 4.5 million this time.

He nodded. “I know. Many, many Leningraders sent their boys there yesterday.” His face was blank. “Alexander, the Germans are down in Crimea,” said Tatiana. “Comrade Molotov said so himself. Didn’t you hear his speech?” “Yes, they are in Crimea. But we have a border with Europe that’s two thousand kilometers long. Hitler’s army is on every meter of that border, Tania, south from Bulgaria north to Poland.” He paused. She didn’t say anything. “For right now, Leningrad is the safest place for Pasha. Really.” Tatiana was skeptical. “Why are you so sure?” She became animated. “Why does the radio keep talking about the Red Army being the strongest army in the world? We have tanks, we have planes, we have artillery, we have guns. The radio is not saying what you’re saying, Alexander.” She spoke those words almost as a rebuke. He shook his head. “Tania, Tania, Tania.” “What, what, what?” she said, and saw that Alexander, despite his serious face, nearly laughed. That made her nearly laugh herself, despite her own serious face. “Tania, Leningrad has lived for so many years with a hostile border with Finland only twenty kilometers to the north that we forgot to arm the south. And that’s where the danger is.” “If that’s where the danger is, then how come you’re sending Dimitri up to Finland where, as you suggest, all is quiet?” Alexander was silent. “Reconnaissance,” he said at last. Tatiana felt he left something unsaid. “My point is,” he went on, “all of our precautionary defenses are focused in the north. But south and southwest, Leningrad does not have a single division, a single regiment, not one military unit deployed. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” “No,” she said, a little defiantly. “Talk to your father about Pasha,” he repeated.

With faulty caps and no artillery present, the Stonewall Brigade fought with knife, bayonet, gun butt, and fist. Those who were able, fled; the remainder were killed.[34] By May 14, 1864, there were less than 200 members of the Stonewall Brigade still in action. These men and survivors from other Virginia brigades were combined to form one small brigade, which was commanded by William Terry as the 4th Virginia.[35] Terry’s Brigade, as it became known simply as a means of designation, fought in various encounters for the remainder of the war, and the men of the former 1st Brigade, Virginia Volunteers, continued to refer to themselves as members of the Stonewall Brigade. After