The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-06-18
NERVE AND SKILL ARE ESSENTIALS|N BOMB B THROWING Description of a Trip to England's Famous Bomb
 ing School DEADLY MISSILES
 MADE OF JAM-TINS Motion Used in Pitching Baseball Is Useless When It Comes to
 Throwing Genuine Hand
 Grenade
By GILBERT sELDEs

By GILBERT SELDES
 London, May 31.-(Special Correspnd- ence.)-"Ho, English. A present for you" The men of the famous black watch, holding the British line near Neuve Chapelle in October 1914, heard this salutation from the German lines. They saw something coming over the trenches and when the thing landed they looked curiously to see what it was. As they looked it exploded, killing wounding every man within 10 feet Bombing had begun.
 That first bomb was the costliest joke Germany has played since the war be- gan. Today the British bomber, or erenadier is the greatest artist of the war and bombing is the greatest art. The man who fires the gun that throws high explosives may be more destructive, the man who wields bayonet may be more dangerous in action, but for pure skill and art, the bomb-thrower is in class Al.
 At least the experience of the British army is that every infantryman tends to become a bomber. and as our Ameri- can army is likely to profit by the knowl- edge of the British, our soldiers are bound to become more or less familiar with the bomb and the grenade before many weeks have passed.
 In order to give Americans sketch of what is being done by the British arny to train it's men in bombing I have been especially permitted to go to the . cradle of bombing" in England. Through the Kindness of the war office I have heen the first correspondent privileged to see and report on the wonderful work going on here. It is the most impressive and the most important part of the apD1V's work " bicb caD he Saan tbic side of the English channel Whether they are based on the system of this school directly or. not, the American schools for bombers will resemble it in general outline
 In simplest terms a bomb is an ex- plcsive encased in something which will lreak up when the explosive goes off, so really bombing itself is nearly as old as warfare The Greeks are supposed to have had a missile which broke and gave out smoke or flames In more mod ern times the bomb appeared sometime during the eighteenth century. It was called a bottle" and we have the curious record preserved, little later, that by these hellish devices the hearts of brave men are made as of water" In the early part of the last century the bomb. then called grenade. was at it's height of popu- larty. The famous old British song testifies to the fame and glory of the
 
 adler was a grenade thrower at first. Then the bomb began to decline. Gen erally warfare was in the open and as one military critic wrote, proficiency with the musket maketh the foot soldier the equal of the grenadier." Although the British used the grenade at the siege of Sebastopol, in the Crimean war the development of the rifle even then put all bombing into the background. No bomb possibly can be thrown, or even fired to a distance equaling the range of a modern rifle.
 GERMAN JOKE
 In front of Port Arthur the Japanese developed a type of bomb with some new features, and the German army is SUD- posed to have got an inspiration from this application of old trick. No other army picked it up. The grenade and the bomb remained part of military theory, but the extent of practical knowl- edge with regard to them can be realized from the fact that when the war broke out the British army possessed a grand total of 1000 bombs.
 Then came that German joke at Neuve Chapelle.
 It's result is that the British govern ment is producing over 10,0000O0 bombs a year for itself and for the allies
 The day after the first German bomb came over an enterprisng British of- ficer divided his men into committees one on explosives, one on fuses and another on castings. The men on the committees were holding a line far beyond their strength. Eight hundred men were sent perforce to hold a front worthy of thousands. They were kept 2S days in the front line, their mum bers dwindling sometimes to as low a s 200, before they were relieved They suffered intolerable agonies The Germans had all the shells. Every day the British soldiers had to beat off German attack, a raid or a pa trolling party. But every night they gathered in a dug-out and worked on new bomb, something to throw back at the Boche. The result of this work was the jam tin, or "tickler's artil- lery"
 The story of the first jam tin or 1am-pot bomb was told to me by the man who made it, Here is his story:
 "The army rations at that time all Included jam, usually plum and apple served out in tin cans. When we began looking about for something to throw at Fritz We naturally hit on these tins as the only thing available. You know great deal of our equipment in those days was rather domestic. We even tried to use drain pipes for artillery barrels.
 Well. l took a plum -and-apple tin and divided it into three parts by ram. ming quantity of explosive down the center and banking that on both sides with layers of shrapnel sawdust regi- mental buttons anything we could find to fly off and annoy the Boche In the middle of the explosive I fas- tened fuse and the thing was done
 You know the story about one oi our chaps who took over jam tin ir the earliest days. He stood by tn, German dug-out and called the men tC come out and surrender. They wouldn come up. thinking they were saft underground. Finally Tommy got i'm patient. How many are you dowr there? he sang out.
 "Sixteen.'
 Then divide that among you. yol blighters,' said he peevishly, and tn, Jam-tin went biffing down the dug out.
 ''They were fairly good things, thos