The daily Gate City and constitution-Democrat. (Keokuk, Iowa) 1916-1922, 1918-08-08
AFRAID
OF HIS GUN
Recruits Often Found Who Handle
Firearrn as Though 1t
Might Turn Upon
Him,
[By a British Musketry Officer. Writ
ten for the United Press.l

[By a British Musketry Officer. Writ
ten for the United Press.l
LONDON, July 21.-A man who
rides a bicycle wonders how on earth
1t is possible to fall off. just as
man who is learning to ride wonders
how on earth 1t is possible to stay on.
That is contrast which every
musketry Instructor must keep con-
tinually in his mind. If he does not
he will forget that to every recruit
the rifle Is new and perhaps a
dangerous thing. He approaches 1t
with respect. Exactly as with the
bicycle, he wonders not only how he
will manage 1t, but what 1t will DO
with him. That is why you cannot
drill men into shooting as you can
drill them into forming fours, and
why with harshness and Impotence
YOU may spoil good man at mus
kerry. You are doing more than to
teach him to do a new thing-you
are putting a strange instrument into
his hands, as you might give him a
curious animal, and he has to be-
come accustomed to it. If you let
him use it wrongly, If you let him
fire his first shot with a loose grip
and hurt himself with the kick, you
may make him permanently afraid
of it
That is an obvious carelessness
which every good instructor avoids,
but he has to do more-he has to re-
member that every man with 1mag1-
nation enough to learn at all must
have a certain gun shyness at first
even If he never shows it, and must
wonder what the first shot will feel
like. That, as every instructor knows,
is hard thing to keep perpetua1ly
and consciously in mind.
Gun shyness is well chosen ex-
preston, and in the exact sense OF
it every man is gun shy at the begin
ming, but it is used more often sim
ply to describe the more obvious
physical nervousness that some men
show when they first handle a rifle.
II is very difficult to find a cause for
it. It may perhaps be a repusnance
to sudden noise, repugnance which,
If you knew the mans past. you
would find to have shown itself in
other ways. AT the same time 1t is
interesting to note that artillery Of
ficers do not find as much gun shy
ness among their men as might be
expected from the greater volume OF
noise. Or 1t may be the excessive
nervousness Oh an lIudSlIldllFS man
at handling a dangerous thing for the
first time In his life: or 1t may, in
rare cases, be definite fear of some
particular accident, fear of which
the man himself is perfectly con-
scious
1t was so in case Of a man with
glasses who flinched badly at every
shot. He had a brother who also
wore glasses and who had been blind
ed in one eye by sudden explosion.
He was in continual fear Of the same
accident. The only thing was to put
him to shoot without his glasses. He
was shortsighted, but could see well
enough at the short ranges. It did
not matter at all that at SOC yards
he could hit nothing. At 200 and 300
he could learn to use his rifle; and
when he grew to know it, he would
probably want himself to see better
and take his glasses again.
But clear cases of that sort are
rare, and there is no opportunity to
try to trace the nervousness back
to its source All that the musketry
officer has is the man himself-a
puzzled, rather shamefaced man, who,
for no reason at all that he can find,
trembles when he goes down with a
rifle. or breaks into a sweat, or can
not see clearly: and he has to put
heart into that man and make him