Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-08-06
No. 3


l lived to see the Canadian boy
who thus flew and signalled, load
his plane with all the bombs it would
carry, fly back through clouds OF
bursting shrapnel, to do what he
could, pitifully little to help the
boys in that CHASTITY trench. Splen-
did young, fearless lives sacrificed,
splendid young, strong bodies blown
to bloody bits, because that states
man and that audience and their
kind didn't even know enough OF
military education to see the blind
folly of expecting a trained and
equipped army to grow up in a
month, or in six months.
Had we even an inkling of mill
tary knowledge we would have
laughed that statesman off the stage
and out of the State.
l took another look at that Front.
Here an airplane attack; flotilla
of planes coming over to bomb;
some speeding low, two or three
hundred feet from the ground,
splitting a fire of death from their
machine guns, some higher up bomb
dropping, some soaring aloft for
observation, others going back of
the lines to drop huge bombs on the
villages and towns to crush help
less civilians, women and children.
1 watched the shrapnel puffs, and
did some thinking. The sky was
literally dotted with planes; the SOL
emn "plop" far up in the clouds the
insistent bang and crash right over
your head; the sinister hiss and
bone e-shattering dotonations of the
bombs going right on despite the
anti aircraft fire. | watched the
thousands of shells shot at these
sky raiders. l suppose l have seen
twenty thousand shrapnel fired at
airplaneS at all angles and heights
and in all lights, from midnight
when the sky was cross-grilled by
flaming swords of search-lightS,
while little children crouched in
cellars and holes to avoid the Hun
to broad daylight where eager gun
ners manned their pieces and shot
as fast as they could load, salvo
after salvo, hundreds, thousands of
shots. And out of that mass of
shots perhaps half a dozen hit their
target. and less than that number
brought down their plane.
1t takes an expert shot to come
even reasonably near them; and it
takes genius to hit them once out of
fifty times. And we didn't have
military education enough even to
sense that simple fact, otherwise
we would have had some air-gun-
ners trained, some military educa-
tion somewhere, that would have
shown the grim humor of antl-pre-
paredness speeches.
Just figure it out; a plane COM
ing a hundred and twenty miles an
hour sweeping, swerving, dipping,
curving like q swallow; a heavy
cannon manned by a crew. They
must get direction, height, range
accurately on that moving target
by means of machinery moving
heavy cannon. They must set the
clockwork on the shrapnel to burst
at the right moment. One seconds
difference in bursting time makes
a difference of over fifty yards on
the target even if it were stationary.
And one second in the shell itself,
the velocity of the shell as it sweeps
up makes a difference of over five
hundred yards in the place where
it bursts and this complicated and
rapid shooting must be done, not
with a light gun in the hands of one
man, but with a cannon, handled by
a crew.
If you want a fair example, try
a gun heavy enough to need two
men to fire it, and try to shoot ducks
on the wing with it. You will soon
realize how much training and
practice it needs. And when you
have tried that, load your gun with
a shell that must be timed right to
burst and you have the problems of
the anti-aircraft gun; also the rea-
son why so few planes are hit by
them.
Doesn't that throw some light on
the necessity for a little military
education?
A trained army in a month or in
six months?
You who doubt the necessity of
military education, turn this over
in your mind: our anti-aircraft
guns have killed and wounded more
of our own men than they have of
the enemy, and when I speak of our,
I mean the Allied aircraft guns.
What goes up must come down"
we used to say when I was a boy.
And this rapid fire of shrapnel back
of the lines, at speeding air-crafts
necessary as it is to keep the raid
ers high up. is rather hard on the
boys at best and when you have
half educated gunners, 1t is some
thing more than a joke. I'd like to
put our great statesman" who
thought we could get a million