covering the advance of the 46th Division in such a position that a normal frontal barrage could be fired, and it was decided to try the novel experiment of an oblique or "enfilade" barrage. With this object in view, all the guns were arranged as nearly as possible in enfilade of the front on which the attacking Brigades would advance, and time-tables for a creeping enfilade barrage were made out, the necessary lifts being made on the leap-frog principle.
In discussing this, the last barrage of great intensity under which the troops of the Division were fated to advance in the present war, it may be permissible to enter into a little more detail. The reader of this account who is not conversant with modern artillery may thus be given some idea of the uses of an artillery barrage, a factor which has played so important a part in this war and which has been developed to a very high state of perfection. The idea of the barrage is first and foremost to afford the attacking troops a certain measure of protection, by forcing the enemy to take refuge in his dug-outs, saps and trenches. Intense, well-directed covering artillery fire will so plaster the ground over which the assault is being made, that troops exposed in the open stand very little chance indeed of survival. They are, therefore, constrained to take shelter, and a determined attacking force keeping well up to the line of bursting shells can overrun the strongest defences without much trouble. On the other hand, should the barrage, through badly worked-out time-tables, or through the Infantry being delayed by some unforeseen accident, get ahead of the latter, it is of little use. The defending troops can lie snugly hidden in their shelters until the rain of shells has passed and then, emerging from their dug-outs, can man their machine guns and shoot
