cipline must be maintained, so that there is the strictest
compliance with verbal orders and signals, and application on the
battlefield of the habits inculcated during the training period. The
time when fire is to be opened is often left to the discretion of the
fire-unit commander, but, generally speaking, fire should be opened by
an {38} attacking force only when a further advance without opening
fire is impossible; and even in defence, when access to the ammunition
reserve is likely to be far easier than in an attack, withholding fire
until close range is reached is generally more effective than opening
at a longer range. The tactical value of a withering fire at close
range from a hitherto passive defender has again and again been proved
in battle. On the _Heights of Abraham_ (September 13, 1759) General
Wolfe had assembled his troops and he awaited Montcalm's attack. Not a
shot was fired by the defenders until the attacking force was within
forty paces, and three minutes later a bayonet charge into the broken
foe swept the French helplessly before it. At the _Battle of Bunker
Hill_ (June 17, 1775) the American colonists inflicted a loss of 46 per
cent. on the assaulting British force, by reserving their fire "until
the badges and buttons of the tunics could be clearly identified." At
the _Battle of Fredericksburg_ (December 13, 1862) General Meagher's
Irish Brigade of the U.S. Army of the Potomac assaulted Marye's Hill,
1,200 strong. The defending Confederates reserved their fire until the
assailants were 100 yards from their position and drove them off with a
loss of 937 out of the 1,200. In August, 1914, the British Regular
Army, during the _Retreat from Mons_, reserved their fire until the
Germans arrived at the most deadly point of their rifles' trajectory,
and again and again drove off all except the dead and mortally wounded.
Throughout the Great War, troops fully trained in the British system of
musketry and using the short magazine Lee Enfield rifle, proved beyond
dispute the values of the system and of the weapon. In a review of the
methods adopted to check the great German offensive in the spring of
1918, a circular issued by the General Staff states: "Rapid rifle fire
was the decisive factor in these operations. The men had confidence in
their rifles and knew how to use them."

Superiority of fire can only be gained by the close {39} co-operation
of the artillery and infantry at every stage of