William Balck on Field Artillery (III)
Armies of the First World War
After devoting several paragraphs to particular cases, Balck provided a model for the allocation of artillery to a division engaged in offensive operations along a four-kilometer front. In doing this, Balck refrained from laying down fixed rules. Instead, he suggested both minimum and maximum allocations of batteries of three basic types. (These were field batteries, armed with either field guns or light field howitzers; batteries of heavy field howitzers; and batteries equipped with heavy guns in calibers between 100mm and 150mm.)
Balck followed his argument for the custom-tailoring of the artillery assigned to each division by quoting several complete paragraphs from a French manual on defensive operations. Exactly why he did this is hard to say. His point may have been “even the French, who are famous for their fondness for hard-and-fast rules, believe that the allocation of artillery to particular divisions is a function of local conditions.” He may also have used the quotations to help the reader shift from a discussion of scale to one of function.