The Role of Modern Artillery on the Battlefield and in Religious Law

The US Military refers to artillery as "The King of Battle." This moniker arose for a number of reasons. First in the early stages of the formation of the American Army, branches began to apply association with the various pieces on a chessboard. There was a huge scramble to be the first to lay claim to the most desired icons; it came as no surprise that the infantry was the first to adopt this iconography by self-labeling the branch "The Queens of Battle." Then there was the Quartermaster branch's declaration that they were "the third pawn on the left next to the one that Transportation took." The Signal Corps took the rook because they thought that it looked like the safest place to be; their argument was something about needing to wave flags from a high point. By the time, that the smoke had cleared the only piece left was the King. It is ironic that the artillery, like the king is the largest and most impressive looking piece on the board, moves very slowly, if at all and all of the other pieces, including the pawns must defend it. It only contributes to the actual action under the direst circumstances, usually just before someone beats you.
The history of the artillery in combat dates back to the Napoleonic Wars. There were a number of units infected by the desire to be the first to fight and they would practically run from battle to battle. This was quite upsetting to the units comprised of out of shape frogs who wanted nothing more than to swill wine and sit around coming up with even more outlandish hats to compliment their outlandish uniforms. It was for this reason that a particularly fat lazy officer was looking at the miles between his unit and the next battle on a map when the officer had a brilliant idea. “Hey Jacque, look at this map. What if instead of each of all of us carrying a little bit of lead and powder all the way over there, we only went half way, combined all of our powder and lead, stuff it into a tree trunk and shoot those guys from way back here at a safe distance.” This idea not only gave birth to the artillery, but the first recipient, albeit posthumously, of the coveted artillery honorific ‘Order of St Barbara’ Award. Saint Barbara became the patron saint of the artillery because the infantry had snatched Saint Maurice or Maury as the liked to call him in those days, right after announcing that they were the Queens of Battle. Today the artillery plays an important part in any good army. If you want respect as a nation, you have to be able to show that you have an economy strong enough to support entire units of poorly engineered virtually useless weapons and fat slow soldiers to operate them, poorly. There are two types of artillery pieces, howitzers, and cannons a howitzer is a cannon with a German accent. An interesting side note, even the smallest sovereign nation on earth, The Vatican, has a canon and they have a complex set of rules for firing it called The Canon Law. I tried to call The Holy See to ask about their artillery, but the priest I spoke with became very frustrated after some discussion, I think that it is classified, because he kept denying that they had any artillery at all.
The modern artillery is a highly complex branch, comprised of highly complex equipment that is dependent on the ability of its operators to perform precise mathematical calculations under extreme conditions in order to be accurate and effective. For this reason, the US Department of Defense has decided that there was no one better suited to instruct the warriors of tomorrow in these precision techniques than United States Marine Corps Officers. The US Army’s Artillery school at Ft Sill OK is practically swimming with instructors whose test scores would not have gotten them into any other branch of service, including the Merchant Marines and no one even knows what they do. The watchword of the Artillery instructor is precision, not as it relates to artillery. Any artillery instructor will tell you that artillery is so imprecise that there is an entire job in the military dedicated to correcting artillery fire; even then, it still takes three or four shots to get it right. However, for precision in the classroom, no one has better penmanship on a whiteboard than an Artillery Instructor; you should see the lettering those jarheads can make.
“The mission of the field artillery is to destroy, neutralize, or suppress the enemy by cannon, rocket, and missile fire, and to help integrate all fire support assets into combined arms operations.” The most important thing to realize about this mission statement is that it gives the artillery a lot of wiggle room, which is important since the whole basis of the artillery is the probability of error. So much so, that part of the calculations done whenever firing artillery are for ‘probable error’ as in “someone is probably going to error and we are going to miss and hit a bunch of those infantry queens or someone’s farmhouse in Gatesville, but at least we keep the guys who correct our fire in a job!”
There are a number of other calculations before firing the big guns, Metro for instance. Metro is something that you cannot see and cannot touch, but there are varying levels of metro. Ranging from one: not very metro, moustaches and in need of a bath, all the way to eight: we not only manscape, but exfoliate and moisturize every inch of ourselves. Metro is one of artillery’s dirty little secrets; there are even guys who make metro their jobs. The artillery tends to put these people so far away from them and everyone else that they serve no real purpose, but they have their grooming tools and lint brushes and no one seems to mind the arrangement.
So there you have it, the history of artillery concisely, accurately and on time on target, and if it is not right, someone will give me a call and I should get it within three or four tries.