3-078-235 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Manoeuvres of the First Army Corps in and around Wolmer Forest, Hampshire, 1890. '1. The Royal Scots Fighting in Brimstone Wood: [the Scots] had some magazine rifles...while the Royal Marines had Martini-Henry rifles. 2. The War Balloon, with Telephonic Communication: It was inflated with gas produced by sulphuric acid and zinc in iron cylinders...The [captive] balloon rose to the height of 300 ft.; the car would hold two or three persons, who had a telephone communicating with the headquarters below. 3. Vedette of the 14th Hussars on the Look-out for the Enemy. 4. Laying the Field Telegraph: The defending army was accompanied by the field telegraph corps, who laid down the line of telegraph with much celerity. They carried bamboo poles about 12 ft. high, with insulators fixed at the top, in which the wire was placed. Two men...with sledge-hammers, drove an iron peg into the ground, to make holes for the poles to be stuck up in, at intervals of 150 yards...These were followed by two men with a hand-barrow carrying the wire mounted on a wheel, and it was unrolled as they went, and placed on the top of the poles. 5. The Devonshire Regiment Skirmishing. 6. Field-Cookery on Broxhead Common: black stew-pots, to cook the beef and potatoes'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.